ever
run into debt on his own account.

Another influence for good was the lad's inherited love for all
out-of-door sports, and he could not remember the time when he was not
in training for a team, a crew, or an athletic event of some kind.
Thus the keeping of regular hours, together with a studied temperance
in both eating and drinking, had been grafted into his very nature.

Life had thus been made very pleasant for our hero, and, believing
himself to be heir to a fortune, he had never been disturbed by
anxieties concerning the future. Of course, while he had hosts of
acquaintances, most of whom called themselves his friends, he was well
aware that some of them were envious of his position and would rejoice
at his downfall, should such an event ever take place. It was partly
this knowledge, partly his own sense of absolute security in life, and
partly a habit acquired during a long career of leadership among his
school companions that rendered him brusque with those for whom he did
not particularly care and contemptuous to the verge of rudeness
towards such persons as he disliked. Thus it will be seen that our
young man possessed a facility for the making of enemies as well as
friends.

Of his secret enemies the most bitter was a fellow-student, also an
American, named Owen, who, possessed of barely means enough to carry
him through college, and with no prospects, had, by relinquishing
everything else, taken much the same stand in scholarship that Peveril
had in athletics. As a consequence, each was envious of the other, for
the stroke of the 'varsity eight was so little of a student that he
had never more than barely scraped through with an examination in his
life, and was always overwhelmed with conditions. This jealousy would
not, however, have led to enmity without a further cause, which had
been furnished within a year.

Owen had crossed on a steamer with Mrs. Maturin Bonnifay, of New York,
and her only daughter, Rose. They did London together, and never had
the young American found that smoke-begrimed city so delightful. At
his solicitation the Bonnifays consented to visit Oxford, and
permitted him to act as their escort. In contemplating the pleasure of
such a visit, Owen had lost sight of its dangers; but, alas for his
happiness! they became only too quickly apparent.

The ladies must be taken to the river, of course, and there the one
thing above all others to see was the 'varsity eight at practice. Of