ogy_, and Huxley's
_Invertebrata_, together with a disarticulated human skull. On one side
of the fireplace two thigh bones were stacked; on the other a pair of
foils, two basket-hilted single-sticks, and a set of boxing-gloves.
On a shelf in a convenient niche was a small stock of general
literature, which appeared to have been considerably more thumbed than
the works upon medicine. Thackeray's _Esmond_ and Meredith's _Richard
Feveret_ rubbed covers with Irving's _Conquest of Granada_ and a
tattered line of paper-covered novels. Over the sideboard was a framed
photograph of the Edinburgh University Football Fifteen, and opposite it
a smaller one of Dimsdale himself, clad in the scantiest of garb, as he
appeared after winning the half-mile at the Inter-University Handicap.
A large silver goblet, the trophy of that occasion, stood underneath
upon a bracket. Such was the student's chamber upon the morning in
question, save that in a roomy arm-chair in the corner the young
gentleman himself was languidly reclining, with a short wooden pipe in
his mouth, and his feet perched up upon the side of the table.

Grey-eyed, yellow-haired, broad in the chest and narrow in the loins,
with the strength of a bullock and the graceful activity of a stag, it
would be hard to find a finer specimen of young British manhood.
The long, fine curves of the limbs, and the easy pose of the round,
strong head upon the thick, muscular neck, might have served as a model
to an Athenian sculptor. There was nothing in the face, however, to
recall the regular beauty of the East. It was Anglo-Saxon to the last
feature, with its honest breadth between the eyes and its nascent
moustache, a shade lighter in colour than the sun-burned skin. Shy,
and yet strong; plain, and yet pleasing; it was the face of a type of
man who has little to say for himself in this world, and says that
little badly, but who has done more than all the talkers and the writers
to ring this planet round with a crimson girdle of British possessions.

"Wonder whether Jack Garraway is ready!" he murmured, throwing down the
_Scotsman_, and staring up at the roof. "It's nearly eleven o'clock."

He rose with a yawn, picked up the poker, stood upon the chair, and
banged three times upon the ceiling. Three muffled taps responded from
the room above. Dimsdale stepped down and began slowly to discard his
coat and his waistcoat. As he did so there was a quick, active step
upon the