alk of Victor Trevor?" he asked. "He was the only
friend I made during the two years that I was at college. I was never a
very sociable fellow, Watson, always rather fond of moping in my rooms
and working out my own little methods of thought, so that I never mixed
much with the men of my year. Bar fencing and boxing I had few athletic
tastes, and then my line of study was quite distinct from that of the
other fellows, so that we had no points of contact at all. Trevor was
the only man I knew, and that only through the accident of his
bull-terrier freezing on to my ankle one morning as I went down to
chapel.

"It was a prosaic way of forming a friendship, but it was effective. I
was laid by the heels for ten days, and Trevor used to come in to
inquire after me. At first it was only a minute's chat, but soon his
visits lengthened, and before the end of the term we were close friends.
He was a hearty, full-blooded fellow, full of spirits and energy, the
very opposite to me in most respects; but we found we had some subjects
in common, and it was a bond of union when I found that he was as
friendless as I. Finally, he invited me down to his father's place at
Donnithorpe, in Norfolk, and I accepted his hospitality for a month of
the long vacation.

"Old Trevor was evidently a man of some wealth and consideration, a J.P.
and a landed proprietor. Donnithorpe is a little hamlet just to the
north of Langmere, in the country of the Broads. The house was an
old-fashioned, wide-spread, oak-beamed, brick building, with a fine
lime-lined avenue leading up to it. There was excellent wild duck
shooting in the fens, remarkably good fishing, a small but select
library, taken over, as I understood, from a former occupant, and a
tolerable cook, so that it would be a fastidious man who could not put
in a pleasant month there.

"Trevor senior was a widower, and my friend was his only son. There had
been a daughter, I heard, but she had died of diphtheria while on a
visit to Birmingham. The father interested me extremely. He was a man of
little culture, but with a considerable amount of rude strength both
physically and mentally. He knew hardly any books, but he had travelled
far, had seen much of the world, and had remembered all that he had
learned. In person he was a thick-set, burly man, with a shock of
grizzled hair, a brown, weather-beaten face, and blue eyes which were
keen to the verge of fierceness. Yet he had a reputation for kin