year, Hardy often brought him down from high talk of
"universal democracy" and "the good cause" by insisting on making the
younger man explain what he really meant. And though Tom suffered under
this severe treatment, in the end he generally came round to acknowledge
the reasonableness of Hardy's methods of argument.

It was a trying year to Tom, this third and last year; full of large
dreams and small performances, of hopes and struggles, ending in failure
and disappointment. The common pursuits of the place had lost their
freshness, and with it much of their charm. He was beginning to feel
himself in a cage, and to beat against the bars of it.

Squire Brown was passing through Oxford, and paid his son a visit in the
last term.

Tom gave a small wine-party, which went off admirably, and the squire
enlarged upon the great improvement in young men and habits of the
university, especially in the matter of drinking. Tom had only opened
three bottles of port. In his time the men would have drunk certainly
not less than a bottle a man.

But as the squire walked back to his hotel he was deeply moved at the
Radical views his son now held. He could not understand these new
notions of young men, and thought them mischievous and bad. At the same
time, he was too fair a man to try to dragoon his son out of anything
which he really believed. The fact had begun to dawn on the squire that
the world had changed a good deal since his time; while Tom, on his
part, valued his father's confidence and love above his own opinions. By
degrees the honest beliefs of father and son no longer looked monstrous
to one another, and the views of each of them were modified.

* * * * *

One more look must be taken at the old college. Our hero is up in the
summer term, keeping his three weeks' residence, the necessary
preliminary to an M.A. degree. We find him sitting in Hardy's rooms; tea
is over, scouts out of college, candles lighted, and silence reigning,
except when distant sounds of mirth come from some undergraduates' rooms
on the opposite side of the quad.

"Why can't you give a fellow his degree quietly," says Tom, "without
making him come and kick his heels here for three weeks?"

"You ungrateful dog! Do you mean to say you haven't enjoyed coming back,
and sitting in dignity in the bachelors' seats in chapel and at the
bachelors' table in hall, and thinking how much wiser you are than the
undergraduate