ache this morning, and the night air
now," said Julian, smiling at the energetic description, yet pained by
the intensity of Kennedy's tone of voice.

"Hush, Julian! I hate all that stupid materialism. Depend upon it,
some evil thing is over me. I wonder whether crimes of the future can
throw their crimson shadow back over the past. My life, thank God, has
been an innocent one, yet now I feel like the guiltiest thing alive."

"One oughtn't to yield to such feelings, or to be the victim of a heated
imagination, Kennedy. In my own case at least, half the feelings I have
fancied to be presentiments have turned out false in the end--
presentiments, I mean, which have been suggested, as perhaps this has,
by passing circumstances."

"God grant this may be false," said Kennedy, "but something makes me
feel uneasy."

"It will be a lying prophet, if you so determine, Kennedy. The only
enemy who has real power to hurt us is ourselves. Why should you be
agitated by an idle forecast of uncertain calamity? Be brave, and
honest, and pure, and God will be with you."

"Don't be surprised," continued Julian, "if you've heard me say the same
words before; they were my father's dying bequest to his eldest son."

"Be brave, and honest, and pure--" repeated Kennedy; "yes, you _must_ be
right, Julian. Look what a glorious sky, and what numberless `patines
of bright gold.'"

Julian looked up, and at that moment a meteor shot across the heaven,
plunging as though from the galaxy into the darkness, and after the
white and dazzling lustre of the trail had disappeared, seeming to leave
behind the glory of it a deeper gloom. It gave too true a type of many
a young man's destiny.

Kennedy said nothing, but although it is not the Camford custom to shake
hands, he shook Julian's hand that night with one of those warm and
loving grasps, which are not soon forgotten. And each walked slowly
back to his own room.

CHAPTER NINE.

THE BOAT-RACE.

"And caught once more the distant shout,
The measured pulse of racing oars
Between the willows."
_In Memoriam_.

The banks of "silvery-winding Iscam" were thronged with men; between the
hours of two and four the sculls were to be tried for, and some 800 of
the thousand undergraduates poured out of their colleges by twos and
threes to watch the result from the banks on each side.

The first and second guns had been fired, and the scullers in their
boats, each some ten yards