“You won’t blow on me.”
“Me? You must be dreaming.”
“But you’d never expect to hear what I’m going to tell.”
“Perhaps not, but whatever it is, out with it.”
So encouraged, and even now half drunk with wine, Phillip began his story; his first step in crime, as he called it.
And as he went on, Captain Jack eyed him like a hawk, and his eyes glistened with deadly malice towards Phillip, as Redgill began:—
“Tom Templeton was generally admitted to be the greatest Greek scholar in college.
“Plato, Demosthenes and Xenophon were eternally in his hands, and his favourite amusement seemed to be to have a ‘quiet half-hour’ with Homer or Sophocles.
“How he could muster sufficient patience to pore over those tantalizing authors, seemed a great mystery to all the Juniors, but the ‘Nobs,’ ‘Dons,’ and ‘Big-wigs’ of the university would complacently smile, take a pinch of snuff, and nod to Tom, who, squatted at his ease upon the grass, would loll for hours under the trees of our extensive grounds and park, and smoke with impunity, in open defiance of every rule and regulation.
“He could leap, run, walk, fence, and, in fact, excel at anything to which he seemed, inclined to pay attention, except swim, which he never did.