He looked at us as he said this, pausing long with uplifted eyebrows to watch the effect which this announcement, to him so terrible, would have on us. I did not know what to say, so prayed him civilly to proceed.

'You may well be pained,' he continued, though it must be said that I don't think we were at all, 'but you will rejoice to hear that these things will not continue long. I have here a goad which will soon drive these dull-witted cattle back to the right path.'

So saying he laid his hand on a bundle of manuscript, which we knew only too well, and leaning fondly over it read slowly, as though it were a sweetmeat in his mouth, the title-leaf at the top. Its name was in Greek, not because the work was written in that tongue, but merely out of a fashion used commonly amongst such men to increase their appearance of wisdom.

'It is a work,' the good old man said,—we had heard it a score of times before,—'upon which I am labouring, entituled, "'H Aristotéleia Apología; or, Ramus Ransacked, being a British Blast against Gaulish Gabies, wherein all the preposterous, fantastical opinions of late grown current amongst the Dunces of Paris are fully set forth, withstood, and refuted by Christoph: Follet." It begins with a sharp note against——'

'But, please you, sir,' Harry interrupted,—and I was glad he did, for I saw the old man was running out of his course, as he always did when he got astride his 'Apology,'—'were it not well first to show us how the knowledge of this New World, of which we were asking you, had so set things awry?'

'Knowledge of the New World, say you?' said our tutor, evidently a little pained. 'Know, my boys, there is no knowledge of this pretended New World. No man can know what does not exist: the New World does not exist, ergo, no man hath knowledge of it.'

'Far be it from me to dispute your syllogism,' said I, for logic was his chief delight to teach us, 'yet, saving your premises, I have many times spoken with them that have been there and seen it.'

'My boy, my boy,' answered Mr. Follet sadly, 'in what a perilous case do I find you! What hope can I have of your scholarship if you will set the eyes of moderns against the wits of the ancients? How can they have seen this New World of which they are so ready to prate? Had it existed, Aristotle would have written of it. Forget you for how many years, and for how many and great sages, the whole sum of human understanding has been contained within the compass of the writings of that great man, and will you seek to increase it by the babbling of drunken sailors?'

'But, please you,' said Harry, 'the honest mariners who told me were not drunk.'

'The greater liars they, then,' answered Mr. Follet, a little testily. 'Or rather, I should say, the more pitiable their ignorance; for let me not be carried beyond good manners, which are a sweet seasoning of scholarship too often forgotten nowadays in the dishes men compound of their wits.'