CHAPTER III.
THE CHUMS In that old square of Trinity College, Dublin, one side of which fronts the Park, and in chambers on the ground-floor, an oak door bore the names of 'Kearney and Atlee.' Kearney was the son of Lord Kilgobbin; Atlee, his chum, the son of a Presbyterian minister in the north of Ireland, had been four years in the university, but was still in his freshman period, not from any deficiency of scholarlike ability to push on, but that, as the poet of the _Seasons_ lay in bed, because he 'had no motive for rising,' Joe Atlee felt that there need be no urgency about taking a degree which, when he had got, he should be sorely puzzled to know what to do with.

He was a clever, ready-witted, but capricious fellow, fond of pleasure, and self-indulgent to a degree that ill suited his very smallest of fortunes, for his father was a poor man, with a large family, and had already embarrassed himself heavily by the cost of sending his eldest son to the university.

Joe's changes of purpose--for he had in succession abandoned law for medicine, medicine for theology, and theology for civil engineering, and, finally, gave them all up--had so outraged his father that he declared he would not continue any allowance to him beyond the present year; to which Joe replied by the same post, sending back the twenty pounds inclosed him, and saying: 'The only amendment I would make to your motion is--as to the date--let it begin from to-day.

I suppose I shall have to swim without corks some time.

I may as well try now as later on.' [Illustration: 'What lark have you been on, Master Joe ?'] The first experience of his 'swimming without corks' was to lie in bed two days and smoke; the next was to rise at daybreak and set out on a long walk into the country, from which he returned late at night, wearied and exhausted, having eaten but once during the day.
Kearney, dressed for an evening party, resplendent with jewellery, essenced and curled, was about to issue forth when Atlee, dusty and wayworn, entered and threw himself into a chair.
'What lark have you been on, Master Joe ?' he said.