CHAPTER III.
The party given at St.Hubert's on this evening in the Eights week was given in honour of a famous guest--the Lord Chancellor of the day, one of the strongest members of a strong Government, of whom St.Hubert's, which had nurtured him through his four academic years, was quite inordinately proud.

It was very seldom that their great nursling was able or willing to revisit the old nest.

But the head of the college, who had been in the same class-list and rowed in the same boat with the politician, was now Vice-Chancellor of the University; and the greater luminary had come to shine upon the lesser, by way of heightening the dignity of both.

For the man who has outsoared his fellows likes to remind himself by contrast of his callow days, before the hungry and fighting impulses had driven him down--a young eaglet--upon the sheepfolds of law and politics; while to the majority of mankind, even to-day, hero-worship, when it is not too exacting, is agreeable.
So all Oxford had been bidden.

The great hall of St.Hubert's, with its stately portraits and its emblazoned roof, had been adorned with flowers and royally lit up.