The fellow moved towards him reluctantly, and with suspicion.  ’Who is it lies dead there?’ Sir George asked.

‘Your honour knows,’ the man answered cautiously.

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Then you will be the only one in Oxford that does not,’ the fellow replied, eyeing him oddly.

‘Maybe,’ Soane answered with impatience.  ’Take it so, and answer the question,’

‘It is Masterson, that was the porter at Pembroke.’

‘Ah!  And how did he die?’

‘That is asking,’ the man answered, looking shiftily about.  ’And it is an ill business, and I want no trouble.  Oh, well’—­he continued, as Sir George put something in his hand—­’thank your honour, I’ll drink your health.  Yes, it is Masterson, poor man, sure enough; and two days ago he was as well as you or I—­saving your presence.  He was on the gate that evening, and there was a supper on one of the staircases:  all the bloods of the College, your honour will understand.  About an hour before midnight the Master sent him to tell the gentlemen he could not sleep for the noise.  After that it is not known just what happened, but the party had him in and gave him wine; and whether he went then and returned again when the company were gone is a question.  Any way, he was found in the morning, cold and dead at the foot of the stairs, and his neck broken.  It is said by some a trap was laid for him on the staircase.  And if it was,’ the man continued, after a pause, his true feeling finding sudden vent, ’it is a black shame that the law does not punish it!  But the coroner brought it in an accident.’

Sir George shrugged his shoulders.  Then, moved by curiosity and a desire to learn something about the girl, ‘His daughter takes it hardly,’ he said.

The man grunted.  ‘Ah,’ he said, ’maybe she has need to.  Your honour does not come from him?’

‘From Whom?  I come from no one.’

’To be sure, sir, I was forgetting.  But, seeing you with her—­but there, you are a stranger.’

Soane would have liked to ask him his meaning, but felt that he had condescended enough.  He bade the man a curt good-night, therefore, and turning away passed quickly into St. Aldate’s Street.  Thence it was but a step to the Mitre, where he found his baggage and servant awaiting him.

In those days distinctions of dress were still clear and unmistakable.  Between the peruke—­often forty guineas’ worth—­the tie-wig, the scratch, and the man who went content with a little powder, the intervals were measurable.  Ruffles cost five pounds a pair; and velvets and silks, cut probably in Paris, were morning wear.  Moreover, the dress of the man who lost or won his thousand in a night at Almack’s, and was equally well known at Madame du Deffand’s in Paris and at Holland House, differed as much from the dress of the ordinary well-to-do gentleman as that again differed from the lawyer’s or the doctor’s.  The Mitre, therefore, saw in Sir George a very fine