Toward the end of his first year he sent to Westover one night from a station-house, where he had been locked up for breaking a street-lamp in Boston.  By his own showing he had not broken the lamp, or assisted, except through his presence, at the misdeed of the tipsy students who had done it.  His breath betrayed that he had been drinking, too; but otherwise he seemed as sober as Westover himself, who did not know whether to augur well or ill for him from the proofs he had given before of his ability to carry off a bottle of wine with a perfectly level head.  Jeff seemed to believe Westover a person of such influence that he could secure his release at once, and he was abashed to find that he must pass the night in the cell, where he conferred with Westover through the bars.

In the police court, where his companions were fined, the next morning, he was discharged for want of evidence against him; but the university authorities did not take the same view as the civil authorities.  He was suspended, and for the time he passed out of Westover’s sight and knowledge.

He expected to find him at Lion’s Head, where he went to pass the month of August—­in painting those pictures of the mountain which had in some sort, almost in spite of him, become his specialty.  But Mrs. Durgin employed the first free moments after their meeting in explaining that Jeff had got a chance to work his way to London on a cattle-steamer, and had been abroad the whole summer.  He had written home that the voyage had been glorious, with plenty to eat and little to do; and he had made favor with the captain for his return by the same vessel in September.  By other letters it seemed that he had spent the time mostly in England; but he had crossed over into France for a fortnight, and had spent a week in Paris.  His mother read some passages from his letters aloud to show Westover how Jeff was keeping his eyes open.  His accounts of his travel were a mixture of crude sensations in the presence of famous scenes and objects of interest, hard-headed observation of the facts of life, narrow-minded misconception of conditions, and wholly intelligent and adequate study of the art of inn-keeping in city and country.

Mrs. Durgin seemed to feel that there was some excuse due for the relative quantity of the last.  “He knows that’s what I’d care for the most; and Jeff a’n’t one to forget his mother.”  As if the word reminded her, she added, after a moment:  “We sha’n’t any of us soon forget what you done for Jeff—­that time.”

“I didn’t do anything for him, Mrs. Durgin; I couldn’t,” Westover protested.

“You done what you could, and I know that you saw the thing in the right light, or you wouldn’t ‘a’ tried to do anything.  Jeff told me every word about it.  I know he was with a pretty harum-scarum crowd.  But it was a lesson to him; and I wa’n’t goin’ to have him come back here, right away, and have folks talkin’ about what they couldn’t understand, after the way the paper had it.”