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By Root 3886 0

who he was or what he had done. No, what came from this college was an endless procession of Saltwoods, men of solid worth who never stood at the head of any list but who had a penchant for doing the right thing. They had managed their business in Salisbury, and extended it into various profitable fields; they had served in Parliament when Old Sarum was a rotten borough and then stood for honest election when it was abolished; and like his grandfather's brother Hilary, they had followed God into strange and tragic callings.

Three weeks before his examinations were to begin he fell into a deep melancholy, obsessed by his thoughts of Hilary Saltwood, and he wondered what had motivated him. He had died with his throat cut, Frank knew, and images of the old man ... He assumed that Hilary had been old, for he had lived long ago, and the old man's ghost haunted him so persistently that he began to wonder if this might not be a call to holy orders. Was God speaking to him, soliciting his assistance in some distant missionary field?

He might have gone quite sour and missed his examinations altogether had not the curious scholar come bursting back to Oriel, feverishly preparing for his own final examinations, as strange as ever, those watery blue eyes still deceptive. They seemed somnolent, like a snake's; actually, they burned with an incandescent fire on the few occasions when he looked directly at a newcomer.

This happened one afternoon at tea when a friend said in banter, 'Saltwood, you're beginning to look like a missionary.'

Frank blushed, but was spared the embarrassment of reply by the peripatetic scholar, who hunched his shoulders forward, stared right at him, and asked in a soft, high-pitched voice, 'Why would you elect to be a missionary in strange quarters when there's so much real work to be done in your homeland?'

'What do you mean?' Frank stammered.

'I mean South Africa. Don't you live there?'

'I ... I do. But what's that got to do with it?'

Suddenly the stranger put down his cup, rose awkwardly and stomped from the room, volunteering not another word.

'Who is that fellow?' one of the Oriel men asked.

'Odd duck. Been studying here for his degree since 1873.'

'Eight years to do three years' work. Is he stupid?'

'I don't know. Those are the first words I've ever heard him speak.'

A younger student interrupted: 'He's not stupid at all, although he sometimes seems so.'

Another disagreed: 'He tried to enter a real college, you know. Balliol, I think, but he couldn't pass the exams. So Balliol sent him over here, and our provost said, "It's always the same. All the colleges send me their failures." And Oriel accepted him.' The speaker laughed nervously. 'Same thing happened with me.'

The first young man continued: 'He lives in South Africa, I'm told, and that's why he's been able to attend only on a hit-or-miss basis.'

'I don't understand,' Frank said.

'His health fails. His lungs. Our Oxford climate threatens him and he must hurry home to recuperate. He's had a very broken career, you know.'

'I'd hardly call that a career,' one student said derisively. 'I say, Salt-wood, you're from South Africa. You know the blighter?'

'First time he spoke to me,' Frank said.

'Well, he owns diamond mines in South Africa, and caring for them's the real reason he flits back and forth.'

Three days later Frank again met the stranger, and was impelled to speak with him: 'You said I should not become a missionary?'

'What I meant to saywhy don't you knuckle down and quit this foolishness? Why don't you act like a man, pass your examinations?'

The stranger's tone of voice was so peremptory that it sounded like a father's, and Frank said rebelliously, 'They tell me it's taken you eight years to pass yours.'

The man showed no resentment. A bright smile animated his face and he grasped Frank by the arm. 'You spend three years and come away with a degree. I spent eight years and return home with an empire.'

'What kind?'

'Every kind you can imagine. Political, business, mining, but mostly power.' The man started to leave,