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out a horse. The club was running over with “representatives” from every part of the colony, each team also being provided with a bodyguard of devoted adherents and supporters. The young men were all very kind and friendly to the professor (who felt immensely flattered by their patronage), and they “took him in hand” without delay, and endeavoured to initiate him into the various mysteries of polo, the totalizator, progressive euchre, poker, and Calcutta sweeps. Perhaps they attempted too much at once, for some of the good-looking athletic young fellows might often be observed looking more in sorrow than in anger on their pupil, while he made havoc of their dearest technical terms—perhaps inquiring (“just as we thought he did begin to understand something”) as to “who kicked the goal” at polo, or blandly asking “And who won the race to-day?” when a detachment in hunting boots and straw hats came into breakfast from an early morning run with the harriers over the grassy volcanic hills that shut in the town to the northward.

One of these boys, an innocent-looking, curly-haired youth, known among his intimates as Rat Robinson, took the professor more especially under his protection (always addressing him for some unknown reason as Mynheer), and struggled