One morning this vacation quiet of the College was rather noisily broken
by the arrival of a number of undergraduates, who had returned to
prepare for an examination, bringing with them the noise and influences
of the outside world. Now the American was no longer to be met with in
the garden or quadrangle, whither he had been wont to come almost every
day, as if fond of the place and not averse from Foley's company.
Wondering that he did not see him any more, Foley one evening asked the
undergraduates if they knew Sutton or had ever heard anything about
him.
By sight and reputation they knew him very well,--a solitary person, who
led in Oxford a most melancholy life, without friends or apparent
occupation; staying there, it was reported, because of something in his
past which kept him from going back to America.
Foley knew how distorted gossip of this kind would grow in coming
through the minds of undergraduates; and yet there was enough in what
they told, to make him uneasy about his friend. Sutton had given up
studying theology, had tried history, making however a complete failure
in the schools; he was said to have adopted strange religious ideas and
had been heard, it was rumoured, groaning and scourging himself at
night. There was a report too that some Americans had come to Oxford,
and, after visiting him, had gone to the Warden and accused Sutton of
keeping some money which was not his own.