`Yes - I have seen you now and then.'

`And you knew who I was, and didn't speak? And now I am going away!'

`Yes. That's unfortunate. I have hardly any other friend. I have, indeed, one very old friend here somewhere, but I don't quite like to call on him just yet. I wonder if you know anything of him - Mr. Phillotson? A parson somewhere about the county I think he is.'

`No - I only know of one Mr. Phillotson. He lives a little way out in the country, at Lumsdon. He's a village schoolmaster.'

`Ah! I wonder if he's the same. Surely it is impossible! Only a schoolmaster still! Do you know his Christian name - is it Richard?'

`Yes - it is; I've directed books to him, though I've never seen him.'

`Then he couldn't do it!'

Jude's countenance fell, for how could he succeed in an enterprise wherein the great Phillotson had failed? He would have had a day of despair if the news had not arrived during his sweet Sue's presence, but even at this moment he had visions of how Phillotson's failure in the grand university scheme would depress him when she had gone.

`As we are going to take a walk, suppose we go and call upon him?' said Jude suddenly. `It is not late.'

She agreed, and they went along up a hill, and through some prettily wooded country. Presently the embattled tower and square turret of the church rose into the sky, and then the school-house. They inquired of a person in the street if Mr. Phillotson was likely to be at home, and were informed that he was always at home. A knock brought him to the school-house door, with a candle in his hand and a look of inquiry on his face, which had grown thin and careworn since Jude last set eyes on him.

That after all these years the meeting with Mr. Phillotson should be of this homely complexion destroyed at one stroke the halo which had surrounded the school-master's figure in Jude's imagination ever since their parting. It created in him at the same time a sympathy with Phillotson as an obviously much chastened and disappointed man. Jude told him his name, and said he had come to see him as an old friend who had been kind to him in his youthful days.

`I don't remember you in the least,' said the school-master thoughtfully. `You were one of my pupils, you say? Yes, no doubt; but they number so many thousands by this time of my life, and have naturally changed so much, that I remember very few except the quite recent ones.'

`It was out at Marygreen,' said Jude, wishing he had not come.

`Yes. I was there a short time. And is this an old pupil, too?'

`No - that's my cousin.... I wrote to you for some grammars, if you recollect, and you sent them?'

`Ah - yes! - I do dimly recall that incident.'

`It was very kind of you to do it. And it was you who first started me on that course. On the morning you left Marygreen, when your goods were on the waggon, you wished me good-bye, and said your scheme was to be a university man and enter the Church - that a degree was the necessary hall-mark of one who wanted to do anything as a theologian or teacher.'

`I remember I thought all that privately; but I wonder I did not keep my own counsel. The idea was given up years ago.'