mise you, he was one man under his father's
eye, and another down at Oxford; so, one night, this gentleman, being
warm with wine, opens his window, and, seeing a group of undergraduates
chattering and smoking in the quadrangle, imitates the peculiar grating
tones of Mr. Champion, vice-president of the college, and gives them
various reasons why they ought to disperse to their rooms and study.
"But, perhaps," says he, in conclusion, "you are too blind drunk to read
Bosh in crooked letters by candle-light? In that case----"

And he then gave them some very naughty advice how to pass the evening;
still in the exact tones of Mr. Champion, who was a very, very strict
moralist; and this unexpected sally of wit caused shrieks of laughter,
and mightily tickled all the hearers, except Champion ipse, who was
listening and disapproving at another window. He complained to the
president. Then the ingenious Wardlaw, not having come down to us in a
direct line from Bayard, committed a great mistake--he denied it.

It was brought home to him, and the president, who had laughed in his
sleeve at the practical joke, looked very grave at the falsehood;
Rustication was talked of and even Expulsion. Then Wardlaw came
sorrowfully to Penfold, and said to him, "I must have been awfully cut,
for I don't remember all that; I had been wining at Christchurch. I do
remember slanging the fellows, but how can I tell what I said? I say, old
fellow, it will be a bad job for me if they expel me, or even rusticate
me; my father will never forgive me; I shall be his clerk, but never his
partner; and then he will find out what a lot I owe down here. I'm done
for! I'm done for!"

Penfold uttered not a word, but grasped his hand, and went off to the
president, and said his pupil had wined at Christchurch, and could not be
expected to remember minutely. Mimicry was, unfortunately, a habit with
him. He then pleaded for the milder construction with such zeal and
eloquence that the high-minded scholar he was addressing admitted that
construction was _possible,_ and therefore must be received. So the
affair ended in a written apology to Mr. Champion which had all the
smoothness and neatness of a merchant's letter. Arthur Wardlaw was
already a master in that style.

Six months after this, and one fortnight before the actual commencement
of our tale, Arthur Wardlaw, well crammed by Penfold, went up for his
final examination, throbbing with anxiety. He passed; and