as the fluent use of the unknown tongue which at once
allayed any mistrust I might have felt of my new acquaintances; however
that may be, there was something so imposing in the high-sounding
syllables that I yielded at once, and followed them into another and
more remote quadrangle.

Here they stopped under a window, while one gave a loud whistle with his
fingers to his lips; the sash was immediately thrown up, and a handsome,
merry-looking face protruded. "Eh!--what!--Taylor and Ward," cried he,
"what's going on?"

"Come down, Burton; here's a youth for matriculation," cried the
younger.

"All right," cried the other. "There are eight of us here at breakfast;"
and disappearing from the window, he speedily descended to the court,
followed by a number of others, who gravely saluted me with a deep bow,
and solemnly welcomed me within the classic precincts of old Trinity.

"Domine--what's his name?" said the young gentleman called Burton.

"Cregan, sir," replied I, already flattered by the attentions I was
receiving,--"Con Cregan, sir."

"Well, Domine Cregan, come along with us, and never put faith in a
junior sophister. You know what a junior sophister is, I trust?"

"No, sir."

"Tell him, Ward."

"A junior sophister, Mr. Cregan, is one who, being in 'Locke' all day,
is very often locked out all night, and who observes the two rubrics
of the statute '_de vigilantibus et lucentibus_,' by extinguishing both
lamps and watchmen."

"Confound your pedantry!" broke in Burton; "a junior soph, is a man in
his ninth examination."

"The terror of the porters," cried one.

"The Dean's milch cow," added another.

"A credit to his parents, but a debtor to his tailor," broke in a third.

"Seldom at Greek lecture, but no fellow commoner at the Currah," lisped
out Taylor; and by this time we had reached a narrow lane, flanked on
one side by a tall building of gloomy exterior, and on the other by an
angle of the square.

"Here we are, Mr. Cregan; as the poet says, 'this is the place, the
centre of the wood.'"

"Gentlemen sponsors, to your functions!" Scarce were the words out, when
I was seized by above half a dozen pair of strong hands; my legs were
suddenly jerked upwards, and, notwithstanding my attempts to resist, I
was borne along for some yards at a brisk pace. I was already about
to forbear my struggles, and suffer them to play their--as I deemed
it--harmless joke in quiet, when straight in front of me I saw an