ning
and felt its air upon his cheeks. He and Bertie belonged to the same
club-table, and they met there mournfully over the oatmeal. This very
hour to-morrow would see them eating their last before the
examination in Philosophy 4. And nothing pleasant was going to happen
between,--nothing that they could dwell upon with the slightest
satisfaction. Nor had their sleep entirely refreshed them. Their eyes
were not quite right, and their hair, though it was brushed, showed
fatigue of the nerves in a certain inclination to limpness and disorder.

"Epicharmos of Kos
Was covered with moss,"

remarked Billy.

"Thales and Zeno
Were duffers at keno,"

added Bertie.

In the hours of trial they would often express their education thus.

"Philosophers I have met," murmured Billy, with scorn And they ate
silently for some time.

"There's one thing that's valuable," said Bertie next. "When they spring
those tricks on you about the flying arrow not moving, and all the rest,
and prove it all right by logic, you learn what pure logic amounts to
when it cuts loose from common sense. And Oscar thinks it's immense. We
shocked him."

"He's found the Bird-in-Hand!" cried Billy, quite suddenly.

"Oscar?" said Bertie, with an equal shout.

"No, John. John has. Came home last night and waked me up and told me."

"Good for John," remarked Bertie, pensively.

Now, to the undergraduate mind of that day the Bird-in-Hand tavern was
what the golden fleece used to be to the Greeks,--a sort of shining,
remote, miraculous thing, difficult though not impossible to find, for
which expeditions were fitted out. It was reported to be somewhere in
the direction of Quincy, and in one respect it resembled a ghost: you
never saw a man who had seen it himself; it was always his cousin, or
his elder brother in '79. But for the successful explorer a dinner and
wines were waiting at the Bird-in-Hand more delicious than anything
outside of Paradise. You will realize, therefore, what a thing it was
to have a room-mate who had attained. If Billy had not been so dog-tired
last night, he would have sat up and made John tell him everything from
beginning to end.

"Soft-shell crabs, broiled live lobster, salmon, grass-plover,
dough-birds, and rum omelette," he was now reciting to Bertie.

"They say the rum there is old Jamaica brought in slave-ships," said
Bertie, reverently.

"I've heard he has white port of 1820," said Billy; "and