of Oxford had been her answer to his
prayer--his appeal. Had she not given him a right to make the appeal?
What girl could give two such rendezvous to a man, and not admit some
right on his part to advise, to influence her? It was monstrous she
should have turned upon him so!

And as for this puppy!--

A sudden gust of passion, of hot and murderous wrath, different from
anything he had ever felt before, blew fiercely through the man's soul.
He wanted to crush--to punish--to humiliate. For a moment he saw red.
Then he heard Meyrick say excitedly: "This is our last chance! Let's
cool his head for him--in Neptune."

Neptune was the Graeco-Roman fountain in the inner quad, which a former
warden had presented to the college. The sea god with his trident,
surrounded by a group of rather dilapidated nymphs, presided over a
broad basin, filled with running water and a multitude of goldfish.

There was a shout of laughing assent, and a rush across the grass to
Radowitz's staircase. College was nearly empty; the Senior Tutor had
gone to Switzerland that morning; and those few inmates who still
remained, tired out with the ball of the night before, were fast asleep.
The night porter, having let everybody in and closed the gate, was
dozing in his lodge.

There was a short silence in the quadrangle. Then the rioters who had
been for a few minutes swallowed up in a distant staircase on the
western side of the quadrangle reemerged, with muffled shouts and
laughter, bringing their prey with them--a pale, excited figure.

"Let me alone, you cowardly bullies!--ten of you against one!"

But they hurried him along, Radowitz fighting all the way, and too proud
to call for help. The intention of his captors--of all save one--was
mere rowdy mischief. To duck the offender and his immaculate white
flannels in Neptune, and then scatter to their beds before any one could
recognise or report them, was all they meant to do.

But when they reached the fountain, Radowitz, whose passion gave him
considerable physical strength, disengaged himself, by a sudden effort,
from his two keepers, and leaping into the basin of the fountain, he
wrenched a rickety leaden shell from the hand of one of Neptune's
attendant nymphs and began to fling the water in the faces of his
tormentors. Falloden was quickly drenched, and Meyrick and others
momentarily blinded by the sudden deluge in their eyes. Robertson, the
Winchester Blue, was heavily struck. In a wil