t in the Hodgett family, he had regularly invested fourpence
weekly in a copy of the _Nottingham Herald_. By this means he had the
satisfaction of congratulating the dean upon the birth of a nephew, in
the person of a son and heir of the Moggs: and though so carefully did
that gentleman avoid all communication with his tormentor, that he was
obliged for two whole days to watch an opportunity to convey the
intelligence; yet, as he finally succeeded in announcing it in the
presence of the tutor of a neighbouring college, who was a profound
genealogist and a great gossip, his pains, he declared, were
sufficiently repaid. The eagerness with which he pounced upon the
advertisement may be imagined; and finding, from a little _N. B._ at the
bottom, that handbills with further particulars were to be had at the
office, he lost no time in procuring half a dozen by post; and one
morning the usual receptacles for university notices, the hall-door and
the board by the buttery, were placarded with staring announcements, in
red and black letters, six inches long, of Mrs HODGETT'S speculation.
One was pushed under the dean's door; one stuck under the knocker at the
principal's; one put into the college letterbox for "the senior
common-room;" in short, had good Mrs Hodgett herself wished to have the
college for her customers, she could hardly have distributed them more
judiciously.

In short, no pains were spared by John Brown to tease and worry the dean
with all the particulars of his family history, which he would most have
wished to bury in oblivion. And to do him justice, he in his turn spared
no pains to get rid of John Brown. He would have allowed him to cut
lectures and chapels _ad libitum_, if he thus could have spared all
personal intercourse, and escaped his detested civilities. Finding that
would not do, he tried the opposite course, and endeavoured either to
get him rusticated at once, or to disgust him with the college, and thus
induce him to take his name off. John was cautious--very cautious; but a
war against the powers that be, is always pretty much of an uphill game;
and so at last it proved in his case.

John had another enemy in the college, of his own making too; this was
Mr Silver, the junior tutor. He was a man of some scholarship and much
conceit; took a first class when very young, having entered college a
mere schoolboy, and read hard; got his appointment as tutor soon after,
and sneered at older men on the st