April 14.--To-morrow is here and has brought a letter from Catherine. I
find it lying by my plate when I come down to breakfast. I take it up,
look at the superscription, partly in Catherine's well-known writing,
partly in my landlady's spider scrawl--for it had gone first to my
London rooms. I turn it over, feel it, decide it contains one sheet of
paper only, and put it resolutely down. After breakfast is time enough
to read it; nothing she can say shall ever move me more.

I pour out my coffee; my resolutions waver and dissipate themselves like
the steam rising from my cup. I tear the letter open, and find myself in
Heaven straightway. And these are the winged words that bore me there:--

"Why do you not come and see me? Why are you so blind? It is true I do
not _like_ you! But I love you with all my heart. Ah! could you not
guess? did you not know?"

"PROCTORISED."

What a ghostly train from the forgotten past rises before me as I write
the word that heads this sketch! The memory dwells again upon that
terrible quarter of an hour in the Proctor's antechamber, where the
brooding demon of "fine" and "rustication" seemed to dwell, and where
the disordered imagination so clearly traced above the door Dante's
fearful legend--Abandon hope all ye that enter here.

How eagerly each delinquent scanned the faces of his fellow-victims as
they came forth from the Proctorial presence, vainly trying to gather
from their looks some forecast of his impending fate; and how jealously
(if a "senior") he eyed the freshman who was going to plead a first
offence!

And then the interview that followed--not half so terrible as was
expected. The good-natured individual who stood before the fire, in
blazer and slippers, was barely recognisable as the terrible official of
yesterday's encounter; while the sleek attendant at the Proctor's elbow
seemed more like a waiter than the pertinacious and fleet-footed
"bull-dog." What a load was raised from the mind as the Proctor made a
mild demand for five shillings, and the "bull-dog" pointed to a plate
into which you gladly tossed the half-crowns. And then you quitted the
room which you vowed never again to enter, feeling that you had been let
down very easily. For you knew full well that beneath the Proctor's
suave demeanour lurked a sting which too often took the painful form of
rustication from the University.

But let us accompany the Proctor as he makes his nightly rounds with his