and anxious one for the captain.
All day long fellows came applying to him on the wildest of pretexts for
"permits" the following afternoon to go into town. Pilbury, Cusack, and
Philpot wanted to get their hair cut. King and Wakefield had to get
measured for boots, and to-morrow afternoon was the only time they could
fix for the ceremony. Parson and Telson suddenly recollected that they
had never called to pay their respects at Brown's after the pleasant
evening they had spent there a few weeks ago. Strutter, Tedbury, and a
few other Limpets were anxious to study geology that afternoon at the
Town Museum, Pringle wanted to see how his "uncle" was getting on,
etcetera, etcetera.

All which ingenious pretexts the captain very naturally saw through and
firmly declined, much to the mortification of the applicants--who many
of them returned to the charge with fresh and still more ingenious
arguments for making an exception in their particular case. But all to
no effect. About midday the captain's study was empty, and the
following notice pasted on the door told its own story.

Notice.

_By the Doctor's order, no permits will be allowed to-morrow. Call-over
will be at four instead of five_.

A. Riddell, Capt.

In other words, the authorities were determined that Willoughby should
take no part in the election, and to make things quite sure had fixed
call-over for the very hour when the poll would be closing. Of course
poor Riddell came in for all the blame of this unpopular announcement,
and had a bad time of it in consequence. It was at first reported that
the captain was a Radical, and that that was the reason of the
prohibition, but this story was contradicted by his appearance that same
evening with a yellow ribbon in his buttonhole. It was next insinuated
that as he had not been allowed to go down himself he was determined no
one else should, and Willoughby, having once taken up the idea,
convinced itself this was the truth. However, when a good many of the
disappointed applicants went to Bloomfield, and were met by him with a
similar refusal, it began to dawn upon them that after all the doctor
might be at the bottom of this plot to thwart them of their patriotic
desires, and this discovery, though it by no means allayed their
discontent, appeared to keep their resentment within some sort of
bounds.

The juniors, disappointed in the hope of publicly displaying their anti-
radical sentiments before all