he _Daily Independent_ caused him any
uneasiness. No doubt, as he fully recognised, the suggestion about
the Trinity student was nothing but a wild guess on the part of the
reporter. It was highly unlikely that anyone would seriously consider a
theory so intrinsically improbable. Still, if the faintest suspicion of
the part he had played reached the ears of the college authorities, he
felt that his career as a divinity student was likely to be an extremely
brief one. His chief fear was that a prolonged absence from college
would give rise to inquiry, and that his bandages would excite suspicion
when he reappeared. Fortunately, the house surgeon decided that he was
sufficiently recovered to be allowed to leave the hospital early in the
afternoon. The boot which had put an end to his share in the riot had
raised its bruise under his hair, so he was able to remove the bandages
from his head as soon as he got into the street. There still remained a
long strip of plaster meant to keep a dressing of iodoform in its place
over the cut on his cheek which Mr. Shea's chair-leg had inflicted.
This he could not get off, and thinking it wiser to make his entry into
college after nightfall, he sought a refuge in Mary O'Dwyer's rooms.

He found the poetess laid on a sofa and clad in a blue dressing-gown.
She stretched a hand of welcome to Hyacinth, and then, before he had
time to take it, began to laugh immoderately. The laughing fit ended in
sobs, and then tears flowed from her eyes, which she mopped convulsively
with an already damp pocket-handkerchief. Before she had recovered
sufficient self-possession to speak, she signed to Hyacinth to fetch a
bottle of smelling-salts from the chimney-piece. He hastened to obey,
and found himself kneeling beside the sofa, holding the bottle to her
nose. After a while she recovered sufficiently to tell him that she had
not slept at all during the night, and felt extremely unwell and quite
unstrung in consequence. Another fit of immoderate and tearful laughter
followed, and Hyacinth, embarrassed and alarmed, fetched a tumbler of
soda-water from the syphon on the sideboard. The lady refused to
swallow any, and, just as he had made up his mind to risk an external
application, recovered again. During the lucid interval which followed
she informed him that his own conduct had been superb and heroic. What
seemed to be an effort to celebrate his achievements in extemporary
verse brought on another fit. H