CHAPTER II.—­A STRANGE STORY.

How long he lay he knew not.  When he came to himself it was broad daylight, and he was walking through the Great Court hand in hand with Mrs. JOGGINS.

“See,” she said, “there is Dr. GORGIAS,” and sure enough there stood the redoubtable Master in the centre of one of the grass-plots in a bright red dressing-gown and slippers, with an embroidered smoking-cap upon his head.  He was engaged in distributing crumbs to a congregation of sparrows and thrushes and redbreasts.

“Good morning, BURROWES,” said the Master; “how’s your poor feet?  Can you catch.  One, two, three, heads!” and with that he flung the crust he held in his hand at the astounded Dean, and landed him fairly on the right cheek.  Dr. GORGIAS then executed a pirouette, kissed his hand to Mrs. JOGGINS, and disappeared into the Master’s lodge.  “From this good man,” said Mrs. JOGGINS to the Dean, “you may learn a lesson of unassuming kindness; but time presses; we must hurry on.  By virtue of the power vested in me by the Queen of the Fairies, whose ambassadress I am in Grantaford, I have summoned back to St. Michael’s all the Undergraduates.  You shall see them.”  In vain the miserable Dean protested that he had seen too much of them.  The Fairy JOGGINS was inexorable.  She waved her wand, a yard of butter congealed to the hardness of oak by the frosty morning, and in a moment the Court was filled with Undergraduates.  They were all smoking, and suddenly the Dean became aware that he too had a lighted cigar in his mouth, and was puffing at it.  At the same moment he discovered that he was wearing a disgracefully battered college-cap, and a brilliant “blazer,” lately invented by a rowdy set as the badge of their dining Club.  He shuddered, but it was useless.  He put his hand in his coat-pocket.  It contained a bottle of champagne.

The Undergraduates now formed a procession and began to defile past him.  “Smoking in the Court, half-a-crown,” said one, in a dreadful voice.  “Mr. BURROWES irregular in his attendance at Chapel, gated at eight,” roared a second.  “Mr. BURROWES persistently disorderly, sent down for the term,” shouted a third; and then they all began to caper round the hapless man whom the Fairy Queen had betrayed into their power.  They taunted him and reviled him.  “You have mined our homes, poisoned our fathers’ happiness, undermined the trusting confidence of our mothers.  You have been a bad man.  You must perish!” and thus the dreadful chorus went on while the Dean stood stupidly in the centre of the throng puffing violently at one of the largest cigars ever seen in St. Michael’s.  At last the Fairy waved her wand again, and in a moment the shouts ceased and the crowd disappeared.  “See,” she said, “the result of intemperate disciplinarian zeal!” But Mr. BURROWES neither heard nor heeded.  He had collapsed.

CHAPTER III.—­WIDE AWAKE!