After the service Martin should have returned to his lodgings at once, but, tempted by the novelty of all he saw about him, he lingered in the streets, and saw cause to alter his opinion of the extreme propriety of the students.  Some of them were playing at pitch and toss in the thievish corners.  At least half a dozen pairs of antagonists were settling their quarrels with their fists or with quarterstaves, in various secluded nooks.  Songs, gay rather than grave, not to say a trifle licentious, resounded; while once or twice he was asked:  “Are you North or South?”—­a query to which he hardly knew how to reply, Kenilworth being north and Sussex south of Oxford.

But the penalty of not answering was a rude jostling, which tried his temper sadly, and awoke the old Adam within him, which our readers remember only slumbered.  He looked through the open door of a tavern.  It was full of the young reprobates, and the noise and turmoil was deafening.

As he stood by the door, three or four grave-looking men came along.

“We must get them all home, or there will be bloodshed tonight,” Martin heard one say.

“It will be difficult,” replied the other.

Into the tavern they turned, and the noise suddenly subsided.

“What do ye here, ye reprobates, that ye stand drinking, dicing, quarrelling?  To your hostels, every one of you,” said the first.

Martin expected scornful resistance, and was surprised to see that instead, all the rapscallions evacuated the place, and the “proctors,” as we should now call them, remained to remonstrate with the host, whose license they threatened to withdraw.

“How can I help it?” he said.  “They be too many for me.”

“If you cannot keep order, seek another trade,” was the stern response.  “We cannot have the morals of our scholars corrupted.”

“Bless you, sirs, it is they who corrupt me.  I don’t know half the wickedness they do.”

Our readers need not believe him, the proctors did not.

But Martin took the warning, and was bent on getting home, only he lost his way, and could not find it again.  It was not for want of asking; but the young scholars he met preferred lies to truth, in the mere frolic of puzzling a newcomer, and sent him first to Frideswide’s, thence to the East Gate, near Saint Clement’s Chapel, and he was making his way back with difficulty along the High Street when he heard an awful confusion and uproar about the “Quatre Voies” (Carfax) Conduit.

“Down with the lubberly North men!”

“Split their skulls, though they be like those of the bullocks their sires drive!”

“Down with the moss troopers!”

“Boves boreales!”

And answering cries: 

“Down with the lisping, smooth-tongued Southerners!”

“Australes asini!”

“Eheu!”

“Slay me every one with a burr in his mouth.” (An allusion to the
Northumbrian accent.)