472 Three Years at Cambridge. [May, 
was notorious—containing a similar request, and appointing eight o’clock 
as the hour of assignation for both. This done, I summoned P. t and 
a few others to my presence, to whom I imparted my scheme, and who 
delighted of course at the idea, promised to aid me in its development. ° 
With this view, at the appointed hour, we all took our station behind 
a hedge, close to which was the scene of assignation, and there awaited 
in anxious suspense the arrival of the enamoured couple. It was a 
cloudy night ; the moon was at the end of her first quarter, and there 
was just sufficient glimmer to enable us to see, without very accurately 
distinguishing objects. The Bursar—a thin, spare, irritable little being, 
was the first who arrived. He was succeeded almost instantly by T. n, 
when both Gentleman advanced stealthily and cautiously towards each 
other. At the distance of a few yards T halted, and after taking off 
his spectacles to scrutinize the dark stranger who stood near him, and 
finding that he still remained looking towards him, as if in expectation 
of his approach, felt convinced that this must be his Dulcinea, and, in a 
paroxysm of emotion, walked briskly up, casting at the same time a 
second furtive glance around him, clasped the figure in his arms, and 
imprinted a deep, fervent, sonorous kiss upon its cheek. In an instant 
he recoiled with horror; the supposed damsel’s face was as Coarse as a 
gravel pit, and to complete his confusion, the moon suddenly peeping 
out from behind a dense mass of vapour, enabled him satisfactorily to 
ascertain that he had been kissing his greatest enemy. Paralyzed by 
such a blunder, he stood staring wildly at the Bursar, who, in turn, 
wiped his lips with a look of equal astonishment, not unmixed with — 
indignation. After a moment’s pause— 
« A very awkward mistake!” faltered forth T. n, in a voice meant 
to be facetious—“ very awkward, indeed! He! he! he!” 
“ Sir,” replied the Bursar, “ I must say, this is the most unexpected ; 
—the most insulting—the most unprecedented——” . 
Before he could finish the sentence, the real damsel herself, to whom 
P t had imparted the joke, with a request, strengthened by a bribe, 
that she would assist at the dénowement, made her appearance. At sight 
of this unwelcome apparition, the two Gents. were literally stupified, and 
stood bowing and scraping to each other, at the same time edging off the 
scene of action, with a grave solemnity of visage that would have split 
the sides of Heraclitus himself, had it been his good luck to have fallen — 
on such days of wickedness. This was the moment that P t had selected — 
for the exposure. In an instant we had all leaped the hedge, and planted 
ourselves, while the tears of laughter ran down our cheeks, full in front 
of the two unfortunates, who, struck no doubt with an awful conscious- 
ness of their meditated iniquity, stood upon no further punctilios, but 
scampered off the field, neck and neck, at a rate that would have done | 
credit to a Newmarket race-horse. Unfortunately, on reaching the 
borders of Parker's Piece, they overlooked the slight obstacle thrown in 
their way by a ditch of singularly superb dimensions, into which they 
both plunged headlong, with a precipitancy proportioned to the weig 
and thickness of their respective skulls. Just at this crisis we came w 
and finding four legs sticking up, like tall bullrushes, above the wat 
concluded of course that the owners of such enviable property must b 
somewhere in the neighbourhood ; so proceeded at once to search for 
them, and, in less than a second, had the satisfaction of bringing up two 
heads, which, weighed down by the laws of specific gravity, had anchored 
alongside each other in the mud, To have attempted to distinguish t 
