oking at a now
extinct sun, had been found three miles on the Fenbury road, near a mill
stream; and for four-and-twenty hours it was supposed that poor Pen had
flung himself into the stream, until letters arrived from him, bearing
the London post-mark.

The coach reached London at the dreary hour of five; and he hastened to
the inn at Covent Garden, where the ever-wakeful porter admitted him, and
showed him to a bed. Pen looked hard at the man, and wondered whether
Boots knew he was plucked? When in bed he could not sleep there. He
tossed about restlessly until the appearance of daylight, when he sprang
up desperately, and walked off to his uncle's lodgings in Bury Street.

"Good 'evens! Mr. Arthur, what 'as 'appened, sir?" asked the valet, who
was just carrying in his wig to the Major.

"I want to see my uncle," Pen cried in a ghastly voice, and flung himself
down on a chair.

The valet backed before the pale and desperate-looking young man,
with terrified and wondering glances, and disappeared into his
master's apartment, whence the Major put out his head as soon as he
had his wig on.

"What? Examination over? Senior Wrangler, Double First Class, hey?" said
the old gentleman. "I'll come directly," and the head disappeared.

Pen was standing with his back to the window, so that his uncle could not
see the expression of gloomy despair on the young man's face. But when he
held out his hand to Pen, and was about to address him in his cheery,
high-toned voice, he caught sight of the boy's face; and dropping his
hand said, "Why, Pen, what's the matter?"

"You'll see it in the papers at breakfast, sir," Pen said.

"See what?"

"My name isn't there, sir."

"Hang it, why _should_ it be?" asked the Major, more perplexed.

"I have lost everything, sir," groaned out Pen; "my honour's gone; I'm
ruined irretrievably; I can't go back to Oxbridge."

"Lost your honour?" screamed out the Major. "Heaven alive! You don't mean
to say you have shown the white feather?"

Pen laughed bitterly at the word feather, and repeated it. "No, it isn't
that, sir. I'm not afraid of being shot; I wish anybody would shoot me. I
have not got my degree. I--I'm plucked, sir."

The Major had heard of plucking, but in a very vague and cursory way, and
concluded that it was some ceremony performed corporally upon rebellious
university youth. "I wonder you can look me in the face after such a
disgrace, sir," he said; "I wonder you submitted to