d pushed his chair back from the table, ready to
defend himself, on an emergency, to the bitter end. Then, under the
hearth, there was a sound of scraping and grating, then a rushing noise,
and then George saw--two enormous rats!

Loud and long laughed my master to himself at the discovery. What cared
_he_ for rats? He pulled his chair back to the table, and buried
himself in his book for the next three hours, until his lamp began to
burn low, and the letters on the pages grew blurred and dim, and the
rats had scuffled back by the way they came, and my flagging hands
pointed to four o'clock.

Then George Reader, after kneeling in silent prayer, went to bed.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1. At the college races at Cambridge the boats start one behind
the other at fixed distances, and any boat overtaking and "bumping" the
one in front of it moves up a place nearer to the "Head of the River."

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

HOW MY MASTER FARED AT SAINT GEORGE'S COLLEGE AND MET AN OLD
ACQUAINTANCE OF THE READER'S THERE.

It is not my intention in these pages to give a full and particular
account of George Reader's college life. It would neither be on the
whole interesting, nor would it be found to have much bearing on my own
career, which is the ostensible theme of the present veracious history.

Stories of college life have furnished amusing material for many a book
before now, to which the reader must turn, should his curiosity in that
direction require to be satisfied. The life of a hard--a too hard-
working student in his cell under the college staircase is neither
amusing nor sensational, and it is quite enough to say that, after his
first eventful evening, George Reader pursued his studies with
unflagging ardour, though with greater precaution than ever.

He soon discovered which hours of the day and night were most favourable
for uninterrupted work.

He made a point of taking his constitutional during the hour made
hideous by the ill-starred aspirant on the ophicleide. He invested in a
trap for the rats, which, with the aid of his mother's cheese, yielded
him a nightly harvest of victims, and he arranged with Benson, the
"gyp," not to interrupt him, preferring rather to wait on himself--nay,
even to dust out his own room--than have to sacrifice precious time
while the same offices were being performed by another, especially by
such an overpowering and awe-