er chambers could be had--but then--and after all, perhaps, as
he is young--besides, Frank will certainly be expelled before long, and
then he will have them all to himself. I say, O'Malley, I believe I must
quarter you for the present with a rather wild companion; but as your uncle
says you're a prudent fellow,"--here he smiled very much, as if my uncle
had not said any such thing,--"why, you must only take the better care of
yourself until we can make some better arrangement. My pupil, Frank Webber,
is at this moment in want of a 'chum,' as the phrase is,--his last three
having only been domesticated with him for as many weeks; so that until we
find you a more quiet resting-place, you may take up your abode with him."

During breakfast, the doctor proceeded to inform me that my destined
companion was a young man of excellent family and good fortune who, with
very considerable talents and acquirements, preferred a life of rackety and
careless dissipation to prospects of great success in public life, which
his connection and family might have secured for him. That he had been
originally entered at Oxford, which he was obliged to leave; then tried
Cambridge, from which he escaped expulsion by being rusticated,--that
is, having incurred a sentence of temporary banishment; and lastly, was
endeavoring, with what he himself believed to be a total reformation, to
stumble on to a degree in the "silent sister."

"This is his third year," said the doctor, "and he is only a freshman,
having lost every examination, with abilities enough to sweep the
university of its prizes. But come over now, and I'll present you to him."

I followed him down-stairs, across the court to an angle of the old square
where, up the first floor left, to use the college direction, stood the
name of Mr. Webber, a large No. 2 being conspicuously painted in the middle
of the door and not over it, as is usually the custom. As we reached the
spot, the observations of my companion were lost to me in the tremendous
noise and uproar that resounded from within. It seemed as if a number of
people were fighting pretty much as a banditti in a melodrama do, with
considerable more of confusion than requisite; a fiddle and a French horn
also lent their assistance to shouts and cries which, to say the best, were
not exactly the aids to study I expected in such a place.

Three times was the bell pulled with a vigor that threatened its downfall,
when at last, as the jin