to restore
quiet, then after the lapse of a few more seconds the head and the
nightcap disappeared, and the window was shut down again. But if the
noise was continued, as occasionally it was out of pure mischief, than
in a minute or two the said nightcap would be seen to emerge hastily
from the staircase below, in company with a dressing-gown and slippers,
and Mr Perkins in this disguise would proceed to the scene of
disturbance as fast as his short legs could carry him. He seldom
succeeded in effecting a capture; but if he had that luck, or if he
could distinguish the tone of any individual voice so as to be able to
identify the performer, he had him up before the "seniority" next
morning, where his influence as one of the senior fellows ensured a
heavy sentence. But he had been engaged in so many unsuccessful chases
of the kind, and his short orations from his window so often elicited
only a laugh, though including sometimes brief but explicit threats of
rustication against the noisy unknown, strengthened by little expletives
which, when quoted by under-graduates, were made to sound somewhat
doubtfully--that at last he altered his tactics, and began to act in
silence. And so he did, when upon opening his window he saw a light in
the ground-floor rooms of the staircase whence the sounds proceeded on
the evening in question. Carey, by his own account, was proceeding
quietly in his preparations for bed, singing to himself an occasional
stanza of some classical ditty which he had picked up in the course of
the evening, and admiring the power of the man's lungs in the room above
him, when he heard a short quick step, and then a double rap at his
door. He was quite sufficiently acquainted, by this time, with the ways
of the place, not to be much surprised at the late visit and at the same
time to consider it prudent to learn the name and _status_ of his
visitor before admitting him; so he retorted upon Mr Perkins, quite
unconsciously, his own favourite query--"Who's that?" his first and
obvious impression being that it was one of the party he had just
quitted, coming probably, in the plenitude of good fellowship, to bring
him an invitation to wine or breakfast next day.

"It's me, sir--open the door," was the reply from a deep baritone, which
the initiated would never have mistaken.

"Who are you?" said Carey again.

"My name is Perkins, sir: have the goodness to let me in." He was
getting more angry, and consequently mo