! Mr. Harthur, what as appened, sir?" Mr. Morgan, the valet,
asked, who had just arranged the well-brushed clothes and shiny boots
at the door of his master's bedroom, and was carrying in his wig to the
Major.

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

Morgan backed before the pale and desperate-looking young man, with
terrified and wondering glances, and disappeared in his master's
apartment.

The Major put his head out of the bedroom door, as soon as he had his
wig on.

"What? examination over? Senior Wrangler, double First Class, hay? said
the old gentleman--I'll come directly;" and the head disappeared.

"They don't know what has happened," groaned Pen; "what will they say
when they know all?"

Pen had been standing with his back to the window, and to such a dubious
light as Bury Street enjoys of a foggy January morning, so that his
uncle could not see the expression of the young man's countenance, or
the looks of gloom and despair which even Mr. Morgan had remarked.

But when the Major came out of his dressing-room neat and radiant, and
preceded by faint odours from Delcroix's shop, from which emporium Major
Pendennis's wig and his pocket-handkerchief got their perfume, he held
out one of his hands to Pen, and was about addressing him in his cheery
high-toned voice, when he caught sight of the boy's face at length, and
dropping his hand, said, "Good God! 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," Pen groaned out; "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 to God anybody would. 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 it as a
gentleman."

"I couldn't help it, sir. I did my classical papers well enough it was
those infernal mathematics