CHAPTER I.—The Strange Visitor.
On the evening of the 24th of December, 1874, the Senior Dean of St. Michael's, the Reverend HENRY BURROWES, was sitting in his comfortable rooms in the Great Court. He had, for reasons of his own, decided to spend the Christmas Vacation in Cambridge. His bed-maker, Mrs. JOGGINS, had entered a mild protest, but it been unavailing. Mr. BURROWES was a man of forbidding aspect and of unbending character. During the five years that he had held his office, he had enforced discipline at the point of the bayonet, as it were, and he boasted with pardonable pride that he had broken the spirit of the haughtiest and least tractable of the Undergraduates. Everybody had been gated at eight o'clock. Many had been sent down. Tears and denunciations were alike unavailing. The ruthless Dean had pursued his course without flinching. A very mild reading-man had attempted his life by dropping a Liddell and Scott on to his head from a first-floor room. This abandoned youth had been screened by his comrades, and had ultimately escaped in spite of the efforts of the justly incensed Dean.
It was nine o'clock. The bells at St. Mary's were ringing the customary curfew. The Dean was seated before the fire in his arm-chair. An open book, a treatise on some abstruse question of pure mathematics, lay on the table by his side. He was meditating on his past exploits, and planning new punishments. But somehow there was a strange sinking at his heart. What could be the reason of it? The dinner in hall had been of the usual moderate excellence, he had only drunk a bottle and a half of claret. "Pshaw," he said, "this is folly. I have not been severe enough. Conscience reproaches me. I am unmanned." He rose and paced about the room. At this moment his door opened, and the familiar figure of Mrs. JOGGINS appeared.
"Beg your pardon, Sir," she said, hesitatingly, "I thought you called."
"No, Mrs. JOGGINS," said the Dean. "I did not call. Are you not rather late in College? Is it usual for you to stay—" Here the Dean stopped abruptly. He rubbed his eyes, and clung to his book-shelf for support. His hair stood on end, and his knees shook. In fact he expressed terror in a thoroughly orthodox manner, for he had suddenly become aware that there was in the face of Mrs. JOGGINS a strange radiance, and that two gossamer wings had suddenly appeared on her back in place of the substantial shawl she was wont to wear. Mr. BURROWES gazed * * * then consciousness forsook him.
CHAPTER II.—A Strange Story.
How long he lay he knew not. When he came to himself it was broad daylight, and he was walking through the Great Court hand in hand with Mrs. JOGGINS.
"See," she said, "there is Dr. GORGIAS," and sure enough there stood the redoubtable Master in the centre of one of the grass-plots in a bright red dressing-gown and slippers, with an embroidered smoking-cap upon his head. He was engaged in distributing crumbs to a congregation of sparrows and thrushes and redbreasts.
"Good morning, BURROWES," said the Master; "how's your poor feet? Can you catch. One, two, three, heads!" and with that he flung the crust he held in his hand at the astounded Dean, and landed him fairly on the right cheek. Dr. GORGIAS then executed a pirouette, kissed his hand to Mrs. JOGGINS, and disappeared into the Master's lodge. "From this good man," said Mrs. JOGGINS to the Dean, "you may learn a lesson of unassuming kindness; but time presses; we must hurry on. By virtue of the power vested in me by the Queen of the Fairies, whose ambassadress I am in Grantaford, I have summoned back to St. Michael's all the Undergraduates. You shall see them." In vain the miserable Dean protested that he had seen too much of them. The Fairy JOGGINS was inexorable. She waved her wand, a yard of butter congealed to the hardness of oak by the frosty morning, and in a moment the Court was filled with Undergraduates. They were all smoking, and suddenly the Dean became aware that he too had a lighted cigar in his mouth, and was puffing at it. At the same moment he discovered that he was wearing a disgracefully battered college-cap, and a brilliant "blazer," lately invented by a rowdy set as the badge of their dining Club. He shuddered, but it was useless. He put his hand in his coat-pocket. It contained a bottle of champagne.