I daresay the dean's anathema was "as sensible as it was sincere;" but it did not prevent our thoroughly enjoying the success of the "_outrage_" at the time; nor does it, unfortunately, suffice at this present moment to check something like an inward chuckle, when I think of the trouble which it cost the various retainers of the college to clear it effectually of its strange visitors. Hopkins, the old butler, who was of rather an imaginative temperament, and had a marvellous tale to tell any one who would listen, of a departed bursar, who, having caught his death of cold by superintending the laying down of three pipes of port, might ever afterwards be heard, upon such interesting occasions, walking about the damp cellars after nightfall in pattens,--Hopkins, the oracle of the college "tap," maintained that the frogs were something "off the common;" and strengthened his opinion by reference to a specimen which he had selected--a lank, black, skinny individual, which really looked ugly enough to have come from anywhere. Scouts, wives, and children (they always make a point of having large families, in order to eat up the spare commons), all were busy, through that eventful day, in a novel occupation, and by dinner-time not a frog was to be seen; but long, long afterwards, on a moist evening, fugitives from the general proscription might be seen making their silent way across the quadrangle, and croakings were heard at night-time, which might (as Homer relates of his frogs) have disturbed Minerva, only that the goddess of wisdom, in chambers collegiate, sleeps usually pretty sound.
The "business of the stays," however, bid fair to supersede the business of the frogs, in the dean's record of my supposed crimes; and as I fully intended to clear myself, even to his satisfaction, of any suspicion which might attach to me from the possession of such questionable articles so soon as our theatre closed for the season, I resolved that my successful defence from this last imputation would be an admirable ground on which to assume the dignity of a martyr, to appeal against all uncharitable conclusions from insufficient premises, and come out as the personification of injured innocence throughout my whole college career.