"Me and my missis, sir," quoth John, "was a-coming into college when it was hardly to say daylight, when she, as I reckon, sets foot upon one of 'em, and was like to have been back'ards with a set of breakfast chiney, as she was a-bringing in for one of the fresh gentlemen. She scritches out, in course, and I looks down, and then I sees two or three a-'oppin about; but I didn't take much notice till I gets to the thoroughfare, when there was a whole row on 'em a-trying to climb up the bottom step; and then I calls Solomon the porter, and"----
Here I left my window, and, making a hasty toilet, joined a group of undergraduates, who were now collecting round the dean and bursar. I cast my eyes round the quadrangle, and was delighted with the success of our labours. There had been a heavy shower in the night, and the frogs were as lively as they could be on so ungenial a location as a gravelled court. In every corner was a goodly cluster, who were making ladders of each other's backs, as if determined to scale the college walls. Some, of more retiring disposition, were endeavouring to force themselves into crevices, and hiding their heads behind projections to escape the gaze of academic eyes; while a few active spirits seemed to be hopping a sweepstakes right for the common-room door. Just as I made my appearance, the Principal came out of the door of his lodgings, with another of the fellows, having evidently been summoned to assist at the consultation. Good old soul! his study of zoology had been chiefly confined to the class edibles, and a shower of frogs, authenticated upon the oaths of the whole Convocation, would not have been half so interesting to him as an importation of turtle. However, to do him justice, he put on his spectacles, and looked as scientific as anybody. After due examination of the specimen of the genus Rana which the bursar still held in captivity, and pronouncing a unanimous opinion, that, come from where he would, he was a _bona fide_ frog, with nothing supernatural about him, the conclave proceeded round the quadrangle, calculating the numbers, and conjecturing the probable origin of these strange visitors. Equally curious, if not equally scientific, were the undergraduates who followed them; for, having strictly kept our own secret, my friend and myself were the only parties who could solve the mystery; and though many suspected that the frogs were unwilling emigrants, none knew to whom they were indebted for their introduction to college. The collected wisdom of the dons soon decided that a shower of full-grown frogs was a novelty even in the extraordinary occurrences of newspapers; and as not even a single individual croaker was to be discovered outside the walls of ----, it became evident that the whole affair was, as the dean described it, "another of those outrages upon academic discipline, which were as senseless as they were disgraceful."