The table rang with the knocking of knuckles and the low cries of half-tipsy boys as the half-tipsy old man rose solemnly before them, and proceeded to deliver himself in his earliest style of his famous carol of 'Bet, the Bagman's Daughter.' He was certainly in excellent feather. Standing tall and erect, with the enlivenment of the wine to support him for the moment; all the creases smoothed out of his back, and half the wrinkles out of his brow; even his coarse, bloated face softened a little by the unusual society in which he found himself, Mr. Plantagenet sang his song as he had never sung it at the White Horse at Chiddingwick, with great verve, go, and vigour. He half blushed once or twice--at least, he would have blushed if his cheeks were capable of getting much redder--when he came to the most doubtful verses of that very doubtful composition; but the lads beside him only clapped the harder, and cried, 'Bravo!' 'Jolly good song!' and 'Well done, Mr. Plantagenet!' so he kept through bravely to the very end, singing as he had never sung before since he was a promising young man of eight-and-twenty, the lion of Lady Postlethwaite's delightful entertainments. As he sat down a perfect chorus of applause rent the air, and Faussett, anxious not to let so good an opportunity slip by, took occasion to fill Mr. Plan-tagenet's glass twice over in succession: once during the course of the boisterous song, and once at the end to reward his efforts. The old man had been unusually circumspect, for him, at first, for he vaguely suspected in his own mind that Faussett might have asked him there on purpose to make him drunk; and though there was nothing he liked better than an opportunity of attaining that supreme end of his existence at somebody else's expense, he had still some faint sense of self-respect left, lingering somewhere in some unsuspected back corner of his poor old ruined personality, which made him loath to exhibit his shame and degradation before so many well-bred and gentlemanly young Oxonians. But as time wore on, and the lads applauded all his jokes and songs and stories to the echo, Mr. Plantagenet's heart began by degrees to soften. He was wronging these ingenuous and eminently companionable young fellows. He was over-suspicious in supposing they wanted to make fun of him or to get fun out of him. They had been naturally attracted and pleased by his marked social qualities and characteristics. They recognised in him, under all disguises of capricious fortune, a gentleman and a Plantagenet. He helped himself complacently to another glass of sherry. He held up the golden liquid and glanced askance at the light through it, then he took a delicate sip and rolled it on his palate appreciatively.