The next day there was an immense excitement at Oxbridge, where, for some time, a rumour prevailed, to the terror of Pen's tutor and tradesmen, that Pendennis, maddened at losing his degree, had made away with himself. A battered cap, in which his name was almost discernible, together with a seal bearing his crest of an eagle looking at a now extinct sun, had been found three miles on the Fenbury road, near a mill stream; and for four-and-twenty hours it was supposed that poor Pen had flung himself into the stream, until letters arrived from him, bearing the London post-mark. The coach reached London at the dreary hour of five; and he hastened to the inn at Covent Garden, where the ever-wakeful porter admitted him, and showed him to a bed. Pen looked hard at the man, and wondered whether Boots knew he was plucked? When in bed he could not sleep there. He tossed about restlessly until the appearance of daylight, when he sprang up desperately, and walked off to his uncle's lodgings in Bury Street. "Good 'evens! Mr. Arthur, what 'as 'appened, sir?" asked the valet, who was just carrying in his wig to the Major. "I want to see my uncle," Pen cried in a ghastly voice, and flung himself down on a chair. The valet backed before the pale and desperate-looking young man, with terrified and wondering glances, and disappeared into his master's apartment, whence the Major put out his head as soon as he had his wig on. "What? Examination over? Senior Wrangler, Double First Class, hey?" said the old gentleman. "I'll come directly," and the head disappeared. Pen was standing with his back to the window, so that his uncle could not see the expression of gloomy despair on the young man's face. But when he held out his hand to Pen, and was about to address him in his cheery, high-toned voice, he caught sight of the boy's face; and dropping his hand said, "Why, 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," groaned out Pen; "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 anybody would shoot me. 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, which I have always neglected." "Was it--was it done in public, sir?" the Major said. "What?"