Here they stopped under a window, while one gave a loud whistle with his fingers to his lips; the sash was immediately thrown up, and a handsome, merry-looking face protruded. "Eh!--what!--Taylor and Ward," cried he, "what's going on?" "Come down, Burton; here's a youth for matriculation," cried the younger. "All right," cried the other. "There are eight of us here at breakfast;" and disappearing from the window, he speedily descended to the court, followed by a number of others, who gravely saluted me with a deep bow, and solemnly welcomed me within the classic precincts of old Trinity. "Domine--what's his name?" said the young gentleman called Burton. "Cregan, sir," replied I, already flattered by the attentions I was receiving,--"Con Cregan, sir." "Well, Domine Cregan, come along with us, and never put faith in a junior sophister. You know what a junior sophister is, I trust?" "No, sir." "Tell him, Ward." "A junior sophister, Mr. Cregan, is one who, being in 'Locke' all day, is very often locked out all night, and who observes the two rubrics of the statute '_de vigilantibus et lucentibus_,' by extinguishing both lamps and watchmen." "Confound your pedantry!" broke in Burton; "a junior soph, is a man in his ninth examination." "The terror of the porters," cried one. "The Dean's milch cow," added another. "A credit to his parents, but a debtor to his tailor," broke in a third. "Seldom at Greek lecture, but no fellow commoner at the Currah," lisped out Taylor; and by this time we had reached a narrow lane, flanked on one side by a tall building of gloomy exterior, and on the other by an angle of the square. "Here we are, Mr. Cregan; as the poet says, 'this is the place, the centre of the wood.'" "Gentlemen sponsors, to your functions!" Scarce were the words out, when I was seized by above half a dozen pair of strong hands; my legs were suddenly jerked upwards, and, notwithstanding my attempts to resist, I was borne along for some yards at a brisk pace. I was already about to forbear my struggles, and suffer them to play their--as I deemed it--harmless joke in quiet, when straight in front of me I saw an enormous pump, at which, and by a double handle, Burton and another were working away like sailors on a wreck; throwing forth above a yard off, a jet of water almost enough to turn a mill. The whole plot now revealed itself to me at once, and I commenced a series of kickings and plungings that almost left me free. My enemies, however, were too many and too powerful; on they bore me, and in a perfect storm of blows, lunges, writhings, and boundings, they held me fast under the stream, which played away in a frothy current over my head, face, chest, and legs,--for, with a most laudable impartiality, they moved me from side to side till not a dry spot remained on my whole body.