Be it, however, confessed that Amy (whose father soon had rooms in college, not to live, but to lecture in), being a very shy young maiden, never could be brought to come and call him to his tea,—oh no. So many young men in gorgeous trappings, charms, and dangles, and hooks of gold, and eye–glasses very knowing—not to mention volunteer stuff, and knickerbockers demonstrant of calf—oddly enough they _would_ happen to feel so interested in the architecture of the porterʼs lodge whenever Amy came by, never gazing too warmly at her, but contriving to convey their regret at the suppression of their sentiments, and their yearning to be the stones she trod on, and their despair at the possibility of her not caring if they were so—really all this was so trying, that Amy would never go into college without Aunt Doxy before her, gazing four–gunned cupolas even at scouts and manciples. And this was very provoking of her, not only to the hearts that beat under waistcoats ordered for her sake, but also to the domestic kettle a–boil in Pembroke Lane. For, over and over again, Uncle John, great as he was in chronology and every kind of “marmora,” and able to detect a flaw upon Potamogeitonʼs tombstone, lost all sense of time and place, _me_ and _te_, and _hocce_ and Doxy, and calmly went home some two hours late, and complacently received Doxology. But alas, we must abandon Amy to the insidious designs of Hebdomadal Board, the velvet approaches of Proctor and Pro, and the brass of the gentlemen Bedels, while we regard more rugged scenes, from which she was happily absent. Rufus Hutton had found the missing link, and at the same time the strongest staple, of the desired evidence. The battered gun–barrels had been identified, and even the number deciphered, by the foreman of Messrs. L—— and Co. And the entry in their books of the sale of that very gun (number, gauge, and other particulars beyond all doubt corresponding) was—”to Bull Garnet, &c., Nowelhurst Dell Cottage,” whom also they could identify from his “strongly–marked physiognomy,” and his quick, decisive manner. And the cartridge–case, which had lain so long in Dr. Huttonʼs pocket, of course they could not depose to its sale, together with the gun; but this they could show, that it fitted the gauge, was not at all of a common gauge, but two sizes larger—No. 10, in fact—and must have been sold during the month in which they sold the gun, because it was one of a sample which they had taken upon approval, and soon discarded for a case of better manufacture. Then as to motive, Rufus Hutton himself could depose to that, or the probability of it, from what he had seen, but not understood, at the fixing of the fireworks; neither had he forgotten the furious mood of Bull Garnet, both then and in his garden.