The students of the Northern nations mock, of course, at these revellers, thumbs are bitten, threats exchanged, and we shall see what comes of the quarrel. But the hall bells chime half-past noon; it is dinner-time in Oxford, and Stoke, as he throws off his mask (_larva_) and vine-leaves, mutters to himself the equivalent for ‘there _will_ be a row about this.’ There will, indeed, for the penalty is not ‘crossing at the buttery,’ nor ‘gating,’ but—excommunication! (_Munim. Academ._, i. 18.) Dinner is not a very quiet affair, for the Catte’s men have had to fight for their beer in the public streets with some Canterbury College fellows who were set on by their Warden, of all people, to commit this violence (_ut vi et violentia raperent cerevisiam aliorum scholarum in vico_): however, Catte’s has had the best of it, and there is beer in plenty. It is possible, however, that fish is scarce, for certain ‘forestallers’ (_regratarii_) have been buying up salmon and soles, and refusing to sell them at less than double the proper price. On the whole, however, there a rude abundance of meat and bread; indeed, Stoke may have fared better in Catte’s than the modern undergraduate does in the hall of the college protected by St. Catherine. After dinner there would be lecture in Lent, but we are not in Lent. A young man’s fancy lightly turns to the Beaumont, north of the modern Beaumont Street, where there are wide playing-fields, and space for archery, foot-ball, stool-ball, and other sports. Stoke rushes out of hall, and runs upstairs into the _camera_ of Roger de Freshfield, a reading man, but a good fellow. He knocks and enters, and finds Freshfield over his favourite work, the _Posterior Analytics_, and a pottle of strawberries. ‘Come down to the Beaumont, old man,’ he says, ‘and play pyked staffe.’ Roger is disinclined to move, he _must_ finish the _Posterior Analytics_. Stoke lounges about, in the eternal fashion of undergraduates after luncheon, and picking up the _Philobiblon_ of Richard de Bury (then quite a new book), clinches his argument in favour of pyke and staffe with a quotation: ‘You will perhaps see a stiff-necked youth lounging sluggishly in his study . . . He is not ashamed to eat fruit and cheese over an open book, and to transfer his cup from side to side upon it.’ Thus addressed, Roger lays aside his _Analytics_, and the pair walk down by Balliol, to the Beaumont, where pyked staffe, or sword and buckler, is played. At the Beaumont they find two men who say that ‘sword and buckler can be played sofft and ffayre,’ that is, without hard hitting, and with one of these Stoke begins to fence. Alas! a dispute arose about a stroke, the by-standers interfered, and Stoke’s opponent drew his hanger (_extraxit cultellum vocatum hangere_), and hit one John Felerd over the sconce. On this the Proctors come up, and the assailant is put in Bocardo, while Stoke goes off to a ‘pass-supper’ given by an _inceptor_, who has just