A little later on, a similar notice was brought to him from his Tutor. Mr. Binney was in such a low state that he actually shed tears at this fresh misfortune. He must have done something very bad indeed. If only he could remember what it was! But he couldn't, and his head was too painful to allow him to exert it to any great extent. All he knew was that he would never be able to hold up that head again. He would be sent down for a certainty. He would be eternally disgraced in the eyes of all his friends, before whom he had been used to bear himself so proudly. He grew cold when he thought of what Mrs. Higginbotham would say to him. Then his thoughts flew with a deadly sinking of heart to Dr. Toller and his fellow-officers in the congregation of which Dr. Toller was the shining leader. At this moment there was a ring at the bell, and in a few moments Dr. Toller himself was announced. Mr. Binney buried his head in the cushions of his armchair and wept aloud. CHAPTER XIV NEMESIS Dr. Toller left Mr. Binney an hour afterwards, chastened and repentant. The full enormity of his crime had been brought home to him. His only plea was that this was the first time such a dreadful thing had happened. Dr. Toller did not refer in direct terms to the _New Court Chronicle_, as he remembered in time that his wife had not told him before he left home how its numbers had fallen into her hands. But he drew from Mr. Binney an account of the occurrences of the term, and amongst them of the attack that Piper had made upon him in his paper. "I went in for revelry to some extent last term," Mr. Binney explained, "but, even then, nothing of the sort that happened last night took place. This term my life has been hitherto irreproachable, and I did not deserve these attacks." Dr. Toller was pleased to hear it. Poor Mr. Binney was so ashamed of himself and looked such a pitiable object bundled up in his armchair with a despairing look on his white face and black rings under his eyes, that he readily promised to keep the account of the previous night's orgie from Mr. Binney's friends in Bloomsbury, and before he went gave the repentant sinner full absolution and a great deal of very good advice.