My attention had been diverted from the accuser, by my amazement at the accusation; but, as soon as I recovered my recollection, it seemed to me certain that I knew his face. The idea was seized with so much eagerness, and associations occurred so rapidly, that the figure of one of my companions, on the night of the debauch when I first came to Oxford, rose full before me; though he had been absent from the university, so that till this day I had never seen him since. It was the very tutor of the Earl of Idford! A train of the most tormenting suspicions rushed upon me. I soon learned, from inquiry, that he was intimate likewise with the president. Was not this a combination? What could it be else? This tutor was connected with the earl and the president; so was the latter with the bishop! The whole plot, in its blackest hues, seemed developed. My agitation was extreme. I ran from college to college, wherever I had acquaintance, repeating all I knew and much of what I suspected. Nor did I merely confine myself to narrative. I added threats, which, however impotent they might be, were not the less violent. One of my first projects was to seek personal satisfaction of the vile tutor, or if he refused to chastise him with inexorable severity; but this he had taken care to elude, by keeping out of the way. My denunciations soon reached the ear of the president, and I was given to understand that, if I were not immediately silent, I should be expelled the university; and that a degree would never be granted me, till I had publicly retracted the opprobrious words I had uttered. Distant consequences are easily defied. My blood was in a flame, and despising the menace, I publicly declared that my persecutors were as infamous as the tool they had employed; that I should think it a disgrace to be a member of a body which could countenance proceedings so odiously wicked; that I spurned at every honour such a body could confer; and that, with respect to expulsion, I would myself erase my name from the register in which it had unfortunately been entered. How little is man aware that by intemperance he damns his own cause, and gives the face of seeming honesty to injustice itself! Vicious as the place is, I myself could not abhor such proceedings more than many men in Oxford would have done, had they believed the tale. Fortune still continued in her wayward mood. On the heel of one perverse imp another often treads. While I remained at Oxford, which was but a few days after this event, the retailing of my wrongs was my chief employment; and in a coffee-room, to which I resorted for this purpose, the following advertisement in a London newspaper met my astonished eye! THIS DAY IS PUBLISHED: A DEFENCE OF THE THIRTY NINE ARTICLES BY THE RIGHT REVEREND FATHER IN GOD ****** LORD BISHOP OF ******