Mr. Ketch stood in his lodge, leaning for support upon the shut-up press-bedstead, which, by day, looked like a high chest of drawers with brass handles, his eyes fixed on the keys, hanging on the opposite nail. His state of mind may be best expressed by the strong epithet, “savage.” Mr. Ketch had not a pleasant face at the best of times: it was yellow and withered; and his small bright eyes were always dropping water; and the two or three locks of hair, which he still possessed, were faded, and stood out, solitary and stiff, after the manner of those pictures you have seen of heathens who decorate their heads with upright tails. At this moment his countenance looked particularly unpleasant. Mr. Ketch had spent part of the night and the whole of this morning revolving the previous evening’s affair of the cloisters. The more he thought of it, the less he liked it, and the surer grew his conviction that the evil had been the work of his enemies, the college boys. “It’s as safe as day,” he wrathfully soliloquized. “There be the right keys,” nodding to the two on the wall, “and there be the wrong ones,” nodding towards an old knife-tray, into which he had angrily thrown the rusty keys, upon entering his lodge last night, accompanied by the crowd. “They meant to lock me up all night in the cloisters, the wicked cannibals! I hope the dean’ll expel ‘em! I’ll make my complaint to the head-master, I will! Drat all college schools! there’s never no good done in ‘em!” “How are you this morning, Ketch?” The salutation proceeded from Stephen Bywater, who, in the boisterous manner peculiar to himself and his tribe, had flung open the door without the ceremony of knocking. “I’m none the better for seeing you,” growled Ketch. “You need not be uncivil,” returned Bywater, with great suavity. “I am only making a morning call upon you, after the fashion of gentlefolks; the public delights to pay respect to its officials, you know. How _do_ you feel after that mishap last night? We can’t think, any of us, how you came to make the mistake.” “I’ll ‘mistake’ you!” shrieked Ketch. “I kep’ a nasty old, rusty brace o’ keys in my lodge to take out, instead o’ the right ones, didn’t I?” “How uncommonly stupid it was of you to do so!” said Bywater, pretending to take the remark literally. “_I_ would not keep a duplicate pair of keys by me--I should make sure they’d bring me to grief. What do you say? You did _not_ keep duplicate keys--they were false ones! Why, that’s just what we all told you last night. The bishop told you so. He said he knew you had made a mistake, and taken out the wrong keys for the right. My belief is, that you went out without any keys at all. You left them hanging upon the nail, and you found them there. You had not got a second pair!”