Here a broad glare against the window interrupted him, and, looking out, his auditors saw a bonfire blazing with peculiar splendor under the windows of the chamber where the Faculty were at that moment in solemn session. Three proctors and a tutor were hastening towards the scene of outrage, when a stentorian voice from the adjacent darkness roared forth a warning that there was a canister of gunpowder in the fire expected every moment to explode. The prudent officers therefore kept their distance, busying themselves with noting down the names of several innocent spectators, while the bonfire subsided to a natural death, the gunpowder hoax having perfectly succeeded. Mr. Wren's guests resumed their seats, mingling with graver matters the usual badinage of a college gathering; and when at length they separated, only a lonely light or two glimmered from among the many windows of the academic barracks which overlook the college green. CHAPTER VI. As if with Heaven a bargain they had made To practise goodness--and to be well paid, They, too, devoutly as their fathers did, Sin, sack, and sugar, equally forbid; Holding each hour unpardonably spent That on the leger leaves no monument.--_Parsons_. Mr. Erastus Flintlock sat at his counting room, in his old leather-bottomed arm chair. Vassall Morton, his newly emancipated ward, just twenty-one, stood before him, the undisputed master of his father's ample wealth. "What, no profession, Mr. Morton? None whatever, sir?" "No, sir, none whatever." The old man's leathery countenance expressed mingled wrath and concern.