I was there in obedience to a whim; and the whim, with all that went before it--let me set it down that men may judge me for what I was--was the child of a drunken frolic. It befell in this wise.
I was a student at Balliol--a student, an’ you please, by courtesy, for I had no love for book-learning, finding life alluring enough without that fragrance which high scholarship is supposed to lend it.
It was the middle of the Lent term, and a little band of men like-minded with myself had assembled in my room, whose window overlooked the quadrangle, and with cards, and ribald tales, and song, to say nothing of much good beer, we had spent a boisterous evening. Big Tom had pealed five score and one silvery notes from Christ Church Tower, and into the throbbing silence that followed his mighty strokes, I, with the fire of some bold lover, had flung the glad notes of rare old Ben’s "Song to Celia." A storm of cheers greeted the first verse, and, with jocund heart, well-pleased, I was about to pour my soul into the tenderness of the second, when Maltravers, seated in the window-recess, interrupted me.
"Hush!" he cried, "there’s a Proctor in the Quad, listening: what can he want?" Now when much liquor is in, a man’s wits tend to forsake him, and I was in the mood to flout all authority.
"To perdition with all Proctors!" I exclaimed. "The mangy spies!" And I strode to the window and looked out.
In the faint moonlight I saw the shadowy figure of a man standing with face upturned at gaze below my window. The sight stirred some spirit of misrule within me, and, flinging the window wide, I hurled straight at the dark figure my leathern beer-pot with its silver rim. The contents struck him full in the face, and the missile fell with a thud on the lawn behind him. There was an angry splutter; the man drew his sleeve across his face, and stooping picked up the tankard. In that moment some trick of movement revealed him, and Maltravers gasped "Zounds! It’s the Master himself."
And so it proved--to my bitter cost. Had I been coward enough to seek to hide my identity, it would have been useless, for the silver rim of my leather jack bore my name. Thus it came to pass that I stood, a solitary figure, with none to say a word in my behoof before the Court of Discipline.