was as flawless as pure crystal, was like to fare as badly as the muddiest rascal of them all, if his side sank in defeat.  And yet I cannot help believing that, in some cases at least, a man might have had a happier end if he had abstained from acts of political turpitude, which were as irrational in their conception as they were ruinous in their effect; acts, that is, which, in the existing circumstances, no sane man could have undertaken unless the mere doing of these rogueries had been a supreme and a necessary pleasure to him.  There was poor CHARLES THE FIRST. Surely, in spite of that melancholy, doomed face, he might have died in peace if he had only played the game fairly.  JAMES THE SECOND, too, and MARLBOROUGH, the greatest Captain of his age, and BOLINGBROKE, the eloquent philosophiser, the grave moralist, how different might their ends have been had not you, O CROOKEDNESS, presided at their births, and ruled their lives.  But, avaunt, History!  Here I am straying into a treatise, when I merely intended to remind you of little PETER SHEEF, and of his adventures.

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PETER and I were freshmen together at Cambridge in the remote past before “Johnnies,” and “Chappies,” and “Mashers” had been heard of, before the “oof bird” had been fledged in its pink and sporting nest, or the Egyptian cigarette had asserted its universal sway.  I daresay we differed but little (by “we” I mean the freshmen of our year) from those who have lately appeared for the first time in King’s Parade, or Jesus Lane.  We were very young—­we imagined Proctors to be destitute of human feeling; we ate portentous breakfasts of many courses, and, for the most part, treated our allowances as though they had been so much pocket-money.  Also we had an idea that a man who had passed his thirtieth year was absurdly old, and that nobody could be called a boy whose name had been entered on the books of a College.  In fact, we were freshmen.

PETER and I were a good deal thrown together during our first term.  Like me, he had come up from one of the smaller schools, and we had not, therefore, a very large number of friends to start with.  PETER was one of the pleasantest fellows in the world, always cheerful, good-tempered, and obliging.  He always seemed to have plenty of money.  Indeed, I know that his father made him an allowance of L800 a year, a sum which was considerably more than double that received by the majority of his fellows.  The parental SHEEF I have since discovered was a Solicitor, who had made his mark and his fortune by the crafty defence of shady financiers in distress, of bogus company promoters, and generally of the great race who live in the narrow border-land which divides the merely disreputable from the positively indictable.  But at that time I didn’t trouble my head to inquire about PETER’s father, and was content as most Undergraduates are, to take my friends as I thought I found them.  PETER was musical; he