He also stood his friend in a serious emergency.

Young Wardlaw, you must know, was blessed or cursed with Mimicry; his powers in that way really seemed to have no limit, for he could imitate any sound you liked with his voice, and any form with his pen or pencil.

Now, we promise you, he was one man under his father's eye, and another down at Oxford; so, one night, this gentleman, being warm with wine, opens his window, and, seeing a group of undergraduates chattering and smoking in the quadrangle, imitates the peculiar grating tones of Mr.Champion, vice-president of the college, and gives them various reasons why they ought to disperse to their rooms and study.
"But, perhaps," says he, in conclusion, "you are too blind drunk to read Bosh in crooked letters by candle-light?
In that case----" And he then gave them some very naughty advice how to pass the evening; still in the exact tones of Mr.Champion, who was a very, very strict moralist; and this unexpected sally of wit caused shrieks of laughter, and mightily tickled all the hearers, except Champion ipse, who was listening and disapproving at another window.

He complained to the president.

Then the ingenious Wardlaw, not having come down to us in a direct line from Bayard, committed a great mistake--he denied it.
It was brought home to him, and the president, who had laughed in his sleeve at the practical joke, looked very grave at the falsehood; Rustication was talked of and even Expulsion.