They were talking loudly, and reading something which was being passed from hand to hand.

As he approached, there was a sudden dead silence.

But in his abstraction and excitement he noticed nothing.
When he had vanished within the doorway of his staircase, Meyrick, who had had a great deal too much champagne, said fiercely-- "I vote we give that young beggar a lesson! I still owe him one for that business of a month ago." "When he very nearly settled you, Jim," laughed a Wykehamist, a powerfully built fellow, who had just got his Blue for the Eleven, had been supping freely and was in a mood for any riotous deed.
"That was nothing," said Meyrick--"but this can't be stood!" And he pointed to the sheet that Falloden, who was standing in the centre of the group, was at the moment reading.

It was the latest number of an Oxford magazine, one of those _ephemerides_ which are born, and flutter, and vanish with each Oxford generation.

It contained a verbatim report of the attack on the Marmion "bloods" made by Radowitz at the dinner of the college debating society about a fortnight earlier.