"Good-bye, Spavin," said he; "I'm very glad you are through. Don't let me
keep you; I'm in a hurry--I'm going to town to-night."

"Gammon," said Mr. Spavin. "This ain't the way to town; this is the
Fenbury road, I tell you."

"I was just going to turn back," Pen said.

"All the coaches are full with the men going down," Spavin said. Pen
winced. "You'd not get a place for a ten-pound note. Get into my yellow;
I'll drop you at Mudford, where you have a chance of the Fenbury mail.
I'll lend you a hat and a coat; I've got lots. Come along; jump in, old
boy--go it, leathers!"--and in this way Pen found himself in Mr. Spavin's
postchaise, and rode with that gentleman as far as the Ram Inn at
Mudford, fifteen miles from Oxbridge; where the Fenbury mail changed
horses, and where Pen got a place on to London.

The next day there was an immense excitement in Boniface College,
Oxbridge, where, for some time, a rumour prevailed, to the terror of
Pen's tutor and tradesmen, that Pendennis, maddened at losing his degree,
had made away with himself--a battered cap, in which his name was almost
discernible, together with a seal bearing his crest of an eagle looking
at a now extinct sun, had been found three miles on the Fenbury road,
near a mill-stream, and, for four-and-twenty hours, it was supposed that
poor Pen had flung himself into the stream, until letters arrived from
him, bearing the London post-mark.

The mail reached London at the dreary hour of five; and he hastened to
the inn at Covent Garden, at which he was accustomed to put up, where the
ever-wakeful porter admitted him, and showed him to a bed. Pen looked