selfishness, and make him persist. An old feud, about a worthless piece of covert, was the weapon he found in his hand after a few days' consideration. Sir Hugh Brockliss had crossed his father and gone to law with him on this piece of copse. If there was a man more than another whom his father hated, it was Sir Hugh Brockliss. Sir Hugh was a Tory, another great point; and Sir Hugh had declared for keeping the school where it was, and the dress as it was, on the grounds of the associations of the place. Arthur had only to go down to Silcotes, and point out these facts to his father, when his father arose in a white heat of rage, and committed himself to the question of moving the school and altering the dress, as long as breath was in his body. He cared nothing about it. But anger and personal spleen made him undertake a purpose, and stick to it with the utmost tenacity until it was carried; while principle never would have moved him.

Arthur knew perfectly well that, by holding the red rag of Sir Hugh Brockliss before his father's face, he would arouse all the bull-like pugnacity in his father's nature, and get all his father's barristerial ability, and his unequalled powers of debate at his back. Was he justified in arousing that long sleeping volcano of shrewd logical scorn; in calling into activity the very worst part of his father's character-jealous, suspicious hatred of every one who crossed him; even in such a good cause as this? Why, But he did it without flinching. This thing had to be done, and therefore must be done, quickly and cheaply, and with the handiest materials. What a narrow young Buonaparte it was at this time!

no.

"His father's own son," said the Princess once, little dreaming in her foolish head that she was, unconsciously of course, speaking the truth:

They had their will. Sir Hugh Brockliss left off attending the board. Silcote's powers of logical scorn, which in old times had promised to put him at the head of one branch of his profession, were too much for the honest kindly country baronet. He wrote a letter to the board, which he and his wife considered to be rather withering than otherwise. He deeply deplored that certain circum

stances he regretted to say, that his duty as an English gentleman constrained him to admit of a personal nature prevented his sitting at that board again. When he said, as he did with his hand on his heart, that that board, in its collective capacity, was as intelligent and as gentlemanlike a body of men as he ever hoped to meet, he made one exception-he regretted to say an individual one. He would not name any names whatever. He would not point the finger of scorn in any direction; but he put it to that board, whether, after the language he had received from an individual member of that board on Tuesday last, he could, with any sense of decency, further assist at their councils. Of that individual member he had no more to say. To that individual member, if he ever spoke to him again (a pleasure, he was bound to add, which he and Lady Brockliss had determined to forego), he should say that the term pig-headed," although ostensibly applied to a political party, may be uttered with such distinctness of emphasis that it became personal.

This was Sir Hugh Brockliss's reply to Silcote's really fine irony. But they would not have won their game still, if it had not been for old Betts.

A row between terrible old Silcote and pompous honest old Sir Hugh was very good fun, but it was not business. They represented the sentimental part of the affair; and, among a board of Philistine governors, most people will allow that sentiment does not go for much. The Philistines were perfectly ready to clothe the boys decently; but the moving of the school into the country was quite another matter; it meant money.

Here old Betts came out nobly, backing the Squire with endless bundles of papers, which, egged on by Arthur, he had been secretly preparing, and endless rows of figures, calculations of rent, the price of land in the city, the price of land thirty miles from town. The figures were undeniable; the gain was very considerable to the institution. Over and above the cost of a poor tract of land in a romantic situation which they bought, they found they had a very large building-fund in hand. A clever architect was secured, with orders to reproduce the school-buildings. In

a year it was done, and now that the beautiful medieval building was removed from the crowded houses of the city, one could see how really beautiful the original design was.

At length there came the last holidays in the old place, and then the very last morning there. James was again. alone at school, and awoke in the empty dormitory at daybreak. It was indeed the dawning of a new day and a new life for him.

CHAPTER XV.

ST. MARY'S BY THE LAKE.

THE new clothes which lay at his bedside, into which he put himself with the utmost rapidity, were the first things which attracted him on this very memorable morning. He had never been dressed becomingly before; from a smock frock and heavy ill-fitting boots he had passed to hideous and ridiculous green baize petticoats, with ill-fitting brass lacheted shoes, made of the worst leather; three sizes among two hundred boys. Now he found himself standing alone in the deserted dormitory, in a short pilot jacket, with gold buttons, well cut shepherd's-plaid trousers, nicely made shoes, fit to run a race in, and a pretty cap, with S. M. H. in gold on the forehead. He did not know that he was handsome, and that he looked attractive in his new dress. He had no idea of that. He only knew that the old hideous nightmare of the green baize petticoats was gone for ever, and that now he could walk the streets without being an object of scorn and ridicule to other boys. He thought that now he was only as other boys were, and would attract no attention; the fact was, that from an object of contempt he had passed into being an object of envy. His intense pleasure at the transformation made him blush several times, and his intense modesty made him hesitate for a long time before he went down to the lodge. But, casting a parting look-with a somewhat regretful face after all, mind

you-on the old white-washed walls, and on the green baize petticoats and heavy shoes, which lay in a heap on the floor, he went down the stairs, and out into the gravelled quadrangle, whose western pinnacles—after doing duty, more or less faithfully, for four hundred years, condemned as old materials-were just lit up by the sun of the summer's morning.

Will you follow me through the brightest day in the life of a very good fellow, take him all in all? If you will, read; if you would rather not, skip. I wish to please you, but you do not know how difficult you are to please.

Nearly all the servants of the college had been sent on before, to get in order and arrange the new building, which was now, having had the March wind through it, pronounced to be dry and fit for the reception of pupils, and the working people necessary for their instruction in the fear of God, grammar, and plain-song. James was the only boy so utterly friendless and lonely as to be left up for the midsummer holidays, and he was to travel down with Berry, the old porter, and formally to take possession of the new building, in the name of the Society of the Hospital of the Blessed Virgin.

James and old Berry were great cronies. They squabbled at times, for James's vivacity now and then took the form of piratical irritating mischief. But any boy who had broken a window in James's company was comfortably assured of one thing, that old Berry would never report James. What was deliberation on the part of any other boy was mere accident in James's case. The master who had the care of such little logic as they learnt, had remarked once ironically, that Sugden's accidents appeared from their frequent recurrence to be inseparable, and might be more correctly described as qualities; but what third master, let him have expended a thousand pounds on his education, can ever hold his own against the porter? It is Seely against Pakington. The porter wins, and James was never formally reported.

Hi!" said old Berry, as James came into the lodge for his breakfast; "we are fine. How nice the boy looks though. You look the gentleman all over."

"I am a gentleman, ain't I?" said James.

"Not you," said Ben Berry. "If you had been you'd have been reported times out of mind. You're no gentleman. Where's your old things?"

"In the dormitory."

"Fetch 'em along."

"Why?"

"To keep 'em by you, to remind you that fine feathers don't make fine birds. I ain't been consulted about this new move myself; if I had been, I should have gone agin it most likely. Still, I likes the look on it pretty well this morning. But fetch they old things along, James Sugden, as was shepherd's boy. If you ever forget what you was, and forget the mother that has been going up and down in front of these gates many a time when you have been at football or marbles, I'll report you for the next window as sure as you are born."

"My mother?" said James.

"But what the

"Ah! your mother!" said Ben Berry. odds about she? Leastways now. You and I was always comfortable together, and no man can say as I ever reported you. Come, get your breakfast, my dear boy. I have always stood your friend, James Sugden; and if I spoke strongish just now, why I am an old man, and you young ones tries us at times. But I never reported you, James, and you wouldn't desert me now.

"Desert you, Ben? I ain't going to desert you!"

"I know you wouldn't. I know you'll see me through this moving. I ain't moved from here, from this lodge, for thirty year; and since then these pesky railways have turned up and I'm afeard on 'em. Come, James, see me through to-day. I never reported you, and, by Job, if you get me safe down there, I never will, not if you were to burn the place down under my nose. And you might, you know; because, in a mind constituted like yours, there's the elements of as outrageous a young toad as I've seen in thirty year. You sleep on that warning, my young

friend."

"All right, Ben. I'll take you down safe enough."

The passengers by the nine o'clock train from Vauxhall