Arrived at the King's Bench prison, he hurried to the apartment where Edwards was confined-The bolts flew back; for even the turnkeys seemed to catch our hero's enthusiasm.

"Edwards, my dear boy! how do you do?— Here's a bond debt, justly due to you for my education-0, never mind asking any unnecessary questions; only just make haste out of this undeserved abode-Our old rascal is paid off-Owen ap Jones you know-Well how the man stares?-Why, now, will you have the assurance to pretend to forget who I am? and must I spake," continued he, assuming the tone of his childhood-" and must I spake to you again in my old Irish brogue, before you will ricollict your own Little Dominick?"

When his friend Edwards was out of prison, and when our hero had leisure to look into the business, he returned to the attorney, to see that Mr. Owen ap Jones had been satisfied.

"Sir," said the attorney, "I have paid the plaintiff in this suit, and he is satisfied: but I must say," added he, with a contemptuous smile, "that you Irish gentlemen are rather in too great a hurry in doing business; business, sir, is a thing that must be done slowly, to be well done."

"I am ready now to do business as slowly as you please; but when my friend was in prison, I thought the quicker I did his business the better. Now tell me what mistake I have made, and I will rectify it instantly."

"Instantly! 'Tis well, sir, with your promptitude, that you have to deal with what prejudice thinks so very uncommon-an honest attorney. Here are some bank-notes of yours, 8 r, amounting to a good round sum! You have made a little blunder in this business: you left me the penalty, instead of the principal, of the bond-just twice as much as you should have done."

"Just twice as much as was in the bond; but not twice as much as I should have done, nor half as much as I should have done, in my opinion!" said O'Reilly: "but whatever I did, it was with my eyes open. I was persuaded you were an honest man; in which, you see, I was not mistaken; and as a man of business, I knew that you would pay Mr. Owen ap Jones only his due. The remainder of the money I meant, and now mean, should lie in your hands for my friend Edwards' use. I feared he would not have taken it from my hands: I therefore

left it in yours. To have taken my friend out of prison, merely to let him go back again today, for want of money to keep himself clear

with the world, would have been a blunder, indeed! but not an Irish blunder: our Irish blunders are never blunders of the heart!"

LAMENT FOR HER HUSBAND.

There was an eye whose partial glance
Could ne'er my numerous failings see,
There was an ear that still untired

Could listen to kind praise of me.
There was a heart Time only made

For me with fonder feelings burn; And which, whene'er, alas! I roved, Still long'd and pined for my return. There was a lip which always breathed E'en short farewells with tones of sadness; There was a voice, whose eager sound My welcome spoke with heartfelt gladness. There was a mind, whose vigorous powers On mine its fostering influence threw; And call'd my humble talents forth, Till thence its dearest joys it drew. There was a love that oft for me

With anxious fears would overflow; And wept and pray'd for me, and sought From future ills to guard-but now That eye is closed, and deaf that ear,

That lip and voice are mute for ever! And cold that heart of faithful love, Which death alone from mine could sever!

And lost to me that ardent mind,

Which loved my various tasks to see; And oh of all the praise I gain'd,

This was the dearest far to me!

Now I, unloved, uncheer'd, alone,

Life's dreary wilderness must tread, Till He who loves the broken heart In mercy bids me join the dead.

But, "Father of the fatherless,"

O! thou that hear'st the orphan's cry, And "dwellest with the contrite heart," As well as in "thy place on high!"

O Lord! though like a faded leaf

That's severed from its parent tree, I struggled down life's stormy tide,

That awful tide which leads to thee!

Still, Lord! to thee the voice of praise Shall spring triumphant from my breast, Since though I tread a weary way,

I trust that he I mourn is bless'd!

MRS. OPIE

THE FAGS' REVOLT.1

[Thomas Hughes, born at Donnington Priory, Berks, 1823; educated at Rugby and Oxford; called to the bar in 1848. He was returned to Parliament for Lambeth

in 1865, and for Frome in 1868. It was in the leisure of a busy life that he produced Tom Frown's School Days, Tom Brown at Oxford, The Scouring of the White Horse, &c. The first of these obtained immediate popu

larity, and had much influence in bringing about a reform of many abuses which prevailed at public schools during the author's school-days. The book is remarkable for its vigorous sketches of actual experiences.]

In no place in the world has individual character more weight than at a public school. Remember this, I beseech you, all you boys who are getting into the upper forms. Now is the time in all your lives, probably, when you may have more wide influence for good or evil on the society you live in than you ever can have again. Quit yourselves like men, then; speak up, and strike out if necessary, for whatsoever is true, and manly, and lovely, and of good report; never try to be popular, but only to do your duty and help others to do theirs, and you may leave the tone of feeling in the school higher than you found it, and so be doing good which no living soul can measure to generations of your countrymen yet unborn. For boys follow one another in herds like sheep, for good or evil; they hate thinking, and have rarely any settled principles. Every school, indeed, has its own traditionary standard of right and wrong, which cannot be transgressed with impunity, marking certain things as low and blackguard, and certain others as lawful and right. This standard is ever varying, though it changes only slowly and little by little; and, subject only to such standard, it is the leading boys for the time being who give the tone to all the rest, and make the school either a noble institution for the training of Christian Englishmen, or a place where a young boy will get more evil than he would if he were turned out to make his way in London streets, or anything between these two extremes.

The change for the worse in the school-house, however, didn't press very heavily on our youngsters for some time; they were in a good bedroom, where slept the only præpostor left who was able to keep thorough order, and their study was in his passage; so, though they were fagged more or less, and occasionally kicked or cuffed by the bullies, they were on the whole well off; and the fresh, brave school-life, so

1 From Tom Brown's School Days. By an Old Boy. Loudon: Macmillan & Co.

full of games, adventures, and good fellowship, so ready at forgetting, so capacious at enjoying, so bright at forecasting, outweighed a thousandfold their troubles with the master of their form and the occasional ill-usage of the big boys in the house. It wasn't till some year or so after the events already recorded that the præpostor of their room and passage left. None of the other sixth-form boys would move into their passage, and to the disgust and indignation of Tom and East, one morning after breakfast they were seized upon by Flashman, and made to carry down his books and furniture into the unoccupied study which he had taken. From this time they began to feel the weight of the tyranny of Flashman and his friends, and now that trouble had come home to their own doors, began to look out for sympathizers and partners amongst the rest of the fags; and meetings of the oppressed began to be held, and murmurs to arise, and plots to be laid as to how they should free themselves and be avenged on their enemies.

While matters were in this state East and

Tom were one evening sitting in their study. They had done their work for first lesson, and Tom was in a brown study, brooding, like a young William Tell, upon the wrongs of fags in general, and his own in particular.

"I say, Scud," said he at last, rousing himself to snuff the candle, "what right have the fifth-form boys to fag us as they do?"

"No more right than you have to fag them," answered East, without looking up from an early number of Pickwick, which was just coming out, and which he was luxuriously devouring, stretched on his back on the sofa.

Tom relapsed into his brown study, and East went on reading and chuckling. The contrast of the boys' faces would have given infinite amusement to a looker-on, the one so solemn and big with mighty purpose, the other radiant and bubbling over with fun.

"Do you know, old fellow, I've been thinking it over a good deal," began Tom again.

"Oh yes, I know, fagging you are thinking of. Hang it all, but listen here, Tomhere's fun. Mr. Winkle's horse"

"And I've made up my mind," broke in Tom, "that I won't fag except for the sixth."

"Quite right too, my boy," cried East, putting his finger on the place and looking up; "but a pretty peck of troubles you'll get into, if you're going to play that game. However, I'm all for a strike myself, if we can get others to join-it's getting too bad."

"Can't we get some sixth-form fellow to take it up?" asked Tom.

"Well, perhaps we might; Morgan would | interfere, I think. Only," added East, after a moment's pause, "you see, we should have to tell him about it, and that's against School principles. Don't you remember what old Brooke said about learning to take our own parts?"

“Ah, I wish old Brooke were back again it was all right in his time."

"Why, yes, you see, then the strongest and best fellows were in the sixth, and the fifthform fellows were afraid of them, and they kept good order; but now our sixth-form feliows are too small, and the fifth don't care for them, and do what they like in the house."

"And so we get a double set of masters," cried Tom, indignantly; "the lawful ones, who are responsible to the Doctor at any rate, and the unlawful-the tyrants, who are responsible to nobody."

The cowardly brute," broke in East, "how I hate him! And he knows it too, he knows that you and I think him a coward. What a bore that he's got a study in this passage! Don't you hear them now at supper in his den? Brandy punch going, I'll bet. I wish the Doctor would come out and catch him. We must change our study as soon as we can."

"Change or no change, I'll never fag for him again," said Tom, thumping the table.

"Fa-a-a-ag!" sounded along the passage from Flashman's study. The two boys looked at one another in silence. It had struck nine, so the regular night-fags had left duty, and they were the nearest to the supper-party. East sat up, and began to look comical, as he always did under difficulties.

66

Fa-a-a-ag!" again. No answer. "Here, Brown! East! you cursed young skulks," roared out Flashman, coming to his open door, "I know you're in-no shirking." Tom stole to their door, and drew the bolts as noiselessly as he could; East blew out the candle.

their door. They held their breaths, and heard whispering, of which they only made out Flashman's words, "I know the young brutes are in."

Then came summonses to open, which being unanswered, the assault commenced; luckily the door was a good strong oak one, and resisted the united weight of Flashman's party. A pause followed, and they heard a besieger remark, “They're in safe enough-don't you see how the door holds at top and bottom? so the bolts must be drawn. We should have forced the lock long ago.' East gave Tom a nudge, to call attention to this scientific remark.

Then came attacks on particular panels, one of which at last gave way to the repeated kicks; but it broke inwards, and the broken piece got jammed across, the door being lined with green baize, and couldn't easily be removed from outside; and the besieged, scorning further concealment, strengthened their defences by pressing the end of their sofa against the door. So, after one or two more ineffectual efforts, Flashman & Co. retired, vowing vengeance in no mild terms.

The first danger over, it only remained for the besieged to effect a safe retreat, as it was now near bedtime. They listened intently and heard the supper-party resettle themselves, and then gently drew back first one bolt and then the other. Presently the convivial noises began again steadily. Now then, stand by for a run," said East, throwing the door wide open and rushing into the passage, closely followed by Tom. They were too quick to be caught, but Flashman was on the lookout, and sent an empty pickle-jar whizzing after them, which narrowly missed Tom's head, and broke into twenty pieces at the end of the passage. "He wouldn't mind killing one, if he wasn't caught," said East, as they turned the corner.

There was no pursuit, so the two turned into the hall, where they found a knot of small boys round the fire. Their story was told-the war of independence had broken out-who would join the revolutionary forces? Several others present bound themselves not to fag for the fifth form at once. One or two only edged off, and left the rebels. What else could they do? 'I've a good mind to go to the Doctor

"That'll never do-don't you remember the levy of the school last half?" put in another.

In fact, that solemn assembly, a levy of the school, had been held, at which the captain of the school had got up, and, after premising

up on the walls with every insulting epithet | which the fag invention could furnish. The war in short raged fiercely; but soon, as Diggs had told them, all the better fellows in the fifth gave up trying to fag them, and public feeling began to set against Flashman and his two or three intimates, and they were obliged to keep their doings more secret, but, being thorough bad fellows, missed no opportunity of torturing in private. Flashman was an adept in all ways, but above all in the power of saying cutting and cruel things, and could often bring tears to the eyes of boys in this way which all the thrashings in the world wouldn't have wrung from them.

And as his operations were being cut short in other directions, he now devoted himself chiefly to Tom and East, who lived at his own door, and would force himself into their study whenever he found a chance, and sit there, sometimes alone, sometimes with a companion, interrupting all their work, and exulting in the evident pain which every now and then he could see he was inflicting on one or the other. The storm had cleared the air for the rest of the house, and a better state of things now began than there had been since old Brooke had left: but an angry dark spot of thundercloud still hung over the end of the passage, where Flashman's study and that of East and Tom lay.

He felt that they had been the first rebels, and that the rebellion had been to a great extent successful; but what above all stirred the hatred and bitterness of his heart against them was, that in the frequent collisions which there had been of late they had openly called him coward and sneak,-the taunts were too true to be forgiven. While he was in the act of thrashing them, they would roar out instances of his funking at football, or shirking some encounter with a lout of half his own size. These things were all well enough known in the house, but to have his disgrace shouted out by small boys, to feel that they despised him, to be unable to silence them by any amount of torture, and to see the open laugh and sneer of his own associates (who were looking on, and took no trouble to hide their scorn from him, though they neither interfered with his bullying or lived a bit the less intimately with him), made him beside himself. Come what might, he would make those boys' lives miserable. So the strife settled down into a personal affair between Flashman and our youngsters; a war to the knife, to be fought out in the little cockpit at the end of the bottom passage. Flashman, be it said, was about seventeen

years old, and big and strong of his age. He played well at all games where pluck wasn't much wanted, and managed generally to keep up appearances where it was; and having a bluff, off-hand manner, which passed for heartiness, and considerable powers of being pleasant when he liked, went down with the school in general for a good fellow enough. Even in the school-house, by dint of his command of money, the constant supply of good things which he kept up, and his adroit toadyism, he had managed to make himself not only tolerated, but rather popular amongst his own contemporaries: although young Brooke scarcely spoke to him, and one or two others of the right sort showed their opinions of him whenever a chance offered. But the wrong sort happened to be in the ascendant just now, and so Flashman was a formidable enemy for small boys. This soon became plain enough. Flashman left no slander unspoken, and no deed undone, which could in any way hurt his victims, or isolate them from the rest of the house. One by one most of the other rebels fell away from them, while Flashman's cause prospered, and several other fifth-form boys began to look black at them and ill-treat them as they passed about the house. By keeping out of bounds, or at all events out of the house and quadrangle, all day, and carefully barring themselves in at night, East and Tom managed to hold on without feeling very miserable; but it was as much as they could do. Greatly were they drawn then towards old Diggs, who, in an uncouth way, began to take a good deal of notice of them, and once or twice came to their study when Flashman was there, who immediately decamped in consequence. The boys thought that Diggs must have been watching.

When therefore, about this time, an auction was one night announced to take place in the Hall, at which, amongst the superfluities of other boys, all Diggs' Penates for the time being were going to the hammer, East and Tom laid their heads together, and resolved to devote their ready cash (some four shillings sterling) to redeem such articles as that sum would cover. Accordingly, they duly attended to bid, and Tom became the owner of two lots of Diggs' things;-lot 1, price one-and-threepence, consisting (as the auctioneer remarked) of a "valuable assortment of old metals," in the shape of a mouse-trap, a cheese-toaster without a handle, and a saucepan; lot 2, of a villanous dirty table-cloth and green-baize curtain; while East, for one-and-sixpence, purchased a leather paper-case, with a lock but no key, once handsome, but now much the