might
do harm to read their books,--shake them up together and make
into a paste, add some poetical excerpts of a moral tendency,
and spread thick over a violent lad smarting under a sense
of demerit justly scorned, Turn him out into the world,
then scrape clean and return him to his true friends. Cards,
race-meetings, and billiards may be introduced _ad lib._, also
passion, prejudice, a faithful dog, and an infant prattler.
Death-scenes form an effective relief. I have several which
only need a touch or two to be complete. That is the way to
please the publishers and capture the public. Try it, and let
me know what you think.--R.T."]

CHAPTER I.

Ah me, how shall we know the true,
How mark the old, how fix the new?
Or teach the babe in arms to say,
"Base, bold, bad boys are cheap to-day"?

NARR. _The White Witch_.

[Illustration]

SONOGUN scarcely knew what to do. He had been up all day, wandering
about the lanes which surrounded the family mansion. A fitful light
blazed in his magnificent eyes, his brow contracted until it assumed
that peculiarly battered expression which is at once characteristic
of a bent penny and consistent with the most sublime beauty. To be
properly appreciated he must be adequately described. Imagine then a
young man of twenty, who was filled with the bitterest hatred of the
world, which he had forsworn two years ago, on being expelled from
school for gambling. There was about him an air of haughty reserve and
of indifference which was equally haughty. This it was his habit to
assume in order to meet any neighbours who happened to meet him, and
the result naturally was that he was not so popular as some inferior
beings who were less haughty. In fact he had a very short way with his
relations, for whose benefit he kept a shell into which he frequently
retired. He was dangerously handsome, in the Italian style, and often
played five bars of music over and over again, with one finger,
to please his mother. Some women thought he was an Apollo, others
described him as an Adonis, but everybody invariably ended or began
by calling him an ancient Roman. He was sarcastic, satiric, and very
strong. Indeed, on one occasion, he absolutely broke the feathers on
a hand-screen, and on another he cracked three walnuts in succession
without looking up. But, oh, the sufferings that young heart had
undergone. Slapped by his nurse, reproved by his mot