d's doing. Could Jem think he had been a wicked
boy, and take it as punishment?

CHAPTER IV--PAUL BLACKTHORN

'I say,' cried Harold, running up into his brother's room, as soon as he
had put away the pony, 'do you know whether Paul is gone?'

'It is always Paul, Paul!' exclaimed Ellen; 'I'm sure I hope he is.'

'But why do you think he would be?' asked Alfred.

'Oh, didn't you hear? He knows no more than a baby about anything, and
so he turned the cows into Darnel meadow, and never put the hurdle to
stop the gap--never thinking they could get down the bank; so the farmer
found them in the barley, and if he did not run out against him downright
shameful--though Paul up and told him the truth, that 'twas nobody else
that did it.'

'What, and turned him off?'

'Well, that's what I want to know,' said Harold, going on with his tea.
'Paul said to me he didn't know how he could stand the like of that--and
yet he didn't like to be off--he'd taken a fancy to the place, you see,
and there's me, and there's old Caesar--and so he said he wouldn't go
unless the farmer sent him off when he came to be paid this evening--and
old Skinflint has got him so cheap, I don't think he will.'

'For shame, Harold; don't call names!'

'Well, there he is,' said Alfred, pointing into the farm-yard, towards
the hay-loft door. This was over the cow-house in the gable end; and in
the dark opening sat Paul, his feet on the top step of the ladder, and
Caesar, the yard-dog, lying by his side, his white paws hanging down over
the edge, his sharp white muzzle and grey prick ears turned towards his
friend, and his eyes casting such appealing looks, that he was getting
more of the hunch of bread than probably Paul could well spare.

'How has he ever got the dog up the ladder?' cried Harold.

'Well!' said Mrs. King, 'I declare he looks like a picture I have seen--'

'Well, to be sure! who would go for to draw a picture of the like of
that!' exclaimed Ellen, pausing as she put on her things to carry home
some work.

'It was a picture of a Spanish beggar-boy,' said Mrs. King; 'and the
housekeeper at Castlefort used to say that the old lord--that's Lady
Jane's brother--had given six hundred pounds for it.'

Ellen set out on her walk with a sound of wonder quite beyond words. Six
hundred pounds for a picture like Paul Blackthorn! She did not know that
so poor and feeble are man's attempts to imitate the daily forms and
colourings fre