ock drew near, and with it the
early dusk of an autumn evening. Bert was growing faint with hunger,
and, oh! so weary of his confinement. Not until it was too dark to read
any longer did Dr. Johnston move; and then, without noticing Bert, he
went down the room, and disappeared through the door that led into his
own apartments.

"My gracious!" exclaimed Bert, in alarm. "Surely he is not going to
leave me here all alone in the dark. I'll jump out of the window if he
does."

But that was not the master's idea, for shortly he returned with two
candles, placed one on either side of Bert's desk, then went to his
desk, drew forth the long, black strap, whose cruel sting Bert had not
felt for years, and standing in front of the quaking boy, looking the
very type of unrelenting sternness, said:

"You shall not leave your seat until your composition is finished, and
if you have not made a beginning inside of five minutes you may expect
punishment."

So saying, he strode off into the darkness, and up and down the long
room, now filled with strange shadows, swishing the strap against the
desks as he passed to and fro. Bert's feelings may be more easily
imagined than described. Hungry, weary, frightened, he grasped his pen
with trembling fingers, and bent over the paper.

For the first minute or two not a word was written. Then, as if struck
by some happy thought, he scribbled down a title quickly and paused. In
a moment more he wrote again, and soon one whole paragraph was done.

The five minutes having elapsed, the doctor emerged from the gloom and
came up to see what progress had been made. He looked over Bert's
shoulder at the crooked lines that straggled over half the page, but he
could not have read more than the title, when the shadows of the great
empty room were startled by a peal of laughter that went echoing through
the darkness, and clapping the boy graciously upon his back, the master
said:

"That will do, Lloyd. The title is quite sufficient. You may go now;"
for he had a keen sense of humour and a thorough relish of a joke, and
the subject selected by Bert was peculiarly appropriate, being
"Necessity is the Mother of Invention."

Mr. Lloyd was so delighted with Bert's ingenuity that thenceforth he
gave him very effective assistance in the preparation of his weekly
essays, and they were no longer the bugbear that they had been.

It was not long after this that Bert had an experience with the law not
less me