the answer from the outside would be
"ten," or else that "it depended upon circumstances." Every week some
ribald and libellous paragraph would appear in the county newspaper,
headed "Advertisement," in such terms as the following:--"We have just
learned from the best authority, that the usher of a school not a
hundred miles off from Hogs-Norton, has lately been detected in various
acts of forgery, petty larceny, sedition, high treason, burglary, &c.
&c. If this report be not officially contradicted by the said usher
within a fortnight, by advertisement, duly inserted and paid for in this
newspaper, we shall hold the same to be true." Or sometimes more
mysteriously thus:--"Delicacy forbids us to allude to the shocking
reports which are current respecting the usher of Mullaglass. Christian
charity would lead us to hope they were unfounded, but Christian verity
compels us to state that we believe every word of them." And though Jack
and his editor sometimes overshot their mark, and got soused in damages
at the instance of those whom they had libelled, yet Jack, who found
that it answered his ends, persevered, and so kept the whole
neighbourhood in hot water.

You would not believe me were I to tell you of half the tyrannical and
preposterous pranks which he performed about this period; but some of
them I can't help noticing. He had picked up some subscriptions, for
instance, from charitable folks in the neighbourhood, to build a school
upon a remote corner of North Farm, where not a single boy had learned
his alphabet within the memory of man; and what, think ye, does he do
with the money, but insists on clapping down the new school exactly
opposite the old school in the village, merely to spite the poor usher,
against whom he had taken a dislike--though there was no more need to
build a school there than to ship a cargo of coals for Newcastle. Again,
having ascertained that one of his servants had been seen shaking hands
with some of Jack's family with whom he had quarrelled as above
mentioned, he refused to give him a character, though the poor fellow
was only thinking of taking service somewhere in the plantations.

Notwithstanding all Jack's efforts, however, it sometimes happened that
when an usher was appointed he could not get up a sufficient cabal
against him, and that even the schoolboys, knowing something of the man
before, had no objection to him. In such cases Jack resorted to various
schemes in order to cas