friends, nowadays. May I put you in?"

"Oh, certainly!" said Richard, placing himself in front of the fire,
putting his feet on the hob, and stroking his curls with an air which
seemed to imply that whatever he was put into would be highly favored.

The rest struggled, and pushed, and squeezed themselves into more modest
but equally comfortable quarters; and after a few moments of thought,
Paterfamilias's friend commenced the story of

MELCHIOR'S DREAM.

"Melchior is my hero. He was--well, he considered himself a young man,
so we will consider him so too. He was not perfect; but in these days
the taste in heroes is for a good deal of imperfection, not to say
wickedness. He was not an only son. On the contrary, he had a great many
brothers and sisters, and found them quite as objectionable as my friend
Richard does."

"I smell a moral," murmured the said Richard.

"Your scent must be keen," said the story-teller, "for it is a long way
off. Well, he had never felt them so objectionable as on one particular
night, when the house being full of company, it was decided that the
boys should sleep in 'barracks,' as they called it; that is, all in one
large room."

"Thank goodness we have not come to that!" said the incorrigible
Richard; but he was reduced to order by threats of being turned out, and
contented himself with burning the soles of his boots against the bars
of the grate in silence: and the friend continued:

"But this was not the worst. Not only was he, Melchior, to sleep in the
same room with his brothers, but his bed being the longest and largest,
his youngest brother was to sleep at the other end of it--foot to foot.
True, by this means he got another pillow, for of course that little
Hop-o'-my-thumb could do without one, and so he took his; but in spite
of this, he determined that, sooner than submit to such an indignity, he
would sit up all night. Accordingly, when all the rest were fast asleep,
Melchior, with his boots off and his waistcoat easily unbuttoned, sat
over the fire in the long lumber-room, which served that night as
'barracks'. He had refused to eat any supper down-stairs to mark his
displeasure, and now repaid himself by a stolen meal according to his
own taste. He had got a pork-pie, a little bread and cheese, some large
onions to roast, a couple of raw apples, an orange, and papers of soda
and tartaric acid to compound effervescing draughts. When these dainties
were finished, he proceed