s of
knowing the value of good conduct and good manners, should choose such
boys for his friends and playfellows, was indeed most strange. Yet thus
it was; their shouting, laughing, and vulgar mirth pleased Frank. They
had also a great share of cunning, and found the way to manage him, so
as to get from him what they wanted to have. When they told Frank that
he was very handsome and very clever, and that it was a shame so fine a
boy should be forced to go to school if he did not like it, he was silly
enough to be pleased, and gave them in return his playthings and his
money; nay, he would even take sugar, cakes, fruit, and sweetmeats from
his mother's store-room to bestow on these ill-chosen friends; and their
false pretence of love for him made him quite careless of gaining the
real love of his father and mother.

On meeting his son in the midst of the brickmakers' children, Mr.
Lawless[2] was very angry, and, taking him home by force, he gave him a
severe reproof, and then locked him up in his chamber. Frank, who had
lately grown very sullen and froward, was far from being sorry for his
fault, and said to himself that his father was both cross and cruel, and
wished to prevent his being happy. With these wicked thoughts in his
head, he began to contrive how to make his escape; and the window not
being very high above the ground, and having a vine growing up to it,
whose branches would serve as a sort of ladder, he got out, reached the
ground, and passing unseen through the garden-gate, ran with all his
speed till he came up to the boys, who were still at the cruel sport of
robbing birds'-nests in the lane where he had left them.

But he did not seem half as welcome to them now as in the morning, when
he had brought a pocket full of apples, and as he said he was come to
live with them, and should never go home again, their manner was quite
changed. One took away his hat and another his shoes. They cut sticks to
make a bonfire, and, having got a great pile, they made Frank carry it.
The weight was too much for him, and when he let it fall, they gave him
hard words and still harder blows. He now began to find that the service
of the wicked is by no means so easy as to obey the commands of the good.

While Frank Lawless was toiling under his heavy load of sticks, the boys
were laying a plan to rob an orchard. It was the autumn season of the
year, and all the fruit of the orchard was gone, except the pears of one
tree, wh