the voice of some one close at
hand. It was their sister, a pretty girl of fourteen, who stood in the
court below.

'I can see the tops of your heads! What's the use of staying up there? I
like you not to go out with the street-boys; but do come and play with
me!'

They treated her as an inadequate interlocutor, and put her off with some
slight word. She went away disappointed. Presently there was a dull
noise of heavy footsteps at the side of the house, and one of the
brothers sat up. 'I fancy I hear him coming,' he murmured, his eyes on
the window.

A man in the light drab clothes of an old-fashioned country tradesman
approached from round the corner, reeling as he came. The elder son
flushed with anger, rose from his books, and descended the stairs. The
younger sat on, till, after the lapse of a few minutes, his brother re-
entered the room.

'Did Rosa see him?'

'No.'

'Nor anybody?'

'No.'

'What have you done with him?'

'He's in the straw-shed. I got him in with some trouble, and he has
fallen asleep. I thought this would be the explanation of his absence!
No stones dressed for Miller Kench, the great wheel of the saw-mills
waiting for new float-boards, even the poor folk not able to get their
waggons wheeled.'

'What _is_ the use of poring over this!' said the younger, shutting up
Donnegan's _Lexicon_ with a slap. 'O if we had only been able to keep
mother's nine hundred pounds, what we could have done!'

'How well she had estimated the sum necessary! Four hundred and fifty
each, she thought. And I have no doubt that we could have done it on
that, with care.'

This loss of the nine hundred pounds was the sharp thorn of their crown.
It was a sum which their mother had amassed with great exertion and self-
denial, by adding to a chance legacy such other small amounts as she
could lay hands on from time to time; and she had intended with the hoard
to indulge the dear wish of her heart--that of sending her sons, Joshua
and Cornelius, to one of the Universities, having been informed that from
four hundred to four hundred and fifty each might carry them through
their terms with such great economy as she knew she could trust them to
practise. But she had died a year or two before this time, worn out by
too keen a strain towards these ends; and the money, coming unreservedly
into the hands of their father, had been nearly dissipated. With its
exhaustion went all opportunity and hope of