gement from Uncle Joe to go on with my natural history
pursuits, collecting butterflies and beetles, birds' eggs in the spring,
and stuffing as many birds as I could obtain.

Some of these latter were very roughly done, but I had so natural a love
for the various objects of nature, that I find the birds I did in those
days, rough as they were, had a very lifelike appearance. I had only to
ask my uncle for money to buy books or specimens and it was forthcoming,
and so I went on arranging and rearranging, making a neatly written
catalogue of my little museum in the tool-house, and always helped by
Uncle Joe's encouragement.

I suppose I was a strange boy, seeking the companionship of my
school-fellows but very little, after my aunt had refused to let any of
them visit me, or to let me go to their homes. I was driven thus, as it
were, upon my own resources, and somehow I did not find mine to be an
unhappy life; in fact so pleasant did it seem that when the time came
for me to give it up I was very sorry to leave it, and felt ready to
settle down to aunt's constant fault-finding for the sake of dear
tender-hearted old Uncle Joe, who was broken completely in spirit at my
having to go.

"But it's right, Nat, my boy, quite right," he said, "and you would only
be spoiled if you stayed on here. It is time now that you began to
think of growing to be a man, and I hope and pray that you'll grow into
one of whom I can be proud."

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE RETURN OF THE WANDERER.

One day when I came home from school I was surprised to find a tall dark
gentleman in the drawing-room with my uncle and aunt. He was so dark
that he looked to me at first to be a foreigner, and his dark keen eyes
and long black beard all grizzled with white hairs made him so very
different to Uncle Joseph that I could not help comparing one with the
other.

"This is Master Nathaniel, I suppose," said the stranger in a quick
sharp way, just as if he was accustomed to order people about.

"Yes, that's Joseph's nephew," said my aunt tartly, "and a nice boy he
is."

"You mean a nasty one," I said to myself, as I coloured up, "but you
needn't have told a stranger."

"Yes," said Uncle Joseph, "he is a very nice boy, Richard, and I'm very
proud of him."

My aunt gave a very loud sniff.

"Suppose we shake hands then, Nathaniel," said the stranger, whom I
immediately guessed to be my Aunt Sophia's brother Richard, who was a
learned man and a doc