eautiful wax-light scarcely burned; and,
certainly, I think it a very cheap and excellent purchase, _N'est-ce
pas, mon fils_?

DOCTOR JOHNS.

XXIV.

At nine next morning, prayers and breakfast being despatched,--during
which Parson Brummem had determined to leave Reuben to the sting of his
conscience,--the master appears in the school-room with his wristbands
turned up, and his ferule in hand, to enforce judgment upon the culprit.
It had been a frosty night, and the cool October air had not tempted the
boys to any wide movement out of doors, so that no occupant of the
parsonage had as yet detected the draggled white banner that hung from
the prison-window.

Through Keziah, the parson gave orders for Master Johns to report
himself at once in the school-room. The maid returned presently,
clattering down the stairs in a great fright,--

"Reuben's gone, Sir!"

"Gone?" says the tall master, astounded. He represses a wriggle of
healthful satisfaction on the part of his pupils by a significant lift
of his ferule, then moves ponderously up the stairs for a personal visit
to the chamber of the culprit. The maid had given true report; there was
no one there. Never had he been met with such barefaced rebellion.
Truants, indeed, there had been in days gone by; but that a pupil under
discipline should have tied together Mistress Brummem's linen and left
it draggling in this way, in the sight of every passer-by, was an
affront to his authority which he had not deemed possible.

An hour thereafter, and he had assigned the morning's task to the boys
(which he had ventured to lengthen by a third, in view--as he said, with
a grim humor--of their extremely cheerful spirits); established
Mistress Brummem in temporary charge, and was driving his white-faced
nag down the road which led toward Ashfield. The frosted pools crackled
under the wheels of the old chaise; the heaving horse wheezed as the
stern parson gave his loins a thwack with the slackened reins and urged
him down the turnpike which led away through the ill-kept fields, from
the rambling, slatternly town. Stone walls that had borne the upheaval
of twenty winters reeled beside the way. Broad scars of ochreous earth,
from which the turnpike-menders had dug material to patch the
wheel-track, showed ooze of yellow mud with honeycombs of ice rimming
their edges, and supporting a thin film of sod made up of lichens and
the roots of five-fingers. Raw, shapeless stones,