have killed him!"

"Frank," said the parson, sternly, "if we all had our deserts, what
should be done to him who not only lets the sun go down on his own
wrath, but strives with uncharitable breath to fan the dying embers of
another's?"

The clergyman here turned away from Frank, who bit his lip, and seemed
abashed, while even his mother said not a word in his exculpation; for
when the parson did reprove in that stern tone, the majesty of the
Hall stood awed before the rebuke of the Church. Catching Riccabocca's
inquisitive eye, Mr. Dale drew aside the philosopher, and whispered to
him his fears that it would be a very hard matter to induce Lenny to beg
Randal Leslie's pardon, and that the proud stomach of the pattern-boy
would not digest the stocks with as much ease as a long regimen of
philosophy had enabled the sage to do. This conference Miss Jemima soon
interrupted by a direct appeal to the doctor respecting the number of
years (even without any previous and more violent incident) that the
world could possibly withstand its own wear and tear.

"Ma'am," said the doctor, reluctantly summoned away to look at a passage
in some prophetic periodical upon that interesting subject,--"ma'am,
it is very hard that you should make one remember the end of the world,
since, in conversing with you, one's natural temptation is to forget its
existence."

Miss Jemima's cheeks were suffused with a deeper scarlet than Frank's
had been a few minutes before. Certainly that deceitful, heartless
compliment justified all her contempt for the male sex; and yet--such is
human blindness--it went far to redeem all mankind in her credulous and
too confiding soul.

"He is about to propose," sighed Miss Jemima.

"Giacomo," said Riccabocca, as he drew on his nightcap, and stepped
majestically into the four-posted bed, "I think we shall get that boy
for the garden now!"

Thus each spurred his hobby, or drove her car, round the Hazeldean
whirligig.

CHAPTER XIII.

Whatever, may be the ultimate success of Miss Jemima Hazeldean's designs
upon Dr. Riccabocca, the Machiavellian sagacity with which the Italian
had counted upon securing the services of Lenny Fairfield was speedily
and triumphantly established by the result. No voice of the parson's,
charmed he ever so wisely, could persuade the peasant-boy to go and ask
pardon of the young gentleman, to whom, because he had done as he was
bid, he owed an agonizing defeat and a shameful