a specimen of the kind of story some boys read, and some
editors do _not_ publish, the reader shall have my "penny dreadful," and
decide for himself whether it has not lots of "go," is not strictly true
to nature, elevating in tone, and carefully studied. If it is not, then
he had better not read it!

The Plaster Cast; Or Septimus Minor's Million.

A Thrilling Story in Fifteen Chapters, by the Author of "Blugram
Blunderbuss, or the Dog-Man."

Sub-Chapter I.

THE MURDER!

The golden sun was plunging his magnificent head angrily into the sheen
of the bronze Atlantic when Septimus Minor scaled the craggy path which
leads from Crocusville to the towering cliff above.

The wind came and went in fitful gusts, which now and again carried
Septimus off his feet, and sometimes lifted him a foot or two over the
edge of the rugged cliff in time for another eddy to carry him back.

Nature this evening suited the gusty humour of Septimus Minor's breast.

"The crisis of my life approaches!" he said to himself, as a magnificent
wave from below leapt eight hundred feet in the air, and fell, drenching
him from head to foot. "I am fifteen years old next week, and something
here,"--here he laid his right hand on his left side--"tells me I am a
man."

As he spoke, another wave leapt skyward, and out of it emerged the form
of a man.

"Yes!" cried Septimus. "Her father!"

Septimus was the youngest of seven children, most of whom were orphans.
But we digress.

"Belay there--haul in your mainslacks, and splice your marline-spike.
Where are you coming to?" cried Peeler, the coastguardsman--for such, we
need hardly say, was the rank of the new arrival.

"How are you?" said Sep, in an off-hand way.

"Blooming," said the not altogether refined Peeler.

A gust of wind lifted them both up the twenty remaining yards of the
cliff, and left them standing on a sheltered crag at the extreme brink.

"Spin us a yarn," said Sep.

The setting sun cast a lurid flash over the figures of that strangely
assorted pair. The next moment it had set, and nothing was visible but
the reflection of the end of Sep's cigar in the glass eye of his
interlocutor.

Septimus Minor had lived in Crocusville ever since he could remember,
and the coastguardsman some years longer. Hence Sep's request.

Mr Peeler was a fine specimen of his class. He wore a sou'wester and
boots to match, and round his shoulders--

But why all this minute detail concerni