nt characteristic. He had sent this son, with eighteen pence
in his pocket, to a school of twenty pounds a-year; where, naturally
enough, he learned nothing but mischief and cricket: yet he conceived
that his son owed him eternal obligations.

Luckily for Percy, he was an especial favourite with a certain not
uncelebrated character of the name of Saville; and Saville claimed the
privilege of a relation to supply him with money and receive him at his
home. Wild, passionate, fond to excess of pleasure, the young Godolphin
caught eagerly at these occasional visits; and at each his mind, keen
and penetrating as it naturally was, took new flights, and revelled in
new views. He was already the leader of his school, the torment of the
master, and the lover of the master's daughter. He was sixteen years
old, but a character. A secret pride, a secret bitterness, and an open
wit and recklessness of bearing, rendered him to all seeming a boy more
endowed with energies than affections. Yet a kind word from a friend's
lips was never without its effect on him, and he might have been led
by the silk while he would have snapped the chain. But these were his
boyish traits of mind: the world soon altered them.

The subject of the visit to Saville was not again touched upon. A little
reflection showed Mr. Godolphin how nugatory were the promises of a
schoolboy that he should not cost his father another shilling; and he
knew that Saville's house was not exactly the spot in which economy was
best learned. He thought it, therefore, more prudent that his son should
return to school.

To school went Percy Godolphin; and about three weeks afterwards, Percy
Godolphin was condemned to expulsion for returning, with considerable
unction, a slap in the face that he had received from Dr. Shallowell.
Instead of waiting for his father's arrival, Percy made up a small
bundle of clothes, let himself drop, by the help of the bed-curtains,
from the window of the room in which he was confined, and towards the
close of a fine summer's evening, found himself on the highroad between
and London, with independence at his heart and (Saville's last gift) ten
guineas in his pocket.

CHAPTER IV.

PERCY'S FIRST ADVENTURE AS A FREE AGENT.

It was a fine, picturesque outline of road on which the young outcast
found himself journeying, whither he neither knew nor cared. His heart
was full of enterprise and the unfledged valour of inexperience. He had
procee