essionally, in
experimenting on him, as a finely-complicated case of spiritual disease.
Thrice did Mr. Yollop, in his capacity of a moral surgeon, operate on
his patient, and triumph in the responsive yells which his curative
exertions elicited. At the fourth visit of attendance, however, every
angry symptom suddenly and marvelously disappeared before the first
significant flourish of the clerical knife. Mr. Yollop had triumphed
where Mr. Thorpe had failed! The case which had defied lay treatment had
yielded to the parsonic process of cure; and Zack, the rebellious, was
tamed at last into spending his evenings in decorous dullness at home!

It never occurred to Mr. Yollop to doubt, or to Mr. Thorpe to ascertain,
whether the young gentleman really went to bed, after he had retired
obediently, at the proper hour, to his sleeping room. They saw him come
home from business sullenly docile and speechlessly subdued, take his
dinner and his book in the evening, and go up stairs quietly, after the
house door had been bolted for the night. They saw him thus acknowledge,
by every outward proof, that he was crushed into thorough submission;
and the sight satisfied them to their heart's content. No men are so
short-sighted as persecuting men. Both Mr. Thorpe and his coadjutor were
persecutors on principle, wherever they encountered opposition; and both
were consequently incapable of looking beyond immediate results. The sad
truth was, however, that they had done something more than discipline
the lad. They had fairly worried his native virtues of frankness and
fair-dealing out of his heart; they had beaten him back, inch by inch,
into the miry refuge of sheer duplicity. Zack was deceiving them both.

Eleven o'clock was the family hour for going to bed at Baregrove Square.
Zack's first proceeding on entering his room was to open his window
softly, put on an old traveling cap, and light a cigar. It was December
weather at that time; but his hardy constitution rendered him as
impervious to cold as a young Polar bear. Having smoked quietly for
half an hour, he listened at his door till the silence in Mr. Thorpe's
dressing-room below assured him that his father was safe in bed, and
invited him to descend on tiptoe--with his boots under his arm--into
the hall. Here he placed his candle, with a box of matches by it, on a
chair, and proceeded to open the house door with the noiseless dexterity
of a practiced burglar--being always careful t