ai pas le droit
de renoncer au theatre!" am I? I've renounced _my_ stage. I'm a good
little boy, and won't make a mess with nasty ink and pens any more.
When I get those confounded books back they shall go into the fire--by
Jove they shall!'

'No, Mark, don't, it would be such a pity,' cried Trixie. 'I'm sure
they were beautifully written; quite as well as some that get printed.
I wish you could write novels and be Lord Chancellor too, Mark.'

'Bring out Acts in three volumes, and edit Judicature Rules in fancy
covers for railway reading? It would be very nice, Trixie, wouldn't
it? But I'm afraid it wouldn't do, even if I wrote them in secret,
under the Woolsack. If I write anything now, it must be a smart spicy
quarto on Bankruptcy, or a rattling digest on the Law of Settlement
and Highways. My fictions will be all legal ones.'

'I know you will do your best,' said Trixie, simply.

Mark dreamed that night--much as other disappointed literary aspirants
have dreamed before him--that a second letter had come from the
publishers, stating that they had reconsidered their decision, and
offering repentantly to publish both novels on fabulous terms. He was
just rushing to call Trixie, and tell her the good news, when the
dream faded, and he awoke to the consciousness of his very different
circumstances.

Literature had jilted him. The Law was to be his mistress henceforth:
a bony and parchment-faced _innamorata_, with a horsehair wig; and he
thought of the task of wooing her with a shudder.

CHAPTER V.

NEIGHBOURS.

More than a week had passed since the scene in Malakoff Terrace
described in my last chapter--a week spent by Mark in the drudgery of
school work, which had grown more distasteful than ever now he could
indulge in no golden dreams of a glorious deliverance; for he could
not accept his new prospects as an adequate substitute, and was
beginning to regret his abandonment of his true ambitions with a
longing that was almost fierce.

He had gone down to 'The Woodbines,' his uncle's villa at Chigbourne,
in pursuance of the invitation given him; and Mr. Lightowler's
undisguised recovery of the feeling of proprietorship in him, and his
repeated incitements to pursue his studies with unwearying ardour,
only increased Mark's disgust with himself and his future, as he
walked along the lanes with his relative towards the little church
beyond the village on the last Sunday in November.

It was a bright cle