ited there, the young
necromancer declared that the same wonder would appear in all the rooms
in turn, which it accordingly did; and the whole circumstances having
been privately reported to one of the ushers as usual, that functionary,
after listening about at the doors of the rooms, by a sudden descent
caught the performer in his night-shirt, with a box of phosphorus in his
guilty hand. Lucifer-matches and all the present facilities for getting
acquainted with fire were then unknown; the very name of phosphorus had
something diabolic in it to the boy-mind; so Tom's ally, at the cost of
a sound flogging, earned what many older folk covet much--the very
decided fear of most of his companions.

He was a remarkable boy, and by no means a bad one. Tom stuck to him
till he left, and got into many scrapes by so doing. But he was the
great opponent of the tale-bearing habits of the school, and the open
enemy of the ushers; and so worthy of all support.

Tom imbibed a fair amount of Latin and Greek at the school, but somehow
on the whole it didn't suit him, or he it, and in the holidays he was
constantly working the Squire to send him at once to a public school.
Great was his joy then, when in the middle of his third half-year, in
October, 183-, a fever broke out in the village, and the master having
himself slightly sickened of it, the whole of the boys were sent off at
a day's notice to their respective homes.

The Squire was not quite so pleased as Master Tom to see that young
gentleman's brown merry face appear at home, some two months before the
proper time, for Christmas holidays: and so after putting on his
thinking cap, he retired to his study and wrote several letters; the
result of which was that one morning at the breakfast-table, about a
fortnight after Tom's return, he addressed his wife with--"My dear, I
have arranged that Tom shall go to Rugby at once, for the last six weeks
of this half-year, instead of wasting them riding and loitering about
home. It is very kind of the Doctor to allow it. Will you see that his
things are all ready by Friday, when I shall take him up to town, and
send him down the next day by himself."

Mrs. Brown was prepared for the announcement, and merely suggested a
doubt whether Tom were yet old enough to travel by himself. However,
finding both father and son against her on this point, she gave in like
a wise woman, and proceeded to prepare Tom's kit for his launch into a
public sch