hand to guide his thoughts and fancies, and liberty, in which they may unfold. He needs developing in a way in which no school or college can develop him. I would have him see nature, and learn her lessons; see men and things, and know how to discern and appreciate. I would have him a little different—wider shall I say?—than the mere stereotyped public-school and varsity product—admirable as it is. I would have him cultured, but not a worshipper of culture, to the neglect of those deeper qualities without which culture is a mere husk.

"I would have him athletic, but not of those who deify athletics.

"Above all, I would have him such a gentleman as only he can be who realises that the privilege of good birth is in no way due to indigenous merit."

He paused, and for a while we smoked in silence.

"He will, of course, be away at school for the greater part of each year. But if you, dear friends, would undertake—in turn, if you will—to supervise his holidays, I should be more than grateful. We grown men regard our life in terms—a boy punctuates his, by holidays—and it is in them, that I would beg of you to influence him for good."

He turned to the poet.

"Tommy," he said, "has, I feel sure, a deeply imaginative nature, and I am by no means certain that he is not poetical. In fact, I believe he once wrote something about a star, which was really quite creditable—quite creditable."

The poet looked a little bewildered.

"And I believe that Tommy has scientific bents"—the colonel looked at the doctor, who bowed silently.

Then he regarded me a little doubtfully—after a pause.

"Tommy is not an ordinary boy," he repeated, somewhat ambiguously I thought. Lastly, he turned to the vicar, "I could never repay the man who taught my boy to love God," he said simply, and we fell once more to our silence, and our smoking, while the flames leaped merrily in the old grate, and flung strange shadows over the black wainscot and polished floor.

Camslove Grange was old and serene and aristocratic, an antithesis, in all respects, to its future owner, whose round head pressed a pillow upstairs, while his spirit wandered, at play, through a boy's dreamland. The colonel waved his hand.

"It will all be his, you see, one day," he said, almost apologetically, "and I want the old place to have a good master."

I have said that the colonel's request had filled us with dismay, and this indeed was very much the case.

We all had our habits. We all—even the doctor, who was the youngest of us by some years—loved peace and regularity. Moreover, we all, if not possessed of an actual dislike for boys, nevertheless preferred them at a considerable distance.

And yet, in spite of all these things, we could not but fall in with the colonel's appeal, both for the sake of unbroken friendship—and in one case, at least (he will not mind, if I confess it), for the sake of a sweet lost face.

And so it came about that we clasped hands, in the silence of the old study, where, if rumour be true, more than one famous treaty has been made and signed, and took upon our shoulders the burden of Thomas, only son of our departing friend.

The colonel rose to his feet, and there was a glad light in his eyes. He held out both hands towards us.

"God bless you, old comrades," he said. Then, in answer to a question,

"Tommy returns to school, to-morrow, for the Easter term, and his holiday will be in April, I fancy. To whom is he to go first?"

We all looked at each other with questioning eyes—then we looked at the fire.

The silence began to get awkward.

"Shall we—er—shall we toss—draw lots, that is?" suggested the vicar, rather nervously.

The idea seemed good, and we resorted to the time-honoured, yet most unsatisfactory, expedient of spinning a penny in the air.

The results, combined with a process of exclusion, left the choice between the poet and the doctor.

The vicar spun, and the poet called. "Heads!" he cried, feverishly.

And heads it was.

A smile of relief and triumph was dawning on the doctor's face, when the poet looked at him, anxiously.

"Is there not—" he asked. "Is there not a method of procedure, by which one may call thrice?"

"Threes," remarked the vicar, genially.

"Of course there is—would you like me to toss again?"

"I—I think I would," said the poet, meekly. Then turning, apologetically, to the colonel,

"It's better to make quite sure, don't you think?"

The doctor looked a little crestfallen, but agreed, and the vicar once more sent the coin into the air.

"Tails," cried the poet, and as the coin fell, the sovereign's head lay upward.

The poet drew a deep breath.

"It would seem," he said, bowing to the doctor, "that Tommy may yet become your guest."

"There is another go," said the doctor, and the vicar tossed a third time.

"Heads," cried the poet, and heads it proved to be.

The poet wiped his forehead, after which the colonel grasped his hand.

"Write and tell me how he gets on," he said. "I cannot tell you how grateful I am to you—to all of you."

"No, of course not—that is, it's nothing you know—only too delighted to have the dear boy," stammered the poet. "Er—does he—can he undress himself and—and all that, you know?"

The colonel laughed.

"Why, he's thirteen," he cried.

A little later we took our departure.

In a shadowy part of the drive the poet pulled my sleeve.

"Can boys of that age undress themselves and brush their own teeth, do you suppose?" he asked.

"I believe so," I answered.

The poet shook his head sorrowfully.

"I don't know what Mrs. Chundle will say," he remarked.

And at the end of the drive we parted, with averted looks and scarce concealed distress, each taking a contemplative path to the hitherto calm of his bachelor shrine.

II

IN WHICH TWO RATS MEET A SUDDEN DEATH

"The country is just now at its freshest," said the poet, waving his hand towards the open window and the green lawn. "The world is waking again to its—er, spring holiday, Tommy, and you must be out in the air and the open fields, and share it while you may."

The poet beamed, a little apprehensively it is true, across the breakfast table at Tommy, who was mastering a large plate of eggs and bacon with courage and facility.

"It's jolly good of you to have me, you know," observed Tommy, pausing a moment to regard his host.

"On the contrary, it is my very glad privilege. I have often felt that my youth has been left behind a little oversoon—I am getting, I fancy, a trifle stiff and narrowed. You must lead me, Tommy, into the world of action and sport—we will play games together—hide and go seek. You must buy me a hoop, and we will play marbles and cricket—" and the poet smiled complacently over his spectacles.

Tommy wriggled a little uneasily in his chair, and looked out of the window.

The trees were bending to the morning wind, which sang through the budding branches and hovered over the garden daffodils. Away beyond the lawn and the meadows the hills rose clear and bracing to the eye, and through a chain of willows sped the wavering blue gleam of sunny waters.

"I—I'm an awful duffer at games," said Tommy, with a blush on his brown cheeks, and horrid visions of the