Jubilee Hall

"Joy! joy! joy!" cried Kathleen Malcomson, as she burst into the schoolroom where her two brothers were at work preparing their lessons for school; "oh, boys, I've just heard such a grand piece of news. I'll give each of you three guesses what it is, and only this one hint, that it's the most glorious thing you could possibly imagine."

"You must tell us first," cried Fred, "does it concern us boys as well as you? Otherwise it would not be worth the bother of guessing."

"Of course it does; that's one guess for you, Fred."

"Humbug! you said we were each to have three guesses, and mine was only a simple remark; besides, I know what it is already, so you need not make such a row about it."

"Why, who told you?" asked Kathleen, her face falling several degrees from its original brightness. "I am almost certain you cannot have guessed it."

"Father is going to have the bagatelle board newly covered, and buy fresh balls; I heard him saying so this morning,—eh? Miss Katy."

"Eh? Miss Katy," repeated Harry in a still more decisive tone; "how wise you are with your three guesses."

"It's as much about the bagatelle board as it's about—about your head," cried Kathleen, glancing around the room for some withering simile; "do you think I'd make such a fuss about an old bagatelle board? No; it's something a thousand times better than that."

"Well, then, tell us it out at once," cried both the boys, roused to real interest by Kathleen's words and manner; "what's the use of bottling up your news, instead of giving us the benefit of it? Pour it all out quick, that's a good old Kat."

"Well, I'll only ask you to give one guess each," said Kathleen, recovering the bright expectant glance of pleasure as she drew nearer. "Now, Fred, you go ahead first, and Harry shall have his afterwards."

"Well, I guess—I guess, humph; you said it was awfully grand, did you not?"

"I did."

"Well, then, I guess, that my new suit has come home from the tailor's."

"Nonsense, Fred; that's no real guess. Who cares about your suit? You did not really try to think."

"I did, 'pon my word; but my head is nothing but a brick-bat over this horrid Euclid. Let Harry have his shot now."

"I have known what it was all along," said Harry calmly; "the midsummer holidays are to begin a week earlier than we thought, for I heard mother saying so this morning; at least she told Leonard that the pony might begin to cart gravel after the end of this week, as we should not want it any more for the croydon, and I twigged at once that there would be no school after that week."

"You are just a shade right in your guess, and nothing more," cried Kathleen triumphantly; "you will not want the croydon for going to school after the end of this week, but only because you are going somewhere else."

"Where?" cried both the boys, springing up from their chairs in great excitement; "not—not to Jubilee Hall, surely."

"Yes, to Jubilee Hall for the whole midsummer holidays. There was a letter from Aunt Marian last night, asking us to spend the whole midsummer holidays there."

The wild whoop of joy and chorus of shouting, dancing, flinging about of lesson-books, and pounding recklessly on the piano, showed that Kathleen had not exaggerated the rapturous quality of her news, nor over-rated the warmth of its reception. The boys proceeded to hug their sister enthusiastically, and to kick each other ignominiously, till at length, lessons having been hopelessly abandoned, they all leaped out through the open window, and rushed off with their news to pour it into the sympathetic bosom of Mrs. Duffy, the dairywoman; or failing her, into the somewhat obtuse ear of Quin, the gardener. But they were both kindly souls, and always received the children's intelligence with the full amount of surprise or joy expected from them.

The dairy came first, being situated at the foot of the lawn, and shaded from the house by a plantation of young firs and laurustinus bushes; and besides, they were always sure of finding "old Mother Duffy" at home, for she never left the precincts of her own place except at milking-time, and it was now only four o'clock in the afternoon.

"Well, bless my heart," cried the good old soul, coming to the door of her dairy as she heard the loud hurrahs and yells of the children, and saw them come flying over the sunk fence and down the meadow towards her, "there must be some rare piece of news up now;—I'd better turn the key on the dairy-room, or Master Harry will be playing some of his wild tricks with the cream, or putting salt in the milk, as he did the other day." And Mrs. Duffy, moving aside to carry out her precautionary measure, had only just turned the key in the lock when the trio burst headlong into the room with a clatter and a row that brought several of the panikins and wooden butter moulds tumbling off the dresser upon the flagged floor of the dairy.

"Now, Master Harry, and you, Master Fred, couldn't you come a trifle easier into the house, without knocking all my little goods and chattels about the place! What bee have you got in your bonnet this morning, Miss Kathleen, that makes you so flighty and wild?"

"She has got the biggest bee that ever was born," cried Fred, quite breathless from his quick race; "and we've all come down to see what you'll think of it. Only fancy, Mother Duffy, there has been a letter from Aunt Marian, and we are all going to spend the midsummer holidays at Jubilee Hall."

"The jolliest place you ever were in," broke in Harry, who, having seen at a glance that the dairy door was locked, was searching behind every cup and platter for the key; "no end of good things to eat and drink, and no stint of milk and butter as there is in some places; nor locks on the doors either."

"Then she must be a rare simple lady to ask such folks as you down to her place, and keep nought under lock and key. Wait till the first day she finds a frog swimming in the milk-pail or a hedgehog at the bottom of the churn, and see whether she'll turn the key in her dairy door or not. She'll be a sillier lady than I take her for, or she'll soon send you packing home again to your own place."

"Oh, will she? that's your view of the question, Mother Duffy, but not mine," retorted Harry, who with his back turned, was busily employed pouring some ink out of a small stone jar into Mother Duffy's empty tea-pot; "Aunt Marian is the jolliest cove in all England."

"I don't understand anything about 'coves,'" replied Mrs. Duffy, shaking her head ominously; "but if you get on with the same tricks at Jubilee Hall as you do here, it's the short holidays you'll have there, I promise you. Not but I'm glad you have such a treat before you; though how folks with such a fine place to live in as this should set so much store by another house, is a matter I don't quite come to see the sense of."

"Oh, but don't you see," cried Kathleen, "there is every kind of fun going on there from morning till night,—archery, and croquet, and lawn tennis, and ponies to ride. Arthur Jackson spent one day there last year, and he says it's the most splendid place he ever was in."

"Splendid is no word for it," cried Fred enthusiastically; "from what he said, it must be a—a—gollumptious place. The gooseberry bushes there are so large and full of fruit, you could stay a whole day under one of them, and leave it none the worse for the picking."

"I'm thinking you'll be a trifle the worse for such a picking," said Mrs. Duffy, laughing good-humouredly, "Do you remember the day you ate all the cherries, and the doctor had to be sent for in the evening."

"Pooh! that was ages ago, when I was quite young," replied Fred, who had only just passed out of his fourteenth year. "You would not catch me making such a fool of myself again."

"I hope not," said Mrs. Duffy; "but I'd be sorry to be the cherry-tree that should come in your way, old as you are and wise. But what's Master Harry at that he's so quiet yonder in the corner?"

"Oh, nothing," cried Harry, gliding away from the dresser, where he had just poured some vinegar into a jug of new milk. "I was looking at that grand picture that you've stuck up on the wall since I was here last."

Harry's face looked so innocent, and his remark was so plausible a one, that Mrs. Duffy, who was only too easily imposed upon, allowed the excuse to pass muster, and continued,—"On what day are you going to leave us, Master Fred? I'll be lonesome enough without you, bad as you are with your tricks and treacherous ways."

"We are going on this day week," replied Kathleen. "I was the first to hear it all, and the boys knew nothing about it until I told them."

"Phew! how grand you are!" cried both the boys contemptuously. "Why should you have been told before either of us, I should like to know? You happened to go into the drawing-room first, and that was all."

"No, it was not all; I was sent for," replied Kathleen proudly. "Mamma had to get me some new clothes made before I went on a visit, and so she told me all about it then. And what was more, she said that although I was the youngest, she hoped I would try to prevent you boys from being too wild or playing practical jokes while you were away; for there are to be lots of other visitors at the Hall, and mamma was afraid you might get into some scrape, and perhaps have to be sent home."

Fred threw his arms around his mother's neck.

"Oh, dear! so we are to be under your thumb, Miss Wiseacre, are we?" cried Fred, pointing contemptuously with his finger at his sister, whose heightened colour betrayed her vexation. "We must do nothing, and say nothing, and think nothing even, without coming to ask your leave or advice; ain't it likely just? that's all I say," and Fred whistling, turned on his heel and stepped over the threshold of the dairy door.

"You might do worse than follow Miss Kathleen's advice," cried Mrs. Duffy, seeing the ready tears in the little girl's eyes, and always prepared to take the part of the weak; "for she's a good girl, and always tries to do what her mamma tells her, and that's more than I can say for either of you. For if a bit of a spree turns up in your paths, it's little you think of who likes it or dislikes it either; and as I said before, I just think it more than likely we'll be having you home here before you've been half a week away."

"Bosh," cried Fred, leaping over the gravel walk and turning off towards the garden.

"Gammon," cried Harry, as he also left the dairy and followed in his brother's wake.

"That last idea is a trifle too rich, ain't it, now?" said Fred, as he linked his arm in that of his younger brother, in the shady shrubbery path leading to the front garden; "that a couple of big fellows like us are to be under the guidance of a little scrap-o'-my-thumb of a child like Katy. Why, I look on the very fact that we shall have no one over us to say, 'do this, or do that,' is the very cream of the whole joke; don't you?"

"Of course I do."

"Father always looks so grave if a fellow does anything the least out of the common run, and mother is so—"

"Mother is awfully jolly, I think, and father too," replied faithful Harry, who, under all his madcap ways, had a loyal, loving heart.

"Well, I should rather think they were. I ain't the one to run down mother, I should think, or father either, for that matter; but I mean it will be an awfully jolly sensation to be entirely one's own master, and no one to pull a long face if one happens to do or say anything not exactly laid down by rule. You see what I mean, don't you, Harry?"

"Oh yes; of course, it will be grand sport and no mistake."

"I hope Kathleen won't really be poking her nose into all our doings," said Fred meditatively; "there are heaps of larks which are perfectly harmless in themselves which might throw her into fits of terror. I'm sorry mother ever put such a silly notion into her head."

"O Fred!"

"My dear fellow, don't 'oh' and 'ah' at every word I say. One would think I was running mother down, by the way you bounce up whenever I mention her name. But ain't it a silly notion, now, for a little meawy kitten like Kathleen to be set to watch over our actions?"

"I expect she will be so nervous when she gets there, she will have enough to do to look after herself," replied Harry evasively; and having reached the garden gate, their talk and walk ended in the ever entrancing operation of gooseberry-picking.

At length the day arrived for the journey of the children to Jubilee Hall. It had seemed as if it would never come, so ardently did they look forward to the visit; and now it was a picked day, so gloriously sunshiny and fine, and with just enough breeze to prevent the heat from being too oppressive.

The carriage, or rather the pony phaeton, stood already at the door, and the children, impatient of delay, listened to the last words and injunctions of their mother with somewhat less attention than was their wont; for though they were often disobedient and wild, and extraordinarily foolish, still they loved their mother with all their heart; and when she pointed out their faults to them, they made ardent resolutions of amendment, and determined to make their future conduct so good and faultless, that all past errors or mischief should be forgotten. But this morning their thoughts were busy with the pleasures of Jubilee Hall and its thousand and one enjoyments, so that their mother's words fell like hailstones on a glass roof, which touch the surface for a moment only to rebound and fall at a greater distance.

"Harry, love, you will be sure not to play any practical jokes while you are away."

"Oh, mother!"

"Well, you know what I mean; not jokes which are either unkind or mischievous: some jokes are quite innocent, while others do untold harm."

"Oh, of course, mother; but the carriage has been at the door such ages, and the horse is awfully fidgety."

"The horse is not half so fidgety as I am," replied their mother smiling, "sending such a set of wild creatures into a strange house full of company. But, Fred darling, you are the eldest of all, and therefore I am sure you will try to behave well;—and don't burst through any of Aunt Marian's rules so as to follow up your own fancy; promise me that."

"I'll burst through nothing, I promise you, mother, unless it's my clothes, and that I can't answer for, as Tracy has made all my garments an inch smaller than usual."

"And above all, Fred," said Mrs. Malcomson, lowering her voice so as only to be heard by her eldest son, "above all, Fred, you'll not touch anything or go any place where you are forbidden, nor take anything which is not strictly your own."

"Oh, mother, I never do so now."

"I know you have been much better lately, Fred, but still we have had trouble more than once on that point; and though in this house things may readily be forgiven and forgotten, in a strange house you might lose your character and all your promised pleasure by one act of this kind. Aunt Marian is ever so good-natured and generous, but she is very particular about truth and honesty and uprightness; so you'll remember all I have said, will you not, Fred?"

"I'll remember every word as right as a trivet, see if I won't. Good-bye, old mother;" and with these words human endurance came to an end, and Fred, throwing his arms around his mother's neck, rushed out into the hall, and from thence with one bound was seated in the phaeton outside.

Mrs. Malcomson hurried after her children to see that they were safely stowed away, and that the coachman had the reins; for Fred was not a particularly good whip, and Harry was too good a whip, for he generally whipped the horse up into a furious gallop: and as Mrs. Malcomson lifted Kathleen up into the hind seat of the phaeton beside Harry, she whispered, "You'll remember, darling, all I said, and remind the boys each night about their prayers."

"I will," nodded Kathleen, with rather tearful eyes; for now that the moment for parting had come, she did not like leaving her mother's side, to whom, when at home, she always clung like a shadow.

"You'll take great care of your sister, boys," cried she as the pony, raising himself high in the air on his hind legs, made a plunge forward, "and you'll not let her do anything foolish."

"Oh yes; we'll wallop her well if she does anything wrong, I'll promise you. Good-bye once again, and write us awful long budgets of home news," cried Fred.

"And tell old Mother Duffy to send us a stave to say particularly how she liked her last cup of tea," shouted Harry as the phaeton turned round the curve of the avenue and disappeared from sight.

Mrs. Malcomson also turned away with the good-bye smile still lingering about her lips, and re-entered the porch. But ere she had crossed the hall the smile had quite faded away from her face; for dim misgivings began already to fill her heart, lest, after all, instead of the pleasures so much anticipated by the boys, some trouble might arise, either from their thoughtlessness or impatience of restraint, which would make the visit end in disappointment and distress; and, above all, her heart misgave her about Fred, whose conscience was the most pliable of the three, and who sometimes, to gain a desired end, would turn aside from the obstacle of truth, and gain by crooked ways what he could never attain by straight.

But no misgivings of coming evil dimmed the brightness of the boys' pleasure. On the contrary, their spirits rose at every fresh turn of the road, which brought them nearer to their destination; and Brien, the coachman, had by no means an easy time of it trying to keep their hilarity within bounds.

Harry amused himself for some time in making the most appalling grimaces at the passers-by, until a very irate old gentleman on horseback rode up to the side of the phaeton and threatened to horsewhip him if he went on with such tricks. Kathleen was so frightened she burst out crying, which seemed to appease the old gentleman's wrath, for he rode on without making any further remark; and for some time Harry only confined his attentions to Brien, pushing his hat suddenly down on his eyes, or snatching it off and rattling his stick inside of it, which set the pony off at a furious pace, and terrified all the passers-by.

"I shall have a nice story to tell your mamma when I get home," said Brien grimly, as he re-adjusted his hat, and gave it one solemn sideways shake. "It's likely she'll be sending me back again to fetch you to-morrow when she hears the tricks you are up to."

"Pooh," replied Harry, "I'd like to see you tell her anything about it. Had you never a bit of a spree when you were young yourself, eh? But you're such an old land-crab, I don't suppose you ever were young: at the same time, I'm awfully fond of you, in fact I love you like my own child;" and Harry, stretching forward, threw his arms round the old man's neck and leaned his head in an attitude of mock affection on his shoulder.

"Now, Master Harry, keep off with you, and let me drive straight. You nearly made me run the pony against that wall; do be easy, that's a good lad."

"Then you won't tell mother about that old cross-cat on horseback?"

"Not a word of it, if you'll leave me in peace."

So with this and other equally judicious management, Brien managed to convoy his noisy troop along the road until they reached the little village of Drummond, where they were to rest the pony, and get some refreshment at the inn.

Here Fred and Harry were in their element; for, having no one to overlook them (Brien being busy with the pony), they both adjourned to the farmyard followed by Kathleen, who did not like remaining in the inn by herself, and who vainly tried to induce them to remain indoors; but the loud and furious gobble of a turkey-cock had caught the boys' ears, and they rushed in, eager for the fray, waving their canes, and gobbling aloud in imitation of the angry bird.

Kathleen, who, unfortunately, had on a little scarlet cloak, no sooner became aware of the turkey's presence than she dashed into a cowshed and cried loudly for help; but the boys were too excited to think of her, and they prodded the bird with their canes, and worried him so successfully, that at last they actually drove him straight into the shed where their sister had rushed for shelter. The turkey-cock, with every feather on end and his crimson neck inflated to the full, charged in his anger and fright at the red cloak and its owner. Poor Kathleen shrieked with terror, and having nothing but her parasol to defend herself with, beat with all her force at the bird, much oftener missing it and striking the hard paving-stones of the cowshed, until at last the stick of her new parasol snapped suddenly in two, and the pretty silk cover, with its glossy fringe, flew aside into a pool of dirty water on the ground. This was a real misfortune, and the boys, somewhat appalled by the consequences of their "lark," hunted the animal back into the yard, and tried to console Kathleen for the sad fate which had happened to her new and most precious belonging. But Kathleen's tears flowed fast; for not only was her mother's parting gift destroyed, but the front of her pretty new print dress was all spotted and streaked with the mud which, in lifting her parasol out of the dirt, had fallen upon it; and the anguish of having to make her appearance in such a plight was almost more than she, with all her sweet temper, could endure.

The landlady at the hotel was, however, exceedingly kind and forgiving; and although she scolded the boys heartily, and threatened to write to their father, still she brought Kathleen into the kitchen, and sponged her dress and took out the stains, and then she devoted herself to the unhappy parasol, which she cleaned wonderfully, and got her husband to splice and mend, so that Kathleen's tears were soon dried up, and by the time luncheon was over, she was as cheerful and pleasant as ever, and had quite forgiven the boys for their share in her trouble.

When they remounted and were all settled in the carriage, Fred made a desperate attempt to get possession of the reins; but Brien knew that he would be held responsible for the safe conduct of his charge and the safety of the phaeton, and he refused positively to give them out of his own hands. And though Fred first sulked and afterwards abused him roundly, it was all no use; and Brien, as well as Kathleen, who was growing almost sick with nervousness and apprehension, felt no small relief when they entered by a handsome turreted gate the long avenue of Jubilee Hall, and, a few minutes later, found themselves opposite the large iron-clamped door which guarded the entrance of the Hall.

Jubilee Hall stood on the summit of a not very high hill, which, however, commanded a splendid view of both sea and mountain. It was a large and handsome building, with a turret at each end; and as all the windows of the principal rooms faced the south, it was a peculiarly warm and sunny residence. It was not an old castle or hall, so it had not the small many-paned windows which generally deprive the inhabitants of light and warmth; on the contrary, the windows, which were remarkably large and handsome, opened down to the very ground, and, protected in the inside by light and unobtrusive bars, allowed those within to get the most uninterrupted view of the landscape outside, and admitted the most delicious scent from the flowers in the ornamental garden beneath.

Harry and Fred stood entranced at the view from their bedroom window, when, their luggage having been carried upstairs, and their first meeting with their aunt being over, they had had time to look about them a little. Their bedroom and their sister's opened off each other, which was a great comfort to Kathleen, who had felt very nervous at the thought of having to sleep alone at a distance from her brothers; but the rooms, with their pretty chintz curtains and bright wall-paper, looked so cozy and cheerful, it would have been difficult to feel either lonely or timorous, and the boys agreed that, splendid as they had thought the place would be, it was ten times more splendiferous and jolly than they had expected.

And as the day wore on, and they grew acquainted with all the other young guests at the Hall, and they had been introduced to the unlimited beds of strawberries and raspberries, and the actual acres of gooseberry-bushes in the garden, they could find no words even in their school vocabulary (which was extraordinarily large and ample enough) to express the fulness of their happiness. Aunt Marian was a stunner, the jolliest cove in England; she was Al; she was no end of a brick; while Kathleen gave her, perhaps, the greatest praise of all when she said she was nearly as nice as her own mamma. And when at last the first happy day came to an end, the boys rejoiced to think that the long mid-summer holidays lay stretched out before them, and that for seven long weeks this wonderful fairy-tale life of enjoyment was to last.

Aunt Marian, or Lady Brinsley, as she was known to the world in general, was the widow of a very wealthy officer and baronet, who had died many years ago when engaged on active service in India, and who had left four young children for his wife to look after and educate. This trust Lady Brinsley had carried out with the most zealous love and watchfulness, and her children well repaid all her care, for they were quite devoted to their mother, and made her wishes their law. It was only within the last two years they had come to live at Jubilee Hall, the family place, as Lady Brinsley, by her husband's dying wish, had taken the children abroad to receive a good foreign education, and also to give time for the Hall to be put into the most thorough state of repair and finish, for under its former owner it had fallen into a partial state of rum. So the whole place was now in the most perfect order and beauty; and it was Lady Brinsley's delight and pride to keep it in this state, and to make the house thoroughly sociable and comfortable.

"I say," cried Fred, after they had come into their own room at night, and were preparing for bed, "this is a regular palace of a house. Did you see all the wonderful places there are downstairs—cellars, and china-closets, and dairies, and store-rooms by the dozen?"

"No," replied Harry; "I don't even know whereabouts they are. How did you manage to come across them?"

Kathleen ducked down as she was told.

"Simply by using my eyes and my legs and a trifle of brains into the bargain. I was cutting down one of the passages this afternoon when we were playing hide-and-seek, when I came across a funny little round staircase going down from outside Aunt Marian's boudoir right into the lower part of the house; so I just crept quietly down it, to see where it led to, and it was just like the Tower of London, with all sorts of dark rooms, and some extraordinary great iron doors, with huge bars across them, and three or four locks on each. And right under the last flight of steps, just where it stops going round and round in a circumbendibus sort of way, and finishes off like any other flight of steps, there is one of the jolliest store-rooms you ever saw. It runs right away under the stairs, and has a window looking out into the passage; and, my eyes! if you only saw the rows of shelves, and all the jolly things on them—boxes and boxes of preserved fruit, and actual pyramids of lump-sugar, and figs, and raisins, and crackers, and plum-cake, and a thousand other rare and delicious things. I'd give a good deal to have the run of the premises for an hour, and have leave to grub whatever I liked."

"So should I," joined in Harry. "You must show me to-morrow where it is. I'd like awfully to have a squint at it."

"All square; I'll show you the way. But it will make your mouth water, I can tell you; and all to no good, as the door is shut as tight as wax, and there is a wire fence inside of the window that a gnat couldn't squeeze through, so I would not have you try it on, old boy."

"My dear fellow, what humbug you are talking; as if I should want to squeeze into any such place. A nice cowardly trick it would be, when Aunt Marian's so awfully good to us, and gives us every jolly thing to eat or drink which we could possibly want to have."

"Well, and who said they wanted to get into it?"

"You did."

"No, I didn't."

"You said something very like it then."

"I said nothing within a hundred miles of it."

"Well, have it your own way."

"I'll have my own way, and no thanks to you, you may be sure of that." said Fred, his voice waxing louder as his anger grew. "A fellow can't say it's a fine day without your finding—"

Here the door between the two rooms opened, and Kathleen put in her little grave face, which looked very white and frightened. "Boys, what is the matter?"

"Nothing; go to bed."

"You are not quarrelling, are you?"

"Quarrelling, humbug; shut the door, and cut."

"Mamma told me to be sure and remind you both to say your prayers before you got into bed."

"Shut the door this instant, or I'll shy a book at your head!" shouted Fred, losing all command over his temper. So Kathleen shut the door, and after a little time, as all remained silent in her brothers' room, she closed her eyes and fell fast asleep.

The next morning was just as bright and pleasant a one as its predecessor had been, and the boys, forgetful of last night's row, got up in very good humour both with themselves and everybody else. They chatted, and planned, and whistled, and threw bolsters at each other, and played off several innocent tricks on Kathleen, until it was nearly time for breakfast, when Fred, seeing a squirrel dart up a tree just beside the house, declared he would "go out and nabble the crittur" as sure as his name was Frederick; and as his toilet was just completed, he bolted out of the room in hot chase, forgetting to read his morning verses or to say his prayers, and leaving Harry to follow or not as he chose.

What Harry would have done—whether he would have followed his brother as soon as his boots were drawn on and his collar and tie neatly fastened in front, who can say; but, opening the door of Kathleen's room with exceeding gentleness and care, so as to be able to send a large hassock at her head, he saw her kneeling reverently beside her bed, her hands clasped and her head bent forward on the counterpane. Harry did not shy the hassock as he had intended, but instead, when he had closed the door softly, he knelt down and said his morning prayers; and when Kathleen entered the room all ready for breakfast, he asked her to read him out a chapter while he was finishing his dressing.

Just as the gong for breakfast was sounding, Fred burst into the bedroom, his coat all covered with the green powder off the bark of the trees, and a large rent across the knee of his trousers.

"I say," he cried breathlessly, "the little brute was nimbler than I thought, and gave me such a chivy as I haven't had this year—up one tree and down another, skipping and jumping like a good un. One time I crept up so dogeously, I had my hand almost on his bushy tail before he caught sight of me. I was certain of nabbing him, for the tree was broken off at the top, and there were no branches long enough for him to get beyond my reach, when all at once the little beggar saw me, and, instead of rushing out on the branch, as I thought he would, he made one bound on my shoulder, rushed down my back, and away out of sight before I could say Jack Robinson. But I say, Kathleen, out with your needle and thread, and sew up this tear I have got right across my knee. It's such a straight one, it won't be seen if you do it properly."

"But the gong has rung, Fred, and I shall be quite late for breakfast."

"Never mind; I shall be late too. You would not have one go downstairs like this, would you?"

"No; but could you not put on another pair?"

"Fiddlesticks! that would be too much bother. If I change one thing, I must change all, for they would not match; so be quick, and you'll set it right in no time."

Kathleen got out her needle and thread, and made the best speed she could; but before the rent was drawn together many minutes had elapsed, and when Kathleen, all covered with blushes, followed her brother into the large dining-hall, morning prayers were over, and all the guests were assembled around the breakfast-table, and Aunt Marian, though she said nothing, looked somewhat grave and put out.

Aunt Marian was a very punctual person herself, and she wished others to be the same, and above all she disliked people being late for prayers; besides which, she thought young persons ought from the very first to learn habits of order and regularity, and her own children were brought up in strict accordance with these ideas. But, nevertheless, she was exceedingly kind-hearted, and had a large measure of human pity; and as she noticed the distress only too visible on Kathleen's face when she entered the room—a distress which seemed to increase when she took her place at the table in the only vacant space immediately opposite the large bay-window—Aunt Marian called out to her in a very pleasant voice,—

"Kathleen, my dear, you will get sick if you sit with your back so close to that fire. Bring up your chair beside mine, and I will make room for you at the head of the table."

Oh, how Kathleen thanked her aunt in her heart; for now, in the process of changing her place at the table, the cruel blushes (which, in the full light of the large window, and in view of her friends opposite, were fast bringing hot tears into her eyes) would have time to go down, or, at least, to begin to go down; and now that her aunt had spoken kindly to her, the sense of disgrace was dispelled, and she could look her companions in the face.

When she took her place beside her aunt, she found already a nice hot cake and a roll of fresh butter deposited upon her plate added; to which, her aunt kissed her very affectionately as she said "Good morning," and bade her eat a good breakfast, as they had a busy day before them; but Kathleen, full of gratitude, did not know until long afterwards that Harry had been her champion on this trying occasion, and had taken the opportunity of the changing of places to come to her rescue and whisper across his next neighbour to his aunt,—"It is not Kathleen's fault that she is late. She was quite ready when the gong sounded, but she waited to mend Fred's clothes." And now that all the company were present, and every one seemed thoroughly happy and enjoying themselves, Aunt Marian only waited for the first pause in the clatter of plates and tongues to make a proposal as to how she thought the day might be spent so as to combine a great amount of amusement with a certain amount of usefulness.

"I am going to make a proposal to the company at large," she said pleasantly; "and let those who approve of my plan hold up their right hand."

"Hear, hear," cried several voices amongst the party, headed by Aunt Marian's own sons.

"I am going to have a grand brewing of jam this week, and I shall want strawberries and raspberries, and currants, black, white, and red, and gooseberries and cherries, gathered in large quantities for this purpose; and so I propose to make you all useful as well as ornamental, and ask you to work in my service, the payment to be deducted on the spot in the form of the fruit most liked, to be eaten on the premises—that is to say, during the process of gathering; but I also propose to give the one who shall have gathered the largest measure of fruit in proportion to the time a prize, which prize shall not be declared until the time of presentation, and that the winner of the said prize shall for the rest of the day be looked on as the head of the company, and select the games or pleasures on which the remainder of the day is to be spent. Now let all who approve of this plan hold up their right hands."

It is scarcely necessary to say that every right hand in the room was extended to its full length, and that cheers and hurrahs loud and long greeted this suggestion of Aunt Marian's; and after this, until the end of breakfast, the hilarity seemed involuntarily on the increase, until at length Aunt Marian deemed it wise to give the signal for rising, and all the company, starting to their feet, made a rush towards the nearest door like a flock of thirsty sheep thronging through a gate to the water.

In about half an hour from this time the whole party were standing ready dressed and watching in front of the house for Aunt Marian, who had promised to meet them at that place and furnish them each with the necessary receptacles for holding the gathered fruit; nor did she keep them long waiting, as she appeared a moment or two later followed by the housekeeper and a couple of footmen, all laden with tin cans of a uniform size and shape, and lined with fresh green cabbage leaves. These she proceeded to dispose of, giving one to each member of the picking force, and which measure was to be filled by them with the fruits named on a label attached to the handle of the can; only those to whom gooseberries were apportioned, and cherries, received cans of a larger size, as they would of course take far less time to pick; and so the whole matter was arranged with a strict view to justice and equity. Nor were those who gathered the fruit named on their labels bound to eat only of that kind. Both gardens, with all their contents, were free to their ingress and egress, and no one was bound to continue his or her labour longer than they liked: but then, whoever was the most steady and industrious was to reap a reward, the nature of which was not yet declared; but Aunt Marian was very generous, and her presents and prizes were always worth having, so the whole party started for the gardens in tip-top spirits, their tin cans glittering in the brilliant sunshine, and the ring of their joyous voices resounding through the morning air.

It would be tedious to recount who ate the most fruit on the occasion of Aunt Marian's grand garden-party, while it is our duty and pleasure to give the name of the one who gathered the most, and of the one who became also the happy possessor of Aunt Marian's prize.

All the morning it seemed doubtful who would be the winner, as all hands seemed to work with an almost equal zeal, and only those whose fingers were smaller, and whose skins were more susceptible to thorns, had less in their cans than the others; but as luncheon time drew near, and hunger began to assert itself, there was a visible diminution of work, and some of the cans even grew less full, as their owners found it more convenient and satisfactory to help themselves from the gathered fruit. It was about this time that Harry found himself close to Kathleen, having deserted his own class of fruit for a very promising bush of gooseberries, which bade fair to satisfy his hunger at a greater rate than any of the others.

"How have you got on, Katy?" he asked, with his mouth full of large amber gooseberries, while he knelt down under the tree the better to enjoy his meal. "Pooh, is that all?" craning his neck across the bush and looking into his sister's can; "I expect you have been devouring largely."

"You expect wrong, then," she answered rather hotly; "I have not tasted a single one. I made a promise to myself that I would not taste one until I had filled my can up to that mark, and I want ages of reaching it still;" and, as Kathleen spoke, she pointed to a line scratched round the middle of the can, so as to divide the inside into two equal portions.

"My eyes, do you mean to say you have not tasted any fruit at all, all this time?"

"Not one pick."

"And you have only gathered that little dab at the bottom of the can?"

"It is not a little dab; it's a whole lot."

"Well, all I can say is the others have gathered twice as much: you must have been star-gazing, or perhaps you went to sleep."

"I did nothing of the kind, but it's so awfully hard to gather raspberries: they all go squash the moment you take hold of them, and they look so awfully flat when you put them into the can; and besides, there are so few really ripe. I have gone round and round the bushes, and could scarcely find any."

"Because, you little donkey, you have chosen nearly the worst spot in the whole garden: if you will come with me I'll give you a share of my bushes, and they are the most golliferous ones in the place; not a soul has found them out but myself, and it's such a rare good plant my can is half full already."

"Where is your can?"

"It is hidden under a lot of cauliflowers; I only came here for a graze, and I'm going back at once."

"Are you sure there are enough for us both?"

"Millions and billions."

"Oh, delightful!" sighed poor Kathleen, whose little flushed face and scratched hands showed how hard she had worked. "It's awfully kind of you, Harry."

"Humbug; but sit down, I say, and have a grub with me at these ambers. They are the grandest chaps in all creation; not a bone in their bodies, and bursting with delicious juice. They are rare fellows, I can tell you, if you only tried them."

"No," said Kathleen, shaking her head; "I promised not to take any."

"Promised your fiddlesticks," cried Harry contemptuously, while he filled his mouth with five or six yellow monsters; "whom did you promise?"

"I promised myself."

"Ha, ha, ha! promised yourself," roared Harry; "why, you ought to know by this time, I should think, that you are nobody, and therefore if you promised nobody you are not bound to keep your word. Here, taste this one—it's a real beauty, a savoury morsel, I can tell you;" and Harry held up an amber through which the sun shone temptingly.

"No, thank you; I'd rather not."

"Well, have it your own way," cried Harry. "I made no promise to myself or any one else, so here goes;" and he transferred the gooseberry to his own mouth. "Do you know these are filling animals at the price; I've nearly had as much as I care for, and the wasps are all buzzing about me like mad."

"Then come on, that's a good boy, and show me where I am to go on gathering."

"All serene;" and Harry rose from his position underneath the bush, leaving a mound of empty skins to mark out to future comers the halting-place of a hungry spirit; and then, taking Kathleen's can in one hand, and thrusting the other through his sister's arm, he walked leisurely on towards the "rare good plant" he had told her of.

"We had better dodge a bit as we go past the walks," he whispered; "for if the other chaps scented our trail they would be down on us like winkin. Here, duck down beyond these bushes, and we shall be past the whole lot of them in a minute."

Kathleen ducked down as she was told, and following in her brother's footsteps, soon found herself in quite a grove of raspberry bushes, every one of which was covered with ripe red fruit, and on which even Harry's ravages had not as yet made themselves visible.

"Here we are now," he cried, "in a perfect paradise of rasps. Ain't I a knowing dog to have found out such a choice spot for work?"

"Indeed you are," said Kathleen gratefully. "I'm awfully obliged to you for showing it to me."

"Nonsense; you just go ahead now and pick away like fun, and I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll just put a few of my rasps into your can, so as to give you a good start."

"Oh no, please don't;" but Harry was too excited to hear her refusal, and was already busy searching among the tall cauliflowers for his hidden can.

"Well, that's the rummest thing I ever saw!" he cried presently in great surprise. "I left my can under this very white-headed chap here, and it's gone now. I counted him down from the wall, and he was number six on the first left-hand row; and now it's nowhere to be found."

"Let me help you. I am sure it is somewhere," cried Kathleen, instantly deserting her can to come to her brother's help. "Are you certain it was under the cauliflowers you hid it?"

"Just as certain as that you are standing there. I marked this particular 'cauli' because I thought it looked the image of a white nigger's pate; and what's more, there is the mark of the can in the soft clay; look for yourself."

Kathleen, who was at the distance of some rows, came jumping over them quickly to see the confirmation of Harry's assertion; but as she leaped over the last row her foot struck against something hard, which gave a sharp metallic ring.

"That's it," cried Kathleen. "I'm certain that was your can I knocked against there. It was very well I did not upset it and all the fruit into the bargain."

It was Harry's can, and no mistake; he knew it by its label, on the back of which, to avoid mistakes, he had scratched his own name.

"Well, how on earth did the beggar get there?" said he meditatively. "I am as certain as ever I was of anything in my life that I did not put it there. Let's see," he added with a curious whistle, which expressed better than words the dawning of some new idea—"let's see if any one has been poaching on my preserves;" and he raised the two green leaves which covered the gathered fruit. "Ay, just so—just what I suspected; somebody has been prigging out of my can. It was up to this mark here when I left it"—and he pointed to a little cross which he had scratched with a stone—"and now it's down below zero. I do say it's a howling shame."

"Who could have done it?" asked Kathleen, with widely-opened eyes of horror.

"That's more than I can tell. There was not a soul saw me go up this path except Fred, who had found a splendid 'plant' for himself. Well, come along—life's too short for getting into passions; and, besides, I am too like the fat boy in Punch to be up for much fighting, for I do feel uncommonly as if my jacket were buttoned. Here"—he added, taking up the can and carrying it over to the raspberry bushes—"let me shy all I've got into your can, and I'll give up the chivy altogether."

"Indeed you must not; you've a splendid lot there. Go on, and it will soon be quite full."

"Not I; it's too much bother. Of course, whoever helped themselves out of my can will win the day; unless, indeed, you let me fill yours up with what remains of mine, and we'll outwit the dishonest old fellows with their own weapons. I'd like to see him, or her, whoever it was, well thrashed. Here, hold your can."

"No; I would much rather go on gathering for myself."

"Why?" asked Harry, holding his can already poised over his sister's.

"Oh! because it would be awfully unfair. We were each to fill our own,—Aunt Marian said so; and, besides, you'll lose the prize if you do."

"But suppose I want you to win it. I don't care a straw whether I get it or not, and I'd like you awfully to have it."

"I know you would, and it's tremendously good-natured of you, Harry; but, indeed, indeed, it would not be fair. I would much rather gather them all myself."

"Well, if you ain't the greatest stickler about trifles I ever met! However, I think myself you're pretty near right for all that. So do you pick away as hard you can, and I'll gather a few more; for I should not quite like Aunt Marian to think I was too greedy to care about her jam."

Aunt Marian found it very difficult to decide who was to have the prize; for though many had brought home very sorry portions of fruit, others had clearly gathered with a right good-will, and two of the company had so well filled their cans, that not only was the fruit quite up to the rim but it was piled up in the centre as well, so as to make the vessel carry as much as possible.

Aunt Marian was reduced at last to weighing the cans, and thus testing to an ounce who had gathered the most; and in this manner the question was at once and definitely set at rest, for one can weighed a whole pound more than the others. And this can, having been held up for general inspection, was claimed by Fred, who was consequently proclaimed the winner of the prize, and the king of the afternoon revels.

All the company shouted and cheered, and loud huzzas sounded through the housekeeper's room, as Fred, blushing over head and ears, came forward at Aunt Marian's request.

"I had two prizes prepared," she said, in a pleasant voice, "in case any two cans had proved of the same exact weight, and my little friend Kathleen bade fair, I thought, until I weighed the two vessels, to have claimed the second one; but the difference of a whole pound in weight must, of course, be a decisive proof of victory. So, Master Frederick Malcomson, allow me to present to you, in the name of the illustrious jam-picking and preserving company, this bow, arrow, and quiver, made of the best wood, well seasoned, and with these padded guards for your arms and fingers. They have only just arrived from London; and the case in which you are to keep them is over there on the side-table in the window."

Again the shout rose loud and long, and again Fred blushed until the hot tears actually stood in his eyes; but so confused was he that he uttered no word of thanks, but simply took the gift out of his aunt's hand, and walked away towards the door.

"Before you go, Fred," said Aunt Marian, "I have a few more words to say." Fred turned back, and the blush having died out of his face, it now looked almost deadly white. "To-morrow I am going to give you all another chance of winning the second prize."

"Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" shouted a chorus of voices.

"The cook is going to make all the preserves this afternoon, or at least a great part of them, and to-morrow morning she will finish the remainder, so that after luncheon all will be ready for the various pots to be covered. In this I am again going to claim all your assistance; and whoever should have neatly covered the largest number of pots by the time the first gong sounds for dinner, shall have a prize fully as handsome as the one given to-day; and if there should be more than one winner, a prize of the same value shall be given to each."

Once more the vaulted roof of the housekeeper's room rang with acclamations; and Aunt Marian having added that of course no one need enter into the competition who did not like the occupation, left the room with her fingers tightly pressed over her ears, that she might not hear the deafening shouts of her grateful and admiring guests.

Having once taken possession of the housekeeper's room, the children proceeded to have all kinds of fun and jollification. They induced the good-natured old dame to give them raisins and figs, and nuts and almonds; they ducked for apples, and played blind-man's-buff, prisoners' base, family coach, &c., until the housekeeper's patience began to flag, when one of the party espying a bottle of spirits of wine in one of the multitudinous presses around the room, he proceeded to take it down, and having fetched some salt from the kitchen, he proposed to make a ghost. This suggestion was hailed with acclamation; so, pouring the spirits of wine over a large dish full of salt, he set fire to it, and having got possession of a long white table-cloth, and a carpet-twig, he enveloped himself in the cloth, and raising it to an immense height by the stick and the head of the twig, which was also secured within the cloth, he seized on the burning dish, the lurid fumes of which gave him the most supernatural appearance, and, followed by all the rest of the party on tip-toe, he suddenly burst open the door of the still-room, and with a loud yell displayed himself to the maid who was at work inside.

The trick was perhaps a trifle too successful, as the unfortunate girl went off into a violent fit of hysterics, and Aunt Marian had finally to be summoned; at which suggestion the whole party instantly dispersed, and, dropping the twig and cloth in their flight, hurried away to the garrets of the Hall, where a sort of gloomy and unfurnished room offered them a good space for expanding and exercising their hilarious spirits.

It was not till the gong sounded the half hour before dinner that the riots upstairs ended, and the noisy troop came clattering down, each turning off aside to their own rooms on the various corridors to dress and to make themselves tidy and neat for dinner; while Harry and Fred, quite out of breath, hurried to their room also, for they were nearly tired out with all the racing and chasing of the day, and they wanted to have ten minutes' rest before they began the arduous work of dressing. But Kathleen, whose toilet was more a work of art, and who found it difficult enough to put on all her clothes without the assistance she usually received at home, went straight to her own room, and began the tedious task of rearranging her hair, which had become sadly tossed in the romping and fun upstairs.

The door, however, between the two rooms stood slightly ajar; and presently Kathleen heard, to her dismay, the following colloquy taking place between the two brothers:—

"I say, Fred," cried Harry, who had evidently just approached the dressing-table to smooth his hair,—"I say, Fred, here's a note addressed to you pinned on the pin-cushion. What a rum idea! I wonder who it can be from?"

"A note for me!" cried Fred, springing up from the bed on which he had been lounging. "Why, who on earth could have written to me? It's some trick some of the fellows have been playing off on me. Here, chuck it across to me, Harry."

"I doubt its being a trick, for it's uncommonly like Aunt Marian's handwriting; ain't it? In fact, I'm sure it is; for I know her F's and M's as well as I know my own. What can she want to write to you for, Fred, when you are in the house and nothing to do but speak to you?"

"I am sure I don't know," replied Fred, who had now evidently got possession of the letter, for Kathleen could hear the crackling of the note-paper as he opened out its folds; and then there followed a prolonged silence, which was ultimately broken by Harry.

"Well, Fred, will you never have done reading that stuff? What is it about?"

"It's simply the greatest piece of humbug I ever heard of in my life," said Fred in a husky voice, which evidently betokened both vexation and dismay. "Because I put five or six stones at the bottom of my can, to keep the cabbage-leaves in their places, she says I have not fairly won the prize, and that Kathleen ought to have it instead of me."

At this Kathleen drew a sharp breath of surprise, and her lace flushed with the sudden distress of the moment, while she hesitated painfully whether to go in and disclaim any wish to rob Fred of his prize, or to risk the chance of Fred's anger at her appearance. Harry, however, broke in on her thoughts with another question.

"And why on earth did you not tell Aunt Marian the stones were in your can, Fred, when you knew she was going to weigh it? I think it was a trifle shabby, I must say."

"Who cares what you think? But it's just the image of you to come down on a fellow when he's in a fix."

"Why, what fix are you in?"

"Simply this, that Aunt Marian says if I put the stones in without thinking of the probability that the fruit might have to be weighed, she will allow me to keep the bow and arrow for myself; but that if I can't answer this question with a clear conscience—'clear conscience,'—rubbish! interpolated Fred angrily—"she would rather I put them back in the boudoir where she could find them, and that no more would be said to me on the subject; but that in any case she thinks Kathleen ought to get a prize, as, without the stones, her can weighed half a pound more than mine."

"Well, I must say that sounds as fair as fair can be," cried Harry, when his brother had ended his complaint. "Of course, if you didn't put the stones in on purpose, it's all right; and if you did, why, it was simply cheating, and you have no right whatever to the prize."

"I'd like to see how you make that out," cried Fred hotly.

"Why, just this way: When you put the stones in your can this morning, did it come into your head that the fruit might be weighed afterwards, or not?"

"That's a simply absurd question. How can I tell what came into my head? I might have thought a thousand things and never remembered them afterwards."

"But did you recollect, when you saw Aunt Marian taking the cans into the larder to be weighed, that you had put the stones into yours?"

"Well, suppose I did; what then?"

"Why, there is no more to be said about it If you did know the stones were in it, and yet made no remark, it was simply cheating and nothing else."

"Oh, what a wonderfully honest fellow you are, to be sure! You did not offer to put some of your own raspberries into Kathleen's can this morning, did you? because you did not care about the prize yourself, and you wanted her to have it. That would have been 'as fair as fair could be,' of course; but to help to fill mine with stones is cheating."

"I know I was wrong," cried Harry, speaking confusedly in his turn.

"Oh yes! of course you can say that now."

"I knew it then, and confessed it too, when Kathleen said she would not do it; and, what's more, unless you had been hiding somewhere you could never have heard what we said. I had a pretty sharp guess before now who it was helped himself out of my can of rasps, but now I know it."

"Oh, boys!" cried Kathleen, opening the door with tearful eyes, and flushed, anxious face. "The gong will sound in a moment, and you will not be dressed; and as to the prize—indeed—indeed, Fred, I don't want it, and I would much rather you had it."

"Don't say that to him; he ought to put it back," cried Harry hurriedly, dragging on his evening jacket; but before Fred could utter his indignant reply, the gong did sound, and there was no time for more words.

The three children all looked uncomfortable and nervous enough when they entered the dining-room; while heavy tears of wounded pride shone far back in Fred's eyes; but in the general clatter and bustle of the meal, their appearance attracted little attention.

Aunt Marian said nothing to Fred, but immediately after dinner she went out by the far door leading into her boudoir, and remained away some time. When she returned, she seemed, Kathleen thought, rather distressed and unhappy; but, with her usual good-nature, she immediately set about entertaining and amusing her guests, and, according to the morning's agreement, made Fred the director and promoter of all the fun.

Fred, however, was not in his customary spirits, and Harry was decidedly out of sorts, so the evening flagged a little, and the games had not their usual zest for the company. Thus all seemed equally glad when the revels were pronounced over for the night, and that the time for bed had come.

Kathleen, on whose eyelashes the tears had been hanging all the evening, slipped up nearly the first, and hid herself in the darkness of her own room, that she might cry out the trouble that was oppressing her. But when she did at length light her candle, and had set it down on the table, quite a sharp cry burst from her lips; for there, almost under her very fingers, lay a spacious parcel directed to herself, with "First Prize" printed on its cover in large letters.

Poor Kathleen! At another time her heart would have throbbed with ecstatic joy at the sight of the beautiful rosewood desk, completely and elaborately furnished with every sort of handsome writing materials; but as it was, she only closed the lid with a sob, and wished with all her heart that the day's trial had ended, as it had promised to do in the forenoon, in Fred's victory and triumph instead of his discomfiture and disgrace.

Kathleen did not venture to show her desk to Fred the following morning, especially as she could hear from the tone of his voice in speaking to his brother that he was in no pleasant frame of mind. But when breakfast was over, and Fred had gone out for a stroll, she called Harry into her room, and exhibited to him, with a mixture of pride and distress, the beautiful prize which her aunt had so generously given her.

"It's without any exception the most gorgeous thing of the kind I ever saw!" cried Harry, raising up the flaps and surveying the paper and envelopes, the pencils, pens, knives, scissors, india-rubber, sealing wax, &c., &c., with which it was filled. "It is simply A1, and I am delighted you got it!"

"Yes; but I am not quite sure whether I ought to keep it."

"Ought to humbug! I can't for the life of me see why you need feel any scruple about it. You won the prize fairly, and Fred did not."

"Yes, that's the very thing; for, don't you see, Harry, if I keep the desk, then Aunt Marian will either feel sure Fred put the stones in on purpose, or she will think I,"—here Kathleen hesitated, suddenly perceiving she had no real ground of argument to put forward.

"Well, she'll think what?" asked Harry magisterially. "You girls have as much idea of explaining things clearly as a frog has of flying. I know perfectly well what the fix is that you are in. You think it will appear greedy in you to accept a prize as well as Fred, when there was such a small difference in the weight of the two cans; and, besides, you are just shaking in your two shoes at the thought of Fred's anger when he finds out that Aunt Marian has given the first prize to you instead of to him,—now, is not that it, old girl?"

"It is; at least it's nearly that," murmured Kathleen, nervously; "only I wish,"—here a painful blush covered all her face,—"I wish, Harry, if you could see Fred, you would tell him that if he will go and put back the bow in Aunt Marian's boudoir, I will give him this desk as soon as ever we go home."

"Indeed, you'll do nothing of the kind."

"Please, please, Harry."

"Gammon! I never heard such rubbish. You won your prize as fairly as you could, and he has not the faintest right to it in any way. He crammed himself with fruit the whole time the others were hard at work. He then supplied his can out of mine, which was awfully shabby of him; and then he put five large stones into the bottom of his, so as to make it weigh more than the others. I think he was an awful sneak to do such a mean thing, and I told him so this morning; but he turns on me every time I speak to him. He says I was as bad as he was, and that I wanted to fill your can out of mine, which was quite as sneaky if not worse. I don't think it would have been quite fair of me to do it, I must say, but still there is a difference somewhere between the two things if I could put it into words."

"You wanted to help me, and he only wanted to help himself," suggested Kathleen, meditatively; "and besides, you gave up your chance of the prize in my favour. But for all that, if I had won it I should not have kept it, for I should have known it was not mine fairly, and I could never have explained it all to Aunt Marian."

"Well, you have expressed yourself clearly for once in your life. And now let us think what is best to be done, for I can't bear the idea of Fred's chousing Aunt Marian out of that splendid bow; and besides, if he lets himself do a thing like that once, he'll be ten times as likely to do the same kind of thing again, and perhaps get into a worse scrape. Suppose you and I go down and have a parlez-vous with him—eh, Kathleen?"

"Very well, whatever you like; but he never minds what I say."

"Doesn't he though? I can tell you what, old lady, bad as you are, whenever you tell me a thing is not right which I'm doing, it sticks there like a bone in my throat; and though I often swallow it down in a rage, and take my own way, still I generally do turn it over in my mind, and give over whatever it was that was wrong. And Fred's just the same, only he has a way of telling himself that things aren't wrong which I don't understand; or, even supposing they are wrong, he thinks if you aren't found out it's no matter, and that to my mind is the worst of all."

"Yes," replied Kathleen, "much the worst."

"And now, what do you think he says?"

"What?" asked Kathleen.

"I am so glad I have met you."

"Why, that very likely he did put the stones in to keep down the leaves,—that he does not exactly know why he put them in. And at the beginning, you remember, he never denied that he put them in on purpose. But that's just it, he can persuade himself to think anything he likes, and then he grows to believe in what he has made himself think. But, I say, let us go out and try to find him; and if we can only catch him in a good humour, we might coax him to put back the bow. The best thing to put it on will be poor mother; for, you know, if it ever came to her ears, she'd simply never get over it."

The children found Fred strolling in the sycamore walk. He was sauntering along with his hands in his pockets, and kicking little pebbles in front of him, as he went along, with the toe of his boot; but he was neither whistling nor singing, as was his wont, and his gait had a certain air of depression about it that both Kathleen and Harry instinctively recognized.

"Well, what are you following me for?" he asked, as he turned at the sound of their footsteps, and saw them coming rather nervously forward to meet him.

"We guessed you were dodging about somewhere in these diggings," said Harry, speaking first, "and we wanted to see you before we began the jam-covering."

"What for?" asked Fred, kicking another large pebble along the walk, and his brow darkening. "I should think you and I had had enough of each other's company this morning."

"Come along, Fred, old boy, and don't be so cranky," cried Harry, taking his brother by the shoulder and thrusting his hand through his arm. "I want awfully to pal up with you, and make things straight if we can. You see Katy and I have been thinking what an awful thing it will be if mother comes to hear about this tin-can affair; and she'll be so cut up about it that I don't think she'll ever get over it, and the whole thing could be set straight so easily."

"Oh ay, I daresay it's an awfully easy thing, is it not, to go and say, 'I did cheat, and you found me out, and so I can't help making a clean breast of it'? I tell you now, Harry, once for all, if you and Kathleen have come down here to wheedle me into putting the bow back, I'll see you further first before I'll do it, and that's an end of it."

"But, Fred, only think."

"Think! I've thought until I'm blue in the face with thinking, and the more I think the more certain I am I did nothing but what was quite fair, or, at least, no worse than any one else; so if you've no more to say you had better cut off about your business."

"You'll come in for the jam-covering, won't you?" asked Kathleen anxiously.

"Not I. I've just as much idea of pasting on old jam covers as I have of putting a cover on myself. Besides, I am not going to run the risk of another affectionate note from my aunt, telling me that I cheated, or, perhaps, accusing me of taking a little out of each pot I covered. No, no; once is enough for that kind of thing."

"If you don't come in, Aunt Marian will think you are afraid, or ashamed."

"Afraid! If you think there is any danger of that, I'll go in this very instant and give them such a piece of my mind that I'll pull the whole house down about their ears. Afraid, indeed!" and Fred pushed on before them with great strides of anger.

"We had better leave him alone," whispered Harry. "He's in a stunner of a temper."

"But he won't go in and say anything to Aunt Marian, will he?"

"Not he; he has just as much idea of doing so as I have. He is just blustering all round the compass because he knows he's in the wrong. Oh, how I wish mother were here. Two words from her would set him as right as a trivet; but I'm such an ass, I always manage to make things worse. See, he has turned in exactly the opposite direction to the Hall. I would not be inside his jacket for a great deal."

Harry was quite correct in all his surmises. Fred had not the smallest intention of going to beard his aunt in her own home; on the contrary, his own desire was to escape from her sight. Although he tried to force his conscience into the belief that he had not acted dishonestly, or at least not more dishonestly than Harry had also tried to do, still he felt a guilty tremor rush all over and through every fibre of his body when he thought of coming face to face with his aunt, and foresaw the conversation which would most probably ensue; and thus he bad brought himself to the cowardly determination to absent himself altogether from the afternoon's employment. But oh the longing he had that he could see his mother,—that he could have just a few moments' conversation with her, and tell her all. She was so kind, so easy to speak to, he could confess all to her without trouble or fear, and could ask her for help and advice. She would explain to Aunt Marian how all had happened, and return the bow to the boudoir, which he had not the courage to do, and which he was too proud to allow his brother or sister to do for him; and Fred, when well out of sight of the others, in the sombre shade of the close-growing pines, threw himself down on the grass and cried, bitterly exclaiming between every sob, "Oh, mother, why are you not here; why, why are you not here, and then all would be well?"

In his grief and utter misery of mind Fred's heart rushed out spontaneously to the mother who had been all to him in his life. He had been in his childhood a delicate boy, and therefore of necessity his mother had watched over him with a peculiar care, and had shielded him from the troubles and sorrows of boyhood with a zealous watchfulness; and now that he had outgrown his former delicacy, and had to push his way through the rough world like the others, he turned at every rude breath to the shelter of her side, and still tried to draw the strength of his character from hers.

But those who choose willingly to lean all their weight on a human friend, must some time or other come to find that the reed, though it may bend and bow almost to the ground with its willingness to endure and be leaned upon, must give way some time, and then the fall is all the more helpless and hopeless. And this Fred's mother had many a time pointed out to her son, imploring of him in his troubles, which were many, to go to a higher and more certain Friend, and to draw help and succour from Him. She knew how frail her own life was, and she knew equally well the weakness of Fred's nature,—a nature keenly susceptible to pain and terribly open to the attacks of temptation,—and she had hesitated long and long before she consented to accept the invitation to Jubilee Hall; but in the end she and her husband had felt that it was well to give Fred the opportunity of acting and thinking for himself, and for testing how far his strength of character could be relied on.

Could Fred only have listened to the pleading voice that had been urging him on to the easy and silent confession of his guilt demanded from him by his aunt, how immeasurably better it would have been for him: for conscience, once rudely thrust aside with a resolute hand, lies often silent and crushed, and allows perhaps a worse error to creep in unnoticed and unopposed; the truth of which terrible danger Fred was also but too soon to experience. But for the present, blind as he was to the future and the temptation creeping silently at his heels, he only thought of the trouble which oppressed him, and not of the guilt which stood as yet unrepented of and unforgiven before the throne of God.

Fred, with his face on the grass and his hands pressed on his ears, did not hear in his trouble the sound of footsteps approaching slowly and lightly over the moss-covered ground, nor did the fear of any one's stumbling accidentally upon his retreat enter into his calculations for a moment. It was therefore in no low or suppressed accents of pain or entreaty that he called on his mother for help and assistance, and sobbed out his grief into the ferns and creeping ivy leaves.

Once a sound had startled him, and he had raised his head in terror, but it was only a cock pheasant calling to his mate; and in the intense stillness of all around him the rabbits were eating peacefully close by, or stroking the muffled down on their faces with their velvety and heathery paws.

But beyond this wild copse, where in the autumn the gun of the gamekeeper often made sad havoc, ay Aunt Marian's dairy-farm, in which she took a warm interest, and which, when time allowed, she personally superintended. This morning she had gone down to see the calves fed, and to doctor a poor heifer which had leaped a wire fence and hurt itself severely, and the time had glided so quickly by that she had not noticed it was nearly luncheon time until the farmyard bell had sounded for the workmen's dinner, and she knew that only ten minutes intervened between this bell and the gong which announced to the assembled guests that luncheon was on the table. She chose, therefore, the short cut through the wood, walking quickly though lightly, and arousing at every footstep some wild inhabitant of the copse; but when she had traversed about half the way she paused for a moment, hearing a cry of pain which seemed to come somewhere from the ground close by. She fancied at first that it was a wounded cat which had crawled somewhere among the ferns to die; for the gamekeeper had no compassion on these semi-wild animals, which ate his young rabbits and rifled the nests of the young game fledgelings, and from many a branch in the wood depended the dead bodies of three or four of these marauders. But as she paused, Aunt Marian caught distinctly the sound of a human voice, and approaching a few steps nearer heard, with pain and self-reproach, Fred's piteous lamentations and the cry for his mother's help, which brought quick and hot tears to her eyes, and for a moment made her irresolute whether to pass on noiselessly, or to stop and proffer her assistance and comfort to the boy.

Aunt Marian had a very soft heart, especially towards boys, and boys' tears could move her into an almost foolish weakness; and now Fred's sobbing appeal for his mother's love suddenly and effectually melted her heart from a kind of growing dislike and distrust of her nephew to a feeling of tender sympathy and compassion.

She paused, however, a moment before making known her presence, to settle in what manner she should address him. She feared increasing his distress, and her whole anxiety at the moment was how but to reassure and encourage him.

"Fred," she said presently, in a somewhat low but very cordial voice as she advanced to meet him, "I am so glad I have met you."

Fred started up, his cheeks blotched with tears and his eyes dazed and misty; but the moment he recognized his aunt a rush of crimson blood covered every inch of his face, and the expression of shame and alarmed surprise seemed to intensify the confusion and awkwardness of the meeting.

But Aunt Marian had looked for confusion and awkwardness of manner at so unexpected a rencounter, and in her sudden flow of sympathy she did not recognize the look of guilt and shame.

"Fred," she continued kindly, stretching out her hand to the boy, who now stood embarrassed and blushing before her, "I have just found you in the nick of time, for the workmen's bell has rung, and I shall certainly be late for luncheon, unless you can take this heavy basket from my hand and allow me to walk free."

"Of course I will, aunt," said Fred, his natural politeness of manner coming to his aid, though he shrank nervously from the thought of the long tête à tête walk home together to the Hall.

"May I take your arm," she continued in a peculiarly soft and pleasing voice; "for I have been standing so long in the dairy fields I am quite tired. I always make my own boys my walking-sticks," she added, with a short laugh, "and as they are not here, I must enlist you in my service."

"Certainly, aunt," replied Fred, growing much more at ease under the healing influence of Lady Brinsley's kindness.

She took his arm, and they walked on through the copse, Aunt Marian keeping the conversation going with descriptions of the wild cats and their thieving propensities, and telling him the quaint sayings of the head gamekeeper, an Irishman, who was quite a character and full of genuine wit and humour. She also promised him a day's shooting with the same gamekeeper, if his father had no objection to his handling a gun; and Fred, by the time they had come within sight of the Hall, felt comparatively at his ease and very grateful for his aunt's kindness and good-natured tact.

It was not until they were within a few paces of the massive oak door of the Hall that the dreaded topic was touched on, and Fred was so comparatively off his guard, that his aunt was in the thick of the subject before he almost understood what she was saying.

"You'll come, of course, and give a helping hand in the jam-covering this afternoon," she said, taking the basket from his arm and moving a little forward.

"Oh yes, of course." Fred felt so much at his ease with his aunt now, that he had no fear or dislike to the occupation, and he answered without hesitation or reserve.

"I'm glad of that," she said quickly and without looking round; "for I'm afraid,"—here feeling her own cowardice she turned and looked Fred full in the face,—-"for I fear I have acted very ungenerously towards you, and accused you of a fault which I fully believe now you had no intention of committing. We all of us," she added kindly, tears springing up into her eyes, "make mistakes sometimes, and judge hastily and without sufficient grounds; but I know, Fred, you will believe me when I say how truly sorry I am for having given you so much pain, and that I beg of you not to think of the subject any more."

"Oh, Aunt Marian, please don't, don't say such things," cried Fred, his heart leaping up into his throat and his eyes also filling with impetuous tears. "You, you—Aunt Marian, don't go into the house, please; I—I—"

But Aunt Marian had said what she had been struggling to gather courage for during the last ten minutes; and she was now inside the doorway and hurrying up the stairs to take off her out-door clothes before the gong should summon the guests to luncheon.

When Fred entered the luncheon-room a few minutes after the gong had sounded, with bright face, easy manner, and a general air of satisfaction, Kathleen and Harry could scarcely believe the testimony of their eyes; and when further, in reply to a question of their aunt, he undertook to marshal the whole bevy of jam-coverers to the housekeeper's room as soon as luncheon should be ended, their amazement almost amounted to disbelief, and many glances, expressive of surprise and curiosity, were exchanged between them, with mutual elevations of the eyebrows, to explain that neither party was in the secret of this great and unlooked-for change.

"I say," said Harry, getting close to his brother as they went out into the passage preparatory to going downstairs, "have you done it after all? I guess you have; and if so, you're no end of a brick."

"Done what?" said Fred testily, as he pushed Harry aside with his elbow; "of course I haven't; but it's all as right as a trivet, and aunt and I are the best of friends."

"Then you have told her?"

"Do be quiet, will you, Harry? and not call every one's attention to me and my affairs. I tell you I have done nothing of the kind, and don't intend either. Aunt Marian has been awfully good-natured to me, and she says it's all right; and I suppose if she says so, you need not trouble yourself about it."

Harry was hustled away from his brother's side and his hopes and fears made light of; but still, though Fred said he need not trouble himself about the matter, he could not help doing so. He drew Kathleen aside into the shadow of the coal-vault, and there they stood and argued the whole question backwards and forwards in timid whispers and in much anxiety on Fred's account, as they both felt the whole thing would come to light some day or other, and that then his case would be even more desperate than it seemed now; and besides, Kathleen could not imagine Fred looking so happy and buoyant if he still had the heavy weight of deception and guilt hanging round his neck.

"I do believe he has brought himself to think that he has done nothing either wrong or shabby, else he could never look so sprag," said Harry with a parting sigh; "and I'm afraid there ain't much use in our trying to undeceive him. He only gets into awful waxes when I go in at him, and says even worse things than he feels. What do you think, Katy?"

"I think—I hope," she whispered, "that when we go home he will tell mamma all about it, and she will be able to speak to him so much better than we can; and besides, she can explain everything to Aunt Marian, and perhaps things may come right in the end."

"Well, we must just hope so," said Harry; "but I can't bear to see Aunt Marian imposed on. I see perfectly well, by all she says and does, that she thinks she has accused Fred unjustly; and it's awfully shabby of him to act up to it. Not but that I might do the same myself if I were in his place," he added humbly. "But I say, Katy, there are rats in this cellar. I hear something rustling in the corner. Oh, I see something white; let's cut and run;" and in another moment, with somewhat grimy hands and white faces, the two children took their places at the long deal table where the process of covering the jam had already begun.

Fred was seated at the head of the table, busily engaged in dispensing paper, gum, and innumerable pairs of scissors to his subs; and not a lingering cloud of trouble seemed to overshadow his good-humoured affability. When he chose to be amusing and pleasant, there was no one who could make himself more generally agreeable; and "Bravo, Fred!" "That's a good fellow, Fred!" might be heard at intervals from various admirers round the table as he laid down some maxims couched in the most absurd language, or made some buffoonish grimace. And thus the afternoon wore on in the most peaceful and perfect harmony; and whenever Aunt Marian looked in on her guests, she saw with genuine delight all the heads busily bent over their work, and heard the peals of laughter at each fresh pun or joke perpetrated by one of the company.

"I say, Harry," she said, kindly laying her hand on her nephew's shoulder, "what's gone wrong with you this evening? I see all the rest laughing and as merry a& crickets, but I don't think you and Kathleen have smiled once. You are not ill, are you?"

"Oh no, thank you, aunt, I am quite well. It's awfully jolly work this jam-covering, and I like it awfully; really I do."

Poor Harry's confusion was evident to the whole table, and Aunt Marian good-naturedly desisted from asking any further question.

"When the jam is all covered, I must ask for your assistance in putting it by," she said presently, addressing the assembled company; "some of the shelves are too high for me to reach up to, and besides I think you would like to see my store-room, which I consider is one of the most comfortable rooms in the house."

Of course, the boys and girls around the table were loud in their acquiescence, and the snipping and snapping of the various pairs of scissors seemed to proceed even more rapidly than before.

"I say, what a regiment of jam pots that brother of yours has managed to cover with all his tomfoolery and joking. I never saw such a fellow for being first in at everything," said young Maurice Brinsley, looking across the table at Fred, whose row of neatly covered preserves certainly seemed more numerous than any of the others. "He won the prize for the jam-picking, and now he's going to bag this one as well. How does he manage it, I wonder?"

"I am sure I don't know," replied Harry, not raising his head from his own work; "I have been so busy looking after my own affairs, I never saw how fast he had got on."

"I can't imagine how he managed to get his can filled so quickly yesterday," continued Maurice innocently, "for he and I went in for a grub of black currants that lasted till we were both fairly done; and though I picked hard for the rest of the time, I had not half filled my can, so I could scarcely believe my eyes or my ears when I saw his tin handed in, and afterwards heard he had got first prize."

"But he did not get first prize," replied Harry, forgetting for the moment what might be the result of his confidence. "It was Kathleen who really won it; for—for there was a mistake somewhere, but Aunt Marian set it all right afterwards."

"How! a mistake! I don't quite understand."

"Oh, nothing; it was only some stones which Fred had put at the bottom of his can to keep the leaves down. At least, that's to say, there were some stones, and of course that made his can weigh heavier than hers."

"You don't mean to say that Fred put stones into his can after all?"

"Why 'after all'?" asked Harry open-mouthed.

"Why, because when he and I were grubbing at the currants, I said for fun, 'What a lark it would be to fill one's can with stones and put only a layer of fruit at the top, and then to see mother's face of surprise when she came to weigh the fruit;' but—"

"Then he did think she would weigh it?" said Harry again, speaking more in accordance with his own thoughts than with the prudence his brother might have expected from him.

"Of course we knew she would have to weigh the cans, or at least, we felt more or less certain of it. But I say, Harry," here Maurice sunk his voice suddenly to a whisper, "Fred's got his eyes fixed on us, and he don't seem to like our conversation."

"Pooh! who cares?" replied Harry hotly. But for all that he went on with his work, and after this a general lack of conversation seemed to fall over all the company, Fred setting them the example by a stony and somewhat sullen silence.

"I expect you'll catch it by-and-by," whispered Maurice into Harry's ear.

"Of course you'll not repeat anything I have said to you?" replied Harry nervously. He was beginning to think he had perhaps inculpated his brother, and yet he possessed no certainty of his guilt.

"I! of course not; it would only drag you into a row, and do no good;—but I must say, if he did put stones in his can after all the talk we had about it, it was a howling shame, and no mistake."

When the first gong sounded and the time for dressing for dinner had arrived, Aunt Marian entered the housekeeper's room to adjudge the prize; and again on this occasion, without any doubt or even loophole for suspicion, Fred's quick and neat fingers had gained the day. He had covered a round dozen more than any of the others, with five minutes allowed to him for dispensing the necessary materials; and this time the prize was a box containing a complete set of lawn-tennis, all beautifully packed into different compartments, and the whole case of a portable size, and fitted with a good lock and key.

Fred was more than satisfied with his aunt's choice. He had wished every day since he came to Jubilee Hall that they had lawn-tennis at The Cedars; and he had even planned in his own mind whereabouts the game could be best played, and the shady spots where garden-seats could be placed for lookers on; and now his aunt had forestalled his wishes, and when he went home he would be able to set it up at once, and have capital games in the autumn. He thanked his Aunt Marian again and again in the most grateful and enthusiastic manner, and not a few of the company envied him the possession of such a prize.

"Now, Fred, listen to me," observed Harry the following morning, when, breakfast being over, they all sallied out in front of the house for a stroll, "if you are going to come it over me in this way I won't stand it, and that's an end of it."

"How come it over you?" said Fred slowly and indifferently, as he pretended to follow the flight of a distant wood-pigeon.

"I mean sticking me into Coventry, and riding your high horse."

"I'll ride any horse I like, high or low, without asking your leave."

"Very well, ride away, and do just as you like; but if you go on with these airs to Kathleen and me which you have kept up all yesterday afternoon and this morning, I'll go my way, that's all."

"Well, and what's your way, may I ask?"

"Simply, I shall go straight to Aunt Marian's boudoir and let her hear the whole matter out, every word and syllable from beginning to end; for, to tell you the truth, I am getting dog-tired of this kind of life. When we came here first I was as jolly as a sand-boy, and now I'm sick of the place, and of everybody and everything."

"Well, that's not my fault."

"It is your fault, it's altogether your fault; for every atom of this wretchedness has come out of that odious heap of stones which you put into your can."

"Humbug! how on earth can that harm you? If it hurts any one it's me, and that's my own affair."

"How can a thing be only your affair, when it has made, and does make, so many people miserable?"

"You are talking simple rubbish, Harry, and I defy you to prove one word of what you say, except, indeed, so far as concerns yourself and Kathleen; and as any one with two eyes in his head can see what a pleasure it is to you both to be miserable, I don't see how you can blame me for it."

Harry's face and eyes perfectly flamed with indignation at Fred's justification of his conduct, and a host of passionate words came rushing hotly to his lips, but Maurice's voice being heard in the shrubbery-walk close at hand, he constrained himself to silence, and walking a step or so forward he picked some pebbles from the gravelled walk and began slinging them at random across the lawn.

"And what's more," cried Fred, roused to a sudden recollection by the sound of his cousin's voice, "I don't see what right you have to call me a sneak and a cheat, and all that, when you go peaching on me behind my back to Maurice, and setting all kinds of suspicions afloat about me, when you may be quite as wrong as—as—"

"As you are," replied Harry shortly. "But as I said before, I'm sick of this sort of life, and of this house and this place; and jolly and delightful as I thought it at first, I'd a million times rather be at home now; and if things don't change from what they are soon, I'll write and ask father and mother to come over for us."

"Bosh!" said Fred, "as if father or mother would come even if you did write. Of course they wouldn't, unless there was some good reason for bringing them over, and I'd like to know where you'd find that."

"Easily enough," murmured Harry beneath his breath; and then, having remained a long ten minutes looking at the beds of flowers all about and around him, he turned towards his brother, and, with quite another tone of voice and expression of face, exclaimed,—"Fred."

"Well."

"Listen; I'll say it all for you, if you like."

"Say what?"

"I'll go now and see Aunt Marian, and make everything straight, you'll see, when I have told her all; and how at the beginning you didn't mean—at least—well, never mind, I'll promise you I'll say it the best way it can be said; and then we shall both be so awfully glad when it's off our minds, shan't we, Fred?"

"I am sure I don't know," replied Fred, swinging his long legs backwards and forwards beneath the iron chair on which he had seated himself; "you always make such mountains out of mole-hills, a fellow never knows what your opinion is worth. I can't for the life of me see that I've done anything so very wrong; in fact, I should never have thought of it a second time, only you and Kathleen pulled such awfully long faces at me, that you turned me sour and cross whether I would or not; and for all I know, if you had left me alone I might have set the whole thing straight in a jiffy."

Fred had a way of putting things that often puzzled Harry sorely, and made him feel for the time as if wrong were right and right wrong; and as Fred now sought to shove the burden of his fault on Harry's shoulders, so Harry began to wonder and question himself if it might not be quite true what his brother said, and that, if he had only left him alone, he would have seen the right course to take, and have followed it. "I know I always do bungle things," replied he humbly; "and I know people hate being bothered into things."

It was Fred's turn now to grow distressed and uneasy. He made no reply for some minutes to Harry's last speech, but kept his eyes fixed on a large fuchsia in a neighbouring bed, evidently thinking anxiously on some subject. At last he said, with a nervous effort to appear quite at his ease, "I'll tell you, Hal, what I'll do. As you seem to take it so much to heart, as soon as ever I go home I'll have a talk with mother on the whole affair, and tell her exactly how the land lies; and if she thinks I oughtn't to keep the prize, I'll give it up, or I'll get her to return it, which comes to the same thing, and that will set all to rights, won't it, Harry?"

"Are you really in earnest?" asked Harry, his whole face glowing from the sudden and unlooked-for relief; "for if you are, I'll say you're a brick, and no mistake."

"Of course I'm in earnest; I'm not quite such a hypocrite as you take me for."

"Indeed, Fred, I don't take you for a hypocrite or anything the least like it; only, I'm so awfully glad you're going to do it: for mother will be sure to know what's right; and I'm such a gaby, I daresay it is I who have been making a great fuss about nothing all the time."

"Well, at any rate, let's all try to be jolly for the rest of the time we are here; Aunt Marian will think we are a set of prigs with the way we have been going on, looking glum, and morose, and stupid, when all the others were bursting their sides with laughter. You'll cheer up now, Harry, won't you?"

"Cheer up? why, I feel as if I could make one good flying leap over sun, moon, and stars, and the equator into the bargain;" and Harry, to prove the truth of his words, made one good flying leap over the end of the iron seat, alighting somewhat ignominiously on the other side, with face, hands, and knees in close contact with the sharp gravel on the pathway.

"I say, Hal, old boy, that's what one might call a cropper of the first water," cried a cheery voice in our fallen hero's ears, as he raised himself up and shook himself free from the gravel and dust which adhered to both hands, and to the knees of his trousers; "if you make such a bad shot at the equator, you'll be likely to come to grief, and get impaled on the North Pole, or something of the kind. But I've been looking for you everywhere, for don't you remember you and I were to have a game at chess to-day, and as we can't have it in the afternoon on account of the jam having to be put away, I thought we might as well have a shy at it now."

"All square," replied Harry cheerfully. "I'm game for any fun going, from pitch and toss to manslaughter, only I warn you, you'll get the worst of it; for I feel as if I could fight Goliath this morning, I'm so sprag and hearty in myself."

"If you make as good a shot at the game as you did at the iron chair a moment ago, I'm afraid I shall get the worst of it," replied Maurice laughing, "especially as I'm by no means in a serene temper. I've been worriting at the old mother for the last hour to give me out the Japanese chess-men which she has locked up in her store-room; but she won't do it, for she says the old wooden ones are quite good enough for us younkers; and though I coaxed, and bullied, and teased, it was all no good, so we must put up with what we have got, and be satisfied."

"They must be awfully precious men," said Harry open-eyed, for he had never heard his aunt refuse Maurice anything before.

"Precious is no word for it. They are all of the most exquisite carved ivory. Every piece is a curiosity in itself: the castles are all on elephants' backs, and the king and queen are the grandest old coves going; and as to the knights, they are simply A1, all of them mounted on horseback, and with banners in their hands. Oh, I do wish I could even have shown them to you, but mother didn't seem to like my asking her."

"I wonder why; I confess I for one would have given a good deal to have a peep at them," said Fred, who, having a lathe of his own at home, and being a decided genius in the art of carving, took delight in looking at anything new and curious in his favourite art.

Maurice scarcely looked at Fred or noticed his remark, but addressing himself to Harry, cried, "I am sorry, now that I think of it, that I nagged at mother so much about them; for it's dawning on me that these very chess-men were a present from my poor father, which arrived at home just after mother heard of his death, and I am sure that is why she does not like to have them knocked about."

"But we need not knock them about, need we?" asked Fred, again seeking to obtain a hearing.

"If you mean that you wish me to ask mother for them again, I'm going to do no such thing," Maurice answered, with scarcely the amount of politeness in his tone due to one's guest, and especially as Fred fancied he heard him add in a lower tone, "least of all for you."

"I am sure I don't care whether you do or not," replied Fred in sudden heat at the tone and words of his cousin. "I dare say I have seen finer chess-men than any you could show me, so you need not trouble yourself to be any ruder than you are by nature."

Maurice merely turned round and stared Fred full in the face with an expression of contempt and unbelief which did not tend to allay the rising fire in his cousin's breast, and, without addressing another word to him, he moved nearer to Harry, who had been standing by, an unhappy spectator of the scene.

"Come along and let's begin our game," he said, "or we shall only have got well into the heat of it all when it will be time to stop. Come along, I say;" and Maurice, taking Harry under his arm without casting another glance in Fred's direction, walked off with him towards the Hall, and through the oak doorway into the house.

Fred remained seated outside for a considerable time longer, and the reverie which he fell into in his solitude was of no very amiable kind.

"What on earth does the fellow mean by treating me in that way?" he growled angrily as the two figures disappeared in the doorway; "he has as much manners as a bear. I'll soon let Aunt Marian hear, if he goes on with any more of his cocksputtiness. It was not to have us spoken to and stared at as if we were a set of Yahoos, that she invited us here. No, no; my fine Master Maurice, I'll not stand such humbug from any one, least of all from you; so you'd better not try it on with me again, that's all." And while Fred vented his anger in such-like idle threats, he raked the path to and fro with his walking-cane, until he had scarred the evenly strewed gravel with unseemly lines and bars.

Nor when luncheon time arrived, and all the party assembled once more in the dining-room, did matters seem more agreeable or promising for Fred. Aunt Marian, who, as usual, presided at the head of the table, seemed preoccupied and out of spirits. Now and then, when Fred looked furtively up, he fancied her eyes were fixed uneasily on him; but the instant their looks met she started, blushed, and turned her head another way. Could it be that the affair about the chess-box was weighing on her mind, or what? But why then need she look so anxiously at him? And Fred tried, as he could not reason the matter out, to push it from his mind altogether, and determined not to look again in her direction.

After luncheon Aunt Marian made a decided effort to brighten up, and, calling all her guests together, she invited them to follow her to the store-room, that she might give them directions where the various jams were to be stored away; and also, she wished to show them some curiosities which she had packed away down there for greater safety, until a wonderful Chinese cabinet which she was expecting from London should arrive to hold them.

All those who did not know the downstairs region of the left wing of the Hall, were enchanted and surprised with the immense rows of dungeon-like rooms which branched off in all directions from the landing under Lady Brinsley's boudoir; and much interest was excited when she came to a full stop opposite a door at the foot of, or rather underneath the flight of stairs which led from the underground region to the upper world.

"I have had my store-room built here purposely," she said putting a large key into the key-hole; "because the flue of the kitchen chimney runs parallel to the shelves along the wall, and thus everything on them is kept dry and free from must. You must not all crowd into the store-room at once, but come in six or seven at a time, and I will show you whatever there is worth seeing; and I must only trust to the honour of the company at large, that, when I am no longer here to superintend the proceedings, anything any of you wish to see you will look at with your eyes, and not with your fingers; for some of my curiosities are of a very fragile kind, and a rough touch or an awkward hand might entirely destroy them. You will be careful all of you, won't you?" she said looking around; "and you, Maurice, and you, Harry Malcomson, I leave you both as my aides-de-camp to see that nothing on my curiosity-shelf is touched or meddled with."

There was a general clamour of assent to Lady Brinsley's wishes, and loud assurances were given by those gathered round her that nothing should be stirred or injured in any way; and then the key was turned in the door, and as many as the room could hold were admitted.

Once inside, what a delicious odour there was of good things,—oranges, figs, raisins, biscuits, gingerbread, plum-cake; and how the dishes and open boxes of preserved fruits glanced from out the darker corners of the shelves!

The stairs overhead were so broad that the store-room was an unusually wide one, and by degrees, most of the party squeezed in so as to be able to catch a view of the case which Lady Brinsley had just lifted from the shelf overhead, and which Maurice, in a voice of superior knowledge, declared to be the gem of the peep-show.

And a most curious and wonderful affair it was when it was placed on the shelf in the window, and the light from the passage outside fell full upon it.

"This," said Aunt Marian, as she took a gold key from her watch-chain and placed it in the lock of the outside case, "this is a Japanese miniature barrel organ, and when I lift off this cover you will see what a strange piece of mechanism it is. Here, Maurice, give me a helping hand," and, assisted by her son, Lady Brinsley removed the outside sandalwood box, and revealed a most perfect and beautiful representation of a mimic stage, on the boards of which several figures in Japanese costume were standing, while a wonderfully painted and enamelled woodland scene at the back made everything appear strangely real and life-like.

Lady Brinsley, having given all the children time to see the stage and its occupants, pushed back a round silver peg at the side of the box, and at once, to the sound of a curious tinkling and somewhat unmusical music, the figures began moving about the stage, extending their arms in entreaty, throwing back their heads in haughty attitudes of refusal or pride, and, in fact, imitating in excellent style the effects of an operatic scene.

Fred pressed forward and gazed with a rapt eagerness at the toy. It was a thing after his own heart, and all troubles and doubts were for the moment forgotten, as he sought to puzzle out the mechanism of the wonderful Japanese automaton.

When every one had been given a full view of the theatre, it was packed up in its box and replaced with some difficulty by Maurice on an upper shelf. Fred followed it with longing eyes as it was returned to the safe keeping of the store-room and its surroundings; and as he did so his glance chanced to fall on another and smaller case close beside it, on which he could see painted in black letters the word "fragile."

"What is in that other box?" he asked curiously; "may we have a look at it also?"

"No, dear; I never open that box," replied Lady Brinsley, in a nervous and somewhat hesitating voice; "its contents are very brittle, and, besides, I have other reasons."

"But what are the contents?" cried Fred, so anxious to satisfy his curiosity, that his aunt's hesitation and distress did not affect him as it would otherwise probably have done.

"Chess-men," she answered shortly, "ivory chess-men.

"Oh!" sighed Fred, "these are the men I suppose Maurice wanted so much to show Harry. Might we not even take one look into the box? we were all so much disappointed."

"Speak for yourself, please," cried Maurice angrily; "neither Harry nor I care a straw whether we see them or not."

"You said you did care very much this morning," retorted Fred, in newly kindled wrath at Maurice's words and manner. "You were quite vexed that you had not been allowed to have them, and you grumbled precious loud about it."

"Shut up, will you. If you had the tact or the good taste of a hen-sparrow, you would know when to leave off a disagreeable subject."

"Maurice, Maurice," said Lady Brinsley reprovingly.—"Suppose now, you all set about the jam and its arrangement," she added cheerfully. "You will find a little wooden ladder in the passage by the pantry which will enable you to pack away a good deal on the high shelves."

Thus the subject of the chess-men dropped for the present; but Fred and Maurice regarded each other with no friendly eyes, and Harry was consequently uneasy and distressed. He felt inclined to take his brother's side in this argument, for he thought Maurice had spoken very roughly to Fred before such a large company, and yet he could not but fear it was his own insinuations on the occasion of the jam covering that had set Maurice so much against Fred. However, in the general laughter, and fun, and jollity which went on, the carrying down the trays of jam, and arranging them in order on the shelves, Harry soon forgot his trouble, and amused himself in playing off a series of his own peculiar style of practical jokes, which were of a very harmless nature, and seldom were pushed sufficiently far to give occasion for offence or anger.

Fred was so absorbed in gazing at the varied contents of the store-room, that he gave but small assistance in the labours of the afternoon; the dark nooks of this mysterious apartment, running, as they did, far up beneath the stairs, had a charm for his inquisitive nature which the more playful of his companions could scarcely have understood. And besides all this, Fred had a longing, amounting almost to misery, to raise the lid of the white box labelled "fragile," and take one glimpse at the rare carving of the Chinese chess-men; and, like a true descendant of our first parents, the more he was hindered from prying, the more intense grew the desire for the forbidden pleasure.

But Maurice seemed to have an inkling of this weakness of Fred, and kept constantly within the sombre precincts of the store-room. He sent the others for the jam and remained himself perched on the ladder, the top of which was propped against the very shelf on which stood the box containing the chess-men; and while Maurice kept firm to his post, Fred had but small chance of the much longed-for peep.

"Why aren't you trying for the prize this afternoon, eh? you are so lucky at winning prizes," asked Maurice of his cousin, in a tone which savoured only too little of politeness; "or perhaps you intend to try your old dodge of making a rush for it in the end, and winning in a hand gallop."

"It's a pity," replied Fred, from some dark corner of the store-room, "that twopence was not charged at your school for good manners; but, I suppose, because you're king of your own castle, you may cheek a fellow as much as you like."

"Humph! 'king of my own castle.' Your head seems to be running very much this morning on the chess-line; you'd give a good deal, I dare say, to get one squint inside of this box;" and Maurice laid his great schoolboy hand on the lid of the white case and smiled, it must be confessed in no very pleasant way, at his cousin.

Maurice had such a loathing for a mean or ungenerous action, he could not conceal his contempt for the boy whose conduct circumstances had led him to distrust; and being the eldest son, and having been, in consequence of his father's death, placed in an unusually prominent position, he had not, perhaps, learned to exercise as much self-control on certain occasions as would have been more fitting and becoming at his age; and he saw the red fire leap into his cousin's eye in the gloom of the dark corner where he stood, though it did not make him desist from his uncourteous conduct.

Fred was an eldest son also, and a somewhat spoiled and petted boy, and he was as little prepared to bear with Maurice's contemptuous treatment as Maurice was to bear with him; so words waxed high between them, and the other guests, abashed and frightened, stood aloof from the scene of action and listened with awe not unmixed with dismay to the passionate tones rising higher and higher within the citadel whose closely barred window showed only the shadowy outlines of the combatants within.

Harry alone ventured to draw near enough to the scene of action to catch some of the voluble words of anger and reproach which passed from the lips of both the boys, and his heart burned with a sudden flame of passion when he heard the words "sneak, cheat, robber," hurled at his brother's head by Maurice, who, still standing on the ladder, kept guard over the box marked "fragile."

"Fred, come out; don't listen to him," cried Harry, driven by the force of his feelings to mingle in the fray; "a fellow who calls another a cheat and a sneak, is no gentleman, I don't care who he is."

"I repeat it," cried Maurice. "I say he is a vile, dastardly sneak, and a liar into the bargain; and no one knows it better than yourself."

At these words there was a crash. Impelled at the same moment by an uncontrollable burst of anger, both brothers had rushed upon the occupant of the ladder, and, pushing it violently aside, had sent Maurice head foremost into a trayful of jam pots, and finally sprawling on the floor.

But a couple of sacks broke Maurice's fall, and he only rose with redoubled fury to continue the fray. Harry he merely thrust out into the passage with one lurch of his great strong arm; but Fred he sent whirling back into the darkness with a blow planted right in the middle of his chest, and an accompanying kick which raised him for a moment from the ground only to fall the more heavily on his back, which struck against something sharp protruding from the wall, and he finally rested upon a shelf raised about a foot or so from the ground, and which extended far back to the very end of the store-room floor, and which was, in fact, only a kind of low platform at the further end of the room.

At this moment there was a cry raised somewhere that Lady Brinsley was coming; and Maurice, ashamed and confused, picked up the ladder, and having placed it against the shelf, began arranging the jam pots, in a somewhat irregular manner, it must be confessed, but still it helped to carry off what would have been otherwise a very unpleasant position.

Fred, meantime, who was smarting all over from the fall, and whose shoulder-blade was cruelly bruised by the blow he had received in his descent, sat down moodily on the shelf or step on which he had fallen, and sulkily awaited the issue of his aunt's arrival.

But Lady Brinsley had no wish just now to enter into this embroilment between her son and her nephew, for, to tell the truth, she would have been sorely puzzled what to say; so she merely looked in at the store-room door for a moment and murmured anxiously, "Maurice, dear, do not let there be such a noise downstairs any more. You know I don't dislike a pleasant row, but the sounds which I heard just now were anything but that. Do try to remember that it is our business to make our guests happy, no matter how they have behaved, and even though Fred has—"

"Fred is here to answer for himself," cried Maurice hastily; for he guessed the gloom of the room had concealed his cousin's presence, and he had no wish to mix up his mother unpleasantly in the business.

"What is all this about, Fred?" asked Lady Brinsley, peering anxiously through the darkness for the figure crouched on the step.

"I am sure I don't know," replied Fred in a sullen tone.

"It's all about this confounded—;" Maurice stopped a moment and then continued nervously, "it's all about this unfortunate chess-box, which Fred is determined to have a look at, and which he says as sure as he's alive he'll see some way or other,—and I'm just as determined that he shan't. I wish you would take it upstairs, mother, and lock it up somewhere; for he's such a fellow he would manage to sneak in through a mouse-hole to gain his purpose."

"Maurice, Maurice, indeed I cannot allow you to speak so," said his mother gravely. "You know well I would far rather, whatever pain it might have cost me, have taken down the box and shown it to Fred, than have had this most unpleasant discussion."

"I don't want to see it," said Fred proudly; "only I won't be bullied by him."

"You swore a moment ago you'd see it if you tore the whole window out of its socket," cried Maurice, growing hot and indignant at Fred's denial.

"And so I would, if you tried to stop me from seeing it."

"Then all I can say is, I'll stop you as long as I have hands on my arms or feet on my legs, and not the most distant vision of one of the men shall you ever see,—at least while you are in this house; unless, indeed, mother chooses to show them to you, and that's no business of mine."

"Maurice, let there be an end of this at once," cried Lady Brinsley, in a tone which her son never dared to oppose. "Whatever else you may be doing, you are not behaving like a gentleman, nor will you by your example be likely to influence your cousin for good. If this most unseemly noise continues, I will just lock the store-room door and break up the whole afternoon, which, I think, would be scarcely fair to our other guests."

"All serene," cried Maurice hoarsely; he was not accustomed to being reproved so sharply by his mother, and before Fred, too. "I'll not say another word," he added in a lower voice; "but I'll balk his sneaking tricks for all that."

Maurice was as good as his word. He never uttered another syllable to Fred, nor did he relax his guard over the shelf where stood the coveted box, but still kept his position on the ladder, arranging in order the various trays of jams, carried down by the others; and after a time, as Fred also remained perfectly silent and inactive in the corner, the "row" was partially forgotten, and jokes and laughter began again to be heard in the halls and passages.

Meantime Fred, who had sat in a kind of gloomy abstraction for nearly half an hour, only showing that he was not asleep by the occasional red gleam from his eyes which shone strangely out of the sombre obscurity of his retreat, suddenly awoke to a strange and thrilling discovery which made his heart beat quick and loud against his side, and which almost tempted him to doubt the evidence of his senses.

And this discovery was brought about in the following manner:—His shoulder, which had been so sorely bruised in the fall, ached terribly for a long time after the other effects of his misfortunes had passed away, till at length, in a vexed and sullen spirit, he searched about and around the place to see against what sharp thing he could have struck when falling, or what accident could have caused the wound which kept on aching so wearily.

For a long time he could see nothing; for the corner where he sat was so dark that objects only revealed themselves slowly to his sight, and it was not for many minutes after he had sat down that he even found out that the platform on which he was seated was used evidently for drying candles and soap, as many squares of the latter were spread out on it, and bundles of candles in orderly rows side by side were also arranged with the same neatness and method; and the roof of the store-room being formed by the stairs overhead it was of necessity a sloping one, and over the shelf on which Fred sat it came slanting down so low as almost to touch his head, so that to rise upright would have been impossible. At some distance behind him the room ended in a dark angle where nothing taller than a cat or a rat could creep along, and as well as Fred's eye could discern, this low nook was used only as a receptacle for old sacks, files of bills, mouse traps and so forth. But so great was Fred's natural curiosity that he longed to pry into its depths, and had he been alone he would certainly have crept on hands and knees along the platform and examined minutely all there was to be seen there; but as it was, he had a character for proud indifference to keep up just now, so he found sufficient interest in searching for the origin of his present suffering, wondering vaguely how it could have been caused.

At length his shoulder became so painful and his back ached so badly, he shoved himself along the wooden platform on which he was seated to the nearest wall of the store-room, so that he might lean his side against it for support, and it was then he awoke suddenly to the discovery which caused him so much surprise and excitement; for as he pressed his head forward toward the wall he again came in contact with something hard and cold protruding from the wooden partition which formed one side of the store-room, and the blow which it gave him, coming, as it did, on the side of his head, caused him almost to cry aloud from pain.

Fred rubbed his wounded ear for a moment or so with his finger and muttered angrily to himself; then, feeling all up the wall with the palm of his hand, he sought to discover the knob or nail which had, as it seemed to him, purposely wounded him.

And he was not long in coming on it. It was an iron knob protruding from the wall, very hard and cold and round, and evidently fastened to the wooden panelling by screws or clamps of some kind or other. Fred turned and fixed his eyes narrowly on the spot; his curiosity was fully aroused, and he determined to get at the root of the matter. As he gazed, it seemed to him as if a silver rod ran down the whole length of the wall beside him, shining quite brightly, and almost glowing in the surrounding darkness.

Fred now ran his fingers down this rod, but found to his surprise that it was nothing tangible; only a long seam of light, which, entering by a crack or fissure in the panels of the wall, gave the appearance of a metal bar; for when some one passed by outside in the passage, the silver bar disappeared, but again returned when the obstruction had moved on.

Once more he ran his fingers up the crack, to ascertain its width, and this time his knuckles came in contact with another knob similar in shape and size to the one he had discovered below, only so high was it placed as to be but an inch or so below the slanting roof of the store-room.

Fred paused for a moment, and with his eyes still eagerly peering into the darkness, drew a long breath. It was just then his heart gave the first great throb, and that the blood tingled so curiously down to his finger-tips.

"Could it be?" he murmured, almost aloud; and then he took a furtive glance towards the stalwart figure of Maurice, who stood with his back turned, and perched on the top of the ladder. He ran his fingers no longer up the wall, but across it; and then he paused again, while the throbbing at his heart became more violent and uncomfortable. "Yes, it was what he suspected it to be." Quite far back he could feel hinges, one above and one below, corresponding exactly to the knobs on the opposite side of the panel. And these knobs, what were they? what could they be? Why, bolts of course; which, closing tightly on the silvery bar of light, kept this hidden egress from the room safe from the visits of intruders.

This was a discovery; as great and significant at the moment to Fred as if he had stumbled on a treasure of pure gold hidden away in some nook or cranny of the wall.

Then came the next question,—could the bolts move, or had long disuse rendered them stiff, and cramped, and useless? That they had not been opened for a long time, the cobwebs which stuck closely over them could testify; sticky gray cobwebs which clung to Fred's fingers and the knees of his trousers, and made him feel as if spiders were running down the back of his neck.

He must try whether the bolts would stir at his bidding or not; but oh! how cautiously must this essay be made, lest Maurice, ever on the alert, should look round and catch him in the act. Fred leaned his head once more in an attitude of weariness against the wall, and with one hand and arm thrust behind him, took the knob in his fingers and pressed, first gently, then a little harder; but no, it would not move, he must push more strongly still. But supposing it were to fly suddenly back, the door might leap open—oh! what a triumph for Maurice, what bitterness of defeat for him.

So Fred continued to push, ever so gently and gingerly, yet at the same time firmly, till at last there was a sharp creak and a grating squeak which could be heard all over the store-room.

Maurice turned hastily round and peered into the darkness; but there was Fred still sitting disconsolately on the step with his head against the wall. Maurice knew nothing of this secret door, so he only remarked, as if in answer to his own thoughts, "Rats," and turned away again carelessly to resume his work.

"Another pot of strawberry, if you please."

Meanwhile, Fred's eye had become riveted on a dish, on which lay heaped one on the top of the other sundry pounds of butter, evidently fresh from the churn. It had been placed on the same shelf where he sat, only at a safe distance from the aroma of the soap and candles; but a quick movement, now that Maurice's back was turned, would easily reach it; and Fred, stretching out his hand, like a flash of lightning removed a small piece from off the nearest roll, and conveying it to his other fingers, cautiously rubbed the rusty lock with the oily but most opportune "find."

This operation was decidedly successful; the next time he tried the bolt it moved, and no creak followed to betray him. The upper lock was greased in the same way, and it also moved, though a slight groan issued from its iron-moulded joints, which caused Maurice once again to turn his head, and murmur "Rats," while he wondered vaguely how such a cowardly fellow as Fred could be content to sit quietly over there in the dark, in such close proximity to rats and other vermin. Perhaps it was the weary dejected position in which Fred sat, with his head resting against the wall, that caused a momentary gleam of contrition and remorse in Maurice's bosom; for presently, in a voice which betrayed an evident struggle between pride and pity, he said, turning towards his cousin,—

"I advise you strongly not to take up your position in that corner, Fred; for the place is alive with cockroaches, and they will be crawling up your leg if you don't take care."

"I have not seen one," replied Fred shortly and sullenly.

"They are there for all that: it was only a few nights ago, when I came down here to fetch up some night-lights for mother, that I came on one as large as a cow, with horns that could have tossed me into the middle of next week. I never saw such a brute; he was more like an old stag cantering along the wall than a human being."

"I never knew cockroaches were human beings before," laughed one of Maurice's sisters, who was standing patiently at the foot of the table with a heavy load of jam in her extended arms, waiting for her brother to arrange them on the shelf above.

"My dear child, who ever supposed you did? But for all that I'm not so far out, for all men are animals, ain't they? and if a cockroach is not an ugly beast of an animal, what else is it? therefore a fortiori it follows, that if both are animals, there is no difference between them."

"All men are animals, but all animals are not men," replied Alice Brinsley, quoting somewhat sententiously from one of her well-read lesson books.

"And all girls are donkeys, though all donkeys aren't girls. I declare, Alice, I think you are the most assified old cockroach in the whole place; for a fellow can't make the most simple and natural observation in the world, but you thrust out your horns and pin him to the wall, while every scrap of knowledge that you have in your shallow pate could be found bound up between the two covers of Mangnall's Questions, beginning at the date when William the Conqueror threw the famous bucket of cold water over his brother Robert le Diable, down to the chap who found out how to square the circle, and make lemon pudding out of pigs' whiskers. There take that;" and Maurice concluded his exordium by seizing a large ball of cord from the shelf beside him, and flinging it right at his sister's uplifted nose, from which it sprang aside and rolled into the dark corner where Fred still sat with his head against the wall, apparently gloomy and abstracted.

But oh! how his face and attitude belied his real feelings, especially now he beheld the ball of cord, which for the last ten minutes he had been gazing at with covetous eyes, actually rolling forward to his very feet. Surely Maurice must have read his thoughts, and fathomed the scheme by which his cousin hoped to retrieve his vantage ground, and make good his angry boast. He must have caught a glimpse of the hungry eyes fixed on the coil of cord above his head, and putting two and two together, must have resolved to aid and abet his enemy, by conniving at his plans, and only planning the more completely and fatally to overthrow and destroy him.

These doubts made Fred hesitate for some minutes whether to avail himself of the unlooked-for assistance, during which time he watched his cousin closely, and narrowly scanned the fluctuating expression of his face; an expression all the more difficult to decipher, as Maurice, having lighted on a jar of French plums, had crammed about a dozen of them into his mouth at one time, and was now making the most frightful grimaces, struggling to eat them without choking or swallowing any of the stones.

But Maurice was perfectly innocent of any plan or plot being laid to undermine his pride; and as soon as he could find room to move his tongue, he again resumed his attack upon his sister, whose arms ached from the weight of the jam pots she still held in her hands, and from which he seemed in no hurry to relieve her.

"Here, Alice, are some rare seeds for you; or as Mangnall would call them, umbelliferous stones," cried Maurice, removing some of the kernels from his mouth, and placing them on the tray before her; "if you plant them in some good farinaceous kind of earth, and water them four times an hour, for fifteen minutes at a go, you'll have in the course of time a magnificent French-plum forest, similar in size and appearance to the famous forest of Ardennes, where Henry the Eighth killed the horrible wild boar, and was afterwards horribly bored to death himself by, I forget how many wives, with patent reversible heads, which could be taken off and on without any trouble; and which, according to Mangnall, was the origin of the penny stamp movement, which was called ever after Anne Boleyn's tragic end, a Queen's head.—Another pot of strawberry, if you please, and then the upper row will be quite full; and give us another handful of French plummers at the same time, that's a good girl, and then I shall be quite full also."

"My dear Maurice, you will really make yourself ill; and besides, you will certainly swallow some of the stones."

"And if I do, what harm? for if you have studied page 40 of Mangnall's 'Internal Economy,' you will find that a stone or apple allowed to fall inside a given circle, proves the gravitation of the Earth. But, good gracious, did you hear those rats again? I say, Fred, have you cheese-parings or what in your pockets, that you seem to be tempting them out of their holes at this time of day?"

To this Fred did not deign a reply, or, if he spoke, the answer was uttered in such a low voice that no one heard him; and Maurice, with a nod of his head, indicative of careless contempt, turned away for good from his cousin, and made no further effort to draw him into conversation.

Fred, meantime, had not been idle; he had, with his penknife, cut off two pieces of cord from the ball which lay, apparently still untouched, at his feet. At the end of each piece of cord he had made a running knot, and this knot he had skilfully placed like a noose over the neck of each bolt, and then drawn the knot tightly with his hands; but the greatest difficulty remained still unsurmounted. The bolts could, of course, be easily withdrawn by any one within the store-room, even without the aid of the cord; but the point which Fred was now eagerly debating in his mind was, how to get the ends of the cord on the other side of the panel, and thus give the power to an outsider to enter at any time he pleased.

The bolts, he had definitely discovered, were screwed to the door, and shot into iron clamps on the wall; so, in order to draw them back from the outside, the ends of the string would have to be passed through some aperture behind the head of the bolt; and how to make this opening without exciting suspicion, was the present stumbling-block in Fred's path. But as he moved himself a little further back on the shelf to get a clearer view of the door, he observed that just beneath the hinges there was also a faint glimmer of daylight, and this discovery solved the problem so satisfactorily, that in a few moments, with the aid of his penknife, he had thrust the end of the cord nearest to him out through the chink into the passage beyond, and he had only to wait patiently for a favourable opportunity to secure the other in the like manner.

Nor had he to wait long, as Maurice had begun to grow tired of his elevated position, and presently, coming down off the ladder, he began arranging the jam on some of the lower shelves, and in this work became so occupied and interested, that he temporarily forgot Fred and his corner, and only paused in his work to make some absurd remarks to his friends.

Fred seized a favourable opportunity when Maurice's back was turned, and no one else was in the store-room, to rise slightly from the shelf, and thrust the second piece of cord through the upper hinge; which effort was so successful, that he felt quite elated, and sat down quietly for a few moments to think out the probable result of his plot.

That he could enter the store-room secretly at some future time, and there and then make good his boast to Maurice, there seemed now no doubt, and Fred glanced up triumphantly at the two pieces of cord securely fastened to the knobs or handles of the bolt and stretching out to the hinges; but how, when he had got in, he was to get out again, without the open door betraying his ingress and egress, was the subject now uppermost in his mind. Was there no plan by which he could shut the door as well as open it? He almost thought there must be; and in order to consider this point thoroughly, he leaned his elbows on his knees, and his head on his hands, and to a speculative eye looked, if possible, even more disconsolate and inscrutable than ever.

Maurice gave one or two side glances towards his cousin, but thought it wiser not to break the unpleasant silence, but to allow Fred's sulky mood to pass over without remark, as all interference seemed only to increase his gloom and reticence; but he determined, at the same time, that when once it had passed over, it would not be his fault if he quarrelled with Fred again, or allowed any guest in his house to feel as uncomfortable and depressed as he had caused Fred to be all the afternoon. And as Maurice made these good resolutions, he whistled softly to himself; and a better and much pleasanter light came into his eyes, as he put aside a box of candied fruit with a beautiful picture on the top of it, as a peace-offering for his cousin, whenever the favourable moment for presenting it should arrive. Little he knew what burning thoughts were passing through Fred's mind, or what a fire of revengeful feelings was smouldering under the quiet attitude and dispirited appearance of his cousin.

Fred meanwhile had not only thought out his new plan, but had actually begun to carry it into execution. Once more, unseen, he had picked up the ball of cord, and cut two pieces from it; and now he was busy, while Maurice's back was turned, making slip knots on these also. And when Maurice leaned across the shelf to take down the prettiest box of preserved fruits for the proposed gift, Fred quickly drew these second loops over the two bolts, and with the ends hanging down beside him, only waited for a further opportunity of pushing them through the hinge of the large door which stood conveniently near its neighbour, and on the very side which would enable him to draw the bolts of the latter securely back into their places.

The gong sounding for dressing soon afforded him the desired moment for action, and when the store-room was nearly full of the guests assembling around Maurice, preparatory to their departure upstairs, Fred stood up, and drawing into the shadow of the large door, which opened inwardly, he thrust the cords carefully through the slit beneath the hinges, and then passing out almost unobserved into the passage, he delayed just sufficiently long to see that they were all well out, and ready for action, and also to assure himself that they would be quite invisible to the eye of a passer-by, as the light painting of the wood corresponded so nearly in shade to the colour of the cord, that unless a person had intentionally sought for the strings, they would never have their attention drawn to the spot.

At any rate, Fred reasoned with himself, the afternoon was already fast closing in, and every moment the hall and staircase would be growing darker; the gas jet in the passage was purposely fixed so as to throw its light in through the window of the store-room, and thus the outside walls lay in comparative shadow; and there was no need to think of to-morrow, for what could be done at once without danger ought not to be deferred until suspicion might be aroused; and Fred, full of a deep and earnest purpose, walked slowly up to his own room and began to dress for dinner.

For a long time Fred debated with himself whether to make Harry a confederate in his scheme or not. He knew that Harry's affectionate spirit had been sorely ruffled and tried that afternoon by Maurice's conduct towards him; and he knew also he had only to show the large purple bruise on his shoulder to call forth a burst of bitter anger in his brother's breast. Harry, too, had a keen enjoyment in following up any scheme which savoured of danger and mystery; and there would be something almost too seductive in the thought of outwitting Maurice, with all his pride and hauteur, for Harry to be able to refuse his aid.

And, after all, what harm was there in the whole affair? He was not going to steal or even touch anything in the store-room, except to raise the lid of the box marked "Fragile," and take one glimpse at the carved ivory men; just sufficient to be able to describe them faithfully to Maurice, and leave him in all the perplexity of a secret and undiscoverable defeat.

It was only a fair revenge for the uucourteous conduct of his cousin,—the epithets hurled on him in the presence of all the guests, and the cruel blow which had sent him reeling back into the darkness of the store-room. "At least I can sound Harry on the subject, and see how he likes the look of it. If he jumps at the fly, all serene; if not, then mum's the word, and all the danger and glory will be my own." So thought Fred as he slowly walked up the stairs leading to the landing where their room was situated, and his face was grave and abstracted when he opened the door and walked in.

"Well, Fred, old man," cried Harry's sympathizing voice as he entered, "I hope you are not much hurt. I was just saying to Kathleen, as you came in, what a shame it was of Maurice to turn on you the way he did, and to knock you down and call you names before every one!"

"Yes, you may say so; and if you only saw the bruise on my shoulder-blade, you'd open your eyes a bit. I am sure it's as large as a plate this moment, and as black and blue as your shoe; and all for what, I'd like to know. Nothing but his confounded pride and ill-temper."

"I can't think why he should have grown so suddenly cold to you," said Harry uneasily. "Sometimes I think perhaps it is all my fault."

"Your fault! Rubbish! how could it be?"

"Well, because I know I said something to him yesterday about the stones you had put in your can, and he flared up at once, and said if you had done it, it was a howling shame, and all that kind of thing. But, somehow or other, I think," pleaded Harry humbly, "something more must have happened to vex him, or he could not be so frightfully waxy."

"I'll wax him before I've done with him," said Fred angrily. "Whether I put the stones in the can or not, what business is it to him? He has no right to set himself up for a judge and put me in Coventry before all the others. However, he'll be sorry for it before all's over. I'll promise you that much for your consolation."

The consolation appeared scarcely to affect Harry as much as might have been anticipated; he glanced nervously towards his brother, and ended a rumination of full five minutes' length with a prolonged sigh.

"Heigh ho, I wish we had never left home. I know I, for one, shall never be in a hurry to leave it again."

"Nor I either," cried Fred, with a certain hoarse sound in his voice which betrayed no small amount of emotion. "However, in for a penny, in for a pound, is my maxim; and I'd rather stick here all my life than leave the place without giving Maurice a Roland for his Oliver."

"You'll never be able to do it. Remember he is in his own house, and we are only visitors."

"All the same, I will do it; and what's more, the trap is set and the hook baited, and I'll be even with him before this time to-morrow, you'll see."

"Why, what are you going to do?"

"If you had the spirit of a mouse I'd tell you; but I know once you heard the whole scheme, you'd never stop till you'd put your foot in it somehow."

"Fred!"

"Oh yes, it's all very well. I know you'd stand by me, and have stood by me in lots of things; but this is a plan which will require the coolness of a cucumber and the courage and calmness of—well, anything you like, to carry it out; and one of your unhandy scruples would just put me off the whole thing, and make me far too nervous to succeed."

"But what do you want to do?"

"I want to outwit Maurice."

"In what way?"

"Well, I'll just tell you this much. Maurice has as good as sworn that he won't let me get a glimpse of those wonderful chess-men he's so ridiculously proud of, and I'm determined that I will see them; and there is the long and the short of the whole thing."

"But—"

"Never mind 'buts;' there are no 'buts' in the affair at all. I'm going to do it, and that's all."

"But, Fred, if they are locked up in Aunt Marian's store-room, how can you?"

"Ay, there's the rub; but since you know so much, I may as well just tell you I can get in and out of that store-room as easily as I could get in and out of Kathleen's room over there."

At this moment Kathleen opened the very door towards which Fred was pointing and walked in. "Were you calling me?" she asked.

"No, no; go back into your own room and dress for dinner. I was only talking to Harry."

"But I am dressed for dinner and you are not, and the gong is just going to sound."

"You don't say so," cried Harry.—"Look at your watch, Fred, and see."

Fred drew out his watch, and found it wanted but six minutes of the dinner-hour; so further conversation had to be indefinitely postponed, and it was with great difficulty the boys accomplished their feat of dressing in six minutes so as to be down in the drawing-room with the rest of the guests before the gong actually sounded.

Fred usually took his place at the end of the dining-room table close to Maurice, who sat at the foot and carved; but to-night the brothers, by a kind of intuition, exchanged places, and Harry took the vacant chair beside his cousin, while Fred sat high up, and comparatively close to his aunt.

Lady Brinsley noticed, with considerable anxiety of mind, the extreme pallor of Fred's face, and the nervous distress which seemed to overpower him so that he ate almost nothing of the various viands which were offered him, and addressed scarcely a word to those around him. However wrong Fred had been, and however dishonourable his conduct might appear, Maurice, she felt, had no right to behave in the way he had done, and to treat his cousin with such harshness; and Lady Brinsley, whose heart was peculiarly susceptible towards boys of Fred's age, felt once again a strong pity rise in her heart for the lad whose unhappiness was too plainly pictured on his face. But as the dinner-time wore on Fred's demeanour changed curiously; and by the time the meal was over, Lady Brinsley observed with surprise a certain look almost of triumph which glowed in Fred's eye, especially when he turned it in Maurice's direction. Nor was the tone of defiance lost upon her when Fred was suddenly called upon to answer some question addressed to him by his cousin, and to which he replied with a confidence and a sangfroid which were in strong contrast with his former nervousness of manner.

The fact was that Lady Brinsley had proposed that the remainder of the evening, which was deliciously soft and balmy, should be devoted to a grand game of "I Spy," among the laurels and thick-growing shrubs of the pleasure-ground; and that the whole party should adjourn outside the Hall after dinner, and have their tea spread afterwards in the tent on the archery ground, with strawberries and cream to refresh themselves after their races and fatigue.

This idea was hailed with unmixed delight by all the party, and by no one with more zeal than Fred, who saw in this suggestion a grand opportunity for carrying out his scheme; for as all the party would be busily employed outside, he could easily seize on a moment to slip away downstairs and invade undisturbed the sacred precincts of the store-room.

But matters did not turn out so propitiously as Fred had imagined. Lady Brinsley, who felt uneasy and restless in her mind both about the boy and the results which might be anticipated from his wounded pride, made it her special charge to look after him, and to see that he was not left out of the game or otherwise coldly treated by Maurice. So Fred, though he watched eagerly for an auspicious moment for flight, had to wait long before the favourable opportunity presented itself.

At last there did come a time when Fred thought he could slip away without notice. Two of the party had gone off to hide as hares in the cover of the far-off evergreens; and Maurice and his mother had gone down to the archery ground to look after the fixing of some pole in the tent, which the butler had brought them word was in rather a shaky condition, and required looking after before the rush of hungry hares into its recesses might bring the whole affair tumbling down about their heads.

Fred now watched his opportunity, and seeing the coast clear, edged slowly off from the group of hounds, which were gathered under a large beech tree, awaiting the shrill whistle from the plantation which would announce that the hares were in safe hiding, and convey also some slight notion as to their whereabouts.

"Where are you going? You are not allowed to leave bounds until the hares are hid," cried several voices as Fred moved out of their ranks.

"Humbug! what harm can I do out here? I can't catch a glimpse of the hiding-ground from this place, and I'm sick of sticking all in a lump under this tree like a swarm of bees."

"It is not fair, for all that," cried the same voices again; "we said we would not go further than this tree."

"I said nothing of the kind; besides, I am tired of the game, and I am going to take a stroll until supper is ready."

"Fred, you are not going really to leave the game?" cried Harry, coming up to him anxiously from under the shadow of the tree. "Do come back,—there's a good fellow; it will be no fun without you." And as Harry spoke he eagerly sought to scan his brother's face, half suspecting he had something more weighty on his mind than a mere stroll about the place.

"Bosh! you'll do twice as well without me," cried Fred, attempting a laugh. But seeing the look in Harry's eyes, he changed his mind, and added in a low voice, "Cannot you take a hint and keep them all quiet there for a few minutes, and draw their attention off me, for I've been watching for this opportunity the whole evening."

"What for?" gasped Harry.

"Why, what I told you before."

"But you did not tell me."

"Well, never mind; the whole thing won't take five minutes, and I'll come back and tell you then."

"O Fred! I know you will get yourself into some awful scrape. Please don't go and do anything rash."

"I tell you I'm in for it now, and, scrape or no scrape, I'll carry it through."

"Would there be less danger if I were to help you?"

"No, no; there is the whistle: if we both went off together, we should only draw suspicion on ourselves. Go, go, I tell you, and hunt with the others; this is the moment of all others for me." And Harry, sorely against his will, went off to search among the evergreens and under the low-growing shrubs for the missing hares, while Fred turned his steps with apparent nonchalance towards the house.

But the moment for success which he had so confidently looked for had not yet come. Just as Fred turned through a low gate in the pleasure-ground leading by a shrubbery walk towards the Hall, he saw Maurice coming round from an opposite path, and also making his way in the direction of the house.

Both the boys caught sight of each other at the same moment, and both paused for an instant, hesitating what course to pursue. Fred was the first to act. He turned deliberately on his heel, and retraced his steps through the dark shrubbery walk; and then Maurice's resolution seemed also taken, for Fred heard hasty steps behind him and some one calling him by his name.

"Fred, Fred! turn back and listen; I want to say something to you."

Fred walked on, his head held proudly in the air, and his ears apparently deaf to Maurice's words.

"Fred, listen to me,—stop; I want awfully to have a few words with you. Don't go on to where the others are, or I can't say them."

But Fred still walked on till he reached the small iron gate, having passed which, he swung it back resolutely in his cousin's face, almost snapping it on his extended hand. Then Maurice halted in his pursuit with a muttered growl of anger and disappointment, and turning also on his heel, he walked gloomily towards the Hall.

Great was Harry's amazement, when rushing in hot pursuit after the discovered hare, to meet Fred walking leisurely back towards the play-ground. He stopped breathless from his chase, and looked with the most painful suspense into his brother's eyes.

"For goodness' sake," cried Fred angrily, "don't stare at me in that horrid way! With your great fishy eyes you look exactly like a boiled haddock."

"But, Fred, have you done it?"

"Of course I knew you were going to ask me that ganderish question. One would think I was a centipede, to be able to reach the house and be back again here in less than five minutes. Don't be a tomfool."

Harry saw the angry light in Fred's eye, and though he sorely longed to know the cause of his brother's speedy return, he feared to ask any further questions; and when Fred turned away a moment afterwards, and made a sudden short cut down one of the terraces towards the archery-ground, Harry gave up all idea of following him or hearing his news, and repaired again to the beech tree on the pleasure-ground, under which the hounds and hares had once more assembled preparatory to a fresh start.

The supper in the tent was, however, announced to be ready, and both parties gave up the chase, and repaired harmoniously together to feed under the same canvas roof.

The table was quite a sight, it was so beautifully and tastefully decorated with fruits, flowers, and variegated leaves. Lady Brinsley and her daughter made the art of table decoration almost a study; and the effects they produced were generally considered to be perfect.

The tempting odour of the ripe fruit lavishly heaped in dishes around the table was most agreeable to the noses of the hounds, who crowded pell-mell into the tent; and as each plate and chair was labelled with the name of its owner, there was no difficulty or confusion in finding room at the table. Fred was surprised, on taking his seat, to find not only his plate labelled with his own name, but also a very pretty French bon-bon box, beneath whose fretted paper coverings could be seen peeping out the most delicious preserved fruits and sweetmeats.

He looked hastily up at his aunt, and scanned her face curiously, to see if this unexpected gift had come from her. But no: when their eyes met, it there was any peculiar expression visible there, it was one of grave, almost distressed anxiety; and Fred relapsed into a miserable state of mind, which had of late become a constant habit with him.

Once he glanced at Maurice, as a quick, uneasy question, flashed through his mind; but the moment Maurice met his gaze, his cheek flushed, and his eyes hastily sought his plate: so Fred, whose heart was just now wound up to the pitch when tears were very close, sought no further to disentangle the riddle. But his pride would not permit him to appropriate the gift; and when supper was over, he rose from the table with a swelling heart, and, with his head still held proudly in the air, he left the tent, and wandered about the grounds until the gong sounded for evening prayers, after which all the guests dispersed to their respective apartments.

Harry, however, had watched Fred's exit from the tent with anxious eyes: for he knew well, from the compressed muscles of his mouth, the effort made to hide the tell-tale quivering of the lips, and the fixed, stony look in the eye which held back the rising tears; and, had he dared, he would have followed his brother out into the shadows of the sycamore alley, and away down the darker paths of the pine plantation, where once before Fred had sobbed out the burden of his guilt; but he knew that to follow Fred in his present mood could only serve to aggravate his temper, so he waited patiently for his return, hoping that in the solitude of his ramble his vexation might have time to cool down, and his project, whatever it might have been, might be temporarily relinquished.

When they all assembled in the Hall for prayers, Fred made his appearance in the house, and took his usual seat; but his face was perfectly impassive, and, save for the extreme pallor of his cheeks and the red circles round his eyes, Harry could not have suspected that any unusual disturbance had been at work within him.

When they went up to bed, Harry made one or two feeble efforts to draw the conversation into the channels of thought which were occupying his own attention so much. But Fred was moody and reserved, and only answered in monosyllables, not vouchsafing even a hint whether he had relinquished his project or was still intent on carrying it into execution.

So Harry was fain to relapse into silence also; and being very tired from all the racing after the hares and all the previous anxiety of the day, he was glad to hurry into bed and try to forget in sleep all the anxieties and worries which were oppressing him.

He had scarcely placed his head on the pillow ere the sleep he had so eagerly sought began to overpower him; and his mind had already wandered off into a strange dreamland, when some one shook him rather roughly by the shoulder, and Fred in a hoarse whisper exclaimed, "Harry, confound you, can't you wake up? What on earth have you done with the matches? I have been hunting for them all over the room, and can't find them."

"Matches! Why—why—oh yes; of course they are hiding behind the bee-hives," gasped Harry, whose imagination was once more busily engaged in chasing the hares.

"Behind the bee-hives! What on earth are you talking about, you gabby?"

"I—I'm positive I saw them there."

"Where, you jackass?"

"In between the garden wall and the water-butt."

"For goodness' sake wake up, Harry, and tell me where are the matches!"

"The matches! Why, what do you want them for?" and Harry, sitting up in his bed, rubbed his eyes furiously, and then stared in blank wonder at his brother, who, with a lighted candle in his hand, stood by the bedside, still dressed in his evening clothes, and with a face as white as the white paper on the wall behind him.

"Fred, why on earth aren't you in bed? What is it you want?"

"The matches, you ass."

"Matches! I don't think there are any in the room; I used the last one in the box this morning."

"What on earth did you do that for?"

"To seal up a parcel of garden seeds for mother."

"It's just like you. Where is the box, and let me see if there ain't another to be found in it?"

"The box is in the drawer of my washing-stand; but there is no use at all looking into it; you'll find nothing there but a nice little toad I picked up in a ditch this morning, and which I'm keeping to tease Mother Duffy with."

"I never knew any one like you," grumbled Fred savagely as he turned away from the bed; "as sure as ever a fellow wants a thing, you are certain to have been beforehand with him; and if I make a mull of the whole thing now, it will be your fault."

"Perhaps there are matches in Kathleen's room."

"Pooh, I've no notion of bringing the house down about my ears by rousing up everybody in it. Just you go to sleep and mind your own business."

"I can't go to sleep when I know you are going to do some awfully risky thing."

"Risky, my dear fellow! the only risk there can be about it, is the danger of the candle going out. If I were to stumble in the dark and come a cropper on my head, ten to one but the house might be roused, and then I might shut up shop, and no mistake."

"But what's the use of making such a dangerous experiment? what can you gain even if you do succeed?"

"I can gain my point, and that's about as much to me just now as—as anything you need care to mention. But if you are so chicken-hearted as not to take any interest in the matter, tuck your little head under your little wing and go to sleep."

"Fred, you know it's only for your sake."

"Gammon,—my sake! go to sleep, I tell you."

"Remember if you do come to grief it's no fault of mine," cried Harry, hoarsely, as he rolled himself round in the blankets, and turned his face towards the wall.

"All serene; and if I don't come to grief, all the honour and glory will be mine. And now, as I said before, you'd better shut up and go to sleep as fast as you can; for until I know that every living soul in the house is as sound as a top, I'll not budge one foot from the place."

So Harry, thus admonished, lay perfectly still; though had Fred leaned over his brother's bed, he might have heard his teeth chattering together in his head, and the loud throbbings of his heart, which the dangerous project about to be carried out had excited to no common degree.

But as it was, Fred's own heart beat so loud, and his teeth chattered to such an unusual extent, it never occurred to him to think that another person could be suffering the same pangs of uneasiness as himself. Once or twice he had almost relinquished his perilous undertaking; for as the night wore on, and a great stillness took possession of the Hall, familiar objects assumed such strange and goblin-like shapes, that a more courageous nature than Fred's might well have been deterred from venturing amongst them. But Fred had a curiously tenacious spirit, and a project once undertaken and thought over, and, above all, boasted of to his friends, he would go through fire and water to carry out; and his pride rose up stronger than all the ghosts and goblins in the world, to strengthen him against weakly, or at least as he thought weakly, yielding to the promptings of a childish and puerile fear.

As the clock therefore struck one, and perfect silence reigned, Fred opened his door and stole quietly out on the broad landing. The hall, which lay beneath, and into which he could peer by leaning over the banisters, was perhaps the most ghostly spot in the whole place to visit at such a time: for as Fred held the light of his one solitary candle over the dark gulf beneath, shadowy figures, draped in white, seemed to be gathered in the space below; some robed in sheets, with drooping heads and disconsolate figures; and others with white arms stretched imploringly out into the surrounding gloom. These figures gave a terribly spectral appearance to the hall, and sent another thrill of uncertainty and irresolution through the brain of our unfortunate hero.

"Pooh, what folly; had not he often walked about in that very hall, and touched those very statues with his hands, which now looked so unearthly and goblin like? There was no real difference between walking among them in the night or the day; and if he gave way to such humbugging fancies, he might as well give up the whole plan."

Thus Fred reasoned with himself, and did battle with his fears, just as if they were the voices of opposing friends who sought to put him off from his project; and in his vexation with himself, he almost spoke aloud, and gripped the top of the banisters defiantly, as if they too had tried to balk his fancy.

"If only he had some matches,"—this was the great weight on his mind; for if the candle went out in some unexpected draught from some dark and winding passage, what was he to do? While he deliberated thus, he remembered having seen, in the inside hall, a box fixed against the wall for the convenience of those who wished to light their bed-candles downstairs: and this thought comforted him not a little, and encouraged him at least to descend so far as the inner room; for even were he to be discovered, no exception could be taken to his making a raid from his own room in search of matches, none being to be had upstairs.

So leaving the door of his own apartment slightly ajar, that he might the more speedily and noiselessly re-enter it, he slowly and cautiously crept down the first flight of stairs, having previously taken off his slippers, that no sound of a footfall might rouse any of the more wakeful inhabitants of the house.

As he placed his foot on the last step of the first flight, he heard a sound as of some one stirring in the passage above, and with much greater haste than he had hitherto used, he descended the remaining flights, till he found himself at the foot of the main staircase of the Hall, and in the immediate vicinity of two grim warriors in rusty armour, who, each with a halberd in his gloved hand, kept watch at either side of the ascent. Indeed, so nervous was Fred that he forgot the existence of these mail-clad giants altogether, and turning hastily round the corner, he came against one of them with such force that it swayed ominously to and fro on its wooden stand, and finally dropped the halberd from its hand! For one instant Fred thought that all was lost; that the noise of the falling weapon resounding through the hall must alarm the whole household; but happily for him, instead of tumbling on the polished oaken floor of the hall, it fell into the soft flaxen mat at the foot of the staircase, and except for a slight clinking of metal, and a dull sound just as it reached the floor, nothing followed to betray the presence of a midnight intruder.

Had Fred raised his head at this moment and looked above him, to see from whence the noise which had first startled him had proceeded, he would indeed have seen a ghostly visage looking at him, with ashy face and large eyes full of an almost unearthly anxiety; but as it was, he hurried blindly on into the inner hall, that, if pursued, he might be found in the vicinity of the match-box, whose contents, he might truthfully say, he wished to rifle.

The flame of the candle flickered horribly.

But no further sound as of pursuers reached his ears, and having snatched a handful of matches out of the tin box as he passed on, he proceeded with more courageous steps towards the back passages of the house, from whence the staircase descended to the lower regions and subterraneous quarters, in close contiguity to which stood the store-room, within whose walls and upon whose shelves lay the box marked "Fragile."

The stillness of a large house at dead of night has something at all times very oppressive in it, but more especially when the intruder on this silence is in a highly wrought state of nerves, and acutely watchful of any sound which may arise to alarm him, or interfere with the project he has in hand.

Fred felt this oppression to a painful degree as he passed out of ear-shot of the great pendulum in the main hall, whose loud ticking might be heard over the greater part of the house; but the passages into which he must turn his steps, in order to reach the store-room, were in a wing all to themselves, and separated from the main building by walls thick and massive enough to deaden even a more penetrating sound than the metallic click, click of the old time-piece.

Even the wind, which all night long had kept up a monotonous wail round the Hall, did not seem to make itself heard in those dark and out-of-the-way lobbies; and the chirp, chirp of the cricket, which Fred detested so much to hear in his own home, would have been a welcome intrusion now on the overpowering feeling of utter loneliness and isolation.

Had Fred not made himself master of a whole handful of matches, his fears at this moment would have been almost enough to have conquered every other feeling; for at each turn of the way the flame of the candle flickered horribly, sometimes dying out to a thin blue line and then reviving again as the unseen draught was left behind, and making Fred's heart suddenly leap up into his throat with each fresh terror, leaving him more and more unfit to cope with the dangerous task which he had undertaken.

It was a green baize door leading into the further-most passage of all which first brought him to a complete standstill, and made him actually shudder with disgust and horror at the thought of having to pass through its tightly closed portals.

For as Fred stretched forth his hand to push it inwards on its spring, and in so doing brought his candle close to its nail-dotted covering, he beheld the whole surface of the baize one moving mass of black and horny animals; some creeping rapidly to and fro with shining spiky legs; and others, with huge demon-like horns and palpitating antennae, slowly and leisurely inspecting the green woollen fabric on which they had taken up a temporary position.

"What diabolical monsters! how on earth can anybody face such a host of dirty black brutes!" muttered Fred between his teeth, as he lowered the candle sufficiently to see that the whole ground at his feet was in possession of the same uncanny creatures, and that one monster with great stag-like horns was already in occupation of the toe part of his stocking.

Fred uttered a faint scream, and shook his foot to and fro, hoping to dislodge the enemy, but all in vain; its black claws were fastened firmly into the wool, and until he struck it two or three times with the edge of the silver candlestick, he did not succeed in ridding himself of his enemy.

In despair he now pushed his way through the door, only to find the passage beyond in possession of the same hideous invaders; so he determinedly closed his eyes and hurried forward, every now and then shuddering from head to foot as he felt himself crushing down some horny and unpleasant substance. Nor did he venture to look around him until he had arrived at the head of the private flight of stairs leading immediately from his aunt's own boudoir to the store-room beneath; but at the foot of which also lay certain ghostly subterranean passages with their iron-clamped doors, and dark and dismal surroundings.

This was the moment which, from the beginning, Fred had dreaded the most: for even in the daylight he had felt a certain amount of nervousness in penetrating any distance into these underground places, and especially since one of the grooms had told him of a white figure which might be seen there occasionally at night time, wandering about dim and ghostly, with its right hand mournfully extended as if in search of some one or something it had lost; and an access of almost childish terror overpowered Fred as he felt he must now either encounter these supernatural horrors quite alone and unprotected, or retire from a certain victory just at the moment when its fulfilment was actually within his reach.

But at this juncture the mocking face and voice of Maurice came so vividly before his mind, that he felt quite a new and sudden rush of courage; and the desire to be equal with the boy who had kicked him so ignominiously aside in the store-room beneath, made for the moment every other feeling but that of revenge sink into utter nothingness; and shading the flame of the candle carefully with his hand so as to secure its light in this most dreary and darksome region, he descended cautiously step by step until he stood at the foot of the stone flight, within a few paces of which was the goal of all his hopes.

He resolutely determined not to look around him until he should reach the door of the store-room, so as not to conjure up imaginary terrors; and turning round at the foot of the stairs, in another moment he stood in front of the panelling, from which, in the bright light of the candle, he could already see the ends of the cord depending through the slits in the store-room wall.

At first, in his nervous haste, Fred tugged at the wrong strings, and thus only succeeded in riveting the bolts tighter, and for a few minutes his distress of mind and disappointment were so great, that beads of perspiration started out upon his forehead, and his knees bent and trembled beneath him.

Almost in despair, and without realizing that his failure was all owing to his own mistake, Fred seized one of the other cords and chucked it violently, the result of which proved almost as terrifying in its own way; for the bolt, thus suddenly appealed to, started back from its socket with such a noisy screech that Fred leaped back against the wall and thrust his fingers into his ears, with some foolish thought that, in doing this, he would deaden the ears of the rest of the world as well. For a few minutes he waited and watched anxiously to see if any one had been roused by the noise, holding the flame of the candle close to his lips, so as to blow it out at a moment's warning, and so shroud himself in the security of darkness; but no movement or stir of any kind followed, and, somewhat reassured, Fred set to work with more caution to loosen the companion bolt at the foot of the secret door.

Fortunately for him it glided from its socket freely, without even the grating sound which might have been anticipated, for the grease which had been applied in the afternoon had done its work most effectually; and Fred, with a joy not unmixed with fear, saw the slit in the panel open yawningly before him, revealing sundry ghostly shapes within, the exact outlines of which it was impossible for him as yet to distinguish by the one dim and flickering light which trembled in his guilty hand.

To enter by this secret door, Fred had to stand on a low broad step in the passage outside; a fact which he had not noticed in the haste and flurry of the previous evening, and on which if he had paused now to reason, he might have saved himself from the disaster which almost immediately followed.

But full of eagerness to gain his object, and yet more desirous of regaining the peace and security of his own room, Fred stooped low down, and holding the light in front of him, entered in a cat-like, stealthy manner, by the half open door.

His first sensation, which, unhappily for him, was of short duration, was that of treading on some soft and peculiarly yielding substance, first with one foot and then with the other; and a most unpleasant sensation it was, as of something adhesive and horribly clammy sticking to the soles of his stockings, and he hastened to extricate himself from his position as quickly as he could, to do which he stepped forward boldly with the lighted candle in his hand.

Too boldly, alas, for him, as, forgetful that the inner step or shelf on which he had entered was higher by many inches than the ground, he fell headlong on the floor, extinguishing the candle in his fall and scattering the matches in hopeless confusion over jars, and shelves, and jam-pots, emitting at the same time a loud yell of terror, enough in itself to alarm all the people both within and without the building, and to apprise them of his whereabouts.

For a few moments all was darkness, confusion, and misery; and Fred, in a wild kind of hopelessness, tried to force himself to believe that it was all a dream of horror, from which he would awake presently, and rejoice in the knowledge of his safety. But no such relief came to him; and presently, with a sinking heart, he began to free himself from the cramped position in which he lay, when, to his inexpressible disgust, he found it was a dish of honey into which he had stepped a moment before, for his stockings and the legs of his trousers were sticky and clammy to a pitiable degree. And to add to his discomfiture, as he stood in the dark, and strove to wipe off with his handkerchief some of the adhesive stuff, a half-dead bee (the honey having been taken from the hive only that afternoon) stung him in the arm, and forced him to stamp on the floor with rage and vexation.

Fred's one idea now was to find a match somewhere, and strike a light; the darkness in itself was intolerable. What if he were to see the figure, clothed all in ghostly white, come down the passage now in search of its lost companion! A shudder passed over him at the bare idea.

It would be too disappointing if he had to return without having gained the object for which he had risked so much. His scream had, fortunately, not aroused any of the inmates of the house: it would be well to make one last and decisive effort to carry out his scheme; and Fred, rubbing his elbows, which had suffered severely in the fall, searched over the ground for the candlestick, which had fallen from his hand.

But the candlestick had rolled off behind a chest of tea; and when at length, after much stooping and groping, he had found it, the candle itself was missing, having been jerked forward in quite an opposite direction.

This new search lasted fully five minutes, for the candle had got wedged between a box of raisins and the back of a shelf; and when at last he actually had it in his hand, it was broken quite in two, and refused to sit up straight in the candlestick.

But the greatest disappointment was yet to come; for now that the candle was found, and so little remained between him and the accomplishment of his object, the matches, dozens of which he discovered lying upon the floor at his feet, all positively refused to light! He struck them against the wall, the door, the shelves; all in vain. He stamped on them, he kicked them, he called them by every bad name in his calendar of epithets; but in vain. The matches only lighted on their own box; and Fred, forgetful once more of the dish of honey, actually sat down on the step in the store-room and cried—cried with sheer mortification and disappointment—while in the pauses of his grief he still hurled at Messrs. Bryant and May all the furious expletives of which he was master. How was he ever to get back again to his own room! It would be impossible without a light to find his way through the intricate passages of the Hall, to say nothing of the black and horny beasts which had possession of those silent corridors. There was, alas! no help, no refuge from this misfortune; unless, indeed, he chose to wait patiently where he was till the early morning light should come to his aid. But oh what an insufferable time to spend all alone in this dungeon of a store-room! a place Fred now wished with all his heart he had never seen or heard of.

His grief and utter misery became every moment more and more overwhelming: the loneliness and silence of the place sent cold shivers chasing each other down his back, while the hideous darkness of all around and about him was almost beyond the strength of mind, and endurance of body of a lad of his age.

At length he was driven most unwillingly to the conclusion that his only chance of safety or success lay in patiently abiding in this den of horrors until the first gray of the dawning should yield him sufficient light to effect his escape; and having thus decided, Fred, still unconsciously seated on a dish of honey, closed his eyes tightly, and thrust his fingers into his ears, that no ghostly apparition might startle him, nor sounds of supernatural footsteps moving about and around him might rob him of the small stock of self-command and courage which still existed within his breast.

How long he sat thus he did not know, or whether kindly sleep came to his aid for a few minutes; but when next he uncovered his eyes, although at first all seemed as dark as ever, he gradually became aware that dawn was on the approach, for the closely-barred grating which looked out on the passage began to make itself visible, though after a horribly dread and mysterious fashion, giving to the newly awakened eyes within the impression of some dim. far-off dungeon window, and raising a thousand new and strange thoughts within the over-tired and over-excited brain of the unfortunate self-made prisoner.

Slowly, very slowly, however, other objects began to shape themselves out of the darkness—the shelves, the sacks, the chests, the white jam-pots. Fred gazed and gazed, till, with the very force of gazing, he conjured up strange shapes out of the surrounding gloom. But what was that tall object standing by the back row of shelves? Fred leaned forward and looked so intently that small sparks of fire seemed to pass over the surface of his eyeballs. It was horribly like the height and figure of a man—the figure of some one dressed in white, and standing in silent guard beside the long row of shelves!

Fred actually felt his hair rise up on end on his head, and, with one hand pressed on the step on which he sat, he rose to fly—ay, cowardly as the act might appear, Fred's one thought now was of flight. But to effect his escape by the door, he must climb upon the step where he had been seated; and this was awkward, for the ceiling was low, and in order to mount he must move a step or so nearer the white and motionless figure which so filled his heart with fear.

He stealthily stretched out one foot, and then cautiously advanced the other; but with all his care he could not escape contact. His heel touched the draped outline of the figure, and as it did so, to his intense horror and surprise the white robes in which it had been enveloped instantly glided from the body and fell upon the floor.

Another piercing scream rang through the Hall, only to be cut short by a quick gasp of relief, as Fred, with the cold sweat on his forehead, recognized the skeleton form of the ladder on which his cousin Maurice had remained perched for so many hours the day before; while the white garments which had filled him with such awe were none other than the folds of the long pantry-apron which Maurice had tied round his neck whilst assisting in the store-room.

Fred did not know he had screamed. The instantaneous change from intense fear to a calm comprehension of his surroundings had so taken up all his thoughts as to render him unaware that he had again risked discovery; and now with the remembrance of Maurice had come back the hot sting of anger and the desire for revenge. Ay, and he would have it too. It was not for nothing he had gone through such a terrible night; it was within his grasp now, and all the world should not prevent him from tasting the pleasure of so complete a victory.

As these thoughts kindled furiously, and fanned themselves into a blaze in Fred's mind, he actually made a movement forward, and laid his hands on the still indistinct rungs of the ladder. All was still so dark and shadowy he could not distinguish the box which he had sworn to rifle, or rather into whose depths he was determined to investigate, and the word "Fragile" was as yet invisible to his eye: but time was precious, and the servants in the Hall were early risers; who could tell that, although so gloomy and obscure in these underground regions, sunlight might not be shining in the windows above, and that the house was already alive with busy workers.

These reflections decided Fred upon immediate action. He did not delay a moment, but laid a hand on each side of the ladder, which tottered not a little as he moved it from its first position and placed it more towards the centre of the wall, and pressing at the same time its topmost rung against the highest range of shelves.

The ladder was by no means a very steady one, especially as its left foot stood on the ball of string which had played such an important part in the drama of the evening before; but Fred knew nothing of this, and went very cautiously to work, so as not to overbalance himself, and perhaps come to some fresh grief.

It was even yet so dark that though Fred knew he must be within a few inches of the shelf on which the chess-box stood, he could not trace the form nor even the faintest outline of any of the packages which he remembered the night before to have noticed in close proximity to the coveted case. So, still poised on the top rung but one of the ladder, Fred stared with all his might straight before him, hoping by the dint of earnest looking to see the word "Fragile" rise up out of the darkness and greet his eyes with the glad promise of success.

And suddenly, as if by magic, and almost as it seemed to him as if a fairy's wand had touched the space before him, the shelf grew curiously and unexpectedly luminous, and the long-watched-for chess-box started out of the gloom actually in front of him, and within a couple of inches of the place where his right hand was resting!

A sudden shaft of daylight had found its way down the obscure passage; at least so Fred surmised, for he dared not turn round on the ladder to look, and now or never was the moment to carry out his project. He loosened his grip of the ladder, and stretched out his right hand to the chest. In order to secure it, he had to put his arm quite round it and draw it nearer to him, for he durst not let go of the ladder with his other hand lest he might fall headlong from his perch. But the box was much heavier than he had anticipated; and having drawn it over towards the edge of the shelf, he leaned one side of it against his chest, and still clasping it with his right hand prepared for his descent; for it would be impossible to look into its contents poised so insecurely on the ladder, and when once carefully examined, in the security of the room beneath, he could replace it in its original position.

But how was this? The whole room was becoming strangely bright; even the printed labels on the sauce bottles and mustard-tins on the shelves in front of him were becoming startlingly visible; neither could it be the pale gray of dawn which was creeping in through the window, but a yellow, tremulous light. He must turn his head a little to see what it all could mean, and not allow a sudden and terrible panic to overpower him and snatch away his victory just in the moment of triumph.

And Fred did turn his head, while the blood rushed in a sickening speed back upon his heart; for it was not daylight which was outside yonder in the passage, but a flickering, advancing flame, which was throwing shadows over the passage-wall, and casting into profound darkness the nooks and angles where a faint dawn had only a moment before been busy chasing the gloom away.

If only his heart would not thump so, then he could listen for footsteps. Hark! yes, there were footsteps, he could hear them now; stealthy, creeping footsteps, drawing nearer and nearer. If he could only reach the bottom of the ladder and lie down on the ground, no one could see him; but poised as he was in mid-air, the next turn of the passage, and his figure must be revealed to the eyes of the intruders outside.

Only for this miserable box marked "Fragile," he could slide down the ladder in a trice; but now, unless he let it fall purposely from his grasp, he must go down carefully and cautiously to the very ground. If he could but know who and what they were that were approaching; robbers perhaps, or some one startled by the noise of his fall, and seeking through the Hall for its cause—or, or could it be—

The rungs of the ladder trembled under Fred's terrified steps, and the wood creaked ominously. "Hush! good heavens, what was that?" Fred's eyeballs almost leaped from their sockets, and he grasped the sides of the ladder more firmly as a flutter of some white drapery showed itself for a moment in the passage beyond.

"It is the ghost," gasped Fred, while the suspense which had thrilled every fibre of his body up till now turned to a cold and deadly faintness. "I—I saw—saw—" Fred felt his hand relaxing on the chest and the sudden sway of the ladder, and in the agony of this new terror he gave a quick short cry of fear.

At this moment a white-clothed figure with a light in its hand appeared distinctly at the end of the passage; and Fred, with a consciousness that the ladder was swinging completely round, and that the chest marked "Fragile" was gliding from his hand, felt or knew nothing more, save one sharp sting of pain behind his ear, and then all was darkness about and around him, without either the light of dawn or of candle to break its obscurity and silence.

When Fred came back to himself again after he had, as it seemed to him, gone through ages of time, and lived in scenes and places remotely apart from his present uncomfortable position, he found himself lying on some cold flagging oil-cloth in a dimly lighted passage, with his head supported on some one's knees, and two eager, anxious eyes, glaring into his face with a scrutiny which, though it was awestruck and terrified, yet had no threatening or sinister expression.

"Fred, Fred, old fellow, are you better? do say you're better," cried a voice whose anxious tones corresponded with the anxious gaze above him; but the dizziness was so great and the faintness so oppressive, Fred could not respond, and closed his eyes again with a shuddering sigh.

"I do believe he's off again; what are we to do? I say, Kathleen, has that place stopped bleeding yet?"

"Not quite," replied a very sorrowful voice behind his head; and then Fred felt that some one was stanching a wound behind his ear with a handkerchief.

"If he does not come round soon, we must rouse up some one or other: it's awful having him here, perhaps dying, all by ourselves in the middle of the night;" and Fred heard distinctly the dry sob which finished this hopeless remark.

"Wait a minute," he managed to say, while he tried to raise his head a little from his sister's knee. "If you give me time I shall be all right." A fearful remembrance was beginning to dawn on his mind, and a rising sense of jeopardy and danger close at hand. He moaned aloud.

"There, then, don't hurry, and you'll soon be all right, old man. There is no good trying to sit up until you are able, so lie still a bit longer."

"But we shall have the whole place about our ears if we don't hurry?" and Fred looked up inquiringly at his brother.

"Not a fear of it; it is only four o'clock, and there won't be a soul stirring for another hour and a half."

Then Fred drew a deep sigh and closed his eyes, lying back heavily on his sister's arm till they thought he had almost fallen asleep; but by-and-by he asked, in a tremulous, anxious voice, "Harry, I suppose I made an awful smash of it."

"Of what?"

"Of the chess-box and everything."

"To tell you the truth I don't know, for I just hauled you out the best way I could; and precious hard work it was too, to get you over that brutal shelf, and the whole place a mess of honey and bees-wax."

"Did you close the door after you even?"

"How could I, when I had you in my arms?"

"And you left it standing wide open for every one to know what has happened!" and Fred covered his face with his hands in the misery of his recollections.

"It's not too late to shut it now, if that's all you want," said Harry, leaping to his feet.

"And cut off the ends of the string while you are about it, like a good fellow," moaned Fred.

"What string?"

"The string fastened to the bolts."

"I have not a notion what you mean; but I suppose I shall find out." And Harry soon disappeared round the corner of the passage which led to the store-room door.

He was a long time away, and when he came back Fred was sitting up and watching for him anxiously.

"There!" he cried, tossing three or four ends of cord on his brother's knees. "It took me a good ten minutes to gnaw these ruffians across. If they were the ropes of a four-master, they could not be tougher or harder to break."

"Did you chink the bolts back again into their place?" asked Fred uneasily.

"Ay did I; and one fellow squeaked like blue murder. But I say, Fred, if you are all right now, we had better peg on, for I thought I heard a stir in the lower regions, and the place will soon be alive with housemaids and besoms."

Thus admonished, Fred rose from the ground, and with the assistance of Harry and Kathleen stood straight up on his feet.

"How do you feel now?"

"Just a little shaky in the upper story. But never mind; once I am in bed I shall be all right."

Harry blew out his candle, as the dawn was now on the increase; and the three slowly and cautiously made their way along passages and through doorways, until at last they stood in the main hall, with its statues and grim warriors keeping guard at the foot of the staircase. Fred's knees were shaking beneath him, and his heart sickened at the sight of the numerous steps before him.

"Gather up all your courage, and you'll be there before you know where you are," whispered Harry, whose brotherly eyes read every thought of Fred's heart.

"I know I wish I never had come down them," murmured Fred despondingly; and, leaning heavily on the supporting arms held out to him, he wearily plodded on to the top, when, with one more almost despairing effort, he staggered forward to the door of his own room, which Harry pushed open, and Fred, stretching out his hand in the gloom of the closely darkened room, sank helplessly on the nearest chair, with closed eyes and a gray pallor spreading over all his face.

"Safe at last!" gasped Harry, as he felt his way over to the window, and turned back one leaf of the shutter to admit some light. "But oh what an awful night it has been! I would not go through it again for twenty pounds!"

"Yes; and what will happen to us to-morrow, when Aunt Marian finds it all out?" continued Kathleen, in a dolorous whisper—

"For goodness' sake, do stop talking!" cried Fred piteously. "Don't you see how miserable I am already! Could not you lend me an arm one of you to help me into bed?"

Harry instantly came forward and gave his brother his arm, assisting him across the room, and laying him down tenderly in the bed, where he covered him up with the clothes; and having examined the wound behind his ear, to see that it was no longer bleeding, he moved quietly away.

"Kathleen, go to your bed now," he said, turning round to his sister, who stood trembling in her night-dress and bare feet in the centre of the room. "I am afraid you will have caught your death of cold in these passages. Roll yourself up as warmly as you can in the blankets, and the first person I hear stirring in the house I'll send and get you a hot cup of tea."

Kathleen lingered, however, a few minutes, just to see that Fred was all right, and settling comfortably for sleep; and as there was no movement, and his breathing sounded tolerably easy and regular, she presently turned away, and with a glance cast towards Harry, expressive of the most gloomy forebodings, she opened the door of her own room and retired to bed.

Harry, however, could not think of rest: he drew his chair over beside the open shutter, and looked out over the parterre beneath, with its still sleeping flowers, on to the gray and drowsy world beyond.

Even the crows in the rookery were not stirring yet; only the sentinels on the outermost branches gave an occasional "caw," and flapped their black wings ominously.

But the daylight was close at hand, for all that; and he had not sat there long before the sun rose up behind the hills, and with it the whole face of nature grew bright and beautiful. The birds began to sing vigorously, and the gloom and mystery of the twilight disappeared.

Yet somehow this glow and cheerful sunlight brought no comfort to Harry's mind. On the contrary, in exact proportion to the increased glory and beauty of the outside world the darkness and despair of his heart deepened, and the consequences of the last night's adventure assumed every moment more terrible proportions.

Oh what a jolly time they might have had if things had not gone wrong! How beautiful and grand and splendid a place it was, with its gardens, and fountains, and woods, and gymnasium, and every pleasure that could be thought of! And Harry's eyes roamed over all the demesne with an overpowering melancholy, as he thought of the leave-taking which his heart told him only too surely was close at hand.

And how had all this misery come about, which for the last few days had been hedging them in closer and closer, round and round, and which now seemed to hide out all that was peaceful and bright. It was a subject for deep thought and consideration, and the disentangling of all the wretchedness of the last few days was by no means an agreeable or lively task; and Harry's sighs followed so quickly and unconsciously one upon the other, that at length there was a stir in the far-off bed, and Fred cried out in a voice of anguish,—

"Harry, do stop groaning and sighing over there at the window! If you were as miserable as I am, you might sigh till your heart burst, and it would do you no good in the end."

"You cannot be more miserable than I am," said Harry quickly, while he bent his head down upon his folded arm on the window-sill.

"Why, what have you to be unhappy about, I'd like to know? You have done nothing wrong: you have not got into a single row since you came into the house, while I have been plunging out of one only to fall into another twice as bad. I'd give all I have in the world this moment to be safe at home, and awake in the morning and find the whole thing had been a beastly nightmare. If mother had been here, that's all: but there is no use in thinking of 'ifs;' only what a difference it would have made! And yet," added Fred; and then followed a long pause, during which time his face grew unusually grave and thoughtful, and undeniable tears came up into his eyes.

"And yet what?" asked Harry timidly, for Fred did not always like having his thoughts "fished up into the light," as he called it; but this time he only stretched out his arms kindly towards his brother, and said in a softened voice:—

"I remember when I was first revelling in the thought of coming here and staying with Aunt Marian, I thought nearly the best of the whole thing, if not quite, was, that neither father nor mother would be with us, and that we should be able to have everything and to do everything just as we liked ourselves; and now I feel exactly the opposite way. If you only knew the longing I have this moment—the actually cruel longing—for mother to come and sit beside my bed, you'd pity me. I fell asleep a moment ago, just for a second, and dreamt she was going over my Delectus with me outside in the dear old verandah at home; and when I awoke, and saw the corner of the wall paper beside my bed, and knew I was here instead of with her, I actually writhed under the clothes with misery and wretchedness." And as he spoke, Fred threw himself suddenly back in the bed, and covered up his head with the clothes, and Harry could see by the heaving of the counterpane that once more his brother was seeking in his despair to smother down the grief which oppressed him.

At length the time came when it was necessary to think of washing and dressing. The footman came in with hot water, and carried down their clothes to be brushed; nor did Harry discover that he was still partially dressed in his evening costume until John asked him politely if he would not like his black trousers to be taken down to be cleaned. And then he remembered with a start of horror how he had drawn on the first pair that came to his hand the night before; and now, as he gave them up into the man's keeping, he felt convinced that soon the whole affair would be known and talked of downstairs, and that these very garments, which he so reluctantly yielded, would become, as it were, proofs of his complicity. It was impossible, however, to defer the ordeal of breakfast and prayers; and he slowly began to draw on his stockings and clothes, wondering all the time whether he ought to rouse Fred, who seemed to have fallen asleep, or at least to be in a more composed and tranquil frame of mind.

Fred, however, needed no reminder of the hour. It was only a question of sickness and faintness which had kept him so still and silent; and now that this was beginning to pass off he slowly raised himself up in his bed, and began with evident effort to look matters in the face, and make up his mind what course of conduct he ought to pursue.

"Harry, throw me over one of my suspenders,—there's a good fellow," he said presently. "I must get up and dress and go down and face them all, or they'd be suspecting something, and getting wind of the whole affair before I've had time to think the matter out, and settle what's best to be done. My own idea is, that the moment breakfast is over I'll just cut and run and make the best of my way home somehow. I don't care how, so as I can bolt before the thing is discovered, and my name turned into a laughing-stock for the amusement of the company at large."

"Fred, you are only humbugging; you would not really do such a cowardly thing."

"Cowardly! how do you mean? It's not a bit cowardly. I just ask you, now, is a fellow supposed to sit down quietly on a barrel of gunpowder and wait till it explodes? Nonsense; of course not. 'He who fights and runs away, will live to fight another day;' and on that principle I shall certainly cut and run. But oh, I say, Harry, shove us over a chair; I'm so dead sick I cannot stand. Ugh!" and Fred sank down on the top of a portmanteau and closed his eyes, while the deadly paleness crept again over his face.

At this moment there was a knock at the bedroom door, and Harry, scarcely conscious of what he was saying or doing, so engrossed was he by Fred's sudden faintness, cried out, "Come in." The door accordingly opened, and Maurice walked in.

"Well, Fred, old fellow," he cried heartily, "I just came to look after you, as I heard from John you weren't quite the thing—but—;" here Maurice stood quite still in the centre of the room, aghast at the pallor of Fred's face, and the evident distress and anxiety depicted in his cousin's countenance. "Good gracious, Fred, what's the matter with you? you do look ill, and no mistake."

"It's nothing, nothing in the least to signify," cried Fred nervously, and waving back his cousin. "I don't want anything, I assure you: please go downstairs and never mind me; I'll follow presently."

"Nonsense, man, you must not think of coming downstairs when you're so ill; get back into bed, and I'll bring you up a cup of coffee. Do, that's a good fellow; indeed, you are not well enough to be up and going about."

"Yes, do go back to bed," urged Harry. "You know you are as faint as ever you can be; and even if you did make your way downstairs, you would have to come up again."

Thus urged, and feeling himself too miserable to argue, Fred consented to return to the bed; but he utterly refused to lean on Maurice's extended arm, not through pride or vexation, but because he feared Maurice might see the wound behind his ear, and question him about it.

"I say, what a smell of honey there is everywhere," observed Maurice, as he stood by the chair on which Fred had cast his socks. "I have noticed it over the whole place ever since I got up this morning."

No one replied to this remark. Harry was assisting Fred into bed, and pale as was Fred's face, it was well for him it was turned towards the wall, or the shudder caused by a sudden renewal of his fears must have been apparent even to his unsuspecting cousin.

The gong for prayers happily sounding at this moment came to the relief of all parties, and Harry, with many promises of a speedy return, left the room in company with Maurice, who, not understanding the restraint and gravity of his cousin's manner, felt uneasy and constrained.

As they went down the broad staircase, Maurice once more spoke about the strong odour of honey through the hall and along the passages, and expressed some curiosity and surprise about the matter; but even these apparently innocent remarks seemed unfortunately chosen, for Harry coloured crimson, and freeing his arm from his cousin, pushed his way down the stairs in front of him.

Lady Brinsley greeted Harry very affectionately on his entrance; and only thinking that Fred was a little late, made no remark on his absence until prayers were finished, when Maurice having told her of Fred's illness, she inquired most anxiously about him, and offered, when breakfast was over, to go up and see him, and then, if necessary, to send for advice to the neighbouring town.

Harry listened to her kind and thoughtful suggestions in almost total silence; only a stray "Thank you," or, "I am sure you are very kind, aunt," dropping from his lips like so many stones instead of words. Not till Lady Brinsley paused and questioned him whether he was ill himself did he rouse himself up sufficiently to give a definite answer.

He assured her he was quite well; he had not slept much, that was all, and that after breakfast they would both be as right as trivets. And so anxious was he to take his place at the table, and thus avoid further questioning, that he became entirely oblivious of Fred and his breakfast, and unobservant of the fact that Maurice had already poured out the coffee and carried the tray up to his cousin's room.

"Now, Fred, old fellow, open your eyes and turn round; here is your breakfast for you," cried Maurice cheerily, as he laid the tray with the smoking coffee and other viands on his cousin's bed.

Fred started round, and, quite unprepared for this act of kindness, uttered some hasty but most confused words of thanks.

"I knew you preferred coffee to tea, and so I brought it up without asking," continued Maurice in the same easy and genial voice. "Sit up and eat a little,—do; I am sure you will feel pounds better when you have taken something."

"I cannot eat, I am too sick," said Fred dolorously.

"I wonder what on earth can have made you sick; did you eat anything yesterday, or what?"

Fred shook his head, but made no reply.

"I should not be a bit surprised if it were the beastly smell of honey which is all through the house that has knocked you up. Some people can't stand the smell of it, you know, and the whole place is reeking like a bee-hive."

Again Fred was silent, at least his lips uttered no sound; but his face, which a moment before was even a shade whiter than the pillow, now crimsoned painfully, telling plainer than words that some painful thoughts had possession of his mind.

"Fred," said Maurice, sitting down at the foot of the bed, and keeping his eyes averted until the blush had cooled down from his cousin's face, "Fred, listen to me, and tell me the truth; it was not the blow I gave you yesterday in the store-room which has made you so ill? Do say 'No;' for ever since the thought first came into my head I have been utterly miserable."

Fred shook his head, and with his knife sliced a hot roll in two, but he durst not look up, or the tears which were in his eyes would indubitably have rolled down his face.

"If I did hurt you I'm awfully sorry," continued Maurice humbly.

"It's nothing; I'm scarcely hurt at all," replied Fred, drawing his hand suddenly across his eyes,—"but I'm such a fool;" and for further refuge he bent his head over the coffee-cup and tried to drink.

As he did so, Maurice uttered a kind of short cry and leaned forward. "Fred, you are hurt, fearfully hurt. I saw an awful cut behind your ear that time you leaned forward; I am certain now I did do it, or you would never try to hide it so."

"No, no, no, I—I—it's not really a bad hurt; please don't say anything about it. I shall be quite right very soon, I am almost well now," gasped Fred pushing aside his almost untasted breakfast, and leaning back on his pillow. "It's only when I sit up I feel so queer and donkeyish. There, please go down and take your breakfast; thinking about it at all makes me ten times as miserable."

"But please, Fred, before I go down do tell me, did you get that hurt in the store-room?"

"I don't know how I got it,—at least not exactly," hesitated Fred, in painful embarrassment.

"But was it in the store-room? I cannot go away until I know."

"It was," said Fred, anxious at any cost to get rid of his questioner; "and now you promised to go."

"O Fred, I am so awfully sorry! How can I ever forgive myself? But I have always been the same passionate, headstrong bully, ever since I can remember."

"You promised you would go down," urged Fred, "and now you are sticking there still, and killing me with things you are saying. Please go back to your breakfast; you'll know all about it soon enough."

Maurice got up from the bed where he had been seated, and looking at his cousin with remorseful eye, said gravely, "At least you'll believe I never intended to hurt you so, Fred."

"I tell you you did not hurt me; I don't know how it happened myself. If you only would do as you promised, and leave me alone. Breakfast will be over before you get back to them all."

Maurice was pained and puzzled by his cousin's manner and evident anxiety to be rid of him, and yet he could not bear to leave him without convincing him of his sorrow and concern. He lifted the tray from the bed and placed it on a table close by, and then he turned once more to pour his regret into his cousin's ear; but Fred's eyes were closed, and there was such an expression of pain upon his face that he did not venture any further remonstrance, but left the room sorrowfully, and went down to sit at the breakfast-table, though certainly not to enjoy the meal.

It must have been evident to the rest of the assembled company that something had gone very wrong in the house that morning. Harry and Kathleen sat like two ghosts at the table; Lady Brinsley appeared unusually silent and grave; while Maurice was absent the greater part of the meal, and even when he did return he said little and ate less. It was quite a relief when the meal was over and they were all free to go out into the open air to enjoy themselves as they liked; and as no particular occupation or amusement had been proposed for the day, the party broke up into groups of two and three, who sauntered about through the pleasure-grounds and held secret council with one another as to what mischance had occurred within doors, to give the air of pre-occupation and distress which was so visible on the faces of their hosts and their hosts' relations.

Harry and Kathleen also separated themselves from the rest of the party, and wandered off arm-in-arm to hold council together over their miserable plight, and to try to sketch out some plan of action by which to shield Fred from the disgrace which only too plainly lay before him.

"We must not stay too long away," whispered Kathleen, as her brother drew her on into the shade of the sycamore walk, "for we cannot tell how soon Aunt Marian will find everything out; and then if she goes up to Fred and finds him all alone, it will be terrible."

"Terrible indeed!" groaned Harry. "It certainly is the most awful thing that has ever happened to us in our lives; and if Fred has really smashed the chess-box, the harm done can never be undone. O Kathleen, if we were only safe at home with mother and father, what a glorious thing it would be!"

"Yes," murmured Kathleen; "too glorious to think of."

Then they walked on for some time without speaking, each of their minds being too full to speak, till presently Harry said, more to himself than addressing any one, "He must confess—yes, he must confess it all; there is nothing else for him."

"He will never do that," said Kathleen, hopelessly.

"We must try to make him. It will be a tough job, but there is no help for it. If he does not confess now, he can never hold up his head again."

"Yes; and only think what papa and mamma will say when they hear it all."

"I have been tormenting myself with that thought all the morning, and I am not sure whether I ought not to write to mother and tell her all, before she hears it from any one else."

"Not without speaking to Fred first."

"Oh, of course not, though I am sure Fred would give his eyes to have her here. Just to think it is only four days since we left home so jolly and in such wild spirits, with the whole midsummer holidays stretched out before us; and we thought we were going to have no end of fun and jollification;—and now here we are, breaking our hearts with misery and dread, and only dead sick with the wish to be home again. Who ever could have guessed how it would all end?"

"Maurice seems very unhappy too this morning," said Kathleen, thoughtfully.

"Yes; I cannot make him out at all. I wonder what it was that set him so dead against Fred all yesterday; and now he seems just as anxious to make friends again with him. But hush! I hear some one coming behind us. Look back—look back and see who it can be, Kathleen."

"It is Maurice."

"Maurice!"

"Yes; he is hurrying after us. Perhaps all has been found out. Let us push on as hard as we can."

"No," cried Harry; "it's awfully cowardly to try to escape in that way. I will go back, for one." And with a great effort over himself, Harry turned round and came face to face with Maurice.

Maurice was quite out of breath, he had walked so quickly, and his face was anxious and pale.

"Harry, I have been looking for you everywhere, and I only discovered a moment ago where you had gone. I wanted to say something to you."

"What?" asked Harry, with an awkward attempt to appear free from embarrassment.

"I was upstairs with Fred and saw the great cut behind his ear, and I'm in such an awful state at the thought that I did it, and the brutal way I behaved to him yesterday. I want mother to allow me to ride over to your home and tell your mother all about it, for I shall be perfectly miserable until she knows it."

Harry and Kathleen involuntarily looked at each other. The contrast between Fred's conduct and Maurice's could not but force itself upon them, and neither of them knew what to reply.

"You see," continued Maurice, "I am so hasty and reckless a fellow, I act almost without thinking; and just because Alice told me she overheard you two talking something about Fred the other day in the coal vault where she was hiding from one of the other girls for fun, I took it into my head Fred had been behaving shabbily, and then afterwards I got into a temper with him about the chess-men for no earthly reason, and you know what a fool I made of myself in the store-room afterwards; and now I am well punished for it all. But I only wanted to ask you whether you would have any objection to my riding over to your place and perhaps bringing aunt back with me; for I am afraid Fred is more hurt than any of us know."

"Oh, do bring mother back with you, if you can," cried Harry, eagerly; "there would be some chance of things coming right if she were here."

"Then you have no objection?"

"Objection!—if you only knew how Kathleen and I were longing to have her here! She is so awfully kind, and always knows what is best to be done;" and the tears rose heavily in Harry's eyes as he spoke.

At these words Maurice coloured deeply, and a look of pain passed over all his face. "I am afraid I have proved but a bad host," he said bitterly; "but all I can say is, both mother and I, and all of us, wished more than I can tell to make you all happy; and only for my unhappy temper—;" here Maurice stopped and turned away.

"Maurice, you must not say such things," cried Harry, interrupting his cousin and catching him by the coat-sleeve. "You don't understand one single thing that has happened. If you did, you would see how different everything is from what you think."

"I understand quite enough," said Maurice, hoarsely.

"No, no, you don't, because you could not; heaps and lots of things have happened since we came here; of which you know nothing at all;—haven't there, Kathleen?"

"Yes," replied Kathleen, almost inaudibly, while she continued feverishly tearing off some leaves from a young sycamore branch which she held in her hand.

"What things?" asked Maurice incredulously.

"Don't ask me to tell you just now; wait till I go in and see Fred, and then I will tell you everything—at least if he allows me. I will go in this moment and ask him, for I would like you to know everything before you see poor mother;" and Harry, without venturing to add another word, pushed past his cousin towards the Hall, while Kathleen followed closely in his wake.

Meantime Fred had remained upstairs in a state of as utter restlessness as it was possible for any boy to be in. Fear, remorse, shame, pride, and even contrition, were at work within him, each fighting their own fight, and loudly asserting their right to a first place in his mind: but fear had the strongest position, for at any moment, Fred knew, the door might open, and his accusers rush in; and then what would be left for him but disgrace and punishment.

A thousand times he turned his glances towards the doorway, while his heart beat fast and furiously, thinking each step in the passage was the footfall of an enemy or the advent of a foe; and when at length he did hear his aunt's voice in the passage outside, and knew that she was coming to see him, he feigned sleep, and that so successfully, that she withdrew from the room with noiseless steps, and closed the door softly behind her.

"If I had only had the courage to tell Maurice when he brought me up my breakfast, I should be all right now, or rather the worst would have been over; but I am the veriest coward living," he murmured to himself reproachfully, as he tossed to and fro on his bed, his head aching painfully at every turn. "Why do not Harry and Kathleen come up to see me; they must know what misery I am in. I wonder whether Harry would tell it all for me? I will ask him when he comes in." And Fred planned feverishly the words of confession which he would dictate to his younger brother, so as to palliate his acts, and make them appear as little criminal as possible.

But again better thoughts would have temporary sway, and then the voice of conscience would whisper painfully into his ear, "You ought to make this confession of your guilt yourself, with your own lips and in your own words, and not lay the burden of your fault on the shoulders of another." And then he would writhe and groan under the pressure of this warning voice; for he knew well whose voice it was that pleaded with him thus, and that its words were the words of truth, and ought not to be thrust aside.

While he thus argued, and murmured, and fretted, and feared, the door opened again, and Harry, followed by Kathleen, came in, with heated face, and anxious, eager manner.

"Well," cried Fred, starting up in his bed angrily, "so you have come in at last, have you! A precious long time you have left me by myself, I must say! But I suppose it was because you knew I was so happy and comfortable up here that you stayed away so long."

"No indeed; we were walking outside, and thinking what was best to be done; and afterwards we met Maurice, who was in an awful state about you, and said all sorts of things. And now we have come up to see if we could persuade you, Fred, to tell him all; for it's not right that he should think it was his fault, and blame himself so awfully."

"Why, what did he say?" asked Fred with an air of sullenness, which even Harry could see was only put on to cover his painful anxiety and fear.

"He said how it was all his bad temper, and the way he treated you, which had made everything go wrong; and that he had wished, and so had they all, to make us so awfully happy, and now he had only made us miserable."

"And what did you say?" asked Fred with increasing uneasiness.

"I am sure I don't know what I said."

"Did you tell him anything,—did you even give him a hint?"

"No; I only said I would go up and see you, and ask you to explain all to him, for there were heaps of things he did not know."

"You did?" gasped Fred.

"Yes."

"Then you have actually pinned me into confessing."

"No, not pinned you; for I do not think Maurice believes there is anything to confess. But surely, Fred, you would not like to be such an utter coward; and, besides, in a little while he must find it all out."

"I'd give all the world not to be such an utter coward, as you call me!" cried Fred, dropping the mask completely from his feelings; "but the fact is, I feel as if I could never make up my mind to confess. I have been fighting with myself all this time up here, and I'm not a bit nearer doing what's right than I was."

"Don't fight with yourself any longer, but do it."

"How should I begin to tell him, Harry?" asked Fred almost piteously.

"Fred, here is mother come to see you."

"Oh, don't plan beforehand what you'll say. When once you have started off, you'll see the right words will come into your head. I know they will," said Harry earnestly.

"How can you know? You have never been in such an awful fix as this."

"I have been in other fixes though, and I have got out of them—I mean I have been helped to get out of them."

"Helped?" questioned Fred, opening his eyes wide, and staring at his brother in amazement "Who helped you? Was it mother?"

Harry shook his head, and remained silent, though sudden nervous blushes covered his face.

"What does he mean?" cried Fred, looking at Kathleen for information, whose corresponding nervousness showed she was a sharer in Harry's confusion.

"I think he means that God helped him," she said in a very low voice, while she tugged at the knots on Fred's counterpane with restless, trembling fingers.

"Oh, was that it! I could not think what he meant," said Fred, in a strange, altered voice, while he turned his head away, and looked vacantly out through the open window where the beech-trees were glistening in the sunshine, with their branches full of song. "I am such an awfully queer kind of a fellow, I never think of these kind of things;" and presently, in the same altered voice, he added, "and that's, I suppose, why I am always getting into these scrapes."

"Nonsense!" cried Harry, with a rising lump in his throat.

"You say 'Nonsense,' but you know all the same it is perfectly true. Mother always said so when we were at home. Oh, what will poor mother say when she hears it all!" And Fred rocked himself to and fro in the bed.

"If it were only for her sake, you ought to try to be brave," said Harry sadly.

"If I do speak, to whom ought I to say it,—to Maurice, or to aunt?" asked Fred after a pause, and with lips which were blanching already at the thought of the dreaded confession.

"To either. I don't think it matters to which."

"If I had only not smashed that precious chess-box, it would not seem half so bad a thing to have to confess;—and they will think, perhaps, I broke it on purpose, out of spite."

"Oh no; I'm sure they won't think that. But listen! I am almost certain I hear Maurice coming up the stairs. Shall we stay with you, Fred, while you are telling him, or not?"

"Yes, yes, stay; or—no; I think I should get on better without you."

"But you'll tell him all, won't you—about the bow and everything?"

"I could not."

"Yes, yes, you must. You will be twice as happy, once it is all off your mind; and don't forget—" But here Harry and his sister had to make a sudden rush towards the door of Kathleen's room, as Maurice's voice was heard outside in the passage, demanding, in a somewhat excited voice, to be admitted.

"Fred!" cried Maurice, in a voice of great excitement, as he hastily pushed open the door of his cousin's room, and walked in—"Fred! what do you think has happened?"

Fred had just lain down in the shade of the bed-curtains, with the express desire of concealing the workings of his face while he made his dreaded confession; but now, in the unexpected agony of the moment, he sat hastily up, and looked full at Maurice, whose blanched cheeks and agitated manner showed that some great thing had just occurred to upset him.

"What is it, Maurice?" he inquired in a tone of no affected concern, for his very heart was beating into his mouth; "nothing bad, I hope."

"Very bad, I am sorry to say; for there has been a general destruction of all mother's most precious things in the store-room downstairs."

"Oh, what—how?"

"Well, that's just what we can none of us exactly make out; only when I went in just now with mother to get out the Japanese theatre dodge, which mother had given me leave to make a present of to you, as I knew you were fond of mechanical inventions—"

"Nonsense, Maurice; I could never have taken it from you."

"Why, then, we found, when we opened the door," continued Maurice, heedless of Fred's interruption, "everything in the most awful state of confusion you can imagine. The theatre, which I was at the moment in search of, was lying on the floor in the most terrible state of smash—the lid of the case broken right off, and all the little men and women thrown pell-mell about the place."

"My goodness, how dreadful!" responded Fred.

"Yes, poor mother is in a sad way about it, for father took such delight in seeing the little puppets dancing, and thought it so ingenious; and besides that, there was a lot more damage done, for the ladder had fallen right across the room and smashed an entire set of rare China plates and dishes in the corner under the window, besides jam-pots to no end. There was one good thing, however—"

"What?" asked Fred, drawing a quick, uneasy breath.

But Maurice paused before he replied, for a sudden consciousness had come over him that he was about to touch on an unpleasant subject, and he coloured painfully, and hesitated in momentary embarrassment.

"What?" asked Fred again, in an eager, hungry voice. It was something to know that there was even one good thing in so utterly bad a transaction.

"Mother's precious chess-box was not broken."

"Thank God!" cried Fred earnestly.

Maurice looked at him for a moment in surprise, and then went on. "You see, yesterday evening I was so thoroughly ashamed of myself for my conduct to you, and the way I had knocked you about in the afternoon, that I asked mother's leave to take the box out of the store-room and have a game with you before tea."

"Well, and what did she say?"

"She was awfully kind, and told me I might have them certainly, if I promised to take great care of them; but though I tried my best to get hold of you afterwards, I could not succeed. You remember when I met you in the shrubbery walk, don't you?"

"I do," sighed Fred hopelessly. "I was a brute, that was all."

"Now, Fred, if you say any of these kind of things again, I'll go out of the room; for I was the one who was utterly in the wrong from beginning to end,—even mother says I was."

"How so?" asked Fred.

"Oh nothing; that's to say it was only that time about the jam picking, and I—or rather she—she thought just at first there had been something wrong about the weighing of the cans; and, besides, the girls overheard something or other which puzzled us a bit, and which, I dare say, meant nothing; and I acted, as I always do, in a headlong way. However," continued Maurice, noticing the distress in his cousin's face; "however—what was I saying, Fred?"

"I—I don't remember."

"Oh yes, now I have it; it was about the chess-men. Well, as I was telling you, I asked mother's leave to take the chess-men out of the store-room to have a game with you; and then afterwards, when I could not catch hold of you, I put them by in mother's room, so as we might have a game this morning; which, as it turns out now, was a great blessing, else they would have been destroyed to a certainty, for they stood exactly on the spot where the Japanese theatre was knocked down."

"A blessing, indeed," groaned Fred, whose confession seemed every moment more and more impossible and imprudent. "But I don't understand, Maurice, how the Japanese box got upon the same shelf as the chess-men; it was not there yesterday surely. And is the word 'Fragile' printed on it also?"

"Of course it is. And as to its being on the shelf why, I put it there myself last night: for I was afraid, what with the weight of all the new jam-pots and crowds of other dodge-my-eyes upon the shelf where it stood, it might come to grief, and so, as I thought, I gave it a much safer berth; but you can see for yourself I am always an unlucky dog. Though how it all happened is the marvel, for not a living soul could have got into the place: the door was locked; and the window, goodness knows, is sufficiently well barred to keep out a host of robbers. The only thing mother and I can think is, that when the housekeeper went in late last night to lock up some honey, which, by-the-by, was upset and smeared about the whole place—" Here Maurice paused for a moment, as if some sudden thought or suggestion had passed like lightning through his brain, and in the pause Fred's cheeks darkened to almost a purple colour, so vividly did the blush of guilt deepen on his face.

Maurice could not but look at him and wonder, and in doing so he for a moment lost the thread of his recital, and once again he had to apply to his cousin for aid. "What was I saying, Fred?"

"About the honey."

"Oh ay, about the honey. Mother thinks that when the housekeeper carried it in at night, the kitchen cat must have darted in after her; for there are rats and mice in there, I believe. You heard them yesterday, didn't you?"

"I—I don't remember."

"That time I said you must have cheese-parings in your pocket."

"I was not listening much to what you were saying just then," replied Fred hoarsely.

"I am not surprised at that; I only wonder you took it half so well. But the point is, how, if it were the cat that did it, she managed to get out again without either mother or my seeing her; for we both went in at the same time, and she could scarcely have slipped through our feet without one or other of us noticing it. What do you think, Fred?"

"I—I really don't know what to think."

"Mother is certain, at least as nearly certain as one can be in such a matter, that it was the cat; so I suppose she must be right: but it's a rum affair from beginning to end, ain't it now?"

"I suppose she must," murmured Fred, scarcely conscious of what he was saying, for he was undergoing at that moment the most furious assault of a new and unexpected temptation; a temptation which he could not have foreseen, having hitherto deemed it impossible that any valid excuse could be discovered which would screen him from the consequences of hie but now his aunt had laid the blame of all the sin,—mischief on shoulders which could bear no corresponding punishment, and why, why need he thrust himself forward as the centre point of guilt and shame?

"I am afraid I am worrying you with my talk. I was forgetting about your headache," said Maurice apologetically, as he noticed Fred's absent manner.

"Oh, not in the least; I was only thinking."

"Thinking of what?"

"Not thinking, exactly; only wondering."

"Wondering! what do you mean?"

"I—I don't exactly know what I mean, except if it were the cat, then,—then of course the cat could not have done it.

"My dear fellow, what do you mean?" and Maurice looked gravely into his cousin's face, fearing that perhaps the sharp blow on the side of his head had done him some serious injury.

The sudden cloud on his cousin's brow, and the intent anxious gaze fixed on his own face, filled Fred with alarm; and under Maurice's searching scrutiny all the blood rushed back upon Fred's heart, leaving him ashy white and trembling.

"Fred," cried Maurice, leaning forward excitedly, "now I am certain—"

"Yes, yes, it is quite true; only don't, don't stare at me in that awful way. I—I could not help it."

"You could not help what?"

"Help it! I didn't say that, did I? I meant of course that—that you—you drove me to it."

"Drove you," echoed Maurice, becoming every moment more terrified and bewildered by his cousin's manner, "how did I drive you? I don't know what you are talking about, Fred."

"Nonsense, it was you yourself who said it first, and accused me of it."

"Accused you of what?"

"Everything. You knew quite well, when you came up here, all about it; and you only wanted to try and wring it out of me, by fair means or foul." Here Fred, worn out by excitement and anxiety, burst into a passionate fit of tears, and, leaning his face forward, buried it completely in the counterpane of his bed. When he looked up again a moment afterwards, surprised at Maurice's silence, he found his cousin gone and the room empty.

"Ah, no wonder he has left me," cried Fred bitterly; and then in his despair he clasped his hands and lifted up his heart to God, asking earnestly for the help he so sorely needed, and the forgiveness he scarcely dared to crave.

He had scarcely unfolded his hands and laid his poor aching head back on the pillow when the door was pushed open again, and Maurice, followed by his mother, hastily re-entered the room.

"Fred, here is mother come to see you;" and Maurice's voice sounded strangely reassuring and kind, considering the confession which he had just heard, and which only a moment before had driven him from the room.

"Well, Fred, my boy," said Lady Brinsley drawing quite close to his bed, and laying her hand gently on his arm, "I am afraid you have been exciting yourself too much, and making yourself quite ill. You ought to lie still after such a severe blow, and not speak at all."

"It was I, mother, who roused him up. It was entirely my fault, but I was so knocked on a heap about the store-room business, I rushed up foolishly to tell him, and to ask him what he thought about it."

"Well, it was rather a pity to disturb him about such a matter, especially as he could not possibly make a guess about it."

Fred listened in amazement. Was it possible Maurice had not understood what he had said, and must he make the dreaded confession again? He looked piteously into his aunt's face, and turned his face quickly towards the wall.

"What is the matter, Fred dear? are you in pain?"

"Yes," moaned Fred.

"Is it your head that aches?"

"No, no; I am miserable and wretched, and I told Maurice all about it, and he—he goes on as if I had said nothing."

"Why, what did you tell him? for I am certain if there is anything or any way Maurice can help you, he will be only too glad to do it."

"No, no, I don't want help; at least I do, awfully, but—oh can't you understand what I mean?"

Maurice glanced at his mother meaningly, and her face grew more anxious as, stooping over the bed, she said kindly, "Fred, dear, do not torment yourself about fancies and worries which are only coming into your head because you are ill and tired. Try and go to sleep, and when you awake you will feel quite refreshed and comfortable."

"I cannot sleep, aunt, till I have told you all. There is no use trying," cried Fred excitedly.

"Told me what?" asked Lady Brinsley, inexpressibly pained by the cruel distress visible on her nephew's face.

"That it was I who went into the store-room. I told Maurice all about it before, and he only stared at me, and then rushed out of the room."

"You went into the store-room, Fred," cried both his aunt and his cousin at the same moment; while Lady Brinsley added almost in a whisper to her son, "It is quite impossible,—he only fancies it."

"No, no, it is no fancy. I went into it last night. I got up on the ladder in the dark, and then—then I saw a light coming round by the passage-wall, and I—I fell somehow. I don't know how it happened; and Harry and Kathleen lifted me up and carried me outside into the other passage, and then I came upstairs and went to bed, and was—oh, so miserable, you can't think."

"And what did you go into the store-room for?" asked his aunt quietly, while with a glance she checked the excited questions which she saw ready to pour from her son's lips.

"I—I wanted to get the chess-box. Maurice dared me to touch it, and I was determined that I would."

"But how did you get in?" continued Lady Brinsley in the same subdued voice.

"By the small door in the panels."

"But that was bolted on the inside also."

"There is no second door is there, mother?" asked Maurice, who could not restrain his curiosity any longer.

"There is," replied Fred hastily. "When you knocked me down in the corner, I struck against the bolt and bruised my shoulder, and that made me look round, and I saw the second door and the things that fastened it."

"And you unbolted it then; was that it?"

"No, no; I tied pieces of cord round the bolts and drew the ends out by the hinges; but I—I never meant to do all—all the terrible mischief which I—I did do, or to break the theatre or anything. I am so awfully sorry, aunt. I wish you would let me go home to-night, I am so miserable."

Fred pressed his hot fingers round his aunt's hand, and looked up imploringly into her face.

"It was all my fault," said Maurice humbly. "I was the one who began the quarrel,—I—I: mother, don't look at him so gravely; it was I who set the whole mischief agoing, besides the horrid cut which I gave him behind his ear."

"No, you have nothing to say to that; it was when I fell from the ladder."

"I thought you told me that I had done it."

"No; at least you took up what I said wrongly, and I—I had not the courage to explain."

"And what made you tell me all about it now, Fred?" asked his aunt in a sad but not unkind voice.

"I don't know. I thought, and Harry said I was a coward,—or no, he said I should be a coward to hide it; and besides, he told me it was awfully wrong, and that—that—but then Harry is quite different to me; he never does sneaky things, and I am always doing them."

"Harry is a noble boy," said Lady Brinsley warmly. "I have noticed his honesty of character ever since he came into the house."

"Yes," cried Fred enthusiastically, "he is a regular brick. Mother always said she could trust him as well as her own self;" and Fred's cheeks as he mentioned his mother's name burned with a sudden access of shame and misery, and the tears which he had held back till now rushed into his eyes.

"I am going to drive over to your own home this afternoon; do you wish me to tell your mother all?"

Supper was laid in the bright parlour.

"Oh yes, yes, do. Tell her everything, please; and oh! ask her to come and take me home. I could never bear to stay on here after all that has happened."

"Nonsense, Fred; of course you will stay here. If you go home I shall be perfectly wretched, for I—I am just as bad as you, and worse;" and even Maurice's eyes clouded with tears at the misery which had arisen so unexpectedly to darken his happy holidays.

"I think we must be guided by what Fred and his mother wish," said Lady Brinsley kindly. "I shall be truly grieved if our pleasant party is broken up, and especially as the quarrel arose out of Maurice's hasty temper."

"No, that is quite untrue, for—for—" Fred paused, while a fresh access of misery and shame seemed to overwhelm him. "For, for,—oh, aunt, I had forgotten to tell you all. I did put the stones in the can; and besides, I—I filled my can out of Harry's; and when he told me to put back the bow, I—I found your note on the pincushion, and I was ashamed, and then I kept it."

Lady Brinsley could not but look and feel sorrowful at the confession of so much sin and the sight of the misery it was causing her nephew.

"I am sure you will be happier by-and-by; Fred, for having made up your mind to tell me all," she said in a low voice full of undisguised emotion; "and I am only very, very sorry that you had not the courage at first to tell the whole truth, as it would have averted all this trouble and saved both you and me the great pain which we are each of us suffering. If, at the very beginning of all this trouble, you had asked God's help, He would have given you the strength to make the necessary confession; and the remembrance of His forgiveness and love would have shielded you from the fresh snares into which you have now fallen."

"I wish I had," sobbed Fred. "I know I never, never—" But here a knock at the bedroom door interrupted what he would have said, and the footman appeared in the entrance with a serious and deprecating air carrying some dark clothes in his hand.

"I came to tell Master Malcomson, my lady," he observed, bowing to Lady Brinsley, "that I have tried in vain to clean his evening suit of clothes. When I took them down this morning to brush, I found them all saturated with honey; and though I have done all in my power, I cannot make them fit to wear."

"Thank you, John; you may put them away on the table over there," said Lady Brinsley quietly, ignoring the cause of the disaster. "Master Fred is not well at present, and will not require to wear his evening suit for some little time."

The footman laid the clothes on the table without another word, and left the room silently. He knew as well as Fred did how it had all occurred: for the servants, when they heard of the catastrophe in the store-room and the broken dish of honey, had not been long in putting two and two together; and what with the sticky footprints leading right up to Fred's door, and the fact of his remaining immured up in his own room all the morning, they had come to no foolish conclusion, that Fred had been at least a partner in the mysterious midnight raid on the store-room, and that the cat was in no way to blame.

To Fred, too, it was a blessed relief to know that he had made his confession before the guilt had been literally brought home to his own door; and when at length Lady Brinsley and her son sorrowfully left the room, he lay back on his pillow and thanked God with his whole heart that He had answered his prayer and given him the strength necessary to overcome his weakness and cowardice; and when Maurice turned back from the door and whispered hurriedly into his ear, "Fred, you'll forgive me, won't you?" he only replied with a burst of sobs, "Yes, yes; but oh! I want so badly to be forgiven myself." And then turning suddenly round in the bed, he covered his face with the clothes and was silent.

That evening Mrs. Malcomson arrived at Jubilee Hall. Her sister, Lady Brinsley, had driven over in the waggonette for her; and having first, by Fred's express desire, told her everything which had occurred since her son's arrival at the Hall, with a troubled and sorrowful heart Mrs. Malcomson had taken leave of her husband, promising to return on the following day.

Fred was asleep when his mother arrived, and he continued to sleep on heavily for several hours. When he did awake, the long summer evening had slipped past, leaving only a gray twilight in his room, while outside, in the still pale-green sky, a crescent moon was shining softly.

Fred sighed heavily on first awaking, and finding himself alone in the large and now sombre bedroom; and, as is often the ease, the awaking from an afternoon sleep, instead of refreshing him, had flushed and heated him; and his mind was no sooner aroused and aware of the solitude and stillness of all about him, than it became filled with dark and fanciful apprehensions, to which he could give no definite shape or form.

One by one the guilty doings of the previous night passed before his mind in a dreary procession of horror. Once again the horny cockroaches seemed clinging to his shoeless feet; and the cold gust of wind, as he turned the lonely corners of the passages, seemed to blow down his neck and shoulders. Now the bolt creaked ominously in the secret door; and the faint odour of honey, which still pervaded the bedroom, became painfully overpowering and oppressive to his senses.

The suspense and horror of darkness which had filled his mind in the store-room the night before, as he waited the slow approach of daylight, seemed lying on him now; and the shadows cast by the rising moon on the furniture of his room gave them grotesque and unfamiliar shapes.

The grave eyes of his aunt, as she heard his confession, seemed gazing at him still through the gloomy air; so that he feared to turn his head towards the spot where she had stood, lest he should have to rehearse again the account of his crimes, and to meet her loving but reproachful gaze.

But all at once, with a great cry, he sat bolt upright in his bed, and called out eagerly, "Mother, mother! Yes, mother was to be here to-night! O mother, dearest mother! have you not come to see me and to help me?"

Just then there was a rustle by the bedside, and a startled voice which answered him out of the darkness: "Fred, my darling boy, I am here beside you! I thought you were asleep, or I would have spoken before. Here, dearest, turn towards me."

Poor Fred! he did turn in the direction of the voice, and as he caught sight of the shadowy figure seated close by his bedside, he flung his arms round it, and with a sob, born of the purest pleasure and the keenest pain, he laid his head on his mother's shoulder, and wept out the burden of his sorrow and care without a word; while in the security of her presence the shadowy ghosts, which had haunted the twilight, became comforting angels, and the whole room seemed suddenly peopled with a happy crowd of familiar faces; while the sprig of verbena in his mother's dress brought back the sunny home-garden, with its rose-covered walls and its shady nooks.

"O mother!" he sighed presently, "why did I ever leave you? Nothing ever goes well with me when you are away. I may go home with you to-morrow, may I not?"

"Certainly, if you wish it."

"Wish it! I am longing to be in the dear old place again."

"It is only four days since you left it."

"I know that, mother; and yet it seems like four years."

There was a long pause, Fred still leaning on his mother's shoulder, so heavily that he could hear the rapid beating of her heart.

"Mother."

"Well, Fred?"

"Mother, you are terribly unhappy about me; I know you are."

No answer.

"Mother, have I vexed you so awfully that you will never be able to love me any more?"

No answer.

"Mother, will you not speak to me? Do, dearest mother, do. What are you thinking of now, that you will not answer me?"

"I am thinking, Fred, and wishing—oh, so earnestly!—that you would love me less, or rather that you would love God more. It is because you lean so entirely on me when I am near you, that when I am absent you always fall into trouble, and sorrow, and disgrace."

"But could not I love God and you too, mother? I am sure I could. I will try—-I will indeed—if you will help me."

"My help, dearest Fred, will be but a poor thing to lean on, compared to the help you could gain elsewhere, if you would only ask God for it, for Christ's sake."

"Will you ask Him for it for me, mother?" murmured Fred in a husky whisper. "Do, mother, now while you are here beside me;" and Fred, raising his head from his mother's shoulder, took both her hands in his, and drew her near him.

Then Mrs. Malcomson knelt down on the floor by her son's bedside, and prayed with all her heart for the much-needed help; for the heart to be made pure, for the good impressions to be made lasting, and for the peace of God which passeth understanding to be granted to both their souls, for Christ's sake. And when she had finished praying, they both sat hand in hand until the twilight had changed into darkness, and the young moon had gone down for the night. Then Harry and Kathleen came up to bed; and after a long chat over home and home doings, the party broke up, and Mrs. Malcomson retired to her own room.

The next day Fred told his aunt of his earnest wish to return home, and received from her the permission to do so. The history of his midnight raid on the store-room had, despite all Lady Brinsley's efforts, become the talk of the whole house; and Fred could not appear among his playmates and friends without running the risk of hearing much that would have been both unpleasant and painful. Nor could Harry bear to hear the hints and innuendoes thrown out against his brother by the less kind-hearted members of the company; so he and Kathleen willingly agreed to give up the remainder of their promised visit, and to share the banishment which Fred had incurred by his deceitful and dishonest conduct.

But there was no great air of banishment about the sunny fields and grassy meadows of The Cedars, as they turned in at its familiar gates, and drove up through the sweet-scented lime avenue to the door of their home.

"Oh, the dear old house, how did we ever care to leave it!" cried Harry, as he leaped with one bound from the carriage to the steps of the portico, and rushed inside for his father's sure greeting and welcome.

Fred's joy was even more intense, though it was silent, at finding himself once more within the shelter of his home; and he, too, wondered with a silent pang of surprise and pain how he could ever have felt such keen delight in leaving it as he had done only a few mornings ago, when he had started in such rampant spirits for Jubilee Hall. But the pleasure of his return was damped not a little by the anticipation of his father's displeasure, and the certainty of the pain which he had caused him by his conduct during his absence from home.

"Mother, will you go in and speak to him first?" pleaded Fred. But Mrs. Malcomson only answered by a look, which recalled with a strange vividness their conversation of the night before; and Fred, gathering up all his courage, walked bravely into the house to meet his father, and to receive with humility the sorrowful reproaches which he could not but feel he had most justly deserved.

Mr. Malcomson, however, said very little on the subject of his son's faults, as he preferred speaking to him on such a grave matter in private to rebuking him publicly before his younger brother and his sister, and the meeting passed off with less pain on both sides than could have been anticipated; for Mr. Malcomson could not but discern, by the expression of Fred's face, that he was returning in a softened and penitent mood, instead of being sullen and hardened. And Fred felt grateful for the consideration shown him by his father, and was, consequently, more desirous to prove by his conduct his contrition for his faults.

The supper was laid in the bright parlour, with its pretty low window looking out upon the flowerbeds and trim yew hedges, while the scent of the roses, hanging across the trellis-work of the verandah, came in delicious gusts across the table.

There were strawberries and raspberries, and cakes steaming from the oven, and jugs of rich cream fresh from the dairy, arranged in tempting order on the clean white cloth. And the room, though it looked tiny after the lofty walls of Jubilee Hall, had an air of cosy comfort, very cheering to those who now sat down with grateful hearts to partake of the evening meal.

After supper Fred went out, leaning on his mother's arm, through the verandah into the garden, and walked with her up and down its well-known paths, and round its box-edged flower-beds. They neither of them said much, but they felt as if some new bond of love had arisen between them, stronger than any they had known before. It was not until Fred was taking his last turn round by the grotto and the little fern-grown well, that he spoke out what had been the real burden of his thoughts all the evening,—

"Mother, there is no place, after all, so safe for a young fellow as his own home. I mean, of course, a really good home like ours."

"What makes you say so, Fred?"

"Because I feel it. I thought, when I was leaving this place a few days ago, I should be ten times as happy and jolly as I had ever been before—I could then be my own master, and I could do just as I liked: but instead of that, I never was so miserable or wretched; and it was just the very freedom which I had longed for so much which made everything go on so badly."

"I am sure you are quite right, Fred."

"I know I am, mother; and I should never care to go away from home again without you and father. It is so awfully jolly to be with you both once more."

"Yes, ain't it just," cried Harry, who could no longer resist his desire to join the two ramblers in the garden. "Home is the most golliferous place in the whole creation;—though, for all that, Aunt Marian was awfully kind, and so was Maurice, and every one."

"Yes; it was not their fault that we were all so very unhappy while we were there,—at least that I was," said Fred humbly: "for, after all, it is not so much the place that makes one jolly or miserable. but the things that happen in the place; and not having father and the dear old mother herself with us, was the reason we all came to grief: besides,—besides, of course, other things as well;" and Fred, stooping down, picked up an unripe apple from the ground, and shied it over the garden hedge; then, in a somewhat hoarse whisper, he added, "We shall do better perhaps by-and-by, with God's help; sha'n't we, mother?" and he leaned his curly head against her shoulder, and pressed her hand nearer to his side.

"Yes, dearest Fred, with God's help we shall: and meantime, I think, it has done us all no harm to find out what a pleasant and safe place home is; and to discover for ourselves that the discipline of home-life, though sometimes irksome and apparently vexatious in its rules and obligations, is, after all, one of our greatest safeguards, protecting us against the dangers and temptations of life, which, if unopposed, would very quickly overcome us, and destroy all our peace of mind and the innocent enjoyment of our lives."

"Which means," cried Harry, turning a somersault over the low yew hedge beside the path, and seizing his mother's disengaged arm in an enthusiastic embrace,—"which means, in other words, words composed expressly for the occasion by the great poet Shakespeare, Milton, Mrs. Browning, or whoever the individual may be or may have been,—that

''Midst pleasures and palaces
    Though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble,
    There's no place like home.'"

THE END.