in his reflections, as usual, water with the secrets of the trade.

Without a syllable accompanying the action Samuel Wideo significantly placed the end of the rein of Queen Mary's snaffle bridle into one of Johnny Tadpole's hands, and taking off the Unknown's leading-rein he carefully rolled it up and, with a piece of string, fixed it in a compact coil, and gave it to his assistant.

'He'll follow the old mare better than lead,' said he, ‘but keep the rein handy, in case ye may want it in getting through a town or village. And now,' continued the dairyman, in a manner which drew Johnny Tadpole's concentrated thoughts to this part of his address into a small focus, for he knew, as if the words had been already spoken, that the finish was at hand-' and now,' repeated he, 'go straight, slow, and sure. Be governed by circumstances and the weather where and when to stop; but, in so far as ye can, Taddy, do as I've told you, and by doing right, which is the best of all rules, the long journey before ye will be shortened many a mile.'

Johnny Tadpole's vow was not expressed beyond a whisper to himself, but, being made in sincerity and truth to do his best in doing right,' it was, doubtlessly, registered among the last addition of good intentions.

'Take care of yourself, your money, and your luggage,' said Samuel Wideo, 'and, above all things, remember the setting sun. Keep it in front, and you're as right as an eight-day clock. Get it behind, and you're done.'

'I'll keep an eye on the setting sun, sir,' responded Johnny Tadpole, as if slightly injured in his feelings at the inferred supposition that the setting sun might get the best of him.

'One last squeeze of your fist, lad,' said the dairyman,

extinguishing Johnny Tadpole's hand as he wrung it rather too heartily. May God bless you, my little man! Say your prayers, Taddy, as usual, and don't leave me out because I'm out of sight.'

'Never fear, sir,' again whimpered Johnny Tadpole, with the knuckles of his fingers again screwed into the corners of his eyes. 'You'll always stands first in my prayers, sir, as it is now and ever shall be, world without end, amen.'

'Amen!' piously responded the dairyman, and then dropping his assistant's hand suddenly, as if transformed into something much too hot to hold, he started off at a sharp run, retracing his steps again towards Bromley Marsh.

Johnny Tadpole looked at his retreating figure with tearful eyes, and when a bend in the road was about to hide the only known friend he possessed from his sight, the dairyman turned and waved one of his hands as a signal of final farewell. The next moment he was gone; but, before it sank on the quicksands of eternity, 'Taddy' opened the floodgates of his pent-up grief, and wept long and alone.

CHAPTER XIII.

WHO is that girl, Aubrey,' said Colonel Leferne, as they sat together alone one morning in the library, 'that I have seen you occasionally walking with ?'

Aubrey's cheeks reddened at the question, but he affected a carelessness of deportment as he replied:

'Ivy Girling, the gamekeeper's daughter.'

'A rustic beauty, is she not ?' rejoined his father.

'She is thought so, I believe,' returned Aubrey.

'What do you think?' asked the Colonel, fixing a penetrating look into his son's eyes which made Aubrey feel what a searching glance meant.

'I think her pretty, sir, for a country girl,' responded his son, with indifference.

'So do I,' added the Colonel, and I think her too pretty for a young gentleman of a susceptible nature to make a companion.'

'With the approval of my aunt,' returned Aubrey, 'Ivy was my earliest, and, indeed, only playfellow as a child.'

'Indeed!' ejaculated the Colonel, with feigned surprise, and raising his thick eyebrows. And so your unsophisticated aunt beheld with composure your lamb-like gambols with the gamekeeper's daughter?'

She never raised any objection to my associating with her,' added Aubrey, evidently offended at the sarcastic tone and manner of his father.

'Had she done so,' responded the Colonel, with an inward chuckle, 'it would have been the first objection, I imagine, that Margaret Leferne ever raised in the whole course of her exemplary life. Take my word for it, Aubrey, that she never opposed man, woman, or child in deed, word, or thought. You probably discovered, as I did long ago, this conspicuous weakness ?'

'It demanded no keen search, sir, to discover the unexceptionable kindness which my aunt displayed towards me during---'

'The long and silent absence of your doting father,' interrupted Colonel Leferne, with a suppressed laugh. 'Is that what you would have said ?'

'No,' returned Aubrey, stopping, and looking full in his father's face, 'I would have said nothing of the kind, sir.

I might have added,' continued he, during a childhood which possessed few joys or pleasures for a child.'

'Don't become sentimental, my dear boy,' responded the Colonel, preserving the most perfect good-humour, and apparently amused at the portrayed irritability of his son. 'There is nothing,' continued he, raising the two first fingers of his right hand deprecatingly, 'that I detest more than sentiment. Life, in all its phases, is composed of such very plain, striped, not to say ugly facts, that to attempt to decorate them with garlands, or describe their grotesque quaintness in the exaggerated language of poetry, is simply to descend in the social scale to the level of an ass.'

'I was merely, sir, giving expression to my thoughts,' rejoined Aubrey, with flushed cheeks and flashing eyes, 'in what appeared to me the plainest words.'

'Avoid sentiment, my dear boy,' returned the Colonel, keeping his fingers still raised, and, as far as I am concerned, let your verbal communications be made either in blank verse or jingling rhyme, as may best accord with your inclination. Devoid of sentiment, I entertain not the smallest dislike to poetry. Referring, however,' continued he, 'to what would seem to be a grievance in connection with your infancy, I must infer that you possessed the ordinary toys popularly supposed to be inseparable to the male sex in lisping disagreeablehood? You were supplied, for instance, with marbles, kites and tops?'

'Yes,' responded Aubrey, with no palpable decrease in his anger, 'but I seldom played with either without having a serious lesson from my tutor concerning their mechanical construction, scientific shape, or ancient origin.'

'So like my dear old college chum,' ejaculated the Colonel, repeating the inward chuckle. 'He must even teach you, Aubrey, in the hours of recreation, as he did his

friends at Oxford, when perhaps brewing a bowl of bishop. Our vicar was a great expert at bishop,' continued he, ‘and I can hear him now, when dropping in the roasted apples, expatiating upon the laws of gravitation, and, as the pips rose to the surface, proving to demonstration why they floated.'

'In a lecture he was once giving me when spinning a top,' said Aubrey, somewhat softened with the tale of the bowl of bishop, 'he declared that the boys of Rome, in the days of the Cæsars, spun tops of precisely the same shape, that they pirated them from the Jews, who brought them originally out of the land of Egypt.'

'Ha, ha' laughed the Colonel. 'Picture to the imagination Cheops or the head of the distinguished family of the Pharaohs spinning tops! But,' and the speaker changed his tone to a confidential whisper, 'far better spin tops, Aubrey, than play with dolls.'

'Dolls ?' ejaculated his son, with inexpressible astonish

ment.

'Aye,' rejoined the Colonel, again lifting his two fingers admonishingly, there is no more dangerous toy than a doll, Aubrey. Boys,' continued he, 'after having passed one of the early stages of disagreeablehood, feel an innate repugnance to dolls; but upon crossing the Rubicon, and entering the succeeding one of blind puppyhood, they are too apt to fall into the fatal error of giving undivided attention to toys of this kind, and I have known clever men-who decidedly ought to have known better--waste the most precious hours of their lives, to say nothing of their fame and fortunes, in playing with painted, powdered, and perfumed dolls, with no more hearts or souls than can be found in bran or sawdust.

Aubrey Leferne said nothing in reply, but kept his eyes fixed steadfastly upon those of his father.