Jacob thereupon felt a vague sort of conscious superiority to Spen, who did not appreciate his enthusiastic admiration of the gorgeous scene before them. While Jacob was up in the sky of wonder, Whiffler was in the ring among the saw-dust. At least some such thought passed through Jacob's mind; and yet the two boys mutually felt, as only boys could feel, on so short an acquaintance, a deep sympathy with each other. Before they reached home again they

were fast friends.

And when they did reach home again, as they now called Spawling's School? Well, everything was in astonishing order. The wrathful magician had released the chairs and tables, and brought down the bumptious little card table from the sideboard; and in fact everything was the pink of neatness. Cups and saucers shone on a large quantity of white table cloth; Mr. Spawling was sitting in his arm-chair reading a book; and Dorothy was cutting a pile of white bread and butter, and watching at the same time an hour-glass, from the top to the bottom of which the sand was running in a little golden

stream.

Whiffler (after changing his Harlequin jacket for a loose blouse) took his seat meekly at the bottom of the table. Dorothy requested Jacob to sit on the other side, at the corner near Mr. Spawling, who looked up and said he hoped Spenny had shown Master Martyn the beauties of the country, and that he had not been guilty of any absurd tricks. Jacob said his companion had been very kind. Accompanied by some other common-place remarks, breakfast was finished; shortly after which Whiffler quietly disappeared, and almost immediately the school-bell began to ring, so furiously at first that it was quite startling; but gradually it became slower and slower, and softer and softer, until at last it died out in a quiet murmur; whereupon Mr. Spawling put down his book, and the master and the new pupil went to school.

CHAPTER X.

MR. GREGORY SPAWLING AS AN EDUCATOR.

In the days of the first public school at Cartown education was generally regarded as a privilege only intended for those who could afford the time and money necessary to be expended upon it. The Education Act had been dreamed of by a few maniacs, who contended that every child was the rightful heir to knowledge; but these dangerous persons had little or no influence, though they were getting.

the thin end of the wedge into the constitution by means of British and National Schools, which provided cheap learning in some of the large manufacturing towns. The Cartown school, started by Mr. Spawling, with the aid of a local committee, was a wonderful advance for the northern division of the Midland mining county, though many of the people of Cartown regarded Mr. Spawling as a mild kind. of lunatic, who could do little harm or good, and who was at the same time a kind-hearted man and loved the poor.

As many other persons, matters, and things are crowding into my canvas, and presenting themselves for recognition, I must leave the reader to imagine the character and capacity of the public school at Cartown, premising by the way that Jacob was Mr. Spawling's only boarder, and that the advertisement which the schoolmaster sent to Middleton was the first announcement Mr. Spawling had made of his intention to receive boarders.

The pupils were a happy family. Mr. Spawling tried to teach them to think as well as to read and write and work out elaborate arithmetical problems. He made himself the personal friend of every individual boy; he was an excellent judge of character; he gauged the capacities of his scholars separately; and in his way was a model schoolmaster.

Spen Whiffler was the low comedy boy, the merriman, the Touchstone of the school. He could draw as many funny things on his slate as he could cut queer capers in the play-ground. Once he had had a fight with the tall boy who came from a long distance every day to school, in company with a bag of books and a particularly plain luncheon; during the encounter the tall boy had not once been able to hit Spen, while Spen, on the other hand, contrived to knock his man down; and when his man was down, Spen turned a somersault over his prostrate form, and then posing himself dramatically with one foot upon the tall boy's body, crowed loudly like a cock, upon which the tall boy from the country could not restrain his laughter, and a lasting friendship was thereupon cemented. Jacob had this story from the tall boy's cousin.

One day at school was very much like another. All the year round the reading, and writing, and ciphering, and spelling, and dictation went on with little variety, save now and then when the master delivered a short lecture from his desk, or the "mapping day" came round, as it did every first and last Friday in every month.

One of the most agreeable things for the pupils on mapping day was neral permission to go into the yard to mix Indian ink at the pump.

There was a mysterious charm attending these brief moments of leisure outside the school just before the bell rang for departure. The hum of the school coming through the windows increased the sense of quiet without, and seemed to enhance the freedom of the time. Mapping was a branch of education in which only a few of the elder boys were instructed, and it was carried on in a special little room behind the master's desk.

This room communicated with the yard, in which there was a pump with a leaden spout. The water was always turned on. It made a continual pleasant pattering music as it fell into a trough. When Jacob and Spen were here together, the Indian ink, used for making the mountains and rivers in "The Land of Palestine" and "The British Islands," and the Prussian blue for colouring the sea to the extent of half an inch all round these said countries, required more mixing than usual, the operation being varied by Spen's tricks and witty sayings. But if Spen began these ten minutes as merriman or Touchstone, he frequently became more like Jacques than the wearer of the cap and bells before the ink was considered sufficiently black for the little wavy rivers, and the blue became sufficiently blue for the half-inch sea. More than once he sat on the edge of the trough, and wondered where everybody would be in ten years, and especially whether, after such a lapse of time, he would be mixing ink to map the Nile on a sheet of cartridge paper, or whether he would be mixing colour to blacken his own eyebrows and to redden his own cheeks.

After school hours, Mr. Gregory Spawling frequently made long excursions with Jacob into the country. He would stimulate the boy's natural love of the beautiful by explanations of form and colour, and remarks upon the picturesque in nature and in art. The schoolmaster's own views were often supported with apt quotations from Shakespeare and the old dramatists. The incomparable bard always found a clever, ingenious, and loving interpreter in Mr. Spawling, who evidently knew him almost by heart.

The schoolmaster, very early during the friendship which was established between himself and Jacob, gave his pupil a glimpse into his history, a cue to the reflective character of his mind, and his comparatively humble position in Cartown.

"How is it now," said the schoolmaster, "that smoke, which is usually offensive (you will have noted it at Middleton), should be accounted a picturesque and beautiful addition to a landscape as we see it now?"

"It has a beautiful appearance here, sir," said Jacob.

"With what a grace it mounts upwards, and spreads like an ethereal mist over the foliage!"

"And the colour, sir, is almost like the sky yonder-smoke is very different at Middleton."

"It not only pleases the eye, Jacob; it induces a sensation of quiet, satisfied pleasure, which the landscape would not alone invoke. Do you perceive that, Jacob?"

"I think I do, sir; I hardly know why. I like to see the smoke among the trees."

"Is it not because you connect it in your mind with the cottage below ?"

"I do not know, sir."

"Nor I, Jacob; but I think we are on the right track in that thought at least; and I want you to remember this little incident as an example for the future to inquire into the reasons why any particular thing gives you pleasure. Look below the surface; it will accustom you to analyse your feelings, and give you as much pleasure as profit. Now, my opinion about this wreath of smoke on the tree tops is that there is more of the practical than the poetical about it-more of the physical than the spiritual. There is an inherent love of home among us English; and I think that, in addition to the picturesque bit of colour which it waves above the trees, we associate the smoke with the comfortable hearth at the foot of the chimney whence it rises; we link with it, if I may so speak, that traditional idea of the purest love, the most complete happiness, being found in a cottage, where there is no ambition beyond the possession of the common necessaries of life and an honest name. Beware of ambition, Jacob; beware of building your hopes on one object, be that object what it may; and remember that the blessings of contentment-the greatest blessings in this world-are more frequently found in a humble cottage such as that among the trees below us than in the mansions of the great and wealthy. This is not mere book philosophy, Jacob. I have seen the world; I know every trick of it. Most of us have our troubles, Jacob, sooner or later. I have had mine; some day we may talk of them for your own benefit."

From these evening walks Spen was for some time excluded. Whether it was out of deference to Jacob, who was to be looked upon with more consideration than Spen, or whether Dorothy wanted Spen to run errands, I cannot say; but when Jacob asked that Spen might accompany them the schoolmaster seemed pleased at the request and complied with it immediately. And so these three had long happy walks together in the evenings, and upon these

occasions Spen conducted himself with great propriety, never doing anything in the tumbling way, beyond thinking of the ring, the sawdust, and the theatre.

One evening, instead of a ramble, Mr. Spawling invited the two boys into his own room, a mark of the very greatest consideration. The schoolmaster's sanctum adjoined Mr. Spawling's bedroom, and was regarded by Dorothy as all but sacred. The schoolmaster dusted his own books, and arranged his own papers; so that Dorothy should have no excuse for touching anything beyond the ordinary furniture when she engaged in her periodical house-cleaning. The room looked orderly and comfortable, nevertheless. The furniture consisted, in chief, of a table, on which lay several books and manuscripts; a wellfilled set of book-shelves; a small stand sacred to a bust of Shakespeare; a fat arm-chair; two other chairs from the bedroom-one for Jacob and one for Spen; and an old-fashioned sofa. Several watercolour drawings and engravings adorned the walls. There were portraits of three several gentlemen in the three several characters of Hamlet, Coriolanus, and Romeo. Near these hung the pictures of two ladies, one as Desdemona and the other as Rosalind. Jacob did not know who these persons were, and indeed did not know whether the last mentioned was intended for a boy or a young lady, and he did not ask. Mr. Gregory Spawling knew, and Spenzonian Whiffler knew-had not Spen seen many ladies dressed as boys, both in the circus and in the theatre? But even Spen Whiffler, who was so learned in these matters, did not know that the water-colour drawing was a portrait of Mr. Gregory Spawling, and that when he played Romeo he was to have been married to the young lady who played Juliet, and that she died two days before the one fixed for the wedding. Indeed, nobody in Cartown, or Middleton, or all through the Midland Counties, north and south, knew this. Even the school committee knew nothing of it, because Mr. Gregory Spawling had been recommended to them by a lord, a real live lord, who had said nothing about Mr. Spawling having been an actor, but had spoken of him in the highest terms in which one man could speak of another, especially when the one speaking is a lord and the other an ordinary mortal. But it is hardly right to call Mr. Spawling (there was a different name under the portrait of the actor as Romeo) an ordinary mortal. had been a leader in his profession. Admired, flattered, followed, he had filled a large space in the world's esteem. He had been the observed of all observers. It was no ordinary mortal that could step down from this pedestal and under a new name settle down in the capacity of a country schoolmaster at Cartown.

He