approaching no

nearer to completion. Dick surveyed it with glowing eyes.

"I saw some like it in a shop as I came down. Oh, how I should like to try! I've cut things myself out of a bit of wood with an old knife, and sold them at the fair."

"And you think you could do this without any lessons?" said Val, laughing; "just take and try it. I wonder what old Fullady would say! there are the saws and things. But look here, you'll have to go, for it's time for eleven o'clock school. Take the whole concern with you, quick, and I'll give you five bob if you can finish it. Remember after six at the rafts to-night."

do better than that I'll get Lichen to speak to them! They might not care for me- but they'll mind what Lichen says." Dick received reverentially and gratefully, but without understanding the full grandeur of the idea, this splendid promise for how should the young tramp have known, what I am sure the reader must divine, that Lichen was that Olympian demigod and king among men, the Captain of the Boats? If Lichen had asked the Queen for anything, I wonder if her Majesty would have had the courage to refuse him? but at all events nobody about the river dared to deny him. To be spoken to by Lichen was, to an ordinary mortal, distinction enough to last him half his (Eton) days. Dick did Thus saying, the young patron pushed not see the magnificence of the prospect his protégé before him out of the room, that thus opened to him, but Val knew all laden with the wood-carving, and rushed that was implied in it, and his counte-off himself with a pile of books under his nance brightened all over. "I don't arm. All the boys in the house seemed think they can refuse Lichen anything," flooding out, and all the boys in Eton to he said. "Look here, Brown; meet us be pouring in different directions, one at the rafts after six, and I'll tell you stream intersecting another, as Dick iswhat is done. I wish your mother would sued forth, filled with delight and hope. tell me my fortune. Lots of fellows He had not a corner to which he could would go to her if they knew; but then take the precious bit of work he had the masters wouldn't like it, and there been intrusted with-nothing but the might be a row." common room of the tramps' lodginghouse. Oh for a "home," not so grand as Val's little palace, but anything that would afford protection and quietplace to decorate and pet like a child! This feeling grew tenfold stronger in Dick's heart as he sat wistfully on the "If Lichen speaks for you, you'll get river's bank, and looked across at the rafts it," said Val; “and I know Harry wants in which were sublime possibilities of boys. You're a good boy, ain't you?" work and wages. How he longed for the he added, looking at him closely - 'you evening! How he counted the moments look it. And mind, if we recommend you, as the day glowed through its mid hours, and you're found out to be rowdy or bad and the sun descended the western sky, after, and disgrace us, Lichen will give and the hour known in these regions as you such a licking! Or for that matter," after six began to come down softly I'll do it myself." on Eton and the world!

"Bless you, sir, mother wouldn't-not for the Bank of England," cried Dick. "She might tell you yours, if I was to ask her. Thank you kindly, sir; I'll be there as sure as life. It's what I should

like most."

"I'm not afraid," said Dick. "I ain't rowdy; and if I get a fixed place and a chance of making a home, you just try me, and see if I'll lose my work for the sake of pleasure. I ain't that sort."

CHAPTER XVII.

-a

DICK's mother sat upon the bank where he had left her, with her hands clasping her knees, and her abstract eyes gazing across the river into the distance, seeing scarcely anything before her, but

"I don't believe you are," said Val; "only it's right I should warn you; for Lichen ain't a fellow to stand any non-seeing much which was not before her sense, and no more am I. Do you think that's pretty? I'm doing it, but I haven't the time."

This was said in respect to a piece of wood-carving, which Valentine had begun in the beginning of the year, and which lay there, like many another enterprise commenced, gathering dust but

nor could be. A tramp has no room to sit in, no domestic duties to do, even were she disposed to do them; and to sit thus in a silent musing, or without even musing at all, in mere empty leisure, beaten upon by wind and sun, was as characteristic of her wandering life as were the long fatigues of the road along

1

Sixteen years! a large slice out of a woman's life who had not yet done more than pass the half-way milestone of human existence. She had never possessed so much even of the merest rudimentary education as to know what the position

which at other times she would plod for the most rigid conventional life, and hours, or the noisy tumult of race-course bound, had she known it, by as unyieldor fair through which she often carried ing a lacework of custom as any that lier serious face and abstract eyesa could have affected the life of the Honfigure always remarkable and never hav- ourable Mrs. Richard Ross, the wife of ing any visible connection with the scene the Secretary of Legation. But she did in which she was. But this day she was not know this, poor soul; and besides, as she had not been for years. The all possibility of that other existence, all heart which fulfilled its ordinary pulsa- hold upon it or thought of it, had disaptions in her breast calmly and dully on peared out of her horizon for sixteen most occasions, like something far off years. and scarcely belonging to her, was now throbbing high with an emotion which influenced every nerve and fibre of her frame. It had never stilled since last night when she heard Val's name sounding clear through the sunny air, and saw the tall well-formed boy, with his wet of Richard Ross's wife meant, except jersey clinging to his shoulders, moving that it involved living in a house, wearing swiftly away from her, a vision, but more good clothes, and being surrounded by substantial than any other vision. Her people of whom she was frightened, who old heart, the heart of her youth, had did not understand her, and whom she leaped back into life at that moment; could not understand. Since her flight and instead of the muffled beating of the back into her natural condition, the slow familiar machine which had simply kept years had brought to her maturing mind her alive all these years, a something full thoughts which she understood as little. of independent life, full of passion, and She was not more educated, more clever, eagerness, and quick-coming fancies, and nor indeed more clear in her confused hope, and fear, had suddenly come to fancies, than when she gave back one of life within her bosom. I don't know if her boys, driven thereto by a wild sense her thoughts were very articulate. They of justice, into his father's keeping; but could scarcely have been so, uneducated, many strange things had seemed to pass untrained, undisciplined soul as she was before her dreamy eyes since then,- a creature ruled by impulses, and with things she could not fathom, vague no hand to control her; but as she sat visions of what might have been right, there, and saw her placid Dick go hap- of what was wrong. These had come to pily off, to meet the other lad who was to little practical result, except in so far that him " a young swell," able to advance she had carefully preserved her boy Dick and help him, one to whom he had taken from contact with the evil around — had a sudden fancy, he could not tell why,-trained him in her way to truth and the strangeness of the situation roused goodness and some strange sense of her to an excitement which she was in-honour - had got him even a little educapable of subduing. "It mayn't be him cation, the faculties of reading and writafter all-it mayn't be him after all," she said to herself, watching Dick till he disappeared into the distance. She would have given all she had (it was not much) to go with him, and look face to face upon the other. It seemed to her that she must know at the first glance whether it was him or not. But, indeed, she had no doubt that it was him. For I do not attempt to make any pretence at deceiving the well-informed and quick-sighted reader, who knows as well as I do who this woman was. She had carried on her wandering life, the life which she had chosen, for the last eight years, exposed to all the vicissitudes of people in her condition, sometimes in want, often miserable, pursuing in her wild freedom a routine as mechanically fixed as that of

ing, which were to herself a huge distinction among her tribe; and, by keeping him in her own dreamy and silent but pure companionship, had preserved the lad from moral harm. She had, however, a material to work upon which had saved her much trouble. The boy was, to begin with, of a character as incomprehensible to her as were the other vague and strange influences which had shaped her shipwrecked life. He was good, gentle, more advanced than herself, his teacher, in the higher things which she tried to teach him, getting by instinct to conclusions which only painfully and dimly had forced themselves upon her, not subject to the temptations which she expected to move him, not lawless, nor violent, nor hard to control,

66

"There was a kind of an accident on the river last night," she said, after a while; "one of the gentlemen got his boat upset, and my lad brought it down

"Lord bless you, call that a haccident?" said her informant; "half-adozen of 'em swamps every night. They don't mind, nor nobody else."

but full of reason and sense and steady the rafts, lightly-clad, softly-stepping trustworthiness from his cradle. She figures, in noiseless boating shoes and had by this time got over the surprise such imitation of boating costume as with which she had slowly come to rec- their means could afford, were lounging ognize in Dick a being totally different about with nothing to do, seated on the from herself. She was no analyst of char- rails drawling in dreary Berkshire speech, acter, and she had accepted the fact with or arranging their boats in readiness for dumb wonder which did not know how the approaching rush. Dick's mother to put itself into words. Even now there approached along the road, without atawaited her many lesser surprises, as tracting any special observation, and got Dick, going on from step to step in life, into conversation with one or two of did things which it never would have oc- these men with the ease which attends curred to her to do, and showed himself social intercourse on these levels of life. totally impervious to those temptations" If there is a new hand wanted, my lad against which it had been necessary for is dreadful anxious to come," she said. her to struggle. His last declaration to " Old Harry's looking for a new lad," her was as surprising as anything that answered the man she addressed. And went before it. The nomad's son, who so the talk began. had been "on the tramp" all his life, whose existence had been spent "on the road," alternating between the noisy excitement of those scenes of amusement which youth generally loves, and that dull semi-hibernation of the winter which gives the tramp so keen a zest for the new start of spring,- was it the boy so bred who had spoken to her of a "home," of steady work, and the commonplace existence of a man who had learned a trade? She wondered with a depth of vague surprise which it would be impos- "I know him well enough - he's in sible to put into words for she herself the Victory; not half a bad fellow in his had no words to express what she meant. way, but awful sharp, and not a bit of Had it not happened to chime in with the patience. I seed him come in dripping longing in her own mind to stay here and wet. He's free with his money, and I see the other boy, whose momentary con- daresay he'd pay your lad handsome. If tact had filled her with such excitement, II were you, I'd speak to old Harry himdon't know how she would have received Dick's strange proposal; but in her other agitation it had passed without more than an additional but temporary shock of that surprise which Dick constantly gave her; and she did not count the cost of the concession she had made to him, the tacit agreement she had come under to live under a commonplace roof, and confine herself to indoor life during this flush of midsummer weather, for the longing that she had to know something, if only as a distant spectator, of the life and being of that other boy.

After a while she roused herself and went over in the ferry-boat to the other side of the river, where were "the rafts" to which Dick looked with so much anxiety and hope. Everything was very still at the rafts at that sunny hour before mid-day, when Eton, shut up in its schoolrooms, did its construing drowsily, and dreamed of the delights of "after twelve" without being able to rush forth and anticipate them. The attendants on

"The name of this one was Ross, I think," she said, very slowly; "maybe you'll know him?”

self about the place; and if you say you've a friend or two among them young swells, better luck."

"Is this one what you call a swell?" said the woman.

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'Why, he's Mr. Ross, ain't he? that's Eton for honourable," said one of the men.

"He aint Mr. Ross," said an older and better-informed person, with some contempt. The older attendants at the rafts were walking peerages, and knew everybody's pedigree. "His father was Mister Ross, if you please. He used to be at college in my time; a nice light-haired sort of a lad, not good for much, but with heaps of friends. Not half the pluck of this one: this one's as dark as you, missis, a kind of a foreign-looking blade, and as wilful as the old gentleman himself. But I like that sort better than the quiet ones; the quiet ones does just as much mischief on the sly."

"They're a rare lot, them lads are," said the other-"shouting at a man

like's he was the dust under their feet. | speak to him about your lad. Speak up Ain't we their fellow-creatures all the same? It ain't much you makes at the rafts, missis, even if you gains a lot in the season. For after all, look how short the season is -you may say just the summer half. It's too cold in March, and it's too cold in October - nothing to speak of but the summer half. You makes a good deal while it lasts, I don't say nothing to the contrary but what's that to good steady work all round the year?"

66

Maybe her lad isn't one for steady work," said another. "It is work, I can tell you is this, as long as it lasts; from early morning to lockup, never a moment to draw your breath, but school-hours, and holidays, and half-holidays without end. Then there's the regular boating gents as come and go, not constant like the Eton gentlemen. They give a deal of trouble they do; and as particular with their boats as if they were babies, I tell you what, missis, if you want him to have an easy place, I wouldn't send him here."

"He's not one that's afraid of work," said the woman, "and it's what he's set his heart on. I wonder if you could tell me now where this Mr. Ross comes from? -if he's west-country now, down Devonshire way?"

"Bless you, no," said the older man, who was great in genealogies; "he's from the north, he is Scotland or thereabouts. His grandfather came with him when he first came to college Lord something or other. About as like a lord as I am. But the nobility ain't much to look at," added this functionary, with whom familiarity had bred contempt. "They're a poor lot them Scotch and Irish lords. Give me a good railway man, or that sort; they're the ones for spending their money. Lord-I can't think on the old un's name."

"Was it - Eskside?"

"You're a nice sort of body to know about the haristocracy," said the man; "in course it was Eskside. Now, missis, if you knowed, what was the good of coming asking me, taking a fellow in?"

"I didn't know," said the woman, humbly; "I only wanted to know. In my young days, long ago, I knew -a family

of that name."

"Ay, ay, in your young days. You were a handsome lass then, I'll be bound," said the old man, with a grin.

"Look here," said one of the others "here's old Harry coming, if you like to

and don't be frightened. He ain't at all a bad sort, and if you tell him as the boy's spry and handy, and don't mind a hard day's work - speak up! only don't say I told you." And the benevolent adviser disappeared hastily, and began to pull about some old gigs which were ranged on the rafts, as if much too busily occupied to spare a word. The woman went up to the master with a heart beating so strongly that she could scarcely hear her own voice. On any other occasion she would have been shy and reluctant. Asking favours was not in her way-she did not know how to do it. She could not feign or compliment, or do anything to ingratiate herself with a patron. But her internal agitation was so strong that she was quite uplifted beyond all sense of the effort which would have been so trying to her on any other occasion. She went up to him sustained by her excitement, which at the same time blunted her feelings, and made her almost unaware of the very words she uttered.

"Master," she said, going straight to the point, as the excited mind naturally does "I have a boy that is very anxious for work. He is a good lad, and very kind to me. We've been tramping about the country-nothing better, for all my folks was in that way; but he don't take after me and my folks. He thinks steady work is better, and to stay still in one place."

"He is in the right of it there," was the reply.

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Maybe he is in the right," she said; "I'm not the one to say, for I'm fond of my freedom and moving about. But, master, you'll have one in your place that is not afraid of hard work if you'll have my son."

"Who is your son? do I know him?" said the master, who was a man with a mobile and clean-shaven countenance, like an actor, with a twinkling eye and a suave manner, the father of an athletic band of river worthies who were regarded generally with much admiration by "the college gentlemen," to whom their prowess was well known, "who is your son?"

The woman grew sick and giddy with the tumult of feeling in her. The words were simple enough in straightforward meaning; but they bore another sense, which made her heart flutter, and took the very light from her eyes. "Who was her son? It was all she could do to keep from betraying herself, from claim

i

ing some one else as her son, very differ-, wooden railing, and held herself upright ent from Dick. If she had done so, she by it, shutting her eyes to concentrate would have been simply treated as a mad her strength. And by-and-by the bewilwoman as it was, the bystanders, used dering sick emotion passed; was it him to tramps of a very different class, looked whom she had seen? at her with instant suspicion, half disposed to attribute her giddiness and faltering to a common enough cause. She mastered herself without fully knowing either the risk she had run or the look directed to her. "You don't know him," she said. "We came here but last night. One of the college gentlemen was to speak for him. He's a good hard-working lad, if you'll take my word for it, that knows him best."

---

After this she crossed the river again in the ferry-boat, though it was a halfpenny each time, and she felt the expenditure to be extravagant, and walked about on the other bank till she found Dick, who naturally adopted the same means of finding her, neither of them thinking of any return "home,”—a place which did not exist in their consciousness. Then they went and bought something in an eatingshop, and brought it out to a quiet corner "Well, missis, it's true as you know opposite the "Brocas clump," and there him best; but I don't know as we can ate their dinner, with the river flowing at take his mother's word for it. Mothers their feet, and the skiffs of "the gentleain't always to be trusted to tell what they men" darting by. It was, or rather know," said the master, good-humouredly. looked, a poetic meal, and few people "I'll speak to you another time, for here passed in sight without a momentary envy they are coming. Look sharp, lads." of the humble picnic; but to Dick Brown "All right, sir; here you are." and his mother there was nothing out of The tide was coming in-a tide of the way in it, and she tied up the fragboys- who immediately flooded the ments for supper in a spotted cotton place, pouring up-stairs into the dressing- handkerchief when they had finished. rooms to change their school garments It was natural for them to eat out of for boating dress, and gradually occupy-doors, as well as to do everything else ing the rafts in a moving restless crowd. out of doors. Dick told her of his good The woman stood, jostled by the living luck, how kind Valentine had been, and stream, watching wistfully, while boat gave her the half-crown he had received, after boat shot out into the water, -gigs, and an account of all that was to be done with a laughing, restless crew-out- for him. “If they don't mind him, riggers, each with a silent inmate, bent they're sure to mind the other gentleon work and practice; for all the school man," said devout Dick, who believed in races had yet to be rowed. She stood Val's power with a fervent and unquesgazing, with a heart that fluttered wildly, tioned faith. After a while he went upon all those unknown young faces and across to the rafts, and hung about there animated moving figures. One of them ready for any odd job, and making himwas bound to her by the closest tie that self conspicuous in eager anxiety to can unite two human creatures; and yet, please the master. His mother stayed poor soul, she did not know him, nor had still, with the fragments of their meal he the slightest clue to find her out to tied up in the handkerchief, on the same think of her as anyhow connected with grassy bank where they dined, watching himself. Her heart grew sick as she the boats as they came and went. She gazed and gazed, pausing now upon one did not understand how it was that they face, now upon another. There was one all dropped off one by one, and as sudof whom she caught a passing glimpse, denly reappeared again when the hour as he pushed off into the stream in one for dinner and the hour of "three o'clock of the long-winged dragon-fly boats, who school" passed. But she had nothing to excited her most of all. She could not do to call her from that musing and sisee him clearly, only a glimpse of him be-lence to which she had become habitutween the crowding figures about; anated, and remained there the entire afteroval face, with dark clouds of curling noon doing nothing but gaze, At last, hair pushed from his forehead. There came a ringing in her ears, a dimness in her eyes. Women in her class do not faint except at the most tremendous emergencies. If they did, they would probably be set down as intoxicated, and summarily dealt with. She caught at the

however, she made a great effort, and roused herself. The unknown boy after whom she yearned could not be identified among all these strange faces; and there was something which could be done for good Dick, the boy who had always been good to her. She did for Dick what no