Chapter Twenty Six.

Chapter Twenty Six.Lambert Simnel, the Baker’s Boy who pretended to be a King.A scene of unwonted excitement was being enacted in Dublin. The streets were thronged with people, the houses were gay with flags, soldiers lined the paths, and nobles in their grand carriages went by in procession. The common folk shouted till they were hoarse, and pressed forward on every hand towards the great church of the city, to witness the ceremony which was taking place there.Whence was all this excitement? How came the Irish capital into such a state of festivity and holiday-making? The story is a short one and a strange.Some weeks before, a man in the dress of a priest, accompanied by a good-looking boy, had landed in Dublin, and made his way to the residence of the governor of the place, with whom he sought an interview. On being admitted, he much astonished that nobleman by the tale he told.It was well known that Richard the Third had during his lifetime shut up in prison the young Earl of Warwick, his nephew, whose title to the crown was better than his own. The cruel uncle, who seemed unable to endure the presence of any of those whom he had so basely robbed of their inheritance, had already, as is well known, murdered those other two nephews whose claims were most prominent and unmistakable. The young Earl of Warwick, however, was allowed to keep his life, but remained a close prisoner in a castle in Yorkshire.When Henry the Seventh took the crown from Richard and became king, he was by no means disposed to liberate a prince who was clearly nearer to the throne than himself. So he had him removed from Yorkshire to the Tower of London, where he remained almost forgotten amid the bustle of coronation festivities of the new king.Now the story told by the priest was that this prince had succeeded in escaping from the Tower, and indeed was none other than the lad who now stood at his side, having made his way to Ireland in the company of his tutor and friend, to beg the aid of the Governor of Dublin in an effort to recover his lawful inheritance.The Earl of Kildare (that was the governor’s name) looked in astonishment from one to the other, and bade them repeat their story, asking the boy many questions about his childhood and the companions of his youth, which the latter answered so glibly and unhesitatingly that the foolish governor was fully persuaded this was no other than the rightful King of England.He caused the lad to be treated with all the honour due to royalty; he gave him a guard of soldiers, he showed him to the populace, who welcomed him with enthusiasm, and he set to work to organise an army which should follow to enforce his claim to the throne of England.The boy took all this sudden glory in a half-bewildered manner, but adhered so correctly to his plausible story that none of those generous Irish folk doubted that he was any other than the disinherited prince he professed to be.Had they only known that the youth about whom they were so enthusiastic was no better than a baker’s son, named Lambert Simnel, they might have been less pleased.Well, in due time it was decided to crown the new king with all honour. And this was the occasion about which, as we have seen, Dublin was in such a state of festivity and holiday.The boy was conducted with great pomp to church, amid the shouts of the people, and there crowned with a diadem taken from a statue of the Virgin Mary. Afterwards, according to custom, he was borne on the shoulders of a huge Irish chieftain back to the castle, where he lived as a king for some time.All this while the real Earl of Warwick was safe in the Tower, and now when the rumour of Lambert Simnel’s doings in Ireland reached King Henry, he had him brought out from his prison and exhibited in public, so that every one might be convinced of the imposture of the boy who set himself up to be the same person.But though the people of England were thus kept from being deceived, as the Irish had been, there were a good many of them who heartily disliked King Henry, and were ready to join in any movement against him, irrespective of right or wrong. The consequence was, Lambert Simnel—or rather the people who instigated him in his falsehood—found they might count on a fair amount of support even from those who discredited their story; and this encouraged them to attempt an invasion of England, and venture their scheme on the field of battle. So, with a force of about 8,000 men, they landed in Lancashire. There is no need to tell the result of this expedition. After many disappointments occasioned by the reluctance of the people to join them, they encountered the king’s army near Newark, and after a desperate battle were defeated, and lost all their leaders. Lambert Simnel and the priest were taken prisoners, and for a time there was an end of this silly attempt to deceive the nation.In the following years of Henry’s reign, any one entering the royal kitchens might have observed a boy, meanly dressed, following his occupation as a turnspit; and that boy, had he felt disposed to give you his history, would have told you how once upon a time he was crowned a king, and lived in a palace, how nobles bowed the knee before him, and troops fought at his bidding. He would have told how people had hailed him as King Edward of England, and rushed along beside his carriage, eager to catch so much as a glance from his eye. And then he would go on to tell how all this was because designing men had put into his head foolish ambitions, and taught him to repeat a likely-looking story. And if one had questioned him further, doubtless he would have confessed that he was happier far now as a humble turnspit than ever he had been as a sham king, and would have warned one sadly that cheats never prosper, however successful they may seem for a time; and that contentment with one’s lot, humble though it be, brings with it rewards infinitely greater than riches or power wrongly acquired.

A scene of unwonted excitement was being enacted in Dublin. The streets were thronged with people, the houses were gay with flags, soldiers lined the paths, and nobles in their grand carriages went by in procession. The common folk shouted till they were hoarse, and pressed forward on every hand towards the great church of the city, to witness the ceremony which was taking place there.

Whence was all this excitement? How came the Irish capital into such a state of festivity and holiday-making? The story is a short one and a strange.

Some weeks before, a man in the dress of a priest, accompanied by a good-looking boy, had landed in Dublin, and made his way to the residence of the governor of the place, with whom he sought an interview. On being admitted, he much astonished that nobleman by the tale he told.

It was well known that Richard the Third had during his lifetime shut up in prison the young Earl of Warwick, his nephew, whose title to the crown was better than his own. The cruel uncle, who seemed unable to endure the presence of any of those whom he had so basely robbed of their inheritance, had already, as is well known, murdered those other two nephews whose claims were most prominent and unmistakable. The young Earl of Warwick, however, was allowed to keep his life, but remained a close prisoner in a castle in Yorkshire.

When Henry the Seventh took the crown from Richard and became king, he was by no means disposed to liberate a prince who was clearly nearer to the throne than himself. So he had him removed from Yorkshire to the Tower of London, where he remained almost forgotten amid the bustle of coronation festivities of the new king.

Now the story told by the priest was that this prince had succeeded in escaping from the Tower, and indeed was none other than the lad who now stood at his side, having made his way to Ireland in the company of his tutor and friend, to beg the aid of the Governor of Dublin in an effort to recover his lawful inheritance.

The Earl of Kildare (that was the governor’s name) looked in astonishment from one to the other, and bade them repeat their story, asking the boy many questions about his childhood and the companions of his youth, which the latter answered so glibly and unhesitatingly that the foolish governor was fully persuaded this was no other than the rightful King of England.

He caused the lad to be treated with all the honour due to royalty; he gave him a guard of soldiers, he showed him to the populace, who welcomed him with enthusiasm, and he set to work to organise an army which should follow to enforce his claim to the throne of England.

The boy took all this sudden glory in a half-bewildered manner, but adhered so correctly to his plausible story that none of those generous Irish folk doubted that he was any other than the disinherited prince he professed to be.

Had they only known that the youth about whom they were so enthusiastic was no better than a baker’s son, named Lambert Simnel, they might have been less pleased.

Well, in due time it was decided to crown the new king with all honour. And this was the occasion about which, as we have seen, Dublin was in such a state of festivity and holiday.

The boy was conducted with great pomp to church, amid the shouts of the people, and there crowned with a diadem taken from a statue of the Virgin Mary. Afterwards, according to custom, he was borne on the shoulders of a huge Irish chieftain back to the castle, where he lived as a king for some time.

All this while the real Earl of Warwick was safe in the Tower, and now when the rumour of Lambert Simnel’s doings in Ireland reached King Henry, he had him brought out from his prison and exhibited in public, so that every one might be convinced of the imposture of the boy who set himself up to be the same person.

But though the people of England were thus kept from being deceived, as the Irish had been, there were a good many of them who heartily disliked King Henry, and were ready to join in any movement against him, irrespective of right or wrong. The consequence was, Lambert Simnel—or rather the people who instigated him in his falsehood—found they might count on a fair amount of support even from those who discredited their story; and this encouraged them to attempt an invasion of England, and venture their scheme on the field of battle. So, with a force of about 8,000 men, they landed in Lancashire. There is no need to tell the result of this expedition. After many disappointments occasioned by the reluctance of the people to join them, they encountered the king’s army near Newark, and after a desperate battle were defeated, and lost all their leaders. Lambert Simnel and the priest were taken prisoners, and for a time there was an end of this silly attempt to deceive the nation.

In the following years of Henry’s reign, any one entering the royal kitchens might have observed a boy, meanly dressed, following his occupation as a turnspit; and that boy, had he felt disposed to give you his history, would have told you how once upon a time he was crowned a king, and lived in a palace, how nobles bowed the knee before him, and troops fought at his bidding. He would have told how people had hailed him as King Edward of England, and rushed along beside his carriage, eager to catch so much as a glance from his eye. And then he would go on to tell how all this was because designing men had put into his head foolish ambitions, and taught him to repeat a likely-looking story. And if one had questioned him further, doubtless he would have confessed that he was happier far now as a humble turnspit than ever he had been as a sham king, and would have warned one sadly that cheats never prosper, however successful they may seem for a time; and that contentment with one’s lot, humble though it be, brings with it rewards infinitely greater than riches or power wrongly acquired.

Chapter Twenty Seven.Edward and Richard Plantagenet, the Boys who were murdered in the Tower.A horseman stood at the gate of the Tower of London, and demanded entrance in the name of the king, Richard Iii.On hearing the summons, and the authority claimed by the stranger, the governor, Sir Thomas Brackenbury, directed that he should be admitted, and deliver his message.“Read this,” said the man, handing a missive sealed with the royal seal.Sir Thomas read the document hastily, and as he read his face grew troubled. For a long time he was silent; then addressing the king’s messenger, he said—“Know you the contents of this letter?”“How should I know?” replied the other evasively.“The king directs me here,” said Sir Thomas, “to do a deed horrible and unworthy of a man. He demands that I should rid him of the two lads now lying in this Tower in my custody.”“And what of that?” said the king’s messenger. “Is it not necessary to the country’s peace? And willyou, Sir Thomas, render so base an ingratitude for the favours you have received at the king’s hands by refusing him this service?”“Not even with the sanction of a king will Thomas Brackenbury hire himself out as a butcher. My office and all I have,” he added, “I hold at His Majesty’s pleasure. He may take them from me if he will, but my hands shall at least stay free from innocent blood!”With that he bade the messenger return to his master and deliver his reply.When Richard, away in Gloucestershire, heard of the refusal of the Governor of the Tower to execute his commands, he was very wroth, and vowed he would yet carry out his cruel purpose with regard to his two helpless nephews.These two boys, the sons of Edward the Fourth, were the principal obstacles to Richard’s undisturbed possession of the throne he had usurped. The elder of them, a boy of thirteen, had already been crowned as Edward the Fifth, but he was a king in name only. Scarcely had the coronation taken place when his bad uncle, under the pretence of offering his protection, got him into his power, and shut him up, with his young brother Richard, in the Tower, while he himself plotted for the crown to which he had neither right nor title.How he succeeded in his evil schemes history has recorded.By dint of falsehood and cunning he contrived to make himself acknowledged king by an unwilling people; and then, when the height of his ambition had been attained, he could not rest till those whom he had so shamefully robbed of their inheritance were out of his path.Therefore it was he sent his messenger to Sir Robert Brackenbury.Foiled in his design of making this officer the instrument of his base scheme, he summoned to his presence Sir James Tyrrel, a man of reckless character, ready for whatever might bring him profit or preferment; and to him he confided his wishes.That same day Tyrrel started for London, armed with a warrant entrusting him with the Governorship of the Tower for one day, during which Sir Robert Brackenbury was to hand over the fortress and all it contained to his keeping.The brave knight had nothing for it but to obey this order, though he well knew its meaning, and could foretell only too readily its result.In a lofty room of that gloomy fortress, that same summer evening, the two hapless brothers were sitting, little dreaming of the fate so nearly approaching.The young king had indeed for some time past seemed to entertain a vague foreboding that he would never again breathe the free air outside his prison. He had grown melancholy, and the buoyant spirits of youth had given place to a listlessness and heaviness strangely out of keeping with his tender years. He cared neither for talk nor exercise, and neglected both food and dress. His brother, two years younger than himself, was of a more hopeful demeanour, perhaps realising less fully the hardships and dangers of their present imprisonment. As they sat this evening in their lonely chamber, he tried to rally his elder brother from his melancholy.“Look not so black, brother; we shall soon be free. Why should we give up hope?”The young king answered nothing, and apparently did not heed his brother’s words.“Nay,” persisted the latter, “should we not be glad our lives are spared us, and that our imprisonment is made easy by the care of good Sir Robert, our governor?”Still Edward remained absorbed in his own gloomy reflections, and the younger lad, thus foiled in his efforts at cheerfulness, became silent too, and sad, and so continued till a warder entered their chamber with food, and remained to attend them to bed.They tasted little that evening, for the shadow of what was to come seemed already to have crept over their spirits.“Will Sir Robert come to see us, as is his wont, before we retire to rest?” inquired Richard of the warder.“Sir Robert is not now Governor of the Tower,” curtly replied the man.Now indeed they felt themselves utterly friendless, and as they crept to their bed they clung one to the other, in all the loneliness of despair.Then the warder took his leave, and they heard the key turn in the lock behind him, and counted his footsteps as he descended the stairs.Presently sleep mercifully fell upon their weary spirits, and closed their weeping eyes with her gentle touch.At dead of night three men stole up the winding staircase that led to their chamber, armed, and carrying a light. The leader of these was Sir James Tyrrel, and his evil-looking companions were the men he had hired to carry out the cruel order of the king. The key turned in the door, and they entered the apartment.It was a sight to touch any heart less hard than those of the three villains who now witnessed it, to see those two innocent boys sleeping peacefully in each other’s arms, dreaming perhaps of liberty, and forgetting the sorrow which had left its traces even yet on their closed eyes. But to Tyrrel and his two assassins, Forest and Deighton, the spectacle suggested neither pity nor remorse.At a signal from Tyrrel, who remained outside the room while the deed was being done, the ruffians snatched the pillows from under the heads of the sleepers, and ere they could either resist or cry out the poor lads were stifled beneath their own bedclothes, and so perished.Then these two murderers called to Tyrrel to enter and look on their work, and bear witness that the king’s command had been faithfully executed.The cup of Richard’s wickedness was now full. He concealed for some time the fate of his two victims, and few people knew what had become of their rightful king and his brother. But the vengeance of Heaven fell on the cruel uncle speedily and terribly. His own favourite son died, his family turned against him, his people rebelled: the kingdom so evilly gained was taken from him, and he himself, after months of remorse, and fear, and gathering misfortunes, was slain in battle, lamented by none, and hated by all.Two centuries later, in the reign of King Charles the Second, some workmen, digging in the Tower, discovered under the stairs leading to the chapel of the White Tower a box containing the bones of two children, corresponding to the ages of the murdered princes. These were found to be without doubt their remains, and in a quiet comer of Westminster Abbey, whither they were removed, a simple memorial now marks their last resting-place, and records the fact of their cruel murder by perhaps the worst king who ever sat upon the throne of England.

A horseman stood at the gate of the Tower of London, and demanded entrance in the name of the king, Richard Iii.

On hearing the summons, and the authority claimed by the stranger, the governor, Sir Thomas Brackenbury, directed that he should be admitted, and deliver his message.

“Read this,” said the man, handing a missive sealed with the royal seal.

Sir Thomas read the document hastily, and as he read his face grew troubled. For a long time he was silent; then addressing the king’s messenger, he said—

“Know you the contents of this letter?”

“How should I know?” replied the other evasively.

“The king directs me here,” said Sir Thomas, “to do a deed horrible and unworthy of a man. He demands that I should rid him of the two lads now lying in this Tower in my custody.”

“And what of that?” said the king’s messenger. “Is it not necessary to the country’s peace? And willyou, Sir Thomas, render so base an ingratitude for the favours you have received at the king’s hands by refusing him this service?”

“Not even with the sanction of a king will Thomas Brackenbury hire himself out as a butcher. My office and all I have,” he added, “I hold at His Majesty’s pleasure. He may take them from me if he will, but my hands shall at least stay free from innocent blood!”

With that he bade the messenger return to his master and deliver his reply.

When Richard, away in Gloucestershire, heard of the refusal of the Governor of the Tower to execute his commands, he was very wroth, and vowed he would yet carry out his cruel purpose with regard to his two helpless nephews.

These two boys, the sons of Edward the Fourth, were the principal obstacles to Richard’s undisturbed possession of the throne he had usurped. The elder of them, a boy of thirteen, had already been crowned as Edward the Fifth, but he was a king in name only. Scarcely had the coronation taken place when his bad uncle, under the pretence of offering his protection, got him into his power, and shut him up, with his young brother Richard, in the Tower, while he himself plotted for the crown to which he had neither right nor title.

How he succeeded in his evil schemes history has recorded.

By dint of falsehood and cunning he contrived to make himself acknowledged king by an unwilling people; and then, when the height of his ambition had been attained, he could not rest till those whom he had so shamefully robbed of their inheritance were out of his path.

Therefore it was he sent his messenger to Sir Robert Brackenbury.

Foiled in his design of making this officer the instrument of his base scheme, he summoned to his presence Sir James Tyrrel, a man of reckless character, ready for whatever might bring him profit or preferment; and to him he confided his wishes.

That same day Tyrrel started for London, armed with a warrant entrusting him with the Governorship of the Tower for one day, during which Sir Robert Brackenbury was to hand over the fortress and all it contained to his keeping.

The brave knight had nothing for it but to obey this order, though he well knew its meaning, and could foretell only too readily its result.

In a lofty room of that gloomy fortress, that same summer evening, the two hapless brothers were sitting, little dreaming of the fate so nearly approaching.

The young king had indeed for some time past seemed to entertain a vague foreboding that he would never again breathe the free air outside his prison. He had grown melancholy, and the buoyant spirits of youth had given place to a listlessness and heaviness strangely out of keeping with his tender years. He cared neither for talk nor exercise, and neglected both food and dress. His brother, two years younger than himself, was of a more hopeful demeanour, perhaps realising less fully the hardships and dangers of their present imprisonment. As they sat this evening in their lonely chamber, he tried to rally his elder brother from his melancholy.

“Look not so black, brother; we shall soon be free. Why should we give up hope?”

The young king answered nothing, and apparently did not heed his brother’s words.

“Nay,” persisted the latter, “should we not be glad our lives are spared us, and that our imprisonment is made easy by the care of good Sir Robert, our governor?”

Still Edward remained absorbed in his own gloomy reflections, and the younger lad, thus foiled in his efforts at cheerfulness, became silent too, and sad, and so continued till a warder entered their chamber with food, and remained to attend them to bed.

They tasted little that evening, for the shadow of what was to come seemed already to have crept over their spirits.

“Will Sir Robert come to see us, as is his wont, before we retire to rest?” inquired Richard of the warder.

“Sir Robert is not now Governor of the Tower,” curtly replied the man.

Now indeed they felt themselves utterly friendless, and as they crept to their bed they clung one to the other, in all the loneliness of despair.

Then the warder took his leave, and they heard the key turn in the lock behind him, and counted his footsteps as he descended the stairs.

Presently sleep mercifully fell upon their weary spirits, and closed their weeping eyes with her gentle touch.

At dead of night three men stole up the winding staircase that led to their chamber, armed, and carrying a light. The leader of these was Sir James Tyrrel, and his evil-looking companions were the men he had hired to carry out the cruel order of the king. The key turned in the door, and they entered the apartment.

It was a sight to touch any heart less hard than those of the three villains who now witnessed it, to see those two innocent boys sleeping peacefully in each other’s arms, dreaming perhaps of liberty, and forgetting the sorrow which had left its traces even yet on their closed eyes. But to Tyrrel and his two assassins, Forest and Deighton, the spectacle suggested neither pity nor remorse.

At a signal from Tyrrel, who remained outside the room while the deed was being done, the ruffians snatched the pillows from under the heads of the sleepers, and ere they could either resist or cry out the poor lads were stifled beneath their own bedclothes, and so perished.

Then these two murderers called to Tyrrel to enter and look on their work, and bear witness that the king’s command had been faithfully executed.

The cup of Richard’s wickedness was now full. He concealed for some time the fate of his two victims, and few people knew what had become of their rightful king and his brother. But the vengeance of Heaven fell on the cruel uncle speedily and terribly. His own favourite son died, his family turned against him, his people rebelled: the kingdom so evilly gained was taken from him, and he himself, after months of remorse, and fear, and gathering misfortunes, was slain in battle, lamented by none, and hated by all.

Two centuries later, in the reign of King Charles the Second, some workmen, digging in the Tower, discovered under the stairs leading to the chapel of the White Tower a box containing the bones of two children, corresponding to the ages of the murdered princes. These were found to be without doubt their remains, and in a quiet comer of Westminster Abbey, whither they were removed, a simple memorial now marks their last resting-place, and records the fact of their cruel murder by perhaps the worst king who ever sat upon the throne of England.

Chapter Twenty Eight.Edward of Lancaster, the Boy whose Life a Robber saved.A terrible scene might have been witnessed near the small town of Hexham, in Northumberland, one May afternoon in the year 1464. A great battle had just been fought and won. Civil war, with all its hideous accompaniments, had laid desolate those fair fields where once cattle were wont to browse and peasants to follow their peaceful toil. But now all was confusion and tumult. On the ground in heaps lay men and horses, dead and dying—the vanquished were crying for mercy, the victors were shouting for vengeance. The country for miles round was alive with fugitives and their pursuers. Women, children, and old men, as well as soldiers, joined in that panic flight; and shrieks, and shouts, and groans told only too plainly of the slaughter and terror of the pursuit. To slaughter the victors added robbery and outrage. Far and wide they scoured the country in quest of victims and booty; houses were burned, villages were desolated, fields were laid bare, nor till night mercifully fell over the land did that scene of terror end. War is indeed a terrible scourge, and civil war the most terrible of all.But while many of those who pursued did so in a blind thirst after plunder and blood, there were others more determined in their going, whose object was rather to capture than to slay, who passed without heeding the common fugitives, and gave chase only to such parties as seemed to be covering the flight of persons of distinction from the scene of their disaster. Of such parties one was known to contain the King of England, nobles, and officers, whom the victors desired to make captive and get into their power; while it was also rumoured that the Queen herself, with her youthful son, was among the fugitives. The soldiers of the Duke of York would indeed have been elated, had they succeeded in getting into their power the king and his son, whose throne they had seized for their own leader, and so they followed hard after the flying host in all directions.That same evening, as the sun was sinking, and the distant sounds of battle were growing faint in the air, a tall, stately woman, leading by the hand a boy of scarcely six years, walked hastily in the direction of a wood which skirted the banks of the River Tyne. It was evident from her dress and the jewels she wore that she was a lady of no ordinary importance, and a certain imperious look in her worn face seemed to suggest that she was one of those more used to ruling than obeying, to receiving honour rather than rendering it. The boy who accompanied her was also richly dressed, and reflected in his handsome face the proud nature of his mother, as this lady seemed to be. Just at present, however, his expression was one of terror. He clung eagerly to the hand of his protectress, and once and again cast a frightened look behind, as if expecting to get sight of the pursuers, from whose clutches they were even now seeking shelter.“Mother,” said the lad, as they entered the wood, and for the first time abated somewhat of their hurried progress, “I am weary and hungry. May we not rest here awhile and eat something?”“My child,” said the lady, “there is naught here to eat, and we must go farther ere we are safe from our cruel foes.”So they went on, deep into the gloomy shade of the wood, till they were far beyond the sight of the outer world, and where the rays of the setting sun scarce gave the feeblest light.“Mother,” said the boy presently, “this is an awful place; we shall die here.”“Fear not, my child,” replied the lady bravely. “Heaven will protect us when none else can.”“But do not robbers abound in these woods? Have I not heard you say so?”“It is true; but they will not hurt thee or me. Remember whose son thou art.”“Ay, I am the king’s son; but I would fain have a morsel to eat.”Just then there was a crackling among the underwood, and a sound of voices approaching the spot.The boy clutched his mother’s hand and trembled. She stood pale and motionless.The sound of feet grew nearer, and presently the voices of those who spoke became distinguishable.“Some will be sure to find their way to this wood,” said one.“I hope such as do may have full purses,” said another. “I have taken nothing these three days.”“Ay, truly, and these wars have made folk so poor, they are not worth robbing when we do find them.”“Soft! methought I heard a voice!” suddenly said one of the speakers.The band halted and listened, and then, hearing nothing, pushed on.“It’s as likely as not we might fall in with royalty itself this night, for I hear the king’s rout has been complete at Hexham.”“And more than that, he has fled from the field in one direction, while his queen and son have sought another!”“Hist!” again cried he who had spoken before. “I certainly heard a voice. This way, my men; follow me.”And advancing at as rapid a pace as the wooded ground allowed of, he conducted them in the direction of the voices. Suddenly they emerged into a clearing, where confronted them the lady and her boy.Loud laughed these greedy robbers, for they spied the jewels on the lady’s person and the rich robes on her and her son.Like cowardly ruffians, astheywere, they rushed forward, heedless of the sex or age of their victims, and threatening to slay them should they resist, tore away jewels, and gold, and silk—all that was of value, roughly handling the two in so doing, and meeting every attempt to speak or resist with the menace of a drawn sword.It was a rich plunder, for the lady’s jewels were large and precious, and, besides, she bore about her no small quantity of gold and other treasure. When they had taken all they could lay their wicked hands on, the men fell to dividing among themselves their ill-gotten booty, glorying as they did so in their crime, and laughing brutally at the expense of their two defenceless victims.As might be supposed, the task of dividing the spoil was one not quietly accomplished. The robbers began to argue as to the division, and from arguing they went on to disputing, and from disputing they came to fighting, in the midst of which the lady and her boy took an opportunity to escape unobserved into the thicket, and hasten as best they might from the reach of their plunderers.Thus they fled, robbed and penniless, exposed to the cold evening air, famishing for lack of food, smarting under insult and wrong, and not knowing where next to turn for shelter or safety.The courage of the lady, hitherto so conspicuous, now fairly gave way. She sat down on the ground, and taking her boy to her arms, abandoned herself to a flood of tears. “My son,” she cried, “better if we had died by the sword of our enemies, than die a shameful death in these woods! Alas! was ever woman so miserable as I?”“But, mother,” said the boy, who now in turn took upon him the office of comforter, “the robbers left us with our lives, and we shall surely find some food here. Cheer up, mother; did you not tell me God would take care of us when no one else could?”The mother’s only answer was to take her boy in a closer embrace and kiss him passionately.Suddenly there appeared before them a man of fierce aspect, holding in his hand a drawn sword.Escape was impossible; robbed as they already were, they had nothing but their lives to offer to this wild ruffian. And would he scruple to murder where he could not rob?The courage of the lady, in this desperate case, returned as quickly as it had lately deserted her.A sudden resolution gleamed in her face; then, rising majestically to her feet, and taking by the hand her trembling boy, she advanced proud and stately towards the robber. The man halted wonderingly. There was something in the imperious bearing of this tall, beautiful lady—something in the appealing looks of the gallant boy—which for a moment cowed his lawless resolve, and made him hesitate.Noticing this, the lady advanced close to him, and said in clear, majestic tones,—“Behold, my friend, I commit to your care the safety of your king’s son!”The man started back in astonishment, the sword dropped from his hand, and a look, half of alarm, half of perplexity, took possession of his face.Then he fell on one knee, and respectfully bowed almost to the earth.“Art thou, then, our good Queen Margaret?”“I am she.”“And this youth, is he indeed our royal master’s son?”“Even so.”Once more the wild man bowed low. Then the queen bade him arise, told him how she and the young prince had come into the plight, and ended by asking if he could give them food and shelter for a short time.“All I have is your majesty’s,” said the man, “even my life. I will at once conduct you to my humble dwelling.” And he lifted the weary boy tenderly in his arms, and led the queen to his cottage in the wood, where they got both food and shelter, and every care and attention from the robber’s good wife.“Mother,” said the young prince that night, “thou saidst right, that Heaven would protect us.”“Ay, my boy, and will still protect us!”For some days they rested at the cottage, tended with endless care by the loyal robber and his wife, until the pursuit from the battle of Hexham was over. Then, with the aid of her protector, the queen made her way to the coast, where a vessel waited to convey her and the prince to Flanders. Thus, for a time they escaped from all their dangers. Had the young prince lived to become King of England, we may be sure that the kind act of the robber would not have been suffered to die unrewarded. But, alas! Edward of Lancaster was never King of England.The Wars of the Roses, as we all know, resulted in the utter defeat of the young prince’s party. He was thirteen years old when the rival Houses of York and Lancaster fought their twelfth battle in the meadow at Tewkesbury. On that occasion Edward fought bravely in his own cause, but he and his followers were completely routed by the troops of King Edward the Fourth. Flying from the field of battle, he was arrested and brought before the young king.“How dared you come here?” wrathfully inquired the usurper.“To recover my father’s crown and my own inheritance,” boldly replied the prince.Whereat, the history says, Edward struck at him with his iron gauntlet, and his attendants fell upon him and slew him with their swords.

A terrible scene might have been witnessed near the small town of Hexham, in Northumberland, one May afternoon in the year 1464. A great battle had just been fought and won. Civil war, with all its hideous accompaniments, had laid desolate those fair fields where once cattle were wont to browse and peasants to follow their peaceful toil. But now all was confusion and tumult. On the ground in heaps lay men and horses, dead and dying—the vanquished were crying for mercy, the victors were shouting for vengeance. The country for miles round was alive with fugitives and their pursuers. Women, children, and old men, as well as soldiers, joined in that panic flight; and shrieks, and shouts, and groans told only too plainly of the slaughter and terror of the pursuit. To slaughter the victors added robbery and outrage. Far and wide they scoured the country in quest of victims and booty; houses were burned, villages were desolated, fields were laid bare, nor till night mercifully fell over the land did that scene of terror end. War is indeed a terrible scourge, and civil war the most terrible of all.

But while many of those who pursued did so in a blind thirst after plunder and blood, there were others more determined in their going, whose object was rather to capture than to slay, who passed without heeding the common fugitives, and gave chase only to such parties as seemed to be covering the flight of persons of distinction from the scene of their disaster. Of such parties one was known to contain the King of England, nobles, and officers, whom the victors desired to make captive and get into their power; while it was also rumoured that the Queen herself, with her youthful son, was among the fugitives. The soldiers of the Duke of York would indeed have been elated, had they succeeded in getting into their power the king and his son, whose throne they had seized for their own leader, and so they followed hard after the flying host in all directions.

That same evening, as the sun was sinking, and the distant sounds of battle were growing faint in the air, a tall, stately woman, leading by the hand a boy of scarcely six years, walked hastily in the direction of a wood which skirted the banks of the River Tyne. It was evident from her dress and the jewels she wore that she was a lady of no ordinary importance, and a certain imperious look in her worn face seemed to suggest that she was one of those more used to ruling than obeying, to receiving honour rather than rendering it. The boy who accompanied her was also richly dressed, and reflected in his handsome face the proud nature of his mother, as this lady seemed to be. Just at present, however, his expression was one of terror. He clung eagerly to the hand of his protectress, and once and again cast a frightened look behind, as if expecting to get sight of the pursuers, from whose clutches they were even now seeking shelter.

“Mother,” said the lad, as they entered the wood, and for the first time abated somewhat of their hurried progress, “I am weary and hungry. May we not rest here awhile and eat something?”

“My child,” said the lady, “there is naught here to eat, and we must go farther ere we are safe from our cruel foes.”

So they went on, deep into the gloomy shade of the wood, till they were far beyond the sight of the outer world, and where the rays of the setting sun scarce gave the feeblest light.

“Mother,” said the boy presently, “this is an awful place; we shall die here.”

“Fear not, my child,” replied the lady bravely. “Heaven will protect us when none else can.”

“But do not robbers abound in these woods? Have I not heard you say so?”

“It is true; but they will not hurt thee or me. Remember whose son thou art.”

“Ay, I am the king’s son; but I would fain have a morsel to eat.”

Just then there was a crackling among the underwood, and a sound of voices approaching the spot.

The boy clutched his mother’s hand and trembled. She stood pale and motionless.

The sound of feet grew nearer, and presently the voices of those who spoke became distinguishable.

“Some will be sure to find their way to this wood,” said one.

“I hope such as do may have full purses,” said another. “I have taken nothing these three days.”

“Ay, truly, and these wars have made folk so poor, they are not worth robbing when we do find them.”

“Soft! methought I heard a voice!” suddenly said one of the speakers.

The band halted and listened, and then, hearing nothing, pushed on.

“It’s as likely as not we might fall in with royalty itself this night, for I hear the king’s rout has been complete at Hexham.”

“And more than that, he has fled from the field in one direction, while his queen and son have sought another!”

“Hist!” again cried he who had spoken before. “I certainly heard a voice. This way, my men; follow me.”

And advancing at as rapid a pace as the wooded ground allowed of, he conducted them in the direction of the voices. Suddenly they emerged into a clearing, where confronted them the lady and her boy.

Loud laughed these greedy robbers, for they spied the jewels on the lady’s person and the rich robes on her and her son.

Like cowardly ruffians, astheywere, they rushed forward, heedless of the sex or age of their victims, and threatening to slay them should they resist, tore away jewels, and gold, and silk—all that was of value, roughly handling the two in so doing, and meeting every attempt to speak or resist with the menace of a drawn sword.

It was a rich plunder, for the lady’s jewels were large and precious, and, besides, she bore about her no small quantity of gold and other treasure. When they had taken all they could lay their wicked hands on, the men fell to dividing among themselves their ill-gotten booty, glorying as they did so in their crime, and laughing brutally at the expense of their two defenceless victims.

As might be supposed, the task of dividing the spoil was one not quietly accomplished. The robbers began to argue as to the division, and from arguing they went on to disputing, and from disputing they came to fighting, in the midst of which the lady and her boy took an opportunity to escape unobserved into the thicket, and hasten as best they might from the reach of their plunderers.

Thus they fled, robbed and penniless, exposed to the cold evening air, famishing for lack of food, smarting under insult and wrong, and not knowing where next to turn for shelter or safety.

The courage of the lady, hitherto so conspicuous, now fairly gave way. She sat down on the ground, and taking her boy to her arms, abandoned herself to a flood of tears. “My son,” she cried, “better if we had died by the sword of our enemies, than die a shameful death in these woods! Alas! was ever woman so miserable as I?”

“But, mother,” said the boy, who now in turn took upon him the office of comforter, “the robbers left us with our lives, and we shall surely find some food here. Cheer up, mother; did you not tell me God would take care of us when no one else could?”

The mother’s only answer was to take her boy in a closer embrace and kiss him passionately.

Suddenly there appeared before them a man of fierce aspect, holding in his hand a drawn sword.

Escape was impossible; robbed as they already were, they had nothing but their lives to offer to this wild ruffian. And would he scruple to murder where he could not rob?

The courage of the lady, in this desperate case, returned as quickly as it had lately deserted her.

A sudden resolution gleamed in her face; then, rising majestically to her feet, and taking by the hand her trembling boy, she advanced proud and stately towards the robber. The man halted wonderingly. There was something in the imperious bearing of this tall, beautiful lady—something in the appealing looks of the gallant boy—which for a moment cowed his lawless resolve, and made him hesitate.

Noticing this, the lady advanced close to him, and said in clear, majestic tones,—

“Behold, my friend, I commit to your care the safety of your king’s son!”

The man started back in astonishment, the sword dropped from his hand, and a look, half of alarm, half of perplexity, took possession of his face.

Then he fell on one knee, and respectfully bowed almost to the earth.

“Art thou, then, our good Queen Margaret?”

“I am she.”

“And this youth, is he indeed our royal master’s son?”

“Even so.”

Once more the wild man bowed low. Then the queen bade him arise, told him how she and the young prince had come into the plight, and ended by asking if he could give them food and shelter for a short time.

“All I have is your majesty’s,” said the man, “even my life. I will at once conduct you to my humble dwelling.” And he lifted the weary boy tenderly in his arms, and led the queen to his cottage in the wood, where they got both food and shelter, and every care and attention from the robber’s good wife.

“Mother,” said the young prince that night, “thou saidst right, that Heaven would protect us.”

“Ay, my boy, and will still protect us!”

For some days they rested at the cottage, tended with endless care by the loyal robber and his wife, until the pursuit from the battle of Hexham was over. Then, with the aid of her protector, the queen made her way to the coast, where a vessel waited to convey her and the prince to Flanders. Thus, for a time they escaped from all their dangers. Had the young prince lived to become King of England, we may be sure that the kind act of the robber would not have been suffered to die unrewarded. But, alas! Edward of Lancaster was never King of England.

The Wars of the Roses, as we all know, resulted in the utter defeat of the young prince’s party. He was thirteen years old when the rival Houses of York and Lancaster fought their twelfth battle in the meadow at Tewkesbury. On that occasion Edward fought bravely in his own cause, but he and his followers were completely routed by the troops of King Edward the Fourth. Flying from the field of battle, he was arrested and brought before the young king.

“How dared you come here?” wrathfully inquired the usurper.

“To recover my father’s crown and my own inheritance,” boldly replied the prince.

Whereat, the history says, Edward struck at him with his iron gauntlet, and his attendants fell upon him and slew him with their swords.

Chapter Twenty Nine.Edward the Sixth, the good King of England.It was a strange moment in the history of England when the great King Henry the Eighth. (“Bluff King Hal,” as his subjects called him) breathed his last. However popular he may have been on account of his courage and energy, he possessed vices which must always withhold from him the name of agoodking, and which, in fact, rendered his reign a continuous scene of cruelty and oppression. People were sick of hearing of the king and his wives—how he had beheaded one, and put away another, and ill-treated another, for no reason at all but his own selfish caprice. And men trembled for their lives when they remembered how Wolsey, and More, and Cromwell, and others had been sacrificed to the whimsical temper of this tyrannical sovereign. England, in fact, was tired out when Henry the Eighth died.It was, at any rate, a change for them to find that their new king was in every respect the opposite of his father. Instead of the burly, hot-headed, self-willed, cruel Henry, they were now to be ruled by a frail, delicate, mild boy of nine, inheriting neither his father’s vices nor his faults, and resembling him as little in mind as in body. But the chief difference of all was this—that this boy-king wasgood.AgoodKing of England. It was indeed and, alas! a novelty. How many, counting back to the day when the country first knew a ruler, could be so described? Had not the sceptre of England passed, almost without exception, down a line of usurpers, murderers, robbers, and butchers, and was it not a fact that the few kings who had not been knaves had been merely fools?But now England had a good king and a clever king, what might not be expected of him?On the day of his coronation all sorts of rumours were afloat respecting young Edward. Boy though he was, he was a scholar, and wrote letters in Latin. Young in years, he was mature in thought, he was a staunch Protestant, an earnest Christian. Tudor though he was, he loved peace, and had no pleasure in the sufferings of others. Was ever such a king?“Alas,” said some one, “that he is but a boy!”The sight which presented itself within the walls of that gloomy fortress, the Tower of London, on the day of Edward the Sixth’s proclamation, was an impressive one. Amidst a crowd of bishops and nobles, who bowed low as he advanced, the pale boy-king came forward to receive the homage of his new subjects.Surely, thought some, as they looked, that little head is not fitted to the wearing of an irksome crown. But, for the most part, the crowd cheered, and shouted, “God save the king!” and not one was there who found it in his heart to wish young Edward Tudor ill.The papist ceremony which had always before accompanied the coronation of English kings was now for the first time dispensed with. With joy the people heard good old Archbishop Cranmer urge the new king to see God truly worshipped, according to the doctrines of the Reformed religion; and with joy they heard the boy declare before them all his intention to rule his country according to the rules of God’s Word and the Protestant faith.Still, as we have said, many in the midst of their joy sighed as they looked at the frail boy, and wondered how so young a head would bear up amid all the perils and dangers of kingship; and well they might pity him.The reign of Edward the Sixth is chiefly a history of the acts of his uncle, the Duke of Somerset, the Protector, and of the dissensions which embittered the government of that nobleman, leading finally to his death on the scaffold. Of Edward himself we do not hear much. We have occasional glimpses of him at his studies, under tutors chosen and superintended by Cranmer; but he does not seem to have taken much part—how could a boy of his age be expected to do so?—in the active duty of governing.We know that such acts as the removal of popish restrictions from the clergy and people, the publication of the Book of Common Prayer, and the discouragement of all idolatrous and superstitious practices, had his hearty sympathy. In these and in such-like useful measures he interested himself, but as for the troubles and commotions of his reign, he had nothing to do with them.His nobles, on the other hand, were by no means so passive. They made war in the king’s name on Scotland, to capture a baby-wife for the poor boy, who was scarcely in his teens; they—accused and impeached one another; they brought their death warrants to Edward to sign, whether he liked or no (and he never did like); they persecuted those who disagreed with them; they goaded the common people into rebellion; they schemed how they should make their own fortunes after the young invalid was dead, and to that end worked upon his weakness and his timidity actually to disinherit his own sisters.In the midst of all this disturbance, and scheming, and distress, we can picture the poor, confused, sickly boy seeking refuge in his books, shrinking from the angry bustle of the court, and spending his days with his grave tutors in quiet study. Reluctantly, once and again, he was forced to come out from his retreat to give the sanction of his authority to some act of his ambitious nobles. With what trembling hand would he sign the death warrants they presented! with what weariness would he listen to their wrangles and accusations! with what distress would he hear discussions as to who was to wear that crown of his when he himself should be in the grave!That time was not long in coming. He was not fifteen when an attack of smallpox laid him on his deathbed; and while all the court was busy plotting and counterplotting as to the disposal of the crown, the poor boy-king lay there almost neglected, or watched only by those who waited the moment of his death with impatience. As the disease took deeper and fatal hold of him, all forsook him save an incompetent quack nurse; and how far she may have helped on the end no one can tell.But for him death was only a happy release from a world of suffering. A few hours before his end he was heard to speak something; and those who listened discovered that the boy, thinking himself alone, was praying. One has recorded those closing words of that strange, sad life: “Lord, deliver me out of this wretched and miserable life, and take me among Thy chosen: howbeit not my will, but Thine be done. Lord, I commit my spirit to Thee. O Lord, Thou knowest how happy it were for me to be with Thee; yet, for the sake of Thy chosen, send me life and health, that I may truly serve Thee. O my Lord God, bless Thy people, and save Thine inheritance. O Lord God, save Thy chosen people of England. O my Lord God, defend this realm from papistry, and maintain Thy true religion, that I and my people may praise Thy holy name, for Thy Son Jesus Christ’s sake.”And with these words on his lips, and these prayers for England in his heart, the good young king died. Who knows if by his piety and his prayers he may not have brought more blessing to his country than many a battle and many a law of less Godfearing monarchs?What he would have done for England had he been spared to manhood, it is not possible to say. A diary which he kept during his life affords abundant proof that even at his tender age he possessed not a little of the sagacity and knowledge necessary to good kingship; and a manhood of matured piety and wisdom might have materially altered the course of events in the history of England of that time.One boon at least he has left behind him, besides his unsullied name and example. Scattered about the counties of England are not a few schools which bear his name. It is possible that a good many of my readers are to be found among the scholars of the Bluecoat School, and of the King Edward Grammar Schools in various parts of the country. They, at least, will understand the gratitude which this generation owes to the good young king who so materially advanced the learning of which he himself was so fond, by the establishment of these schools. He was one of the few of his day who saw that the glory of a country consists not in its armies and exchequers, but in the religious and moral enlightenment of its people; and to that glory his own life was, and remains still, a noble contribution.

It was a strange moment in the history of England when the great King Henry the Eighth. (“Bluff King Hal,” as his subjects called him) breathed his last. However popular he may have been on account of his courage and energy, he possessed vices which must always withhold from him the name of agoodking, and which, in fact, rendered his reign a continuous scene of cruelty and oppression. People were sick of hearing of the king and his wives—how he had beheaded one, and put away another, and ill-treated another, for no reason at all but his own selfish caprice. And men trembled for their lives when they remembered how Wolsey, and More, and Cromwell, and others had been sacrificed to the whimsical temper of this tyrannical sovereign. England, in fact, was tired out when Henry the Eighth died.

It was, at any rate, a change for them to find that their new king was in every respect the opposite of his father. Instead of the burly, hot-headed, self-willed, cruel Henry, they were now to be ruled by a frail, delicate, mild boy of nine, inheriting neither his father’s vices nor his faults, and resembling him as little in mind as in body. But the chief difference of all was this—that this boy-king wasgood.

AgoodKing of England. It was indeed and, alas! a novelty. How many, counting back to the day when the country first knew a ruler, could be so described? Had not the sceptre of England passed, almost without exception, down a line of usurpers, murderers, robbers, and butchers, and was it not a fact that the few kings who had not been knaves had been merely fools?

But now England had a good king and a clever king, what might not be expected of him?

On the day of his coronation all sorts of rumours were afloat respecting young Edward. Boy though he was, he was a scholar, and wrote letters in Latin. Young in years, he was mature in thought, he was a staunch Protestant, an earnest Christian. Tudor though he was, he loved peace, and had no pleasure in the sufferings of others. Was ever such a king?

“Alas,” said some one, “that he is but a boy!”

The sight which presented itself within the walls of that gloomy fortress, the Tower of London, on the day of Edward the Sixth’s proclamation, was an impressive one. Amidst a crowd of bishops and nobles, who bowed low as he advanced, the pale boy-king came forward to receive the homage of his new subjects.

Surely, thought some, as they looked, that little head is not fitted to the wearing of an irksome crown. But, for the most part, the crowd cheered, and shouted, “God save the king!” and not one was there who found it in his heart to wish young Edward Tudor ill.

The papist ceremony which had always before accompanied the coronation of English kings was now for the first time dispensed with. With joy the people heard good old Archbishop Cranmer urge the new king to see God truly worshipped, according to the doctrines of the Reformed religion; and with joy they heard the boy declare before them all his intention to rule his country according to the rules of God’s Word and the Protestant faith.

Still, as we have said, many in the midst of their joy sighed as they looked at the frail boy, and wondered how so young a head would bear up amid all the perils and dangers of kingship; and well they might pity him.

The reign of Edward the Sixth is chiefly a history of the acts of his uncle, the Duke of Somerset, the Protector, and of the dissensions which embittered the government of that nobleman, leading finally to his death on the scaffold. Of Edward himself we do not hear much. We have occasional glimpses of him at his studies, under tutors chosen and superintended by Cranmer; but he does not seem to have taken much part—how could a boy of his age be expected to do so?—in the active duty of governing.

We know that such acts as the removal of popish restrictions from the clergy and people, the publication of the Book of Common Prayer, and the discouragement of all idolatrous and superstitious practices, had his hearty sympathy. In these and in such-like useful measures he interested himself, but as for the troubles and commotions of his reign, he had nothing to do with them.

His nobles, on the other hand, were by no means so passive. They made war in the king’s name on Scotland, to capture a baby-wife for the poor boy, who was scarcely in his teens; they—accused and impeached one another; they brought their death warrants to Edward to sign, whether he liked or no (and he never did like); they persecuted those who disagreed with them; they goaded the common people into rebellion; they schemed how they should make their own fortunes after the young invalid was dead, and to that end worked upon his weakness and his timidity actually to disinherit his own sisters.

In the midst of all this disturbance, and scheming, and distress, we can picture the poor, confused, sickly boy seeking refuge in his books, shrinking from the angry bustle of the court, and spending his days with his grave tutors in quiet study. Reluctantly, once and again, he was forced to come out from his retreat to give the sanction of his authority to some act of his ambitious nobles. With what trembling hand would he sign the death warrants they presented! with what weariness would he listen to their wrangles and accusations! with what distress would he hear discussions as to who was to wear that crown of his when he himself should be in the grave!

That time was not long in coming. He was not fifteen when an attack of smallpox laid him on his deathbed; and while all the court was busy plotting and counterplotting as to the disposal of the crown, the poor boy-king lay there almost neglected, or watched only by those who waited the moment of his death with impatience. As the disease took deeper and fatal hold of him, all forsook him save an incompetent quack nurse; and how far she may have helped on the end no one can tell.

But for him death was only a happy release from a world of suffering. A few hours before his end he was heard to speak something; and those who listened discovered that the boy, thinking himself alone, was praying. One has recorded those closing words of that strange, sad life: “Lord, deliver me out of this wretched and miserable life, and take me among Thy chosen: howbeit not my will, but Thine be done. Lord, I commit my spirit to Thee. O Lord, Thou knowest how happy it were for me to be with Thee; yet, for the sake of Thy chosen, send me life and health, that I may truly serve Thee. O my Lord God, bless Thy people, and save Thine inheritance. O Lord God, save Thy chosen people of England. O my Lord God, defend this realm from papistry, and maintain Thy true religion, that I and my people may praise Thy holy name, for Thy Son Jesus Christ’s sake.”

And with these words on his lips, and these prayers for England in his heart, the good young king died. Who knows if by his piety and his prayers he may not have brought more blessing to his country than many a battle and many a law of less Godfearing monarchs?

What he would have done for England had he been spared to manhood, it is not possible to say. A diary which he kept during his life affords abundant proof that even at his tender age he possessed not a little of the sagacity and knowledge necessary to good kingship; and a manhood of matured piety and wisdom might have materially altered the course of events in the history of England of that time.

One boon at least he has left behind him, besides his unsullied name and example. Scattered about the counties of England are not a few schools which bear his name. It is possible that a good many of my readers are to be found among the scholars of the Bluecoat School, and of the King Edward Grammar Schools in various parts of the country. They, at least, will understand the gratitude which this generation owes to the good young king who so materially advanced the learning of which he himself was so fond, by the establishment of these schools. He was one of the few of his day who saw that the glory of a country consists not in its armies and exchequers, but in the religious and moral enlightenment of its people; and to that glory his own life was, and remains still, a noble contribution.

Chapter Thirty.Henry Stuart, the Boy whom a Nation loved.In the courtyard of a Scottish castle, over which floated the royal banner, a curious scene might have been witnessed one morning nearly three centuries ago. The central figures of the scene were a horse and a boy, and the attendant crowd of courtiers, grooms, lackeys; while from an open window, before which every one in passing bowed low, an ungainly-looking man watched what was going on with a strangely anxious excitement. The horse was saddled and bridled, but, with an ominous roll of his eyes, and a savage expansion of his nostrils, which bespoke only too plainly his fierce temper, defied every attempt on the part of the grooms to hold him steady. The boy, scarcely in his teens, was evidently a lad of distinction, as might be inferred from his gallant dress, and the deferential demeanour of those who now advanced, and endeavoured to dissuade him from a rash and perilous adventure.“Beware, my lord,” said one, “how you peril your life in this freak!”“The animal,” said another, “has never yet been ridden. See how even now he nearly pulls the arms of the grooms from their sockets.”“Lad,” cried the ungainly man from the window, “dinna be a fool, I tell ye! Let the beast be.”But the boy laughed gaily at them all.“Such a fuss about an ordinary horse! Let him go, men, and leave him to me.”And he advanced and boldly took the rein, which the grooms unwillingly relinquished.There was something about the resolute bearing of the boy which for a moment seemed to impress the horse himself, for, pricking his ears and rolling his bloodshot eyes upon him, he desisted from his struggles and stood still.The lad put out a hand and patted his neck, and in doing so secured a firm clutch of the mane in his hand; the next instant his foot was in the stirrup, and the next he had vaulted into the saddle, before the horse had recovered from his astonishment.Once in, no effort of the untamed beast could succeed in ousting him from his seat. In vain it reared and plunged; in vain it pulled and careered round the yard; he stuck to his seat as if he grew there, and with cool eye and quiet smile seemed even to enjoy his position. After many unavailing efforts the horse seemed to yield his vicious will to the stronger will of his rider, and then the boy, lashing him into a gallop, fairly put him through his paces before all the spectators, and finally walked him quietly up to the window at which the ungainly man, trembling, and with tears in his eyes, had all the while watched his exploit. Here he halted, and beckoning to his attendants, dismounted and gave back the horse to their charge, saying as he did so—“How long shall I continue a child in your opinion?”Such is one of the recorded characteristic anecdotes of Prince Henry Stuart, eldest son of James the First of England.Henry was only nine years old when a certain event entirely changed the prospects and circumstances of his early home. Instead of being the poor king of a poverty-stricken country, his father suddenly became monarch of one of the richest and most powerful countries of Europe. In other words, on the death of Queen Elizabeth James the Sixth of Scotland found himself James the First of England.He came to the throne amid the mingled joy and misgivings of his new subjects. How soon he destroyed the one and confirmed the other, history has recorded, and we are not going to dwell upon that here, except to say that one of the few redeeming points about James the First in the eyes of the people was that he had a son who promised to make up by his virtues for all the vice and silliness of his father. They could endure the whims of their ill-conditioned king all the better for knowing that after him was to come a prince after their own heart, one of English sympathies and English instincts; one who even as a boy had won their hearts by his pluck, his frankness, and his wit, and who, as he grew up, developed into a manhood as vigorous and noble as that of his father was mean and imbecile.Henry was, as we have said, emphatically an English boy—not in birth, for his father was Scotch and his mother a Dane—but in every other respect in which an English boy has a distinctive character. He was brave and honest, and merry and generous; his delight was in athletic exercise and manly sports; the anecdote we have quoted will testify to his skill and pluck. We read of him living at one time at Richmond, and swimming daily in the Thames; of his riding more than 100 miles in one day; of his hunting, and tennis playing, and shooting. The people could not fail to love one who so thoroughly entered into their sports, or to admire him all the more for his proficiency in them.But, unlike some boys, Henry did not cultivate physical exercises at the expense of his mind. Many stories are related of his wit and his learning. A joke at his expense was generally a dangerous adventure, for he always got the best at an exchange of wit. Among his friends were some of the greatest and best men of the day, notably Raleigh; and in such society the lad could not fail to grow up imbued with principles of wisdom and honour, which would go far to qualify him for the position he expected to hold.His ambition was to enter upon a military career, such as those in which so many of his predecessors had distinguished themselves. In this he received more encouragement from the people than from his own timid father, who told him his brother Charles would make a better king than he, unless Henry spent more time at his books and less at his pike and his bow. The people, on the other hand, were constantly comparing their young prince with the great Henry the Fifth, the hero of Agincourt, and predicting of him as famous deeds as those recorded of his illustrious namesake. However, as it happened, there was no war into which the young soldier could enter at that time, so that he had to content himself with martial exercises and contests at home, which, though not so much to his own taste, made him no less popular with his father’s subjects.In Henry Stuart the old school of chivalry had nearly its last representative. The knightly Kings of England had given place, after the Wars of the Roses, to sovereigns whose strength lay more in the council chamber than on the field of battle; but now, after a long interval, the old dying spirit flickered up once more in the person of this boy. Once again, after many, many years, the court went to witness a tournament, when in the tiltyard of Whitehall, before king and queen, and lords and ladies, and ambassadors, the Prince of Wales at the head of six young nobles defended the lists against all comers. There is something melancholy about the record—the day for such scenes had gone by, and its spirit had departed from the nation. The boy had his sport and his honestly earned applause; but when it was all over the old chivalry returned to the grave, never to appear again.Henry himself only too soon, alas! sunk into that grave also. The closing years of his life leave many a pleasing trace of kindness, and justice, and earnestness. The boy was no mere boisterous schoolboy. He pondered and prepared himself for what he thought was his path in life; he foresaw its responsibilities, and he faced its duties, and set himself like a man to bear his part as a true king should.It was not to be. Suddenly his health failed him—the tall boy had overgrown his strength before he knew it. Heedless of fatigue and exposure, he pursued his vigorous exercises, and what had been his life became his death. A cold taken during a game of tennis, when he was in his eighteenth year, developed into a fever, and for days he lay between life and death. The nation waited with strange anxiety for the issue, and a cloud seemed to fall over the length and breadth of the land.Then he became worse.“My sword and armour!” he cried; “I must be gone!” and after that the brave boy died.The people mourned him as their own son; and years after, when England was plunged deep in the miseries and horrors of civil war, many there were who cried in their distress,—“If but our Henry had lived, all this had not been!”

In the courtyard of a Scottish castle, over which floated the royal banner, a curious scene might have been witnessed one morning nearly three centuries ago. The central figures of the scene were a horse and a boy, and the attendant crowd of courtiers, grooms, lackeys; while from an open window, before which every one in passing bowed low, an ungainly-looking man watched what was going on with a strangely anxious excitement. The horse was saddled and bridled, but, with an ominous roll of his eyes, and a savage expansion of his nostrils, which bespoke only too plainly his fierce temper, defied every attempt on the part of the grooms to hold him steady. The boy, scarcely in his teens, was evidently a lad of distinction, as might be inferred from his gallant dress, and the deferential demeanour of those who now advanced, and endeavoured to dissuade him from a rash and perilous adventure.

“Beware, my lord,” said one, “how you peril your life in this freak!”

“The animal,” said another, “has never yet been ridden. See how even now he nearly pulls the arms of the grooms from their sockets.”

“Lad,” cried the ungainly man from the window, “dinna be a fool, I tell ye! Let the beast be.”

But the boy laughed gaily at them all.

“Such a fuss about an ordinary horse! Let him go, men, and leave him to me.”

And he advanced and boldly took the rein, which the grooms unwillingly relinquished.

There was something about the resolute bearing of the boy which for a moment seemed to impress the horse himself, for, pricking his ears and rolling his bloodshot eyes upon him, he desisted from his struggles and stood still.

The lad put out a hand and patted his neck, and in doing so secured a firm clutch of the mane in his hand; the next instant his foot was in the stirrup, and the next he had vaulted into the saddle, before the horse had recovered from his astonishment.

Once in, no effort of the untamed beast could succeed in ousting him from his seat. In vain it reared and plunged; in vain it pulled and careered round the yard; he stuck to his seat as if he grew there, and with cool eye and quiet smile seemed even to enjoy his position. After many unavailing efforts the horse seemed to yield his vicious will to the stronger will of his rider, and then the boy, lashing him into a gallop, fairly put him through his paces before all the spectators, and finally walked him quietly up to the window at which the ungainly man, trembling, and with tears in his eyes, had all the while watched his exploit. Here he halted, and beckoning to his attendants, dismounted and gave back the horse to their charge, saying as he did so—

“How long shall I continue a child in your opinion?”

Such is one of the recorded characteristic anecdotes of Prince Henry Stuart, eldest son of James the First of England.

Henry was only nine years old when a certain event entirely changed the prospects and circumstances of his early home. Instead of being the poor king of a poverty-stricken country, his father suddenly became monarch of one of the richest and most powerful countries of Europe. In other words, on the death of Queen Elizabeth James the Sixth of Scotland found himself James the First of England.

He came to the throne amid the mingled joy and misgivings of his new subjects. How soon he destroyed the one and confirmed the other, history has recorded, and we are not going to dwell upon that here, except to say that one of the few redeeming points about James the First in the eyes of the people was that he had a son who promised to make up by his virtues for all the vice and silliness of his father. They could endure the whims of their ill-conditioned king all the better for knowing that after him was to come a prince after their own heart, one of English sympathies and English instincts; one who even as a boy had won their hearts by his pluck, his frankness, and his wit, and who, as he grew up, developed into a manhood as vigorous and noble as that of his father was mean and imbecile.

Henry was, as we have said, emphatically an English boy—not in birth, for his father was Scotch and his mother a Dane—but in every other respect in which an English boy has a distinctive character. He was brave and honest, and merry and generous; his delight was in athletic exercise and manly sports; the anecdote we have quoted will testify to his skill and pluck. We read of him living at one time at Richmond, and swimming daily in the Thames; of his riding more than 100 miles in one day; of his hunting, and tennis playing, and shooting. The people could not fail to love one who so thoroughly entered into their sports, or to admire him all the more for his proficiency in them.

But, unlike some boys, Henry did not cultivate physical exercises at the expense of his mind. Many stories are related of his wit and his learning. A joke at his expense was generally a dangerous adventure, for he always got the best at an exchange of wit. Among his friends were some of the greatest and best men of the day, notably Raleigh; and in such society the lad could not fail to grow up imbued with principles of wisdom and honour, which would go far to qualify him for the position he expected to hold.

His ambition was to enter upon a military career, such as those in which so many of his predecessors had distinguished themselves. In this he received more encouragement from the people than from his own timid father, who told him his brother Charles would make a better king than he, unless Henry spent more time at his books and less at his pike and his bow. The people, on the other hand, were constantly comparing their young prince with the great Henry the Fifth, the hero of Agincourt, and predicting of him as famous deeds as those recorded of his illustrious namesake. However, as it happened, there was no war into which the young soldier could enter at that time, so that he had to content himself with martial exercises and contests at home, which, though not so much to his own taste, made him no less popular with his father’s subjects.

In Henry Stuart the old school of chivalry had nearly its last representative. The knightly Kings of England had given place, after the Wars of the Roses, to sovereigns whose strength lay more in the council chamber than on the field of battle; but now, after a long interval, the old dying spirit flickered up once more in the person of this boy. Once again, after many, many years, the court went to witness a tournament, when in the tiltyard of Whitehall, before king and queen, and lords and ladies, and ambassadors, the Prince of Wales at the head of six young nobles defended the lists against all comers. There is something melancholy about the record—the day for such scenes had gone by, and its spirit had departed from the nation. The boy had his sport and his honestly earned applause; but when it was all over the old chivalry returned to the grave, never to appear again.

Henry himself only too soon, alas! sunk into that grave also. The closing years of his life leave many a pleasing trace of kindness, and justice, and earnestness. The boy was no mere boisterous schoolboy. He pondered and prepared himself for what he thought was his path in life; he foresaw its responsibilities, and he faced its duties, and set himself like a man to bear his part as a true king should.

It was not to be. Suddenly his health failed him—the tall boy had overgrown his strength before he knew it. Heedless of fatigue and exposure, he pursued his vigorous exercises, and what had been his life became his death. A cold taken during a game of tennis, when he was in his eighteenth year, developed into a fever, and for days he lay between life and death. The nation waited with strange anxiety for the issue, and a cloud seemed to fall over the length and breadth of the land.

Then he became worse.

“My sword and armour!” he cried; “I must be gone!” and after that the brave boy died.

The people mourned him as their own son; and years after, when England was plunged deep in the miseries and horrors of civil war, many there were who cried in their distress,—

“If but our Henry had lived, all this had not been!”

Chapter Thirty One.The Troubles of a Dawdler.I was born a dawdler. As an infant, if report speaks truly, I dawdled over my food, over my toilet, and over my slumbers. Nothing (so I am told) could prevail on me to stick steadily to my bottle till it was done; but I must needs break off a dozen times in the course of a single meal to stare about me, to play with the strings of my nurse’s cap, to speculate on the sunbeams that came in at the window; and even when I did bring myself to make the effort, I took such an unconscionable time to consume a spoonful that the next meal was wellnigh due before I had made an end of a first.As to dressing me in the morning, it took a good two hours. Not that I rebelled and went on strike over the business, but it was really too much of an effort to commit first one foot and then the other for the reception of my socks, and when that operation was accomplished a long interval always elapsed before I could devote my energy to the steering of my arms into sleeves, and the disposal of my waist to the adjustment of a sash. Indeed, I believe I am doing myself more than justice when I put forward two hours as the time spent in personal decoration during those tender years.But of all my infant duties the one I dawdled over most was going to sleep. The act of laying me in my little cot seemed to be the signal for waking me to a most unwonted energy. Instead of burying my nose in the pillows, as most babies do, I must needs struggle into a sitting posture, and make night vocal with crows and calls. I must needs chew the head of my indiarubber doll, or perform a solo on my rattle—anything, in fact, but go to sleep like a respectable, well-conducted child.If my mother came and rocked my cradle, I got alarmingly lively and entered into the sport with spirit. If she, with weary eyes and faltering voice, attempted to sing me to sleep, I lent my shrill treble to aid my own lullaby; or else I lay quiet with my eyes wide open, and defied every effort to coax them into shutting.Not that I was wilfully perverse or bad—I am proud to say no one can lay that to my charge; but I was a dawdler, one who from my earliest years could not find it in me to settle down promptly to anything—nay, who, knowing a certain thing was to be done, therefore deferred the doing of it as long as possible.Need I say that as I grew older and bequeathed my long clothes and cot to another baby, I dawdled still?My twin brother’s brick house was roofed in before my foundations were laid. Not that I could not build as quickly and as well as he, if I chose. I could, but I never chose. While he, with serious face and rapt attention, piled layer upon layer, and pinnacle upon pinnacle, absorbed in his architectural ambition, I sat by watching him, or wondering who drew the beautiful picture on the lid of my box, or speculating on the quantity of bricks I should use in my building, but always neglecting to set myself to work till Jim’s shout of triumph declared his task accomplished. Then I took a fit of industry till my tower was half built, and by that time the bricks had to be put away.When we walked abroad with nurse I was sure to lag behind to look at other children, or gaze into shops. Many a time I narrowly escaped being lost as the result. Indeed, one of my earliest recollections is of being conducted home in state by a policeman, who had found me aimlessly strolling about a churchyard, round which I had been accompanying the nurse and the perambulator, until I missed them both, a short time before.My parents, who had hitherto been inclined to regard my besetting sin (for even youngsters of four may have besetting sins) as only a childish peculiarity, at last began to take note of my dawdling propensities, and did their best to cure me of them. My father would watch me at my play, and, when he saw me flagging, encourage me to persevere in whatever I was about, striving to rouse my emulation by pitting me against my playmates. For a time this had a good effect; but my father had something better to do than always preside at our nursery sports, and I soon relapsed into my old habits.My mother would talk and tell stories to us; and always, whenever my attention began to fail, would recall me to order by questions or direct appeals. This, too, as long as it was fresh, acted well; but I soon got used to it, and was as bad as ever. Indeed, I was a confirmed dawdler almost before I was able to think or act for myself.When I was eight, it was decided to send me and Jim to school—a day school, near home, presided over by a good lady, and attended by some dozen other boys. Well, the novelty of the thing pleased me at first, and I took an interest in my spelling and arithmetic, so that very soon I was at the top of my class. Of course my father and mother were delighted. My father patted me on the head, and said, “I knew he could be diligent, if he chose.”And my mother kissed me, and called me her brave boy; so altogether I felt very virtuous, and rather pitied Jim, who was six from the top, though he spent longer over his sums than I did.But, alas! after the first fortnight, the novelty of Mrs Sparrow’s school wore off. Instead of pegging along briskly to be in time, I pulled up once or twice on the road to investigate the wonders of a confectioner’s window, or watch the men harness the horses for the omnibus, till suddenly I would discover I had only five minutes to get to school in time, and so had to run for my life the rest of the way, only overtaking Jim on the very doorstep. Gradually my dawdling became more prolonged, until one day I found myself actually late. Mrs Sparrow frowned, Jim looked frightened, my own heart beat for terror, and I heard the awful sentence pronounced, “You must go to the bottom of the class.”I made up my mind this should be the last occasion on which such a penalty should be mine. But, alas! the very next day the confectioner had a wonderful negro figure in his window made all of sweets, his face of liquorice and his shirt of sugar, his lips of candy and his eyes of brandy-balls. I was spellbound, and could not tear myself away. And when I did, to add to my misfortunes, there was a crowd outside the omnibus stables to watch the harnessing of a new and very frisky horse. Of course I had to witness this spectacle, and the consequence was I got to school half an hour late, and was again reprimanded and stood in the corner.This went on from bad to worse. Not only did I become unpunctual, but I neglected my lessons till the last moment, and then it was too late to get them off, though I could learn as much in a short time as any of the boys. All this grieved poor Mrs Sparrow, who talked to my parents about it, who talked very seriously to me. My father looked unhappy, my mother cried; Mrs Sparrow (who was present at the interview) was silent, and I wept loudly and promised to reform—honestly resolving I would do so.Well, for a week I was a model of punctuality and industry; but then the confectioner changed his sugar negro for an elephant made all of toffee, and I was once more beguiled. Once more from top of my class I sank to the bottom; and though after that I took fits and starts of regularity and study, I never was able for long together to recover my place, and Mrs Sparrow fairly gave me up as a bad job.What was to be done? I was growing up. In time my twelfth birthday arrived, and it wastimeI went to boarding school.I could see with what anxiety my parents looked forward to the time, and I inwardly reproached myself for being the cause of their trouble. “Perhaps,” thought I, “I shall get all right at Welford,” and having consoled myself with that possibility I thought no more about it. My father talked very earnestly to me before I left home for the first time in my life. He had no fears, he said, for my honesty or my good principles; but he had fears for my perseverance and diligence. “Either you must conquer your habit of dawdling,” he said, “or it will conquer you.” I was ready to promise any sacrifice to be cured of this enemy; but he said, “No, lad, don’t promise, but remember and do!” And then he corded up my trunk and carried it downstairs. I cannot to this day recall my farewell with my mother without tears. It is enough to say that I quitted the parental home determined as I never was before to do my duty and fight against my besetting sin, and occupied that doleful day’s journey with picturing to myself the happiness which my altered habits would bring to the dear parents whom I was leaving behind.I pass over my first week at Welford. It was a new and wonderful world to me; very desolate at first, but by degrees more attractive, till at last I went the way of all schoolboys, and found myself settled down to my new life as if I had never known another.All this time I had faithfully kept my resolution. I was as punctual as clockwork, and as diligent as an ant. Nothing would tempt me to abate my attention in the preparation of my lessons; no seductions of cricket or fishing would keep me late for “call over.” I had already gained the approval of my masters, I had made my mark in my class, and I had written glowing letters home, telling of my kept resolutions, and wondering why they should ever before have seemed difficult to adhere to.But as I got better acquainted with some of my new schoolfellows it became less easy to stick steadily to work. I happened to find myself in hall one evening, where we were preparing our tasks for next day, seated next to a lively young scapegrace, whose tongue rattled incessantly, and who, not content to be idle himself, must needs make every one idle too.“What a muff you are, Charlie,” he said to me once, as I was poring over myCaesarand struggling desperately to make out the meaning of a phrase—“what a muff you are, to be grinding away like that! Why don’t you use a crib?”“What’s a crib?” I inquired.“What, don’t you know what a crib is? It’s a translation. I’ve got one. I’ll lend it to you, and you will be able to do yourCaesarwith it like winking.”I didn’t like the notion at first, and went on hunting up the words in the dictionary till my head ached. But next evening he pulled the “crib” out of his pocket and showed it to me. I could not resist the temptation of looking at it, and no sooner had I done so than I found it gave at a glance the translation it used to take me an hour to get at with the dictionary. So I began to use the “crib” regularly; and thus, getting my lessons quickly done, I gradually began to relapse into my habits of dawdling.Instead of preparing my lessons steadily, I now began to put off preparation till the last moment, and then galloped them off as best I could. Instead of writing my exercises carefully, I drew skeletons on the blotting-paper; instead of learning off my tenses, I readRobinson Crusoeunder the desk, and trusted to my next-door neighbour to prompt me when my turn came.For a time my broken resolutions did not effect any apparent change in my position in the classes or in the eyes of my masters. I was what Evans (the boy who lent me the “crib”) called lucky. I was called on to translate just the passages I happened to have got off, or was catechised on the declensions of my pet verb, and so kept up appearances.But that sort of thing could not go on for ever, and one day my exposure took place.I had dawdled away my time the evening previously with one thing and another, always intending to set to work, but never doing so. My books had lain open before me untouched, except when I took a fancy to inscribing my name some scores of times on the title-page of each; my dictionary remained shot and unheeded, except when I rounded the corners of the binding with my penknife. I had played draughts clandestinely with Evans part of the time, and part of the time I had lolled with my elbows on the desk, staring at the head of the fellow in front of me.Bedtime came, and I had not looked at my work.“I’ll wake early and cram it up,” thought I, as I turned in.I did wake up, but though the book was under my pillow I let the half-hour before getting up slip away unused. At breakfast I made an effort to glance at the lesson, but the boy opposite was performing such wonderful tricks of balancing with his teaspoon and saucer and three bread-crusts, that I could not devote attention to anything else. The bell for classes rang ominously. I rushed to my place withCaesarin one hand and the “crib” in the other. I got flurried; I could not find the place, or, when I found the place in theCaesar, I lost it in the “crib.”The master, to add to my misery, was cross, and began proceedings by ordering Evans to learn twenty lines for laughing in school-time. I glanced at the fellows round me. Some were taking a last peep at their books. Others, with bright and confident faces, waited quietly for the lesson to begin. No one that I could see was as badly off as I. Every one knew something. I knew nothing. Just at the last moment I found the place in the “crib” and in theCaesarat the same time, but scarcely had I done so when the awful voice of the master spoke:“Stand up!” All dictionaries and notes had now to be put away; all except the Latin books.I had contrivedto getoff the first two lines, and only hoped the master might pitch on me to begin. And he did pitch on me.“Charles Smith,” I heard him say, and my heart jumped to my mouth, “stand forward and begin at ‘jamque Caesar.’”“Please, sir, we begin at ‘His et aliis,’” I faltered.“You begin where I tell you, sir,” sternly replied he.A dead silence fell over the class, waiting for me to begin. I was in despair. Oh, if only I had not dawdled! I would give all my pocket-money for this term to know a line of that horridCaesar.“Come, sir, be quick,” said the master.Then I fetched a sigh very like a sob, and began—“Que, and—” I heard the master’s foot scrape ominously on the floor.“Que, and—” I repeated.“Andwhat, sir?” thundered the master, rising in his seat and leaning across his desk towards me. It was awful. I was never more miserable in my life.“Caesar, Caesar,” I stammered. Here at least was a word I could translate, so I repeated it—“Que, and—Caesar, Caesar.”A dead silence, scarcely broken by a titter from the back desks.“Jam,” I chokingly articulated, and there stuck.“Well, sir, and what doesjammean?” inquired the voice, in a tone of suppressed wrath.“Jam”—again I stuck.Another dead silence.“Que, and—Caesar, Caesar;jam”—It was no use; the only jam I knew of I was certain would not do in this case, so I began again in despair; “Que, and—Caesar, Caesar;jam—jam—jam.”The master shut his book, and I knew the storm had burst.“Smith, have you prepared this lesson?”“No, sir,” I replied, relieved to be able to answer any questions, however awful.“Why not, sir?”Ah! that I could not answer—not to myself, still less to him. So I was silent.“Come to me after school,” he said. “The next boy come forward.”After school I went to him, and he escorted me to the doctor. No criminal at the Old Bailey trembled as I did at that interview. I can’t remember what was said to me. I know I wildly confessed my sins—my “cribbing,” my wasting of time—and promised to abjure them one and all.The doctor was solemn and grave, and said a great deal to me that I was too overawed to understand or remember; after which I was sent back to my class—a punished, disgraced, and marked boy.Need I describe my penitence: what a humble letter I wrote home, making a clean breast of all my delinquencies, and even exaggerating them in my contrition? With what grim ceremony I burned my “crib” in my study fire, and resolved (a resolution, by the way, which I succeeded in keeping) that, come what might, I would do my lessons honestly, if I did them at all!I gave Evans to understand his company at lesson times was not desirable, and was in a rage with him when he laughed. I took to rising early, to filling every spare moment with some occupation, and altogether started afresh, like a reformed character, as I felt myself to be, and determinedthistime, at any rate, my progress should know no backsliding. How soon I again fell a victim to dawdling the sequel will show.I had a long and painful struggle to recover my lost ground at Welford.When a boy has once lost his name at school, when his masters have put him on the black book, when his schoolfellows have got to consider him as a “fellow in a row,” when he himself has learnt to doubt his own honesty and steadiness—then, I say, it is uphill work for him to get back to the position from which he has fallen. He gets little sympathy, and still less encouragement. In addition to the natural difficulty of conquering bad habits, he has to contend against prejudices and obstacles raised by his own former conduct; no one gives him credit for his efforts, and no one recognises his reform till all of a sudden, perhaps long after its completion, it makes itself manifest.And my reform, alas! consequently never arrived at completion at Welford.For a few weeks all went well enough. My lessons were carefully prepared; my exercises were well written, and my master had no more attentive pupil than I. But, alas! I too soon again grew confident and self-satisfied. Little by little I relaxed; little by little I dawdled, till presently, almost without knowing it, I again began to slip down the hill. And this was in other matters besides my studies.Instead of keeping up my practice at cricket and field sports, I took to hulking about the playground with my hands in my pockets. If I started on an expedition to find moths or hunt squirrels, I never got half a mile beyond the school boundaries, and never, of course, caught the ghost of anything. If I entered for a race in our school sports, I let the time go without training, and so was beaten easily by fellows whom I had always thought my inferiors. The books I read for my amusement out of school hours were all abandoned after a chapter or two; my very letters home became irregular and stupid, and often were altogether shelved.And all this time (such is the blindness of some people) I was imagining I had quite retrieved my lost reputation! I shall never forget, however, how at last I discovered that my time at Welford had been wasted, and that, so far from having got the better of my enemy, I had become a more confirmed dawdler than ever.I had come to my last half-year at school, being now seventeen. My great desire was to go to Cambridge, which my father had promised I should do if I succeeded in obtaining a scholarship, which would in part defray the cost of my residence there. On this scholarship, therefore, my heart was bent (as much as a dawdler’s heart can be bent on anything) and I made up my mind to secure it.The three fellows who were also going in for it were all my juniors, and considerably below me in the doctor’s class; so I had little anxiety as to the result.Need I say that this very confidence was fatal to me? While they were working night and day, early and late, I was amusing myself with boxing-gloves and fishing-rods. While they, with wet towels round their heads, burnt the midnight oil, I sprawled over a novel in my study. Of course, now and then I took a turn at my books, and each inspection tended to satisfy me with myself better than ever. “Those duffers will never be able to get up all that Greek in the time,” I said to myself, “and not one of them knows an atom of mechanics.”Well, the time drew near. My father had written rejoicing to hear of my good prospects, and saying how he and mother were constantly thinking of me in my hard work, and so on.“Yes,” thought I, “they’ll be pleased, I know.” About a week before the examination I looked at my books rather more frequently, and, now and then (though I would not acknowledge it even to myself), felt my confidence a trifle wavering. There were a few things I had not noticed before, that must be got up with the rest of the subjects, “However, a day’s work will polish them off,” said I; “let’s see, I’ve promised to fish with Wilkins to-morrow—I’ll have a go in at them on Thursday.”But Thursday found me fishing too, and on Friday there was a cricket-match. However, the examination was not till Tuesday, so there was half a week yet.Saturday, of course, was a half-holiday, and though I took another look at some of my books, and noted one or two other little things that would have to be got up, I determined that the grand “go in” at, and “polishing off” of, these subjects should take place on Monday.On Monday accordingly I set to work.Glancing from my window—as I frequently did while I was at work—whom should I see, with a fly-net over his shoulder, but Wilton, one of the three fellows in against me for the scholarship! And not long after him who should appear arm-in-arm in cricket costume, but Johnson and Walker, the other two!“Ho! ho!” said I to myself, “nice boys these to be going in for an exam.! How can they expect to do anything if they dawdle away their time in this way! I declare I quite feel as if I were taking an unfair advantage of them to be grinding away up here!”Had I realised that these three fellows had been working incessantly for the last month, and were now taking a breath of fresh air in anticipation of the ordeal of the following day, I should have been less astonished at what I saw, and more inclined to work, at any rate this day, like mad.But I allowed my benevolent desire not to take an unfair advantage to prevail, and was soon far up the stream with my fishing-rod.So Monday passed. In the evening I had another turn at my books, but an unsatisfactory one.“What’s the use of muddling my brain? I had better take it easy, and be fresh for to-morrow,” thought I, as I shut them up and pushed my chair back from the table.Next morning brought me a letter from my father:“This will reach you on the eventful day. You know who will be thinking of their boy every moment. We are happy to know your success is so sure; but don’t betooconfident till it’s all well over. Then we shall be ready to rejoice with you. I have already heard of rooms at Cambridge for you; so you see mother and I are counting our chickens before they are hatched! But I have no fears, after what you have told me.”This letter made me unhappy; the sight of my books made me unhappy; the sight of Wilton, Johnson, and Walker, fresh and composed, made me unhappy; the sight of the doctor wishing me good morning made me unhappy. I was, in fact, thoroughly uncomfortable. The list of those one or two little matters that I had intended to polish off grew every time I thought of them, till they wellnigh seemed to eclipse the other subjects about which I felt sure. What an ass I had been!“The candidates for the Calton Scholarship are to go to the doctor’s class-room!”To the doctor’s class-room we four accordingly proceeded.On the way, not to appear nervous, I casually inquired of Wilton if he had caught any specimens yesterday.“Yes,” he said gaily. “I got one splendid fellow, a green-winged moth. I’ll show him to you in my study after the exam, is over.”Here was a fellow who could calmly contemplate the end of this day’s ordeal. I dared not do as much as that!The doctor affably welcomed us to his room, and bade us be seated. Several quires of blank paper, one or two pens, a ruler, and ink, were provided at each of our four desks.Then a printed paper of questions was handed to each, and the examination began.I glanced hurriedly down my paper. Question 1 was on one of those subjects which had escaped my observation. Question 2 was a piece of translation I did not recognise as occurring in the Greek book I had got up, and yet I thought I had been thoroughly through it. Question 3—well, no one would be able to answer that. Question 4—oh, horrors! another of those little points I had meant to polish off. Thus I glanced from top to bottom of the paper. Here and there I fancied I might be able to give some sort of answer, but as for the rest, I was in despair. I dashed my pen into the ink, and wrote my name at the head of a sheet of paper, and ruled a line underneath it. Then I dug my fingers in my hair, and waited for an inspiration. It was a long time coming. In the meantime I glanced round at the other three. They were all writing hard, and Wilton already had one sheet filled. Somehow the sight of Wilton reminded me of the moth he had spoken of. I wondered if it was a finer specimen than I had got at home—mine had blue wings and a horn. Funny insects moths were! I wondered if the doctor used to collect them when he was a boy. The doctor must be nearly sixty now. Jolly to be a doctor, and have nothing to do but examine fellows! I wondered if Walker’s father had written him a letter, and what sort of nib he (Walker) must be writing with, with such a peculiar squeak—rather like a frog’s squeak. I wouldn’t mind being a frog for some things; must be jolly to be equally at home on dry ground or in water! Fancy eating frogs! Our French master was getting more short-tempered than ever.And so I rambled on, while the paper in front of me remained empty.The inspirations never came. The hours whizzed past, and my penholder was nibbled half away. In vain I searched the ceilings, and my thumb-nails; they gave me no help. In vain I read over the examination paper a score of times. It was all question and no answer there. In vain I stared at the doctor as he sat quietly writing; he had no ideas for me. In vain I tried to count, from where I sat, how many sheets Johnson had filled; that did not help to fill mine. Then I read my questions over again, very closely, and was in the act of wondering who first decided that p’s should turn one way in print and q’s another, when the doctor said, “Half an hour more!”I was electrified. I madly began answering questions at random. Anything to get my paper filled. But, fast as I wrote, I could not keep pace with Wilton, whose pen flew along the paper; and he, I knew, was writing what would get him marks while I was writing rubbish. Presently my attention was diverted by watching Walker gather up and pin together his papers. I looked at my watch. Five minutes more. At the same time the doctor took out his. I could not help wondering if it was a Geneva or an English watch, and whether it had belonged to his father before him, as mine had. Ah! my father, my poor father and mother!“Cease work, please, and hand in your papers.”I declined Wilton’s invitation to come and see his moth, and slunk to my room miserable and disgusted.Even now I do not like to recall the interval which elapsed between the examination and the declaration of the result. To Johnson, Wilton and Walker it was an interval of feverish suspense; to me it was one of stolid despair. I was ashamed to show my face among my schoolfellows; ashamed to write home; ashamed to look at a book. The nearer the day came the more wretched I grew; I positively became ill with misery, and begged to be allowed to go home without waiting for the result.I had a long interview with the doctor before I quitted Welford; but no good advice of his, no exhortations, could alter my despair.“My boyhood has been a failure,” I said to him, “and I know my manhood will be one too.”He only looked very sorrowful, and wrung my hand.The meeting with my parents was worst of all; but over that I draw a veil.For months nothing could rouse me from my unhappiness, and in indulging it I dawdled more than ever. My prospects of a college life were blighted, and I had not the energy to face business. But, as was always the case, I could not for long together stick to anything; and in due time I emerged from my wretchedness, an idle, dawdling youth, with no object in life, no talents to recommend me, nothing to do.It was deplorable, and my father was nearly heart-broken. Heroically he strove to rouse me to activity, to interest me in some pursuit. He did for me what I should have done for myself—sought occupation for me, and spent days and days in his efforts to get me settled in life. At last he succeeded in procuring a nomination to a somewhat lucrative government clerkship; and, for the first time since I left Welford, my father and mother and I were happy together. Despite all my demerits, I was now within reach of a position which many a youth of greater ability and steadier character might well have envied; and I believe I was really thankful at my good fortune.“I will go with you to-morrow,” said my father, “when you have to appear before the head of the department.”“All right,” said I; “what time is it?”“Half-past eleven.”“Well, I must meet you at the place, then, for I promised to see Evans early in the morning.”“Better go to him to-day,” said my mother; “it would be a thousand pities to be late to-morrow.”“Oh, no fear of that,” said I, laughing; “I’ve too good an eye to my own interests.”Next morning I went to see Evans, and left him in good time to meet my father at the stated hour. But an evil spirit of dawdling seized me as I went. I stopped to gaze into shops, to chat with a passing acquaintance, and to have my boots blacked. Forgetting the passage of time altogether, I strolled leisurely along, stopping at the slightest temptation, and prolonging my halts as if reluctant to advance, when suddenly I heard the deep bell of Westminster clock chime a quarter. “A quarter past eleven,” thought I; “I must look sharp.” And I did look sharp, and reached the place of appointment out of breath. My father was at the door. His face was clouded, and his hand trembled as he laid it on my shoulder, and said, “Charlie, willnothingsave you from ruin?”“Ruin!” said I, in amazement; “what do you mean? What makes you so late?”“Late! it’s not half-past yet; didn’t you tell me half-past eleven was the time?”“I did; and it is now just half-past twelve! The post you were to have had was filled half an hour ago by one of the other applicants.”I staggered back in astonishment and horror. Thenitflashed on me that I had dawdled away an hour without knowing it, and with it the finest opening I ever had in my life.I must pass over the next two years, and come to the conclusion of my story. During those two years I entered upon and left no less than three employments—each less advantageous than the former. The end of that time found me a clerk in a bank in a country town. In this capacity my besetting sin was still haunting me. I had several times been called into the manager’s room, and reprimanded for unpunctuality, or cautioned for wasting my time. The few friends who on my first coming to the town had taken an interest in me had dropped away, disgusted at my unreliable conduct, or because I myself had neglected their acquaintance. My employers had ceased to entrust me with any commissions requiring promptitude or care; and I was nothing more than an office drudge—and a very unprofitable drudge too. Such was my condition when, one morning, a telegram reached me from my mother to say—“Father is very ill. Come at once.”I was shocked at this bad news, and determined to start for London by the next train.I obtained leave of absence, and hastened to my lodgings to pack up my few necessaries for the journey. By the time I arrived there, the shock of the telegram had in some way abated, and I was able to contemplate my journey more calmly. I consulted a time-table, and found that there was one train which, by hurrying, I could just catch in a quarter of an hour, and that the next went in the afternoon.By the time I had made up my mind which to take, and inquired where a lad could be found who would carry down my portmanteau to the station, it was too late to catch the first train, and I therefore had three hours to spare before I could leave. This delay, in my anxious condition, worried me, and I was at a loss how to occupy the interval. If I had been wise, I should never have quitted that station till I did so in the train. But, alas! I decided to take a stroll instead. It was a sad walk, for my father’s image was constantly before my eyes, and I could hardly bear to think of his being ill. I thought of all his goodness and forbearance to me, and wondered what would become of us if he were not to recover. I wandered on, broken-hearted, and repenting deeply of all my ingratitude, and the ill return I had made him for his love to me, and I looked forward eagerly to being able to throw myself in his arms once more, and beg his forgiveness.Thus I mused far into the morning, when it occurred to me to look at my watch. Was it possible? It wanted not half an hour of the time for the train, and I was more than two miles from the place. I started to walk rapidly, and soon came in sight of the town. What fatal madness impelled me at that moment to stand and look at a ploughing match that was taking place in a field by the roadside? For a minute or two my anxiety, my father, the train, all were forgotten in the excitement of that contest. Then I recovered myself and dashed on like the wind. Once more (as I thought but for an instant) I paused to examine a gipsy encampment on the border of the wood, and then, reminded by a distant whistle, hurried forward. Alas! as I dashed into the station the train was slowly turning the corner and I sunk down in an agony of despair and humiliation.When I reached home at midnight, my mother met me at the door.“Well, you are come at last,” she said quietly.“Yes, mother; but father, how is he?”“Come and see him.”I sprang up the stairs beside her. She opened the door softly, and bade me enter.My father lay there dead.“He waited for you all day,” said my mother, “and died not an hour ago. His last words were, ‘Charlie is late.’ Oh, Charlie, why did you not come sooner?”Then she knelt with me beside my dead father. And, in that dark lonely chamber, that night, the turning-point of my life was reached.Boys, I am an old man now; but, believe me, since that awful moment I have never, to my knowledge, dawdled again!

I was born a dawdler. As an infant, if report speaks truly, I dawdled over my food, over my toilet, and over my slumbers. Nothing (so I am told) could prevail on me to stick steadily to my bottle till it was done; but I must needs break off a dozen times in the course of a single meal to stare about me, to play with the strings of my nurse’s cap, to speculate on the sunbeams that came in at the window; and even when I did bring myself to make the effort, I took such an unconscionable time to consume a spoonful that the next meal was wellnigh due before I had made an end of a first.

As to dressing me in the morning, it took a good two hours. Not that I rebelled and went on strike over the business, but it was really too much of an effort to commit first one foot and then the other for the reception of my socks, and when that operation was accomplished a long interval always elapsed before I could devote my energy to the steering of my arms into sleeves, and the disposal of my waist to the adjustment of a sash. Indeed, I believe I am doing myself more than justice when I put forward two hours as the time spent in personal decoration during those tender years.

But of all my infant duties the one I dawdled over most was going to sleep. The act of laying me in my little cot seemed to be the signal for waking me to a most unwonted energy. Instead of burying my nose in the pillows, as most babies do, I must needs struggle into a sitting posture, and make night vocal with crows and calls. I must needs chew the head of my indiarubber doll, or perform a solo on my rattle—anything, in fact, but go to sleep like a respectable, well-conducted child.

If my mother came and rocked my cradle, I got alarmingly lively and entered into the sport with spirit. If she, with weary eyes and faltering voice, attempted to sing me to sleep, I lent my shrill treble to aid my own lullaby; or else I lay quiet with my eyes wide open, and defied every effort to coax them into shutting.

Not that I was wilfully perverse or bad—I am proud to say no one can lay that to my charge; but I was a dawdler, one who from my earliest years could not find it in me to settle down promptly to anything—nay, who, knowing a certain thing was to be done, therefore deferred the doing of it as long as possible.

Need I say that as I grew older and bequeathed my long clothes and cot to another baby, I dawdled still?

My twin brother’s brick house was roofed in before my foundations were laid. Not that I could not build as quickly and as well as he, if I chose. I could, but I never chose. While he, with serious face and rapt attention, piled layer upon layer, and pinnacle upon pinnacle, absorbed in his architectural ambition, I sat by watching him, or wondering who drew the beautiful picture on the lid of my box, or speculating on the quantity of bricks I should use in my building, but always neglecting to set myself to work till Jim’s shout of triumph declared his task accomplished. Then I took a fit of industry till my tower was half built, and by that time the bricks had to be put away.

When we walked abroad with nurse I was sure to lag behind to look at other children, or gaze into shops. Many a time I narrowly escaped being lost as the result. Indeed, one of my earliest recollections is of being conducted home in state by a policeman, who had found me aimlessly strolling about a churchyard, round which I had been accompanying the nurse and the perambulator, until I missed them both, a short time before.

My parents, who had hitherto been inclined to regard my besetting sin (for even youngsters of four may have besetting sins) as only a childish peculiarity, at last began to take note of my dawdling propensities, and did their best to cure me of them. My father would watch me at my play, and, when he saw me flagging, encourage me to persevere in whatever I was about, striving to rouse my emulation by pitting me against my playmates. For a time this had a good effect; but my father had something better to do than always preside at our nursery sports, and I soon relapsed into my old habits.

My mother would talk and tell stories to us; and always, whenever my attention began to fail, would recall me to order by questions or direct appeals. This, too, as long as it was fresh, acted well; but I soon got used to it, and was as bad as ever. Indeed, I was a confirmed dawdler almost before I was able to think or act for myself.

When I was eight, it was decided to send me and Jim to school—a day school, near home, presided over by a good lady, and attended by some dozen other boys. Well, the novelty of the thing pleased me at first, and I took an interest in my spelling and arithmetic, so that very soon I was at the top of my class. Of course my father and mother were delighted. My father patted me on the head, and said, “I knew he could be diligent, if he chose.”

And my mother kissed me, and called me her brave boy; so altogether I felt very virtuous, and rather pitied Jim, who was six from the top, though he spent longer over his sums than I did.

But, alas! after the first fortnight, the novelty of Mrs Sparrow’s school wore off. Instead of pegging along briskly to be in time, I pulled up once or twice on the road to investigate the wonders of a confectioner’s window, or watch the men harness the horses for the omnibus, till suddenly I would discover I had only five minutes to get to school in time, and so had to run for my life the rest of the way, only overtaking Jim on the very doorstep. Gradually my dawdling became more prolonged, until one day I found myself actually late. Mrs Sparrow frowned, Jim looked frightened, my own heart beat for terror, and I heard the awful sentence pronounced, “You must go to the bottom of the class.”

I made up my mind this should be the last occasion on which such a penalty should be mine. But, alas! the very next day the confectioner had a wonderful negro figure in his window made all of sweets, his face of liquorice and his shirt of sugar, his lips of candy and his eyes of brandy-balls. I was spellbound, and could not tear myself away. And when I did, to add to my misfortunes, there was a crowd outside the omnibus stables to watch the harnessing of a new and very frisky horse. Of course I had to witness this spectacle, and the consequence was I got to school half an hour late, and was again reprimanded and stood in the corner.

This went on from bad to worse. Not only did I become unpunctual, but I neglected my lessons till the last moment, and then it was too late to get them off, though I could learn as much in a short time as any of the boys. All this grieved poor Mrs Sparrow, who talked to my parents about it, who talked very seriously to me. My father looked unhappy, my mother cried; Mrs Sparrow (who was present at the interview) was silent, and I wept loudly and promised to reform—honestly resolving I would do so.

Well, for a week I was a model of punctuality and industry; but then the confectioner changed his sugar negro for an elephant made all of toffee, and I was once more beguiled. Once more from top of my class I sank to the bottom; and though after that I took fits and starts of regularity and study, I never was able for long together to recover my place, and Mrs Sparrow fairly gave me up as a bad job.

What was to be done? I was growing up. In time my twelfth birthday arrived, and it wastimeI went to boarding school.

I could see with what anxiety my parents looked forward to the time, and I inwardly reproached myself for being the cause of their trouble. “Perhaps,” thought I, “I shall get all right at Welford,” and having consoled myself with that possibility I thought no more about it. My father talked very earnestly to me before I left home for the first time in my life. He had no fears, he said, for my honesty or my good principles; but he had fears for my perseverance and diligence. “Either you must conquer your habit of dawdling,” he said, “or it will conquer you.” I was ready to promise any sacrifice to be cured of this enemy; but he said, “No, lad, don’t promise, but remember and do!” And then he corded up my trunk and carried it downstairs. I cannot to this day recall my farewell with my mother without tears. It is enough to say that I quitted the parental home determined as I never was before to do my duty and fight against my besetting sin, and occupied that doleful day’s journey with picturing to myself the happiness which my altered habits would bring to the dear parents whom I was leaving behind.

I pass over my first week at Welford. It was a new and wonderful world to me; very desolate at first, but by degrees more attractive, till at last I went the way of all schoolboys, and found myself settled down to my new life as if I had never known another.

All this time I had faithfully kept my resolution. I was as punctual as clockwork, and as diligent as an ant. Nothing would tempt me to abate my attention in the preparation of my lessons; no seductions of cricket or fishing would keep me late for “call over.” I had already gained the approval of my masters, I had made my mark in my class, and I had written glowing letters home, telling of my kept resolutions, and wondering why they should ever before have seemed difficult to adhere to.

But as I got better acquainted with some of my new schoolfellows it became less easy to stick steadily to work. I happened to find myself in hall one evening, where we were preparing our tasks for next day, seated next to a lively young scapegrace, whose tongue rattled incessantly, and who, not content to be idle himself, must needs make every one idle too.

“What a muff you are, Charlie,” he said to me once, as I was poring over myCaesarand struggling desperately to make out the meaning of a phrase—“what a muff you are, to be grinding away like that! Why don’t you use a crib?”

“What’s a crib?” I inquired.

“What, don’t you know what a crib is? It’s a translation. I’ve got one. I’ll lend it to you, and you will be able to do yourCaesarwith it like winking.”

I didn’t like the notion at first, and went on hunting up the words in the dictionary till my head ached. But next evening he pulled the “crib” out of his pocket and showed it to me. I could not resist the temptation of looking at it, and no sooner had I done so than I found it gave at a glance the translation it used to take me an hour to get at with the dictionary. So I began to use the “crib” regularly; and thus, getting my lessons quickly done, I gradually began to relapse into my habits of dawdling.

Instead of preparing my lessons steadily, I now began to put off preparation till the last moment, and then galloped them off as best I could. Instead of writing my exercises carefully, I drew skeletons on the blotting-paper; instead of learning off my tenses, I readRobinson Crusoeunder the desk, and trusted to my next-door neighbour to prompt me when my turn came.

For a time my broken resolutions did not effect any apparent change in my position in the classes or in the eyes of my masters. I was what Evans (the boy who lent me the “crib”) called lucky. I was called on to translate just the passages I happened to have got off, or was catechised on the declensions of my pet verb, and so kept up appearances.

But that sort of thing could not go on for ever, and one day my exposure took place.

I had dawdled away my time the evening previously with one thing and another, always intending to set to work, but never doing so. My books had lain open before me untouched, except when I took a fancy to inscribing my name some scores of times on the title-page of each; my dictionary remained shot and unheeded, except when I rounded the corners of the binding with my penknife. I had played draughts clandestinely with Evans part of the time, and part of the time I had lolled with my elbows on the desk, staring at the head of the fellow in front of me.

Bedtime came, and I had not looked at my work.

“I’ll wake early and cram it up,” thought I, as I turned in.

I did wake up, but though the book was under my pillow I let the half-hour before getting up slip away unused. At breakfast I made an effort to glance at the lesson, but the boy opposite was performing such wonderful tricks of balancing with his teaspoon and saucer and three bread-crusts, that I could not devote attention to anything else. The bell for classes rang ominously. I rushed to my place withCaesarin one hand and the “crib” in the other. I got flurried; I could not find the place, or, when I found the place in theCaesar, I lost it in the “crib.”

The master, to add to my misery, was cross, and began proceedings by ordering Evans to learn twenty lines for laughing in school-time. I glanced at the fellows round me. Some were taking a last peep at their books. Others, with bright and confident faces, waited quietly for the lesson to begin. No one that I could see was as badly off as I. Every one knew something. I knew nothing. Just at the last moment I found the place in the “crib” and in theCaesarat the same time, but scarcely had I done so when the awful voice of the master spoke:

“Stand up!” All dictionaries and notes had now to be put away; all except the Latin books.

I had contrivedto getoff the first two lines, and only hoped the master might pitch on me to begin. And he did pitch on me.

“Charles Smith,” I heard him say, and my heart jumped to my mouth, “stand forward and begin at ‘jamque Caesar.’”

“Please, sir, we begin at ‘His et aliis,’” I faltered.

“You begin where I tell you, sir,” sternly replied he.

A dead silence fell over the class, waiting for me to begin. I was in despair. Oh, if only I had not dawdled! I would give all my pocket-money for this term to know a line of that horridCaesar.

“Come, sir, be quick,” said the master.

Then I fetched a sigh very like a sob, and began—

“Que, and—” I heard the master’s foot scrape ominously on the floor.

“Que, and—” I repeated.

“Andwhat, sir?” thundered the master, rising in his seat and leaning across his desk towards me. It was awful. I was never more miserable in my life.

“Caesar, Caesar,” I stammered. Here at least was a word I could translate, so I repeated it—“Que, and—Caesar, Caesar.”

A dead silence, scarcely broken by a titter from the back desks.

“Jam,” I chokingly articulated, and there stuck.

“Well, sir, and what doesjammean?” inquired the voice, in a tone of suppressed wrath.

“Jam”—again I stuck.

Another dead silence.

“Que, and—Caesar, Caesar;jam”—It was no use; the only jam I knew of I was certain would not do in this case, so I began again in despair; “Que, and—Caesar, Caesar;jam—jam—jam.”

The master shut his book, and I knew the storm had burst.

“Smith, have you prepared this lesson?”

“No, sir,” I replied, relieved to be able to answer any questions, however awful.

“Why not, sir?”

Ah! that I could not answer—not to myself, still less to him. So I was silent.

“Come to me after school,” he said. “The next boy come forward.”

After school I went to him, and he escorted me to the doctor. No criminal at the Old Bailey trembled as I did at that interview. I can’t remember what was said to me. I know I wildly confessed my sins—my “cribbing,” my wasting of time—and promised to abjure them one and all.

The doctor was solemn and grave, and said a great deal to me that I was too overawed to understand or remember; after which I was sent back to my class—a punished, disgraced, and marked boy.

Need I describe my penitence: what a humble letter I wrote home, making a clean breast of all my delinquencies, and even exaggerating them in my contrition? With what grim ceremony I burned my “crib” in my study fire, and resolved (a resolution, by the way, which I succeeded in keeping) that, come what might, I would do my lessons honestly, if I did them at all!

I gave Evans to understand his company at lesson times was not desirable, and was in a rage with him when he laughed. I took to rising early, to filling every spare moment with some occupation, and altogether started afresh, like a reformed character, as I felt myself to be, and determinedthistime, at any rate, my progress should know no backsliding. How soon I again fell a victim to dawdling the sequel will show.

I had a long and painful struggle to recover my lost ground at Welford.

When a boy has once lost his name at school, when his masters have put him on the black book, when his schoolfellows have got to consider him as a “fellow in a row,” when he himself has learnt to doubt his own honesty and steadiness—then, I say, it is uphill work for him to get back to the position from which he has fallen. He gets little sympathy, and still less encouragement. In addition to the natural difficulty of conquering bad habits, he has to contend against prejudices and obstacles raised by his own former conduct; no one gives him credit for his efforts, and no one recognises his reform till all of a sudden, perhaps long after its completion, it makes itself manifest.

And my reform, alas! consequently never arrived at completion at Welford.

For a few weeks all went well enough. My lessons were carefully prepared; my exercises were well written, and my master had no more attentive pupil than I. But, alas! I too soon again grew confident and self-satisfied. Little by little I relaxed; little by little I dawdled, till presently, almost without knowing it, I again began to slip down the hill. And this was in other matters besides my studies.

Instead of keeping up my practice at cricket and field sports, I took to hulking about the playground with my hands in my pockets. If I started on an expedition to find moths or hunt squirrels, I never got half a mile beyond the school boundaries, and never, of course, caught the ghost of anything. If I entered for a race in our school sports, I let the time go without training, and so was beaten easily by fellows whom I had always thought my inferiors. The books I read for my amusement out of school hours were all abandoned after a chapter or two; my very letters home became irregular and stupid, and often were altogether shelved.

And all this time (such is the blindness of some people) I was imagining I had quite retrieved my lost reputation! I shall never forget, however, how at last I discovered that my time at Welford had been wasted, and that, so far from having got the better of my enemy, I had become a more confirmed dawdler than ever.

I had come to my last half-year at school, being now seventeen. My great desire was to go to Cambridge, which my father had promised I should do if I succeeded in obtaining a scholarship, which would in part defray the cost of my residence there. On this scholarship, therefore, my heart was bent (as much as a dawdler’s heart can be bent on anything) and I made up my mind to secure it.

The three fellows who were also going in for it were all my juniors, and considerably below me in the doctor’s class; so I had little anxiety as to the result.

Need I say that this very confidence was fatal to me? While they were working night and day, early and late, I was amusing myself with boxing-gloves and fishing-rods. While they, with wet towels round their heads, burnt the midnight oil, I sprawled over a novel in my study. Of course, now and then I took a turn at my books, and each inspection tended to satisfy me with myself better than ever. “Those duffers will never be able to get up all that Greek in the time,” I said to myself, “and not one of them knows an atom of mechanics.”

Well, the time drew near. My father had written rejoicing to hear of my good prospects, and saying how he and mother were constantly thinking of me in my hard work, and so on.

“Yes,” thought I, “they’ll be pleased, I know.” About a week before the examination I looked at my books rather more frequently, and, now and then (though I would not acknowledge it even to myself), felt my confidence a trifle wavering. There were a few things I had not noticed before, that must be got up with the rest of the subjects, “However, a day’s work will polish them off,” said I; “let’s see, I’ve promised to fish with Wilkins to-morrow—I’ll have a go in at them on Thursday.”

But Thursday found me fishing too, and on Friday there was a cricket-match. However, the examination was not till Tuesday, so there was half a week yet.

Saturday, of course, was a half-holiday, and though I took another look at some of my books, and noted one or two other little things that would have to be got up, I determined that the grand “go in” at, and “polishing off” of, these subjects should take place on Monday.

On Monday accordingly I set to work.

Glancing from my window—as I frequently did while I was at work—whom should I see, with a fly-net over his shoulder, but Wilton, one of the three fellows in against me for the scholarship! And not long after him who should appear arm-in-arm in cricket costume, but Johnson and Walker, the other two!

“Ho! ho!” said I to myself, “nice boys these to be going in for an exam.! How can they expect to do anything if they dawdle away their time in this way! I declare I quite feel as if I were taking an unfair advantage of them to be grinding away up here!”

Had I realised that these three fellows had been working incessantly for the last month, and were now taking a breath of fresh air in anticipation of the ordeal of the following day, I should have been less astonished at what I saw, and more inclined to work, at any rate this day, like mad.

But I allowed my benevolent desire not to take an unfair advantage to prevail, and was soon far up the stream with my fishing-rod.

So Monday passed. In the evening I had another turn at my books, but an unsatisfactory one.

“What’s the use of muddling my brain? I had better take it easy, and be fresh for to-morrow,” thought I, as I shut them up and pushed my chair back from the table.

Next morning brought me a letter from my father:

“This will reach you on the eventful day. You know who will be thinking of their boy every moment. We are happy to know your success is so sure; but don’t betooconfident till it’s all well over. Then we shall be ready to rejoice with you. I have already heard of rooms at Cambridge for you; so you see mother and I are counting our chickens before they are hatched! But I have no fears, after what you have told me.”

This letter made me unhappy; the sight of my books made me unhappy; the sight of Wilton, Johnson, and Walker, fresh and composed, made me unhappy; the sight of the doctor wishing me good morning made me unhappy. I was, in fact, thoroughly uncomfortable. The list of those one or two little matters that I had intended to polish off grew every time I thought of them, till they wellnigh seemed to eclipse the other subjects about which I felt sure. What an ass I had been!

“The candidates for the Calton Scholarship are to go to the doctor’s class-room!”

To the doctor’s class-room we four accordingly proceeded.

On the way, not to appear nervous, I casually inquired of Wilton if he had caught any specimens yesterday.

“Yes,” he said gaily. “I got one splendid fellow, a green-winged moth. I’ll show him to you in my study after the exam, is over.”

Here was a fellow who could calmly contemplate the end of this day’s ordeal. I dared not do as much as that!

The doctor affably welcomed us to his room, and bade us be seated. Several quires of blank paper, one or two pens, a ruler, and ink, were provided at each of our four desks.

Then a printed paper of questions was handed to each, and the examination began.

I glanced hurriedly down my paper. Question 1 was on one of those subjects which had escaped my observation. Question 2 was a piece of translation I did not recognise as occurring in the Greek book I had got up, and yet I thought I had been thoroughly through it. Question 3—well, no one would be able to answer that. Question 4—oh, horrors! another of those little points I had meant to polish off. Thus I glanced from top to bottom of the paper. Here and there I fancied I might be able to give some sort of answer, but as for the rest, I was in despair. I dashed my pen into the ink, and wrote my name at the head of a sheet of paper, and ruled a line underneath it. Then I dug my fingers in my hair, and waited for an inspiration. It was a long time coming. In the meantime I glanced round at the other three. They were all writing hard, and Wilton already had one sheet filled. Somehow the sight of Wilton reminded me of the moth he had spoken of. I wondered if it was a finer specimen than I had got at home—mine had blue wings and a horn. Funny insects moths were! I wondered if the doctor used to collect them when he was a boy. The doctor must be nearly sixty now. Jolly to be a doctor, and have nothing to do but examine fellows! I wondered if Walker’s father had written him a letter, and what sort of nib he (Walker) must be writing with, with such a peculiar squeak—rather like a frog’s squeak. I wouldn’t mind being a frog for some things; must be jolly to be equally at home on dry ground or in water! Fancy eating frogs! Our French master was getting more short-tempered than ever.

And so I rambled on, while the paper in front of me remained empty.

The inspirations never came. The hours whizzed past, and my penholder was nibbled half away. In vain I searched the ceilings, and my thumb-nails; they gave me no help. In vain I read over the examination paper a score of times. It was all question and no answer there. In vain I stared at the doctor as he sat quietly writing; he had no ideas for me. In vain I tried to count, from where I sat, how many sheets Johnson had filled; that did not help to fill mine. Then I read my questions over again, very closely, and was in the act of wondering who first decided that p’s should turn one way in print and q’s another, when the doctor said, “Half an hour more!”

I was electrified. I madly began answering questions at random. Anything to get my paper filled. But, fast as I wrote, I could not keep pace with Wilton, whose pen flew along the paper; and he, I knew, was writing what would get him marks while I was writing rubbish. Presently my attention was diverted by watching Walker gather up and pin together his papers. I looked at my watch. Five minutes more. At the same time the doctor took out his. I could not help wondering if it was a Geneva or an English watch, and whether it had belonged to his father before him, as mine had. Ah! my father, my poor father and mother!

“Cease work, please, and hand in your papers.”

I declined Wilton’s invitation to come and see his moth, and slunk to my room miserable and disgusted.

Even now I do not like to recall the interval which elapsed between the examination and the declaration of the result. To Johnson, Wilton and Walker it was an interval of feverish suspense; to me it was one of stolid despair. I was ashamed to show my face among my schoolfellows; ashamed to write home; ashamed to look at a book. The nearer the day came the more wretched I grew; I positively became ill with misery, and begged to be allowed to go home without waiting for the result.

I had a long interview with the doctor before I quitted Welford; but no good advice of his, no exhortations, could alter my despair.

“My boyhood has been a failure,” I said to him, “and I know my manhood will be one too.”

He only looked very sorrowful, and wrung my hand.

The meeting with my parents was worst of all; but over that I draw a veil.

For months nothing could rouse me from my unhappiness, and in indulging it I dawdled more than ever. My prospects of a college life were blighted, and I had not the energy to face business. But, as was always the case, I could not for long together stick to anything; and in due time I emerged from my wretchedness, an idle, dawdling youth, with no object in life, no talents to recommend me, nothing to do.

It was deplorable, and my father was nearly heart-broken. Heroically he strove to rouse me to activity, to interest me in some pursuit. He did for me what I should have done for myself—sought occupation for me, and spent days and days in his efforts to get me settled in life. At last he succeeded in procuring a nomination to a somewhat lucrative government clerkship; and, for the first time since I left Welford, my father and mother and I were happy together. Despite all my demerits, I was now within reach of a position which many a youth of greater ability and steadier character might well have envied; and I believe I was really thankful at my good fortune.

“I will go with you to-morrow,” said my father, “when you have to appear before the head of the department.”

“All right,” said I; “what time is it?”

“Half-past eleven.”

“Well, I must meet you at the place, then, for I promised to see Evans early in the morning.”

“Better go to him to-day,” said my mother; “it would be a thousand pities to be late to-morrow.”

“Oh, no fear of that,” said I, laughing; “I’ve too good an eye to my own interests.”

Next morning I went to see Evans, and left him in good time to meet my father at the stated hour. But an evil spirit of dawdling seized me as I went. I stopped to gaze into shops, to chat with a passing acquaintance, and to have my boots blacked. Forgetting the passage of time altogether, I strolled leisurely along, stopping at the slightest temptation, and prolonging my halts as if reluctant to advance, when suddenly I heard the deep bell of Westminster clock chime a quarter. “A quarter past eleven,” thought I; “I must look sharp.” And I did look sharp, and reached the place of appointment out of breath. My father was at the door. His face was clouded, and his hand trembled as he laid it on my shoulder, and said, “Charlie, willnothingsave you from ruin?”

“Ruin!” said I, in amazement; “what do you mean? What makes you so late?”

“Late! it’s not half-past yet; didn’t you tell me half-past eleven was the time?”

“I did; and it is now just half-past twelve! The post you were to have had was filled half an hour ago by one of the other applicants.”

I staggered back in astonishment and horror. Thenitflashed on me that I had dawdled away an hour without knowing it, and with it the finest opening I ever had in my life.

I must pass over the next two years, and come to the conclusion of my story. During those two years I entered upon and left no less than three employments—each less advantageous than the former. The end of that time found me a clerk in a bank in a country town. In this capacity my besetting sin was still haunting me. I had several times been called into the manager’s room, and reprimanded for unpunctuality, or cautioned for wasting my time. The few friends who on my first coming to the town had taken an interest in me had dropped away, disgusted at my unreliable conduct, or because I myself had neglected their acquaintance. My employers had ceased to entrust me with any commissions requiring promptitude or care; and I was nothing more than an office drudge—and a very unprofitable drudge too. Such was my condition when, one morning, a telegram reached me from my mother to say—“Father is very ill. Come at once.”

I was shocked at this bad news, and determined to start for London by the next train.

I obtained leave of absence, and hastened to my lodgings to pack up my few necessaries for the journey. By the time I arrived there, the shock of the telegram had in some way abated, and I was able to contemplate my journey more calmly. I consulted a time-table, and found that there was one train which, by hurrying, I could just catch in a quarter of an hour, and that the next went in the afternoon.

By the time I had made up my mind which to take, and inquired where a lad could be found who would carry down my portmanteau to the station, it was too late to catch the first train, and I therefore had three hours to spare before I could leave. This delay, in my anxious condition, worried me, and I was at a loss how to occupy the interval. If I had been wise, I should never have quitted that station till I did so in the train. But, alas! I decided to take a stroll instead. It was a sad walk, for my father’s image was constantly before my eyes, and I could hardly bear to think of his being ill. I thought of all his goodness and forbearance to me, and wondered what would become of us if he were not to recover. I wandered on, broken-hearted, and repenting deeply of all my ingratitude, and the ill return I had made him for his love to me, and I looked forward eagerly to being able to throw myself in his arms once more, and beg his forgiveness.

Thus I mused far into the morning, when it occurred to me to look at my watch. Was it possible? It wanted not half an hour of the time for the train, and I was more than two miles from the place. I started to walk rapidly, and soon came in sight of the town. What fatal madness impelled me at that moment to stand and look at a ploughing match that was taking place in a field by the roadside? For a minute or two my anxiety, my father, the train, all were forgotten in the excitement of that contest. Then I recovered myself and dashed on like the wind. Once more (as I thought but for an instant) I paused to examine a gipsy encampment on the border of the wood, and then, reminded by a distant whistle, hurried forward. Alas! as I dashed into the station the train was slowly turning the corner and I sunk down in an agony of despair and humiliation.

When I reached home at midnight, my mother met me at the door.

“Well, you are come at last,” she said quietly.

“Yes, mother; but father, how is he?”

“Come and see him.”

I sprang up the stairs beside her. She opened the door softly, and bade me enter.

My father lay there dead.

“He waited for you all day,” said my mother, “and died not an hour ago. His last words were, ‘Charlie is late.’ Oh, Charlie, why did you not come sooner?”

Then she knelt with me beside my dead father. And, in that dark lonely chamber, that night, the turning-point of my life was reached.

Boys, I am an old man now; but, believe me, since that awful moment I have never, to my knowledge, dawdled again!

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