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worse for wear. But they had still the point to settle of how to get Diggs to take the things without hurting his feelings. This they solved by leaving them in his study, which was never locked when he was out. Diggs, who had attended the auction, remembered who had bought the lots, and came to their study soon after, and sat silent for some time, cracking his great red finger-joints. Then he laid hold of their verses, and began looking over and altering them, and at last got up, and turning his back to them, said, "You're uncommon good-hearted little beggars, you two-I value that papercase, my sister gave it me last holidays-I won't forget;" and so tumbled out into the passage, leaving them somewhat embarrassed, but not sorry that he knew what they had done.

The next morning was Saturday, the day on which the allowances of one shilling a week were paid, an important event to spendthrift youngsters: and great was the disgust amongst the small fry to hear that all the allowances had been impounded for the Derby lottery. That great event in the English year, the Derby, was celebrated at Rugby in those days by many lotteries. It was not an improving custom, I own, gentle reader, and led to making books, and betting, and other objectionable results; but when our great Houses of Palaver think it right to stop the nation's business on that day, and many of the members bet heavily themselves, can you blame us boys for following the example of our betters?—at any rate we did follow it. First there was the great School lottery, where the first prize was six or seven pounds; then each house had one or more separate lotteries. These were all nominally voluntary, no boy being compelled to put in his shilling who didn't choose to do so: but besides Flashman, there were three or four other fast sporting young gentlemen in the school-house, who considered subscription a matter of duty and necessity, and so, to make their duty come easy to the small boys, quietly secured the allowances in a lump when given out for distribution, and kept them. It was no use grumbling, so many fewer tartlets and apples were eaten and fives'-balls bought on that Saturday; and after locking-up, when the money would otherwise have been spent, consolation was carried to many a small boy by the sound of the night-fags shouting along the passages, "Gentlemen sportsmen of the School-house, the lottery's going to be drawn in the Hall." It was pleasant to be called a gentleman sportsman-also to have a chance of drawing a favourite horse.

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The Hall was full of boys, and at the head of one of the long tables stood the sporting interest, with a hat before them, in which were the tickets folded up. One of them then began calling out the list of the house; each boy as his name was called drew a ticket from the hat and opened it, and most of the bigger boys, after drawing, left the Hall directly to go back to their studies or the fifth-form room. The sporting interest had all drawn blanks, and they were sulky accordingly; neither of the favourites had yet been drawn, and it had come down to the upper-fourth. So now, as each small boy came up and drew his ticket, it was seized and opened by Flashman or some other of the standers-by. But no great favourite is drawn until it comes to the Tadpole's turn, and he shuffles up and draws, and tries to make off, but is caught, and his ticket is opened like the rest.

"Here you are! Wanderer! the third favourite," shouts the opener.

“I say, just give me my ticket, please," remonstrates Tadpole.

"Hullo, don't be in a hurry," breaks in Flashman; "what'll you sell Wanderer for

now?"

"I don't want to sell," rejoins Tadpole. "Oh, don't you! Now listen, you young fool-you don't know anything about it; the horse is no use to you. He won't win, but I want him as a hedge. Now, I'll give you half-a-crown for him." Tadpole holds out, but between threats and cajoleries at length sells half for one-shilling-and-sixpence, about a fifth of its fair market value; however, he is glad to realize anything, and as he wisely remarks, Wanderer mayn't win, and the tizzy is safe anyhow."

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East presently comes up and draws a blank. Soon after comes Tom's turn; his ticket, like the others, is seized and opened. "Here you are then," shouts the opener holding it up, Harkaway! By Jove, Flashey, your young friend's in luck."

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Give me the ticket," says Flashman with an oath, leaning across the table with opened hand, and his face black with rage.

"Wouldn't you like it!" replies the opener, not a bad fellow at the bottom, and no admirer of Flashman's. "Here, Brown, catch hold," and he hands the ticket to Tom, who pockets it; whereupon Flashman makes for the door at once, that Tom and the ticket may not escape, and there keeps watch until the drawing is over, and all the boys are gone, except the sporting set of five or six, who stay to compare books, make bets, and so on, Tom, who

doesn't choose to move while Flashman is at the door, and East, who stays by his friend anticipating trouble.

The sporting set now gathered round Tom. Public opinion wouldn't allow them actually to rob him of his ticket, but any humbug or intimidation by which he could be driven to sell the whole or part at an under-value was lawful.

"Now, young Brown, come, what'll you sell me Harkaway for? I hear he isn't going to start. I'll give you five shillings for him," begins the boy who had opened the ticket. Tom, remembering his good deed, and moreover in his forlorn state wishing to make a friend, is about to accept the offer, when another cries out, "I'll give you seven shillings." Tom hesitated, and looked from one to the other.

"No, no!" said Flashman, pushing in, "leave me to deal with him; we'll draw lots for it afterwards. Now, sir, you know me-you'll sell Harkaway to us for five shillings, or you'll repent it."

"I won't sell a bit of him," answered Tom, shortly.

You hear that now!" said Flashman, turning to the others. "He's the coxiest young blackguard in the house-I always told you so. We're to have all the trouble and risk of getting up the lotteries for the benefit of such fellows as he."

Flashman forgets to explain what risk they ran, but he speaks to willing ears. Gambling makes boys selfish and cruel as well as men. "That's true, we always draw blanks," cried one. Now, sir, you shall sell half, at

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any rate. "I won't," said Tom, flushing up to his hair, and lumping them all in his mind with his sworn enemy.

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Very well then, let's roast him," cried, Flashman, and catches hold of Tom by the collar; one or two boys hesitate, but the rest join in. East seizes Tom's arm and tries to pull him away, but is knocked back by one of the boys, and Tom is dragged along struggling. His shoulders are pushed against the mantelpiece, and he is held by main force before the fire, Flashman drawing his trousers tight by way of extra torture. Poor East, in more pain even than Tom, suddenly thinks of Diggs, and darts off to find him. "Will you sell now for ten shillings!" says one boy who is relenting.

Tom only answers by groans and struggles. "I say, Flashey, he has had enough," says the same boy, dropping the arm he holds.

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"No, no, another turn'll do it," answers Flashman. But poor Tom is done already, turns deadly pale, and his head falls forward on his breast, just as Diggs, in frantic excitement, rushes into the Hall with East at his heels.

"You cowardly brutes!" is all he can say, as he catches Tom from them and supports him to the Hall table. "Good God! he's dying. Here, get some cold water-run for the housekeeper."

Flashman and one or two others slink away; the rest, ashamed and sorry, bend over Tom or run for water, while East darts off for the housekeeper. Water comes, and they throw it on his hands and face, and he begins to come to. "Mother!"-the words came feebly and slowly-"it's very cold to-night." Poor old Diggs is blubbering like a child. "Where am I?" goes on Tom, opening his eyes. "Ah! I remember now;" and he shut his eyes again and groaned.

"I say," is whispered, "we can't do any good, and the housekeeper will be here in a minute;" and all but one steal away; he stays with Diggs, silent and sorrowful, and fans Tom's face.

The housekeeper comes in with strong salts, and Tom soon recovers enough to sit up. There is a smell of burning; she examines his clothes, and looks up inquiringly. The boys are silent.

How did he come so?" No answer. "There's been some bad work here," she adds, looking very serious, "and I shall speak to the Doctor about it." Still no answer.

"Hadn't we better carry him to the sickroom?" suggests Diggs.

"Oh, I can walk now," says Tom! and, supported by East and the housekeeper, goes to the sick-room. The boy who held his ground is soon amongst the rest, who are all in fear of their lives. "Did he peach?" "Does she

know about it?"

"Not a word-he's a stanch little fellow." And pausing a moment he adds, "I'm sick of this work; what brutes we've been!"

Meantime Tom is stretched on the sofa in the housekeeper's room, with East by his side, while she gets wine and water and other restoratives.

"Are you much hurt, dear old boy?" whispers East.

'Only the back of my legs," answers Tom. They are indeed badly scorched, and part of his trousers burned through. But soon he is in bed, with cold bandages. At first he feels broken, and thinks of writing home and getting

taken away; and the verse of a hymn he had learned years ago sings through his head, and he goes to sleep, murmuring

"Where the wicked cease from troubling,

And the weary are at rest."

With a great many more of lesser degree,-
In sooth a goodly company;

And they served the Lord Primate on bended knee.
Never, I ween,

Was a prouder seen,

Read of in books, or dreamt of in dreams,

But after a sound night's rest, the old boy-Than the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims! spirit comes back again. East comes in reporting that the whole house is with him, and he forgets everything, except their old resolve never to be beaten by that bully Flashman.

Not a word could the housekeeper extract from either of them, and though the Doctor knew all that she knew that morning, he never knew any more.

I trust and believe that such scenes are not possible now at school, and that lotteries and betting-books have gone out! but I am writing of schools as they were in our time, and must give the evil with the good.

THE JACKDAW OF RHEIMS.1

AN INGOLDSBY LEGEND.

In and out

Through the motley rout,

That little Jackdaw kept hopping about;
Here and there

Like a dog in a fair,
Over comfits and cates,
And dishes and plates,

Cowl and cope, and rochet and pall,
Mitre and crosier! he hopp'd upon all!
With saucy air,

He perch'd on the chair
Where, in state, the great Lord Cardinal sat
In the great Lord Cardinal's great red hat;
And he peer'd in the face
Of his Lordship's Grace,

With a satisfied look, as if he would say,
We two are the greatest folks here to-day!"
And the priests, with awe,

As such freaks they saw,

The feast was over, the board was clear'd,
The flawns and the custards had all disappear'd,
And six little Singing-boys,-dear little souls!
In nice clean faces, and nice white stoles,
Came, in order due,

[Rev. Richard Harris Barham, born at Canterbury, Said, "The Devil must be in that little Jackdaw !" 6th December, 1788; died 17th June, 1845. As Thomas Ingoldsby, author of the Ingoldsby Legends, he is recognized as one of the greatest humorists of our century. In his Life and Letters, edited by his son (published by Bentley, 1870), appears the following criticism, which is perfectly just, notwithstanding the relationship of the writer to the subject of his biography: "As respects the poems, remarkable as they have been pronounced for the wit and humour which they display, their distinguishing attraction lies in the almost unparalleled flow and facility of the versification. Popular phrases, sentences the most prosaic, even the cramped technicalities of legal diction, and snatches from various languages, are wrought in with an apparent absence of all art and effort that surprises, pleases, and convulses the reader at every turn; the author triumphs with a master's band over every sort of stanza, however complicated or exacting; not a word seems out of place, not an expression forced; syllables the most exacting find the only partners fitted for them throughout the range of language, and couple together as naturally as those kindred spirits which poets tell us were created pairs, and dispersed in space to seek out their particular mates." The Rev. Mr. Barham was rector of St. Augustine and St. Faith, and a minor canon of St. Paul's, London. Besides the Legends he wrote a novel entitled My Cousin Nicholas, and contributed largely to the principal magazines.]

The Jackdaw sat on the Cardinal's chair!
Bishop and abbot, and prior were there;

Many a monk, and many a friar,
Many a knight, and many a squire,

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Two by two,
Marching that grand refectory through!
A nice little boy held a golden ewer,
Emboss'd and fill'd with water, as pure
As any that flows between Rheims and Namur,
Which a nice little boy stood ready to catch
In a fine golden hand-basin made to match.
Two nice little boys, rather more grown,
Carried lavender-water, and eau de Cologne ;
And a nice little boy had a nice cake of soap,
Worthy of washing the hands of the Pope.
One little boy more

A napkin bore,

Of the best white diaper, fringed with pink,
And a Cardinal's Hat mark'd in "permanent ink."

The great Lord Cardinal turns at the sight
Of these nice little boys dress'd all in white:
From his finger he draws

His costly turquoise ;

And, not thinking at all about little Jackdaws,
Deposits it straight

By the side of his plate,

While the nice little boys on his Eminence wait;
Till, when nobody's dreaming of any such thing,

1 Inserted by special permission of Messrs. R. Bentley That little Jackdaw hops off with the ring! & Son, London.

There's a cry and a shout,

And a deuce of a rout,

And nobody seems to know what they're about,
But the monks have their pockets all turned inside out.
The friars are kneeling,

And hunting, and feeling

The carpet, the floor, and the walls, and the ceiling. The Cardinal drew

Off each plum-coloured shoe,

And left his red stockings exposed to the view;
He peeps, and he feels

In the toes and the heels;

They turn up the dishes,-they turn up the lates,— They take up the poker and poke out the grates,

-They turn up the rugs,

They examine the mugs:But, no-no such thing;

They can't find THE RING!

And the Abbot declared that, "when nobody twigg'd it, Some rascal or other had popp'd in and prigg'd it !"

The Cardinal rose with a dignified look,

He call'd for his candle, his bell, and his book!
In holy anger, and pious grief,

He solemnly cursed that rascally thief!
He cursed him at board, he cursed him in bed;
From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head;
He cursed him in sleeping, that every night
He should dream of the devil, and wake in a fright;
He cursed him in eating, he cursed him in drinking,
He cursed him in coughing, in sneezing, in winking;
He cursed him in sitting, in standing, in lying;
He cursed him in walking, in riding, in flying,
He cursed him in living, he cursed him dying!-
Never was heard such a terrible curse!!

But what gave rise

To no little surprise,

Nobody seem'd one penny the worse!

The day was gone,

The night came on,

The Monks and the Friars they search'd till dawn;

When the Sacristan saw,

On crumpled claw,

Come limping a poor little lame Jackdaw!

No longer gay,

As on yesterday;

His feathers all seem'd to be turned the wrong way;His pinions droop'd-he could hardly stand,

His head was as bald as the palm of your hand;

His eye so dim,

So wasted each limb,

That, heedless of grammar, they all cried, "THAT'S

HIM!

That's the scamp that has done this scandalous thing! That's the thief that has got my Lord Cardinal's Ring!"

The poor little Jackdaw,
When the monks he saw,

Feebly gave vent to the ghost of a caw;

And turn'd his bald head, as much as to say, "Pray, be so good as to walk this way!"

Slower and slower

He limp'd on before,

Till they came to the back of the belfry door,
Where the first thing they saw,

Midst the sticks and the straw,

Was the RING in the nest of that little Jackdaw!

Then the great Lord Cardinal call'd for his book,
And off that terrible curse he took;
The mute expression

Served in lieu of confession,

And being thus coupled with full restitution,
The Jackdaw got plenary absolution!
-When those words were heard,

That poor little bird

Was so changed in a moment, 'twas really absurd, He grew sleek and fat;

In addition to that,

A fresh crop of feathers came thick as a mat! His tail waggled more

Even than before;

But no longer it wagg'd with an impudent air, No longer he perch'd on the Cardinal's chair. He hopp'd now about,

With a gait devout;

At Matins, at Vespers, he never was out;
And, so far from any more pilfering deeds,
He always seem'd telling the Confessor's beads.
If any one lied,-or if any one swore,-

Or slumber'd in pray'r time and happen'd to snore,
That good Jackdaw

Would give a great "Caw!"

As much as to say, "Don't do so any more!"
While many remarked, as his manners they saw,
That they "never had known such a pious Jackdaw!"
He long lived the pride

Of that country side,

And at last in the odour of sanctity died;

When, as words were too faint

His merits to paint,

The Conclave determined to make him a Saint;
And on newly-made Saints and Popes, as you know,
It's the custom at Rome, new names to bestow,
So they canonized him by the name of Jim Crow!

MY PLEA.

Master, whose life-long work was doing good,
Keep, first of all, my body out of pain;
Then, whether of myself, or not, I would,
Make me within the universal chain
A link, whereby

There shall have been accomplished some slight gain
For men and women, when I come to die.

ALICE CARY.

THE WHITE BOAT.

A STORY OF LA VENDÉE.

[Emile Souvestre is one of the very few French novelists whose works are pure in thought and incident. His most important work is the Souvenirs d'un BasBreton; but he has written many others several specially

for children-and all may be read without fear of encountering any indelicate scene or suggestion.]

The traveller who visits La Vendée, with the stirring memory of its gigantic struggle of loyalty versus revolution fresh in his mind, and looks on it as the land that, in the short space of three years, became the grave of five Republican armies, as well as of the greater proportion of its own heroic population, and was thus converted into a vast and blood-steeped wilderness of smoking ruins, would naturally expect to find in the inhabitants a people gloomy and daring, proud, impetuous, and warlike.

To his astonishment, he sees himself surrounded by a race whose character is in every respect the reverse of this-quiet, thoughtful, taciturn almost to dulness, and whose might, like that of their powerful yoked oxen, slumbers and asks but for repose. Such is the case especially in the hill-country of La Vendée proper, the region of the pure Pictish blood; the people of the plain country bordering on old Anjou are distinguished by greater vivacity and friendliness.

It is in contemplating this aspect of the Vendean character that we learn to estimate the power of that deadly grasp which the bold hand of revolution must have laid on the innermost sanctuary of popular feeling to provoke an outburst of resistance so vigorous and so long sustained.

But if the physiognomy of the Vendeans be marked by a general sameness, nothing can be more varied than the aspect of their country. The eastern shore is indeed barren, dark, and gloomy; but to the north stretches a long tract of undulating country, rich in golden meadows and fertile fields, and dotted with groups of noble forest-trees, in whose shadow nestles many an orchard-circled château and peaceful hamlet: while here and there may be seen a large and populous village, with spire pointing to the skies. The high hedges and deep-embowered lanes, turned to such good account in the burgher struggles of the Chouan warfare, are still the peculiar and distinctive characteristics of the scene. This is indeed the Boccage; and wherever there is an opening, wide tracts of heath are seen, offering the strongest and

most picturesque contrast by the bright blossoms of the yellow furze and the purple glow of the heath flower to the solemn edging of green by which they are bordered. Totally different is the appearance of La Vendée proper-a long and boundless plain of waving corn, almost without trees, except where some narrow strip of château or village. No sooner is the golden of orchard ground points to the neighbourhood harvest brought in, than the waste and dreary stubble-lands are covered with loads of lime, giving to them, in the distance, the appearance of an interminable battle-field strewn with bleaching bones.

Proceeding onward towards the south, to the marshes the Marais as it is called--we again find ourselves in a new world. The land here shows, like an accident, an exception—a creation of art, a sort of rustic Venice. The corn and the fruit seem to ripen on piles, and the flocks to be grazing on floating pastures. Ever since the sixteenth century efforts have been made to reclaim tracts of this marsh by drainage on the Dutch plan, so that the district should rather have been called Little Holland than "Little Poitou," as it is. Some business connected with one of these recently-drained tracts gave me the long-desired opportunity of seeing something of the mode of life of the Cabanneers

the name by which the inhabitants of the reclaimed lands are known, as Hutters is that appropriated to the dwellers in the marsh.

I had made an appointment with Guillaume Blaisot, the farmer with whom my business was to be transacted, to meet him at Marans, at the mouth of the Sèvre, opposite to the Isle of Rhé, in Pertuis-Poitou. I reached Maillepais, after a very uncomfortable journey, by the diligence, hoping to proceed by water.

As I was waiting at the door of the little inn for the arrival of the boat that mine host had promised me, I perceived an old acquaintance approaching, whom, by his little waxcloth hat and his wooden leg, I had at once recognized as Maître Berand, better known as Fait-tout. Berand was one of those equivocal traders who get a livelihood by various nameless handicrafts, and who, in common parlance, are said to live by their wits. He now assured me that business called him in the direction in which I was going. I invited him to embark with me in the boat, which at that moment came alongside. He thankfully accepted my invitation, and I thus secured a companion who, if not altogether trustworthy, was at least well acquainted with the country and its inhabitants; and who was, moreover, himself an interesting subject for my observation.

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