late? A fine, frank, open-hearted fellow, as he was, he is now quite gloomy and reserved. He is the best cricketer in the school, yet he never now handles a bat; so fond as he used to be of this fine manly game, he has given it up entirely, and now does nothing but read-read-read; was there ever such a sap in existence? Look at him; his very face is quite altered; it is a yard longer than it was—and his manners too, and his conversation, and all about him; he has become quite a man of late. It is just as though half-a-dozen years had been added on to the sum of his age, since the beginning of last half. I wonder what all those books are about which he is so eternally reading. He takes devilish good care that we should not catch a glimpse of them, by my faith! He is a regular hole-and-corner student; but of course all these books are Delaval's. By the bye, did you see the other day that, when the foot-ball took the unwarrantable liberty of sweeping all the gods, goddesses, kings, philosophers and poets off the head of that poor Italian image-vender, Leicester came forward immediately, and paid fifteen shillings out of his own pocket, as a compensation, though he was not one of the players, which we all thought very strange."

"I thought it very charitable," replied Everard.

"I have always liked Harry Leicester, but this action has made me love him. What did you think of it, Claude ?"

"I thought it very odd," said I, "that Leicester should have had so much money. Cash, at this late season of the half-year, runs deuced short: and I'll be bound for it, that all the foot-ball players could not have mustered fifteen shillings amongst them, to pay for the broken images. The fact is, as I shrewdly suspect, that Delaval keeps the purse of his young friend constantly supplied. My brother is confident of this, and says that Leicester is a great sneak: for my part, I am quite sure that Harry would do nothing dishonourable to save his life, yet I cannot help thinking here my oration was cut short by the sound of what Horace Smith has called, in Johnsonian language, a "tintinabulant appendage," but which is better known by the monosyllabic name of a bell. It was the school-bell; and in less than a minute the play-ground was swept as with a besom; and a sort of smothered hum, like that of bees — a loud silence, as it were, pervaded the teeming school-room.

With regard to Delaval and Leicester, what puzzled us most of all, was this. The latter was frequently missing, and nobody knew where he was to be found. It was the custom of Dr. R

:

not to interfere with our goings-on out of school, but to entrust this part of the management entirely to Mr. Delaval and it was, therefore, whispered amongst us, that the usher, if he did not connive, at least "winked," at the absence of his young friend, though his unswerving impartiality during study hours seemed to belie every suspicion of unfairness, and to say that he, who was so just in school, could hardly be so unjust or indeed so dishonourable, out of it.

It is more than probable that Leicester never strayed farther than the precincts of Delaval's private room, where he might, with great likelihood, have been found very innocently employed upon a book but youth is the season when the imagination runs riot, and wanders into strange places. What wonderful conjectures we made relating to this extraordinary pair! What extravagant and unprecedented surmises we gave vent to when we discussed their companionship! Vain conjectures, indeed, vain surmises! with how little of the truth were we acquainted! But at length an incident occurred which threw a little light upon the subject; but instead of solving our perplexity, it only mystified us still more, and gave a greater stimulus to our curiosity. I will set down this incident as it happened.

CHAPTER V.

You have consented all to work upon
The softness of my nature; but take heed:
Though I can sleep in silence and look on
The mockery you make of my dull patience,
Yet you shall know, the best of ye, that in me

There is a masculine, a stirring spirit,

Which once provoked, shall, like a bearded comet,
Set ye at gaze and threaten horror.

FORD.

ONE day, Sinclair and I,-for we had by this time become inseparable companions, were circumambulating the play-ground together, and discussing the merits of a poem which we happened lately to have been reading. The poem, if I remember right, was Shelley's Revolt of Islam, and Everard having alluded to a particular passage, we endeavoured to recall the words of it, but we could not;

so we repaired to the school-room that we might refer to our copy of the work.

We scarcely had opened the door, when our attention was arrested by a crowd at the farther extremity of the room; and advancing, we ascertained that the concourse was gathered in that corner of the study where the desk of Harry Leicester was situated; but the cause of this popular commotion we were altogether at a loss to divine. Presently we joined the assembly. Leicester was not there.

"Well, I thought it would come to this," said Evans, a magnate of the first class. "I thought that there was more in the conduct of Mr. Delaval than meets the eye of the school. Silent waters run deep. D- it, I never gave him credit for much. I thought that there was little good lurking beneath all that unsociable reserve; you see that my suspicions are confirmed. The cloven hoof has become visible at last."

"Nor I, either," said Brown, a diminutive, oldlooking boy, who generally sang second to Evans; "nor I either, I assure you. I have always taken him for an hypocrite. Confound the fellow! he looks it all over; he is up to more than we think for. I did not like his refusing to play in our last match against the town; though, poor devil! for the matter of that, I don't suppose he knows a bat