wealthy, and the insolence of this woman, and
the ferocity of these whelps. Oh, my treatise!
Let me die now, for I have no treatise!"

He could say nothing, poor man, but
"treatise," and " Quandoquidem," and
"Digamma," weeping pitiably. They were fain
to put him to bed; and Volumnia, reserving
for a more suitable occasion the expression
of her sentiments relative to being
called " a woman," and her children "whelps,"
went for Mr. O'Bleak the apothecary.
But, Pulchrior, somewhat mistrusting the
skill of that squint-eyed practitioner, sent
off for Doctor Integer, who was wont
to smoke pipes and play cribbage with her
papa.

During the next fortnight, Doctor Pantologos
drank a great deal of apple tea, and
felt very hot, and talked much nonsense.
He woke up one morning quite sensible, but
with no hair on the top of his head—which
was attributable to his having had his head
shaved. He was very languid, and they told
him he had had a brain fever.

Doctor Integer stood at the bottom of the
bed, smiling and snuffing as was his wont.
Pulchrior was standing on one side of the
bed, smiling and crying at the same time, to
see her father so well and so ill. On the opposite
side, there stood a lad with a pale face, a
guilty face, but a penitent face. He held
in his hand a bundle of papers.

"I only burnt the title-page," he said in a
low voice. " All the rest is as safe as the
Bank."

"He has nursed you all through your
illness," faltered Pulchrior.

"He has kept the school together," said
Doctor Integer.

"Bonus puer!" said Doctor Pantologos, laying
his hand on the head of Quandoquidem.

What they all said was true. Thomas
the knuckly, had never intended to destroy
the Doctor's treatise, and was grievously
shocked and shamed when he saw how
well his ruse had succeeded. Thomas
Quandoquidem was a good lad for all his
deficiencies in hic, hæc, hoc, and sedulously
endeavoured to repair the evil he had
done.

The Vicar, abandoning stone-breaking and
heel-balling for a season, had undertaken
to teach school during the Doctor's
illness; and Quandoquidem, the erst dunce,
truant, and idler, had become his active
and efficient monitor, awing the little boys,
shaming the bigger ones into good order
and application, and introducing a state of
discipline that Accidentium Grammar School
had not known for years. No sooner was
school over, every day, than he hastened
to the bedside of the sick Doctor. And there
was no kinder, patienter, abler, usefuller
nurse than Thomas Quandoquidem.

And where was the voluminous Volumnia.
Alas! the Doctor's fever was not a week old
when she ungratefully abandoned him, and
eloped with Mr. O'Bleak—red-haired children
and all. Mr. O'Bleak forgot to settle his little
debts in Accidentium and Volumnia
remembered to take, but forgot to return,
sundry articles of jewellery and clothing
belonging to the late Mrs. Pantologos!
I said alas! when I chronicled Volumma's
elopement; but I don't think, setting aside
the scandal of the thing, that her relatives
grieved very much, or that the Doctor was
with difficulty consoled, when she and her
rubicund progeny took their departure.

Doctor Pantologos is now a white-headed
patriarch, very busy still on the treatise, and
very happy in the unremitting tenderness and
care of his children. I say children, for he
has a son and a daughter; the daughter
Pulchrior, whom you know; the son, her
husband, whom you know, too, though you would
scarcely recognise the knuckly boy who
could not say hic, hæc, hoc, in Thomas
Quandoquidem, Esq., B.A., who went to Cambridge.
and took honours there, and was appointed
master of the Free Grammar School at
Accidentium on the retirement of Doctor
Pantologos. Thomas has written no treatises, but
he is an excellent master; and, in addition,
succeeded in stirring up an earl somewhere,
who had twenty thousand a year and the
gout, who stirred up some prebendaries
somewhere, who stirred up a chapter somewhere,
and they do say that the Free Grammar
School at Accidentium has a sound roof
now, and that its master has a larger
salary, and that the boys are better taught and
cared for.

Pleasant fancies! Thick-coming fancies!
Fancies hallowed by memory which a
dog's-eared Latin grammar on this bookstall—the
inside of its calf-skin cover scrawled over
with school-boy names and dates—can awaken.
But, the bookstall keeper is very anxious to
know whether I will purchase " that vollum,"
and I am not prepared to purchase it, and
the shadows melt into the iron business day
again.

THE POIGNÉ-BANDEL PROPERTY.

THE chaumière in which I am passing the
summer, stands next to a very oddly
shaped house which the French call a castle.
It is not at all like a castle: but, when the
large family of Mr. Joseph Smith who
occupy it, write home, it looks well to date
from so dignified a domicile. I do not think
my chaumière (I prefer the French word to saying
cottage in plain English) a bit less dignified
than the castle in appearance, for I have almost
as many gable ends and projecting windows on
my roof; and, as for my front door, it is
infinitely better, even though I have not two
enormous stone lions lying one at each side of
the entrance. You enter at once without awe
or alarm into my little hall, and thence
into my salon, which has one window opening
to a small garden, exclusively my own; at