merely of filling a little basket with stones, and emptying it again (for in that he was, like the rest of the world of children, a tolerable proficient), but he was taught always to empty the basket at one spot, so as to make a heap; and he directly felt a laudable pride in the size of his heap, and worked manfully.

It was no very long time before Tommy became really useful, for he was docile, and attentive, and industrious. The schoolmasterwhose servant, before her marriage, Susan had been, and who respected her for her strict integrity and steady industry-kept, amid his own important avocations, an observant eye on her boy, and took care that some sort of work, suited to his age, should always be found for him. In due time Tommy was elevated to the post of errand-boy and shoe-cleaner to the school, and there was now no need to seek out for work for him; his own vocation brought him abundance; but the principle of industry was already securely incub cated; the boy never shirked his work.

It was about this time that Mr Fenton frequently observed Tom and his own son, who was a year or two younger, in earnest conference apart from the other boys. Their usual rendezvous was the steps of a dry well in the playground. One day he came upon them quite unexpectedly, and both boys started, whilst his own endeavoured to huddle something into his pocket.

'What is that you are hiding, Harry?' said Mr Fenton. 'Give it to me.'

'Please, father, it's only this,' said the boy holding out a tattered horn-book.

'Why do you hide this, Harry? What are you doing with it?' 'Only teaching Tom to read, father.'

'Which is creditable both to you and him.

You need not be ashamed of it, either of you. So, you wish to learn to read, Tom?' 'I would give all I have in the world to learn, sir.'

'Well, my boy,' said Mr Fenton, smiling, 'it shall not cost you so much as that; nevertheless, you must pay for it.'

Tom stared at the idea of his paying, and so did Harry.

'What I mean is this, Tom: you are hired here to perform certain duties, you are paid for doing them; and I must have none of them omitted, or even neglected. But, by working a little harder, you may contrive to have a spare hour in the afternoon, and that hour you may spend in the school-room. This extra work, Tom, this coming an hour earlier in the morning, or working in your dinnerhour for one or the other you must do this is the way in which you must pay for your learning; and, as you grow older, you will find that nothing great or important can be achieved without selfdenial and exertion; you must begin to practise both now, even to learn to read.'

A proud day was it for Tom Multon, and for his happy mother, when, with newly washed hands, and a face as shining as soap and

water could make it, he made his first appearance in the schoolroom as a scholar. He blushed scarlet, and felt painfully confused as he glanced timidly round and saw the jeering and quizzical looks that were cast on him; but Harry Fenton smiled kindly on him; and the usher, who had been previously instructed by Mr Fenton, called him to a form near himself, and immediately set him to work. From this day Tom never once missed his afternoon attendance at school; his time of entering became earlier and earlier, till at last he habitually came in almost as soon as the bell rang. Mr Fenton at first made some remark, as, 'Are you not too early, Tom?' but the invariable answer was, ‘I've done my work, sir, every bit of it;' and as the answer was always true, as nothing of his regular employment was ever neglected, the schoolmaster ceased to notice the matter.

He could not shut his eyes, however, to the extraordinary progress Tom made in his schooling. The usher, who began to take quite a pride in the boy, frequently called his attention to the fact, and begged him to enlarge the circumscribed plan which he had laid down for his learning. For a long time Mr Fenton refused to do this. He was afraid of entailing misery on the boy, by giving him tastes beyond what his station in life would permit him to gratify. His mother was earning her bread by the sorest drudgery; the boy had no prospect but of doing the same; and he thought that, by enabling him to read English, to write a little, and cast common accounts, he was giving him learning sufficient to make him respectable in his own station of life, and even to elevate him moderately above it. He was not proof, however, against the repeated hints of his usher, the solicitations of his own son, and more especially the patient perseverance of the boy himself, when he found that he had absolutely, against orders, been secretly toiling at the Latin grammar. Moreover, he began to feel that, possessing, from his own position, every facility to help Tom forward, he might himself be doing wrong to repress, determinately, the evidently strong bent of his disposition. The boy was quiet and docile, perseveringly industrious in all he had to do, but above all, fond of his book.

So, having at length made up his own mind, the schoolmaster betook himself to the widow, to induce her to dispense with the present profit of her son's labour, and to let him give himself entirely to the school. She remonstrated sorely: 'she saw no good so much learning would do him; she was a lone widow; she had nobody to work for her; and she could not afford to keep a great boy like him in idleness.'

The schoolmaster urged her to try, for her boy's sake, for his future good; and at length, but not without considerable difficulty, he obtained her consent, promising that she should be at no expense about books, and that he would endeavour to help her in the matter of clothes.

These latter stipulations Mr Fenton managed in a peculiar way; for, with heart open as the day to charity, he had not a purse wherewithal to second his wishes.

‘I have a great favour to beg of you, Mr Courtney,' said he to a gentleman who had come to take his son home for the holidays. 'Pray, name it, Mr Fenton; I shall feel much pleasure in obliging you, if it be in my power.'

'It is quite so, easily so. I have a protegé, a poor lad, humble and industrious, but with such an irrepressible love of books that it is useless to attempt to curb it. I am willing to give him the run of the school; his mother, a hard-working woman, consents to give up his time; but we are at a loss for clothes and books. Your son is about a year older, and my petition to you is, that I may have Master Edward's cast-off suit, at the end of each half-year, for poor Tom Multon.'

'Oh, willingly-most willingly.'

'And perhaps I may be permitted to take Mr Edward's school classics as he relinquishes them: truth compels me to say, they will hardly grace your library shelves after they have done duty here.'

There is hardly need to add, that ready permission was granted, and, moreover, that a lasting interest in his fortunes was thus awakened for Tom in Mr Courtney's breast. Similar applications were made, as they became requisite, by Mr Fenton to other parents, and with the like success. Thus was the errand-boy provided regularly and permanently with clothes, with books, and placed in the path of scholarship. And he became a scholar; not a great, not a shining one, but a safe, a sure, a correct one. He was always assiduous, always attentive, always industrious. If he made no great or sudden steps forward, he never retrograded; and thus gradually and surely winning his onward way, he was fully qualified in a few years to succeed, in the post of usher, the young man who had so kindly and cordially co-operated with Mr Fenton in his education. And it may be doubtful whether Tom Multon himself, now called Mr Thomas, was more proud of his advancement than was his everkind patron, Mr Fenton, or his fast friend, Harry Fenton, who was now bound for the university.

But there was yet another who, silent, unobserved, unsuspected, watched Tom Multon's progress with a far deeper interest than either his patron, his school-friend, or even she who watched his cradle, and fostered him with a mother's love. This was a young girl of domestic habits and retired manners, gentle and unobtrusive, who had been nurtured from infancy in the house which now, since he assumed the duties of usher, was also his home. Rose Fenton was an orphan, but not a destitute one, for her good uncle and guardian had taken care that the little patrimony bequeathed to her should not diminish in his hands. She was kind and goodtempered, a clever housewife for her years, obliging to those about

her, and very good to her poor neighbours. Her uncle used to say jokingly, but most kindly, that she was 'cut out for a parson's wife ;' but at present all Rose's hopes and wishes seemed to be centered in the home of her childhood. But ere long they began to stray, and it could not escape the notice of so observant a person as Mr Fenton, that a warm and mutual attachment was ripening between his usher and his niece.

At first this sorely grieved and perplexed him; for he felt, naturally enough, the inequality of their stations; for, though bred up in a homely and domestic way, Rose Fenton had a right to look to a much higher marriage than one with the child of charity, the son of his charwoman, Susan. But when, again, he reflected on the youth's course of conduct even from his cradle until now; his unvarying integrity, industry, and docility; his good temper, his kind disposition, and the advance in station which his own unwearied perseverance had already achieved he thought perhaps he might rather congratulate his niece than otherwise. He determined to let matters take their course.

But whatever hopes Thomas Multon might secretly cherish, he was too prudent as yet to give any expression to them. True, he had made his way wonderfully; but he felt he had yet much to achieve ere he dared to whisper his hopes to Miss Fenton, or seek the approbation of her uncle. His mother was yet drudging as a servant; she, who had for years deprived herself of every superfluity, in order to procure him the necessaries of life whilst he was a school-boy-a mere burden on her hands. His first object must be to place her above want. He had, from the moment he received a fixed allowance as assistant-teacher, set aside a part of it for her; but she, with the energy which had characterised her, placed it, with her other little savings, to accumulate. 'She did not need to rest yet,' she said. Nevertheless, her son hoped to see her rest before long. So some years passed away, whilst he continued patiently toiling through his duties as usher, but devoting, unremittingly, his private hours to study, with a view to qualify himself for the function of a clergyman. Mr Fenton would fain have dissuaded him from the last step, as he saw little prospect of advancement for him; but in this one instance Multon's wishes were too powerful to be persuaded away. Ordination at that time, and in that district, was easily obtained, without those fitting and decent preliminaries which are now indispensable; and being fortunate enough, through Mr Fenton's influence, to obtain a nomination to an adjoining curacy, the duties of which would not interfere with those of the school, he was ordained by the bishop of the diocese. And this great point being achieved, our errand-boy, now the Rev. Thomas Multon, asked and obtained Mr Fenton's consent to a union with Rose, so soon as he should have obtained the means to support her in respectability and comfort.

These came suddenly, as good-fortune generally does, and from an unlooked-for quarter. On entering the little parlour one day at tea-time, a few months after his ordination, Mr Multon was surprised to find an elderly gentleman whom he did not know and a young man in a military undress, whom he was some time in recognising as Edward Courtney, the youth to whose library and wardrobe he had himself been indebted for several years. The gentlemen had been making a tour in the northern counties, and at the earnest desire of the younger one, had turned aside to visit his old schoolfellow. His greeting to Mr Multon was frank and cordial, that of the old gentleman was kind and even respectful, for Mr Fenton had been preparing the way for his young friend's appearance.

No allusion whatever was made to his circumstances that night; but a few weeks afterwards, a letter arrived from the elder Mr Courtney to Mr Multon, presenting him the rectory of Northerton, in —shire, worth £200 a year, with a commodious parsonage house. And thus was the poor widow's son rewarded for his perseverance in welldoing.

A few years ago, a friend paid me a morning visit, bringing with her a young lady of most prepossessing appearance, and of gentle manners and speech; and who, I was informed, was Rose Multon, the daughter of the rector of Northerton-one of six children, united and affectionate, and as much respected as their parents.

'And what of old Susan,' inquired I, ' as her old acquaintance here

still call her?'

'Old Mrs Multon,' replied my friend, 'lives happily in a small cottage near her son, which, partly from her own former savings, and partly from his liberality, she is able to keep in very comfortable order. I hear but of one dissatisfaction in the family.'

'What is that?'

'It is the rector himself, who complains that his children have quite superseded him in his mother's good graces, and that he really often fancies that she does not think half so much of him now as she did when he was an ERRAND-BOY.'