from real life just now, and I could tell some
very odd tales about this little affair!"

"Tell them, if a character for sanity is of no further use to you," said
Paul. "Tell them to anyone you can get to believe you--tell the
crossing-sweeper and the policemen, tell your grandmother, tell the
horse-marines--it will amuse them. Only, you shall tell them on the
other side of my front door. Shall I call anyone to show you out?"

Paradine saw his game was really played out, and swaggered insolently to
the door: "Not on my account, I beg," he said. "Good-bye, Paul, my boy,
no more dissolving views. Good-bye, my young friend Richard, it was good
fun while it lasted, eh? like the Servian crown--always a pleasant
reminiscence! Good evening to you, Doctor. By the way, for educational
purposes let me recommend a 'Penang lawyer'--buy one as you go back for
the boys--just to show them you haven't forgotten them!"

And, having little luggage to impede him, the front door closed upon him
shortly afterwards--this time for ever.

When he had gone, Dick looked imploringly at his father and then at the
Doctor, who, until Paradine's parting words had lashed him into fury
again, had been examining the engravings on the walls with a studied
delicacy during the recent painful scene, and was now leaning against
the chimney-piece with his arms folded and a sepulchral gloom on his
brow.

"Richard," said Mr. Bultitude, in answer to the look, "you have not done
much to deserve consideration at my hands."

"Or at mine!" added the Doctor ominously.

"No," said Dick, "I know I haven't. I've been a brute. I deserve a jolly
good licking."

"You do," said his father, but in spite of his indignation, the
broken-down look of the boy, and the memory of his own sensations when
waiting to be caned that morning, moved him to pity. And then Dick had
shown some compunction in the billiard-room: he was not entirely lost to
feeling.

"Well," he said at last, "you've acted very wrongly. Because I thought
it best that you should not--ahem, leave your studies for this party,
you chose to disobey me and alarm your master by defying my orders and
coming home by stealth--that was your object, I presume?"

"Y--yes," said Dick, looking rather puzzled, but seeing that he was
expected to agree; "that was it."

"You know as well as I do what good cause I have to be angry; but, if I
consent to overlook your conduct this time, if I ask Dr. Grimstone to
overlo