as three
shillings per load and a royalty of a penny per head which I used to
collect from rabbit snarers who worked with ferrets. But Christmas was
far off, and rabbits were breeding, so my golden opportunity of
acquiring an easy competence would probably be lost by delay.

My parents were unaccountably unsympathetic; they absolutely refused to
provide the shilling. But a friend heard of my plight (not, however,
from myself), and furnished the cash. He little knew the misery he was
calling down on my unsophisticated head.

I posted the shilling's-worth of stamps to the specified address and
awaited a reply in a fever of anticipation. Within a few days it
arrived; we were sitting at breakfast when the letter was delivered. My
heart swelled with joyous expectation. Now I would show my skeptical
relations how wrong-headed they, had been in thwarting my legitimate
ambitions towards making a start in life; now I was about to taste the
sweets of independence.

The missive was bulky. As my trembling fingers tore open the envelope,
a number of closely printed slips fell out. I read these, one by one,
with a reeling brain. Then I laid my head on the table and burst into
bitter tears. My stately castle of hope had tumbled to pieces, and I
was buried beneath its ruins.

The circulars were signed by one "Harper Twelvetree"; the printed slips
outlined a scheme for establishing a burial agency. I had to open an
office at the nearest village and, when I heard of a death, direct the
attention of the bereaved to one or other of the undertakers in the
vicinity. For thus obtaining custom I was to claim a commission on the
funeral expenses. This ghoulish suggestion was the sole outcome of my
sanguine expectations.

It is hardly too much to say that this matter caused me deeper and more
long-drawn-out misery than any other episode of a somewhat chequered
career. I have dwelt on it at length because I think the relation
reveals a moral. At that breakfast-table began a course of torture
which lasted for several years. To say I was chaffed by everyone, from
my father and mother down to old Larry Frane, an ex-soldier who
occupied the lodge at our big gate, gives no idea of the true state of
things. The ridicule was continuous, searching, and universal. I was
the laughing-stock of the neighborhood. Anonymous letters from supposed
persons in a moribund condition, offering to guarantee the delivery of
their prospective remains in considerat