ks, and the
desire to finish work, get out in the bright sunshine, and run and
shout, seemed more than he could bear.

At last, to relieve his feelings a little, he took a fresh piece of
paper, laid it over his pluses and minuses and squares and cubes, and
then wrote enigmatically:

"Lanthorn and rope."

This he blotted, glanced at the hard-working student across the table,
and then thrust it sidewise to Vince, who took it, read it, and, turning
it over, wrote:

"You be hanged!"

He was in the act of blotting it when the pen dropped from Mr Deane's
fingers; he sat up, and extended his hand as he looked sternly across
the table.

"Give me that piece of paper, Vincent," he said.

Vince hesitated; but the tutor's eyes gazed firmly into his, and wrong
yielded to right.

He passed the paper across to Mr Deane, and then nearly jumped out of
his chair, for Mike gave him a violent kick under the table.

"To be paid with interest," thought Vince.

"Oh! you jolly sneak, to give it up!" thought Mike, as the tutor read
the paper on both sides.

"I am very sorry," he said, after coughing to clear his voice--"very
sorry to have to exercise my authority towards you two, who have been
acting this morning like a pair of inattentive, idle schoolboys; but
when I undertook to act as your tutor, it was with the full
understanding that I was to have complete authority over you, and that
you were both to treat me with proper respect."

The boys sat silent and feeling horribly guilty. If Humphrey Deane had
been an overbearing, blustering personage, they might have felt ready to
resent his words; but the injured tone, the grave, gentle manner of the
invalid went right home to both, and they listened, with their eyes upon
their scanty display of work, as the tutor went on.

"You both know," he said, "that my health will not permit of much
strain, but so long as you both work with me and try your best, it is a
pleasure to me, and no one could feel more gratification than I do when
you get on."

"Mr Deane," began Vince.

"One moment, and I have done," continued the tutor. "You well know that
I try to make your studies pleasant."

"Yes, sir," said Mike.

"And that when the morning's work is over I am only too glad to join you
in any amusement or excursion. I ask you, then, is it fair, when you
see I am unwell, to make my endeavours to help you a painful toil, from
your carelessness and inattention?"

"No, Mr Deane," sai