shadowed the elder, confirming his unstable resolutions,
animating his sluggish mind with worthy ambitions, and giving to his
pliant character a tone coloured by his own honesty and uprightness.
Just as a pilot will safely steer the ship amid shoals and rocks out
into the deeper waters, so Charlie, by his quiet influence, had given
Tom's life a new direction towards honour and usefulness.

Once, and once only, during those three years had he shown a disposition
to hark back on his old discreditable ways, and that was the result of a
casual meeting with Gus one summer during the holidays, with whom, he
afterwards confessed to Charlie, he was induced to forget for a time his
better resolutions in the snares of a billiard-room. But the
backsliding was repented of almost as soon as committed, and, to
Charlie's anxious eyes, appeared to leave behind no bad result.

Jim was the same downright outspoken boy as ever. He had yielded,
surlily at first, to the admission of Tom Drift into the confidence and
friendship of himself and his chum, but by degrees, moved by Charlie's
example, he had become more hearty, and now these three boys were the
firmest friends in Randlebury.

One day, as Charlie was sitting in his study attempting, with many
groans, to make sense out of a very obscure passage in Cicero, his fag
entered and said,--

"Newcome, there's a parcel for you down at Trotter's."

"Why didn't you bring it up, you young muff?" inquired his lord.

"Because it's got to be signed for, and he wouldn't let me do that for
you."

"Like your cheek to think of such a thing. What's it like?"

"Oh, it's in a little box. I say, Newcome, shall we go and get it?"

"I can't go at present; it'll wait, I suppose," said Charlie, with the
air of a man who was daily in the habit of receiving little boxes by the
carrier.

But for all that he could not wholly conceal his curiosity.

"What size box?" he asked presently.

"About the size of a good big pill-box."

"All that? I dare say I can fetch that up by myself," said Charlie.

Size of a large pill-box! It could not be anything so very important
after all. So he turned again to his Cicero, and sent the fag about his
business.

Presently, however, that youth returned with a letter for Charlie. It
ran thus:

"Dear Young Scamp,

"People always say bachelor uncles are fools, and I think they are
right. I've sent you a proof of my folly in a little box, which ought