m. When
he had humbled himself sufficiently, the captain ordered the bandage to
be removed, and proceeded to eye him over.

'Ha!' said the captain, thoughtfully, when he had concluded this ordeal.
'Proceed.'

The long comrade read aloud as follows:--'Mark Gilbert. Age, nineteen.
Bound to Thomas Curzon, hosier, Golden Fleece, Aldgate. Loves Curzon's
daughter. Cannot say that Curzon's daughter loves him. Should think it
probable. Curzon pulled his ears last Tuesday week.'

'How!' cried the captain, starting.

'For looking at his daughter, please you,' said the novice.

'Write Curzon down, Denounced,' said the captain. 'Put a black cross
against the name of Curzon.'

'So please you,' said the novice, 'that's not the worst--he calls his
'prentice idle dog, and stops his beer unless he works to his liking. He
gives Dutch cheese, too, eating Cheshire, sir, himself; and Sundays out,
are only once a month.'

'This,' said Mr Tappert gravely, 'is a flagrant case. Put two black
crosses to the name of Curzon.'

'If the society,' said the novice, who was an ill-looking, one-sided,
shambling lad, with sunken eyes set close together in his head--'if the
society would burn his house down--for he's not insured--or beat him
as he comes home from his club at night, or help me to carry off his
daughter, and marry her at the Fleet, whether she gave consent or no--'

Mr Tappertit waved his grizzly truncheon as an admonition to him not to
interrupt, and ordered three black crosses to the name of Curzon.

'Which means,' he said in gracious explanation, 'vengeance, complete and
terrible. 'Prentice, do you love the Constitution?'

To which the novice (being to that end instructed by his attendant
sponsors) replied 'I do!'

'The Church, the State, and everything established--but the masters?'
quoth the captain.

Again the novice said 'I do.'

Having said it, he listened meekly to the captain, who in an address
prepared for such occasions, told him how that under that same
Constitution (which was kept in a strong box somewhere, but where
exactly he could not find out, or he would have endeavoured to procure a
copy of it), the 'prentices had, in times gone by, had frequent holidays
of right, broken people's heads by scores, defied their masters, nay,
even achieved some glorious murders in the streets, which privileges
had gradually been wrested from them, and in all which noble aspirations
they were now restrained; how the degradi