rowd there must always
be one who gets off the last; and it so happened that our friend Lenny
Fairfield, who had mechanically approached close to the stocks, the
better to hear the oracular opinions of Gaffer Solomons, had no less
mechanically, on the abrupt appearance of Mr. Stirn, crept, as he hoped,
out of sight behind the trunk of the elm-tree which partially shaded the
stocks; and there now, as if fascinated, he still cowered, not daring
to emerge in full view of Mr. Stirn, and in immediate reach of the
cartwhip, when the quick eye of the right-hand man detected his retreat.

"Hallo, sir--what the deuce, laying a mine to blow up the stocks! just
like Guy Fox and the Gunpowder Plot, I declares! What ha' you got in
your willanous little fist there?"

"Nothing, sir," said Lenny, opening his palm. "Nothing--um!" said Mr.
Stirn, much dissatisfied; and then, as he gazed more deliberately,
recognizing the pattern boy of the village, a cloud yet darker gathered
over his brow; for Mr. Stirn, who valued himself much on his learning,
and who, indeed, by dint of more knowledge as well as more wit than
his neighbours, had attained his present eminent station of life, was
extremely anxious that his only son should also be a scholar. That
wish--

"The gods dispersed in empty air."

Master Stirn was a notable dunce at the parson's school, while Lenny
Fairfield was the pride and boast of it; therefore Mr. Stirn was
naturally, and almost justifiably, ill-disposed towards Lenny Fairfield,
who had appropriated to himself the praises which Mr. Stirn had designed
for his son.

"Um!" said the right-hand man, glowering on Lenny malignantly, "you
are the pattern boy of the village, are you? Very well, sir! then I put
these here stocks under your care, and you'll keep off the other boys
from sitting on 'em, and picking off the paint, and playing three-holes
and chuck-farthing, as I declare they've been a doing, just in front of
the elewation. Now, you knows your 'sponsibilities, little boy,--and a
great honour they are too, for the like o' you.

"If any damage be done, it is to you I shall look; d' ye
understand?--and that's what the squire says to me. So you sees what it
is to be a pattern boy, Master Lenny!" With that Mr. Stirn gave a loud
crack of the cart-whip, by way of military honours, over the head of
the vicegerent he had thus created, and strode off to pay a visit to two
young unsuspecting pups, whose ears and tails