puzzler! all Eric knew was, that he was in the habit of
sending sometimes for one or other of these functionaries; but he was in
for it, so with a faltering voice he said "the young man" at hazard, and
went back to the Latin-school.

"Why have you been so long?" roared Mr Lawley, as he timidly entered.

Fear entirely prevented Eric from hearing the exact question, so he
answered at random, "He's coming, sir." The master seeing by his scared
look that something was wrong, waited to see what would turn up.

Soon after in walked "the young man," and coming to the astonished Mr
Lawley, bowed, scraped, and said, "Master Williams said you sent for me,
sir."

"A mistake," growled the schoolmaster, turning on Eric a look which
nearly petrified him; he quite expected a book at his head, or at best a
great whack of the cane; but Mr Lawley had naturally a kind heart,
soured as it was, and pitying perhaps the child's white face, he
contented himself with the effects of his look.

The simple truth was, that poor Mr Lawley was a little wrong in the
head. A scholar and a gentleman, early misfortunes and an imprudent
marriage had driven him to the mastership of the little country grammar
school; and here the perpetual annoyance caused to his refined mind by
the coarseness of clumsy or spiteful boys, had gradually unhinged his
intellect. Often did he tell the boys "that it was an easier life by
far to break stones by the roadside than to teach them;" and at last his
eccentricities became too obvious to be any longer overlooked.

The denouement of his history was a tragic one, and had come a few days
before the time when our narrative opens. It was a common practice
among the Latin-school boys, as I suppose among all boys, to amuse
themselves by putting a heavy book on the top of a door left partially
ajar, and to cry out, "Crown him!" as the first luckless youngster who
happened to come in received the book thundering on his head. One day,
just as the trap had been adroitly laid, Mr Lawley walked in
unexpectedly. The moment he entered the schoolroom, down came an
Ainsworth's Dictionary on the top of his hat, and the boy, concealed
behind the door, unconscious of who the victim was, enunciated with mock
gravity, "Crown him, three cheers!"

It took Mr Lawley a second to raise from his eyebrows the battered hat,
and recover from his confusion; the next instant he was springing after
the boy who had caused the mishap, and who,