ologetically.

"It's a lie, t'wasn't me," roared the captive, to whom Tom
administered a sound box on the ear, while the small boys,
rubbing different parts of their bodies, chorused, "'twas him,
teacher, 'twas him," and heaped further charges of pinching,
pin-sticking, and other atrocities on him.

Grey astonished Tom by his firmness. "Don't strike him again," he
said. "Now, go out at once, or I will send for your father." The
fellow got up, and, after standing a moment and considering his
chance of successful resistance to physical force in the person
of Tom, and moral in that of Grey, slunk out. "You must go, too,
Murphy," went on Grey to another of the intruders.

"Oh, your honor let me bide. I'll be as quiet as a mouse,"
pleaded the Irish boy; and Tom would have given in, but Grey was
unyielding.

"You were turned out last week, and Mr. Jones said you were not
to come back for a fortnight."

"Well, good night to your honor," said Murphy, and took himself
off.

"The rest may stop," said Grey. "You had better take the inner
room now; I will stay here."

"I'm very sorry," said Tom.

"You couldn't help it; no one can manage those two. Murphy is
quite different, but I should have spoiled him if I had let him
stay now."

The remaining half hour passed off quietly. Tom retired into the
inner room, and took up Grey's lesson, which he had been reading
to the boys from a large Bible with pictures. Out of
consideration for their natural and acquired restlessness, the
little fellows, who were all between eight and eleven years old,
were only kept sitting at their pothooks and spelling for the
first half hour or so, and then were allowed to crowd round the
teacher, who read and talked to them, and showed them the
pictures. Tom found the Bible open at the story of the prodigal
son, and read it out to them as they clustered round his knees.
Some of the outside ones fidgeted about a little, but those close
round him listened with ears, and eyes, and bated breath; and two
little blue-eyed boys, without shoes--their ragged clothes
concealed by long pinafores which their widowed mother had put on
clean to send them to school--leaned against him and looked up in
his face, and his heart warmed to the touch and the look.
"Please, teacher, read it again," they said when he finished; so
he read it again and sighed when Grey came in and lighted a
candle (for the room was getting dark) and said it was time for
prayers.

A