r
so younger than I--his name's Prosper something or other--I actually met
him out of school in the street, carrying a bundle of wood! A boy that
sits next me in the class!" he added, with considerable disgust.

"Is he a poor boy?" asked Sylvia.

"No--at least not what you'd call a poor boy. None of them are that. But
he got precious red, I can tell you, when he saw me--just like a cad."

"Is he a naughty boy? Does he not do his lessons well?" asked
grandmother.

"Oh I daresay he does; he is not an ill-natured fellow. It was only so
like a cad to go carrying wood about like that," said Ralph.

"Ralph," said grandmother suddenly. "You never saw your uncle Jack, of
course; has your father ever told you about him?"

Ralph's face lighted up. "Uncle Jack who was killed in the Crimea?" he
said, lowering his voice a little. "Yes, papa has told me how brave he
was."

"Brave, and gentle, and good," said grandmother, softly. "Some day,
Ralph, I will read you a little adventure of his. He wrote it out to
please me not long before his death. I meant to have sent it to one of
the magazines for boys, but somehow I have never done so."

"What is it about, grandmother? What is it called?" asked the children
all together, Molly adding, ecstatically clasping her hands. "If you tell
us stories, grandmother, it'll be _perfect_."

"What is the little story about?" repeated grandmother. "I can hardly
tell you what it is about, without telling the whole. The _name_ of
it--the name your uncle gave to it, was 'That Cad Sawyer.'"

Ralph said nothing, but somehow he had a consciousness that grandmother
did not agree with him that carrying a bundle of wood through the streets
proved that "a fellow" must certainly be a cad.

CHAPTER VI.

THE APPLE-TREE OF STEFANOS.

"And age recounts the feats of youth."

THOMSON.

"I was the only daughter among nine children," began old Marie, when the
girls and Ralph had made her sit down in their own parlour, and they had
all drunk her "good health and many happy returns" in raspberry vinegar
and water, and then teased her till she consented to tell them her story.
"That is to say, my little young ladies and young Monsieur, I had eight
brothers. Not all my own brothers: my father had married twice, you see.
And always when the babies came they wanted a little girl, for in the
family of my grandfather too, there were but three boys, my father and
his two brothers, and never a