rs hurriedly opened the paper, which she read,
and then handed to me, Mercer looking over me as I held it out and read
these simple words:--

"For Mary Hopley, with a mother's thanks."

I saw the tears start to the girl's eyes, and there was something very
charming in her next act, which was to carefully fold the note and kiss
it before placing it in her bosom.

"I shan't never part with that," she said softly; and then she stood
gazing down at the watch, till a shadow darkened the door, and big Bob
Hopley came striding in.

"Hullo, young gents!" he said; "how are you? Why Polly! What's--"

"A present, father, from Mr Burr junior's mar. Ought I to take it?"

"Yes," I cried eagerly, "of course. You don't know how happy you made
me by what you said. She is to keep it, isn't she, Bob Hopley?"

"Well," said the big fellow, holding the little watch carefully and
admiringly in his great brown hand,--"well, seeing, my lass, how it's
give, and why it's give, and who give it, and so on, I almost think you
might."

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.

A man once said to me that our brains are very much like a bee's
honeycomb, all neat little cells, in which all our old recollections are
stored up ready for use when we want them. There lie all our adventures
and the results of all our studies, everything we have acquired in our
lives.

Perhaps he was right--I don't know--I never saw my brains; but, if he
is, some of us have got the cells so tightly packed together, and in so
disorderly a way, that when we want some special thing which we learned,
we cannot find it; it is so covered up, so buried, that it is quite
hopeless to try and get at it. This is generally the case with me, and,
consequently, there are no end of school adventures during my long stay
at "Old Browne's" that I cannot set down here, for the simple reason
that I cannot get at them, or, if I do, I find that the cell is crushed
and the memory mixed up all in a muddle with wax.

I suppose I did not pack them into the comb properly. Oddly enough, my
recollections are clearest about the part of my days which preceded the
trouble over the watch.

After that, life seemed to go on at such a rapid rate that there was not
time to put all the events away so that they could be found when wanted
for further use.

Still, I recall a few things which preceded my leaving the school for
Woolwich.

There was that hot June day down by the river--little stream it really