of sale. The
situations are not quite parallel. But people who could seriously
debate, as we did, on the purchase of a freehold at a time when not even
their Rome was their own, clearly had not despaired of their country.

With the exception of the moving incidents to be immediately narrated,
the tale of this term's life differs little from that of the preceding.
The round of work and play was much the same; the harriers were out
again, football went on as before, till superseded by the "athletics,"
and a match was played on March 7th against Shrewsbury School on their
ground, of which the result was a drawn battle.

Our difficulties this term were with the elements. In novels of school
life, where the scene is laid on the coast, the hero always imperils his
bones in an escapade upon the cliffs. The heroes of our romance knew
what was expected of them. Accordingly, two new boys of a week's
standing start one afternoon for a ramble on Borth Head and are missing
at tea-time. Search parties are organised at once (it was not the first
occasion, for the writer remembers sharing in a wild-goose chase which
lasted four hours of the night, along and under the same cliffs); while
one skirted the marsh to Taliesin, another explored the coast. The
latter party at nine o'clock in the evening discovered the involuntary
tenants perched upon a rock a little way up the cliff. They had climbed
to it to escape the tide which had cut them off, and here they sat,
telling stones in turn, they said, to while away the time till the tide
should retire. Before the waters went, however, darkness came; and
either from fear of breaking bones in the descent or suspicion of some
fresh treachery in the mysterious sea, they clung to their perch,
blessing the mildness of a January night without wind or frost, but
blessing with still more fervency the lanterns of their rescuers. They
had passed five hours in this anxious situation.

This was the sportive prelude of more serious trouble. _Nunquam
imprudentibus imber incidit_: as the servant perhaps reflected, who, on
Monday, January 29th, was conveying the dinner of his master's family
from the Hotel kitchen to Cambrian Terrace. As he crossed the gusty
street between them, the harpies of the storm swept the dinner from dish,
and rolled a prime joint over and over in the dust. A leg of mutton was
following, but he caught it dexterously by the knuckle-end as it fell,
and rescued so much from