said the kind old gentleman, rising and taking
the boy in his arms. "While nurse is getting your dinner ready, let's
look out of window, and see if it's going to clear up."

Mr. Thorpe raised his head disapprovingly from his book, but said
nothing this time.

"Ah, rain! rain! rain!" muttered Mr. Goodworth, staring desperately out
at the miserable prospect, while Zack amused himself by rubbing his nose
vacantly backwards and forwards against a pane of glass. "Rain!
rain! Nothing but rain and fog in November. Hold up, Zack! Ding-dong,
ding-dong; there go the bells for afternoon church! I wonder whether it
will be fine to-morrow? Think of the pudding, my boy!" whispered the old
gentleman with a benevolent remembrance of the consolation which that
thought had often afforded to him, when he was a child himself.

"Yes," said Zack, acknowledging the pudding suggestion, but declining to
profit by it. "And, please, when I've had my dinner, will somebody put
me to bed?"

"Put you to bed!" exclaimed Mr. Goodworth. "Why, bless the boy! what's
come to him now? He used always to be wanting to stop up."

"I want to go to bed, and get to to-morrow, and have my picture-book,"
was the weary and whimpering answer.

"I'll be hanged, if I don't want to go to bed too!" soliloquized the old
gentleman under his breath, "and get to to-morrow, and have my 'Times'
at breakfast. I'm as bad as Zack, every bit!"

"Grandpapa," continued the child, more wearily than before, "I want to
whisper something in your ear."

Mr. Goodworth bent down a little. Zack looked round cunningly towards
his father--then putting his mouth close to his grandfather's ear,
communicated the conclusion at which he had arrived, after the events of
the day, in these words--

_"I say, granpapa, I hate Sunday!"_

BOOK I. THE HIDING.

CHAPTER I. A NEW NEIGHBORHOOD, AND A STRANGE CHARACTER.

At the period when the episode just related occurred in the life of Mr.
Zachary Thorpe the younger--that is to say, in the year 1837--Baregrove
Square was the farthest square from the city, and the nearest to the
country, of any then existing in the north-western suburb of London.
But, by the time fourteen years more had elapsed--that is to say, in
the year 1851--Baregrove Square had lost its distinctive character
altogether; other squares had filched from it those last remnants of
healthy rustic flavor from which its good name had been derived; other
streets, crescen