u want a letter from home, do you? But you left them only yesterday
morning."

"I don't know how to believe that,--it seems such an immense time! But
when does the postman come?"

"Any day when he has letters to bring,--at about four in the afternoon.
We see him come, from the school-room; but we do not know who the
letters are for till school breaks up at five."

"O dear!" cried Hugh, thinking what the suspense must be, and the
disappointment at last to twenty boys, perhaps, for one that was
gratified. Firth advised him to write a letter home before he began to
expect one. If he did not like to ask the usher, he himself would rule
the paper for him, and he could write a bit at a time, after his lessons
were done in the evening, till the sheet was full.

Hugh then told his grievance about the usher, and Firth thought that
though it was not wise in Hugh to prate about Crofton on the top of the
coach, it was worse to sit by and listen without warning, unless the
listener meant to hold his own tongue. But he fancied the usher had
since heard something which made him sorry; and the best way now was for
Hugh to bear no malice, and remember nothing more of the affair than to
be discreet in his future journeys.

"What is the matter there?" cried Hugh. "O dear! Something very
terrible must have happened. How that boy is screaming!"

"It is only Lamb again," replied Firth. "You will soon get used to his
screaming. He is a very passionate boy--I never saw such a passionate
fellow."

"But what are they doing to him?"

"Somebody is putting him into a passion, I suppose. There is always
somebody to do that."

"What a shame!" cried Hugh.

"Yes: I see no wit in it," replied Firth. "Anybody may do it. You have
only to hold your little finger up to put him in a rage."

Hugh thought Firth was rather cool about the matter. But Firth was not
so cool when the throng opened for a moment, and showed what was really
done to the angry boy. Only his head appeared above ground. His
schoolfellows had put him into a hole they had dug, and had filled it up
to his chin, stamping down the earth, so that the boy was perfectly
helpless, while wild with rage.

"That is too bad!" cried Firth. "That would madden a saint."

And he jumped down from the paling and ran towards the crowd. Hugh,
forgetting his height from the ground, stood up in the tree, almost as
angry as Lamb himself, and staring with all his might to see wha