is man."

"What man?" said the maid-servant, "the young man? or the butler? or is
it the clerk?"

Here was a puzzler! all Eric knew was that he was in the habit of
sending sometimes for one or the other of these functionaries; but he
was in for it, so with a faltering voice he said "the young man" at
hazard, and went back to the Latin school.

"Why have you been so long?" roared Mr. Lawley, as he timidly entered.
Fear entirely prevented Eric from hearing what was said, so he answered
at random, "He's coming, sir." The master, seeing by his scared look
that something was wrong, waited to see what would turn up.

Soon after, in walked "the young man," and coming to the astonished Mr.
Lawley, bowed, scraped, and said, "Master Williams said you sent for
me, sir."

"A mistake," growled the schoolmaster, turning on Eric a look which
nearly petrified him; he quite expected a book at his head, or at best a
great whack of the cane; but Mr. Lawley had naturally a kind heart,
soured as it was, and pitying perhaps the child's white face, he
contented himself with the effects of his look.

The simple truth was, that poor Mr. Lawley was a little wrong in the
head. A scholar and a gentleman, early misfortunes and an imprudent
marriage had driven him to the mastership of the little country
grammar-school; and here the perpetual annoyance caused to his refined
mind by the coarseness of clumsy or spiteful boys, had gradually
unhinged his intellect. Often did he tell the boys "that it was an
easier life by far to break stones by the roadside than to teach them;"
and at last his eccentricities became too obvious to be any longer
overlooked.

The denouement of his history was a tragic one, and had come a few days
before the time when, our narrative opens. It was a common practice
among the Latin school boys, as I suppose among all boys, to amuse
themselves by putting a heavy book on the top of a door left partially
ajar, and to cry out "Crown him" as the first luckless youngster who
happened to come in received the book thundering on his head. One day,
just as the trap had been adroitly laid, Mr. Lawley walked in
unexpectedly. The moment he entered the school-room, down came an
Ainsworth's Dictionary on the top of his hat, and the boy, concealed
behind the door, unconscious of who the victim was, enunciated with mock
gravity, "Crown him! three cheers."

It took Mr. Lawley a second to raise from his eyebrows the battered hat,
and