rwise than they actually
did. They might perhaps have been less precipitate, and tried to keep
the matter a little more quiet, but this would not have been easy, nor
would it have mended things very materially. The bitter fact remains
that if a girl does certain things she must do them at her peril, no
matter how young and pretty she is nor to what temptation she has
succumbed. This is the way of the world, and as yet there has been no
help found for it.

Ernest could only see what he gathered from the cook, namely, that his
favourite, Ellen, was being turned adrift with a matter of three pounds
in her pocket, to go she knew not where, and to do she knew not what, and
that she had said she should hang or drown herself, which the boy
implicitly believed she would.

With greater promptitude than he had shown yet, he reckoned up his money
and found he had two shillings and threepence at his command; there was
his knife which might sell for a shilling, and there was the silver watch
his Aunt Alethea had given him shortly before she died. The carriage had
been gone now a full quarter of an hour, and it must have got some
distance ahead, but he would do his best to catch it up, and there were
short cuts which would perhaps give him a chance. He was off at once,
and from the top of the hill just past the Rectory paddock he could see
the carriage, looking very small, on a bit of road which showed perhaps a
mile and a half in front of him.

One of the most popular amusements at Roughborough was an institution
called "the hounds"--more commonly known elsewhere as "hare and hounds,"
but in this case the hare was a couple of boys who were called foxes, and
boys are so particular about correctness of nomenclature where their
sports are concerned that I dare not say they played "hare and hounds";
these were "the hounds," and that was all. Ernest's want of muscular
strength did not tell against him here; there was no jostling up against
boys who, though neither older nor taller than he, were yet more robustly
built; if it came to mere endurance he was as good as any one else, so
when his carpentering was stopped he had naturally taken to "the hounds"
as his favourite amusement. His lungs thus exercised had become
developed, and as a run of six or seven miles across country was not more
than he was used to, he did not despair by the help of the short cuts of
overtaking the carriage, or at the worst of catching Ellen at the sta