salad-bed, chanting triumphantly at every stroke, "I had my
bat, and I hit him as he lay on the mat." He was quite out of breath,
and I had not much difficulty in pummelling him as he deserved.

Which shows how true it is, as my dear mother said, that "you never know
what to do for the best in bringing up boys."

Just about the time that we outgrew _Chick-seed_, and that it was
allowed on all hands that even for quiet country-folk with no learned
notions it was high time we were sent to school, our parents were spared
the trouble of looking out for a school for us by the fact that a school
came to us instead, and nothing less than an "Academy" was opened within
three-quarters of a mile of my father's gate.

Walnut-tree Farm was an old house that stood some little way from the
road in our favourite lane--a lane full of wild roses and speedwell,
with a tiny footpath of disjointed flags like an old pack-horse track.
Grass and milfoil grew thickly between the stones, and the turf
stretched half-way over the road from each side, for there was little
traffic in the lane, beyond the yearly rumble of the harvesting waggons;
and few foot-passengers, except a labourer now and then, a pair or two
of rustic lovers at sundown, a few knots of children in the blackberry
season, and the cows coming home to milking.

Jem and I played there a good deal, but then we lived close by.

We were very fond of the old place and there were two good reasons for
the charm it had in our eyes. In the first place, the old man who lived
alone in it (for it had ceased to be the dwelling-house of a real farm)
was an eccentric old miser, the chief object of whose existence seemed
to be to thwart any attempt to pry into the daily details of it. What
manner of stimulus this was to boyish curiosity needs no explanation,
much as it needs excuse.

In the second place, Walnut-tree Farm was so utterly different from the
house which was our home, that everything about it was attractive from
mere unaccustomedness.

Our house had been rebuilt from the foundations by my father. It was
square-built and very ugly, but it was in such excellent repair that one
could never indulge a more lawless fancy towards any chink or cranny
about it than a desire to "point" the same with a bit of mortar.

Why it was that my ancestor, who built the old house, and who was not a
bit better educated or farther-travelled than my father, had built a
pretty one, whilst my father bu