ain look crept
over their faces, as if they scented afar off that abomination of
desolation--"lessons in holiday time."

"_Must_ we read the chapters?" said Hugh John, unhopefully.

"Tell us the stories, anyway, and leave it to our honour!" suggested Sir
Toady Lion, with a twinkle in his eye.

"Is it a story--oh, don't begin wifout me!" Maid Margaret called from
behind the trees, her sturdy five-year-old legs carrying her to the
scene of action so fast that her hat fell off on the grass and she had
to turn back for it.

"Well, I will tell you, if I can, the story of 'Waverley,'" I said.

"Was he called after the pens?" said Toady Lion the irreverent, but
under his breath. He was, however, promptly kicked into silence by his
peers--seriously this time, for he who interferes with the telling of a
story is a "Whelk,"--which, for the moment, is the family word for
whatever is base, mean, unprofitable, and unworthy of being associated
with.

But first I told them about the writing of _Waverley_, and the hand at
the Edinburgh back window which wrote and wrote. Only that, but the
story as told by Lockhart had affected my imagination as a boy.

"Did you ever hear of the Unwearied Hand?" I asked them.

"It sounds a nice title," said Sir Toady; "had he only one?"

"It was in the early summer weather of 1814," I began, "after a dinner
in a house in George Street, that a young man, sitting at the wine with
his companions, looked out of the window, and, turning pale, asked his
next neighbour to change seats with him.

"'There it is--at it again!' he said, with a thump of his fist on
thetable that made the decanters jump, and clattered the glasses;
'it has haunted me every night these three weeks. Just when I am
lifting my glass I look through the window, and there it is at
it--writing--writing--always writing!'

"So the young men, pressing about, looked eagerly, and lo! seen through
the back window of a house in a street built at right angles, they saw
the shape of a man's hand writing swiftly, steadily, on large quarto
pages. As soon as one was finished, it was added to a pile which grew
and grew, rising, as it were, visibly before their eyes.

"'It goes on like that all the time, even after the candles are lit,'
said the young man, 'and it makes me ashamed. I get no peace for it when
I am not at my books. Why cannot the man do his work without making
others uncomfortable?'

"Perhaps some of the company may have tho