Melchior's Dream and Other Tales

ds are

Prov

uncomfortable also; but then no one had ever seen him look otherwise, which was the more strange as he never professed to have any object in life but his own pleasure and gratification. Not troubling himself with any consideration of law or principle-of his own duty or other people's comfort-he had consistently spent his whole tim

to do, had given it such a hopeless slouch that for the matter of beauty he might almost as well have been knock-kneed. His eyes would have been handsome if the lids had been less red; and if he had ever looked you in the face, you would have seen that they were blue. His complexion was fair by nature and discoloured by drink. His manner was something between a sneak and a swagger, and he gener

nkindly towards the yellow-haired lad; but his conduct had long put a gulf between them, which only the conceit of a scamp would have attempted to pass. However, he flattered himself that he "knew what the lasses meant when they said no;" and on the strength of this knowledge

justice drop the lower by one lollipop for Bill than for any other lad, and exempt him by unwonted smiles from her general anathema on the urchin race? There were other honest boys in the parish, who paid for their treacle-sticks in sterling copper of the realm! The very roughs of the village were proud of him, and would have showed their good nature in ways little to his benefit had not his father kept a somewhat severe

leg before him like th

e inquired; and back swung the

oy screwed his l

n't go,

the fact, "Father can't spare me to the day-school n

ook a swing which it was fortunate the lad avoided; but th

k by Yew-lane

es

your way but old Johnson;

Bill, beginning to fee

as the next inquiry; and the boy's discomfort

e's a

there's a weathercock on the church-steeple but I never heard

omfort had

pen?" he asked. "I d

air amount both of spirit and sense; and having a shrewd suspicion that Bully Tom was trying to frighten him, he almost made up his mind

ntly. "What could happen? No one ever comes along

; "so, to be sure, you couldn't get set upon. And a pious lad of your s

at his companion; a fact di

in ghosts," sai

e does, though. I suppose them that has seen them does. Some people thinks that mur

ill, feeling very ch

ied in the churchyard," said Bully Tom, with a rush of superior information; "and all I know is, if I thought he walked i

onsidering their probable efficiency against flesh and blood, he slid from his perch, and "loafed" slowly up the street, whistling and kicking the stones as he went

knows, and Master Arthur always likes his class to time." He lingered, and she continued-"John Gar

sister's face as she delivered it; he was wondering whether what Bully Tom s

as there a man ever

wn thoughts, and did not noti

's an old gravestone over him in the churchyard by the wall, with an odd verse on it. They say the parish clerk

zed legs; and the thoughts of his aching shins, Bully Tom's cruelty, the unavoidable