straight along the horizon. Somewhere very far off, a horn was
being blown, clear and thin; it sounded like the golden streak

grown audible, while the gold seemed the visible sound. It
pricked my ebbing courage, this blended strain of music and

colour, and I turned for a last effort; and Fortune thereupon, as
if half-ashamed of the unworthy game she had been playing with

me, relented, opening her clenched fist. Hardly had I put my
hand once more to the obdurate wood, when with a sort of

small sigh, almost a sob--as it were--of relief, the secret
drawersprang open.

I drew it out and carried it to the window, to examine it in the
failing light. Too hopeless had I gradually grown, in my

dispiriting search, to expect very much; and yet at a glance I
saw that my basket of glass lay in fragments at my feet. No

ingots or dollars were here, to crown me the little Monte Cristo
of a week. Outside, the distant horn had ceased its gnat-song,

the gold was paling to primrose, and everything was lonely and
still. Within, my confident little castles were tumbling down

like card-houses, leaving me stripped of estate, both real and
personal, and dominated by the depressing reaction.

And yet,--as I looked again at the small collection that lay
within that drawer of disillusions, some warmth crept back to my

heart as I recognised that a kindred spirit to my own had been at
the making of it. Two tarnished gilt buttons,--naval,

apparently,--a portrait of a monarch unknown to me, cut from some
antique print and deftly coloured by hand in just my own bold

style of brush-work,--some foreign copper coins, thicker and
clumsier of make than those I hoarded myself,--and a list of

birds' eggs, with names of the places where they had been found.
Also, a ferret's muzzle, and a twist of tarry string, still

faintly aromatic. It was a real boy's hoard, then, that I had
happened upon. He too had found out the secret drawer, this

happy starred young person; and here he had stowed away his
treasures, one by one, and had cherished them secretly awhile;

and then--what? Well, one would never know now the reason why
these priceless possessions still lay here unreclaimed; but

across the void stretch of years I seemed to touch hands a moment
with my little comrade of seasons long since dead.

I restored the drawer, with its contents, to the trusty bureau,
and heard the spring click with a certain satisfaction. Some

other boy, perhaps, would some day release that spring again. I
trusted he would be equallyappreciative. As I opened the door

to go, I could hear from the nursery at the end of the passage
shouts and yells, telling that the hunt was up. Bears,

apparently, or bandits, were on the evening bill of fare, judging
by the character of the noises. In another minute I would be in

the thick of it, in all the warmth and light and laughter.
And yet--what a long way off it all seemed, both in space and

time, to me yet lingering on the threshold of that old-world
chamber!

"EXIT TYRANNUS"
The eventful day had arrived at last, the day which, when first

named, had seemed--like all golden dates that promise anything
definite--so immeasurably remote. When it was first announced, a

fortnight before, that Miss Smedley was really going, the
resultant ecstasies had occupied a full week, during which we

blindly revelled in the contemplation and discussion of her past
tyrannies, crimes, malignities; in recalling to each other this

or that insult, dishonour, or physicalassault, sullenly endured
at a time when deliverance was not even a small star on the

horizon; and in mapping out the golden days to come, with special
new troubles of their own, no doubt, since this is but a work-a-

day world, but at least free from one familiar scourge. The time
that remained had been taken up by the planning of practical

expressions of the popular sentiment. Under Edward's masterly
direction, arrangements had been made for a flag to be run

up over the hen-house at the very moment when the fly, with Miss
Smedley's boxes on top and the grim oppressor herself inside,

began to move off down the drive. Three brass cannons, set on
the brow of the sunk-fence, were to proclaim our deathless

sentiments in the ears of the retreating foe: the dogs were to
wear ribbons, and later--but this depended on our powers of

evasiveness and dissimulation--there might be a small bonfire,
with a cracker or two, if the public funds could bear the

unwonted strain.
I was awakened by Harold digging me in the ribs, and "She's going

to-day!" was the morning hymn that scattered the clouds of sleep.
Strange to say, it was with no corresponding jubilation of

spirits that I slowly realised the momentous fact. Indeed, as I
dressed, a dull disagreeable feeling that I could not define grew

within me--something like a physicalbruise. Harold was
evidently feeling it too, for after repeating "She's going to-

day!" in a tone more befitting the Litany, he looked hard in my
face for direction as to how the situation was to be taken. But

I crossly bade him look sharp and say his prayers and not
bother me. What could this gloom portend, that on a day of days

like the present seemed to hang my heavens with black?
Down at last and out in the sun, we found Edward before us,

swinging on a gate, and chanting a farm-yard ditty in which all
the beasts appear in due order, jargoning in their several

tongues, and every verse begins with the couplet--
"Now, my lads, come with me,

Out in the morning early!"
The fateful exodus of the day had evidently slipped his memory

entirely. I touched him on the shoulder. "She's going to-day!"
I said. Edward's carol subsided like a water-tap turned off.

"So she is!" he replied, and got down at once off the gate: and
we returned to the house without another word.

At breakfast Miss Smedley behaved in a most mean and uncalled-for
manner. The right divine of governesses to govern wrong includes

no right to cry. In thus usurping the prerogative of their
victims, they ignore the rules of the ring, and hit below

the belt. Charlotte was crying, of course; but that counted for
nothing. Charlotte even cried when the pigs' noses were ringed

in due season; thereby evoking the cheerycontempt of the
operators, who asserted they liked it, and doubtless knew. But

when the cloud-compeller, her bolts laid aside, resorted to
tears, mutinous humanity had a right to feel aggrieved, and

placed in a false and difficult position. What would the Romans
have done, supposing Hannibal had cried? History has not even

considered the possibility. Rules and precedents should be
strictly observed on both sides; when they are violated, the

other party is justified in feeling injured.
There were no lessons that morning, naturally--another grievance!

The fitness of things required that we should have struggled to
the last in a confused medley of moods and tenses, and parted for

ever, flushed with hatred, over the dismembered corpse of the
multiplication table. But this thing was not to be; and I was

free to stroll by myself through the garden, and combat, as best
I might, this growing feeling of depression. It was a wrong

system altogether, I thought, this going of people one had
got used to. Things ought always to continue as they had been.

Change there must be, of course; pigs, for instance, came and
went with disturbing frequency--

"Fired their ringing shot and passed,
Hotly charged and sank at last,"--

but Nature had ordered it so, and in requital had provided for
rapid successors. Did you come to love a pig, and he was taken

from you, grief was quickly assuaged in the delight of selection
from the new litter. But now, when it was no question of a

peerless pig, but only of a governess, Nature seemed helpless,
and the future held no litter of oblivion. Things might be

better, or they might be worse, but they would never be the same;
and the innate conservatism of youth asks neither poverty nor