Fourth edition

Chapter I

' Capital ! But it wasn't on a live boy's head, though V ' What odds if it had been ? ' ' All the odds in the world, Ned. Funk makes a fellow's hand shake.' ' Stop, a bit, then, and I'll try again with Tommy Wilmot. Here ! Tommy ! Tommy ! ' But when it was explained to Tommy, the gardener's son, that he was to stand blindfold whilst Master Locksley shot a bolt at an apple on his head, he manifested an un accountable repugnance. In vain was he shown two apples spitted in succession by the marksman's skill ; in vain was he made acquainted with the story of the gallant Switzer's boy ; in vain was an offer made to dispense with the brass ferrule on the bolt. Then bribes were tried, a new sixpence and a bag of marbles. Then came hard words : ' he was a muff : ' ' he was a monkey.' Lastly, I am sorry to say, came threats, B whereat he threw himself upon his back on the turf, kicking and screaming for ' Mammy ! ' ' Ugh ! the little toad ! ' said both his tormentors, with the most ingenuous indignation. ' I have it though,' said the Earl, aster a pause. ' Let's get Mrs. Locksley's big china jar out of the back drawing room, stick it on a stool with the apple atop.

It's no end of funky to shoot at.' It was indeed. Even Ned's recklessness quailed. ' A nice boy you are,' quoth his Lordship ; ' risk Tommy Wilmot's life or eyes and funk the crockery ! Well ! ' This was more than Ned could stand. Indoors he went, and brought out the jar with one hand, a tall stool in the other. On the lid squatted a grinning dragon with a smooth round pate. Thereon a pippin was then craftily poised, and the Earl stepped off the distance at which they had been shooting before. Their weapon was a cross-bow, their bolt of wood tipped with a brass ferrule. Ned took aim so steadily that his companion muttered, ' He'll do it now.' So, perhaps, he would, but for a saucy may-fly and a hungry swallow. The may-fly danced right in the fine of aim ; the swallow darted, snapped at and seized her.

The gleam of the bird's glossy back dazzled Ned's eye too late to check the finger on the trigger. Off went the head of the golden dragon of the dynasty of Ming. ' Oh, Ned, Ned, we've been and done it,' was the Earl's generous exclamation. ' I've been and done it, not you, Phil ! ' was Ned's no less generous disclaimer. ' I put you up to it, and bullied you into it, so the mischiefs mine as much as yours ; and that I'll stick to. But talk of sticking, Ned, couldn't we stick the vile brute's head on again ? ' said Philip, transferring, as we all do sometimes, a share of his annoyance to the victim of his misdeed. ' Perhaps we could,' answered the marksman, ruefully. ' It's a good job it wasn't Tommy's eye.' ' That's the provoking part of it ; the obstinate little toad will think he was right to refuse.

What are you going for now, Ned ? ' ' Only the cement bottle in mammy's cupboard.' Very good cement it was ; and, soon set hard, the Ming monster showed his grinders as well as ever. The ingenious Earl bethought him of some gold shell in Ned's paint-box, and dapping therewith the line of fracture made it almost disappear. ' Repairs neatly done gratis for parties finding their own cement. The jar's as good as ever, Ned. Put it away and there's an end of it.' Not so. Ned's uncompromising honesty would not allow it. His father soon after came up the lawn, where the boys were still lounging under the cedars. At his approach, Tommy Wilmot, who was hovering about, took to speedy flight. Who could say but some vague charge of com plicity might affect and endanger him ? The Earl, who was peeling a willow wand, was rather startled at hearing Ned begin — ' Papa, dear, I've been and done it again.' ' More mischief, Ned ? ' ask«d Mr. Locksley, laying his hand upon the curly head, and looking down into the boyish eyes which sought his in perfect confidence.

B NSD LOCKSLET, THE ETONIAN. 4 ' Yes. You know mammy's big china jar. It's a mercy it ain't atoms, I can tell you. But I knocked the monster's head off with a cross-bolt.' ' Accident or purpose, Ned ? That makes all the dif ference you know.' ' Well, I shot at it on purpose, but cut the dragon off by accident,' and Ned's look drooped at remembering the wantonness of his exploit. ' I haven't time to hear it out just now, Ned ; you must tell me in my study after tea. Lady Cransdale wants you both up at the House. She told me to send you if I came across you, so be off at once.' As they went along, Philip asked of the other ' Do you always tell him things straight out that way, Ned?' ' To be sure I do. Don't you tell Lady Cransdale every thing?' 'Well, I do sometimes. Constance does always. But I say, Ned, will there be much row about this vile beast of a griffin ? ' ' You're hard on the poor old griffin, Phil.

He didn't ask to be shot at ; yet he didn't object, like Tommy.' ' Well, but what will your father do to you for breaking him?' ' Not knowing can't say. But if I catch it, it's a case of serve me right. The jar is mammy's and she'd have been monstrous sorry to have it smashed. Holloa ! what's that ? Your mother and Lady Constance on the walk, with the new pony ! Cut along, Phil, and bother the griffin till after tea.' In two minutes more they were up to the Countess and her daughter with a rush and a shout which set the pony plunging. ' Isn't he too spirited, Con ? ' said Lady Cransdale. ' One of the boys had better ride him first.' ' Oh, please no, dear mamma. I like spirit in a pony. He's gentle enough with it, I'm sure.' She stepped up to the startled creature which eyed her with its large deer-like eyes, and with quivering nostril sniffed at her outstretched hand.

Then, as if reassured by her gentleness and fearlessness together, it stood quite still and suffered her to pat its crested neck. ' There now, mamma dear, Selim and I are friends for good and all. Do let me have the saddle on. It's only three o'clock, and the boys' half holiday ; we could have such a canter. Do, there's a dear ! ' ' Then James must go too. I can't trust you with the boys alone the first time.' Old James, the head groom, touched his hat. ' I'd better ride the old brown hunter, my lady ; he's as steady as a house.' No wonder that Lady Constance had both frame and face instinct with grace and beauty, for all she were as yet a wild slip of a girl. For she was daughter to that beautiful and stately mother, whose motherly beauty widowhood had saddened into a sweet serenity, owning a special loveliness.

The children ran in at open windows on the ground floor. Lady Cransdale mounted the terrace steps. There was a marble vase upon the balustrade, with heavy handles. Clasping one of these with both her hands, she leant her cheek upon them, and looked out wistfully, first upon the landscape, then heavenward. 'Ah, Philip dear,' she sighed, 'I wonder can you see the children now ? Do you still halve the care of them with me ? ' By-and-by the trample of skittish hoofs was heard upon the gravel. The boys looked up and bowed to her with chivalrous grace. Lady Constance cried, ' See how I have him in hand, mamma ! ' But she was too prudent to look off Selim's ears as yet. The Countess smiled to see them go — a sweet smile and bright. She stood too high for any of them to have seen that its brightness sparkled through tear drops.

The precise details of Ned's confessional conference that evening with his father have not been handed down. The penance imposed included, apparently, satisfaction to Tom my Wilmot's injured feelings, for he laid out a bright sixpence next day in ' candy rock ' and toffy, and was in possession of a bag of marbles envied by the whole village school.

Chapter II

Barren of its chief blessedness is the boyhood of him that has no mother. But Edward Locksley's boyhood had been blessed with almost a double mother-love. Lady Cransdale had more than half adopted him to son-ship. There was hereditary bond of friendship and esteem be tween the house of Cranleigh and the Locksleys. The grandfathers of the two boys who played under the cedars had tightened it. They were brother soldiers in one regiment during the American War of Independence. Either had contracted close obligation to the other for life or liberty in the vicissitudes of that adventurous struggle. John, Earl of Cransdale, then Viscount Cransmere, left the army before the outbreak of the ensuing great conti nental wars. His friend, Edward Locksley, followed the profession of arms until the day of Corunna.

There he fell, in command of a regiment of Light Infantry, under the eyes of his noble chief, doomed to death on the self same day. His brother soldier did more than a brother's part for his children. Young Robert Locksley, our Edward's father, owed, in great measure, to the Earl the completion of his school career, his entrance at the university, and his early admission to a post of confidence and wealth. He had been now for years under the elder Lord, and then under his son, the late Earl Philip, manager of the Cransdale estates, intimate counsellor and friend of all at Cransdale park. Earl Philip had been a statesman, and had filled impor tant offices abroad. ' I could hardly have gone upon that Indian governor ship,' he used to say, ' if I had not had Locksley to leave here in my place.

But with him here, I believe the county gained by my turning absentee.' Robert Locksley made a wise choice when he chose the old Rector's daughter, Lucy Burkitt, to his wife. ' Meek hearted Lucy ' was her distinctive title in her own family. She was pretty ; she was gentle ; she was tender ; a true helpmeet for him every way. Knowing, for instance, bet ter than he could, all the folk on the estates, among whom she was born and bred. Gently born and gently bred, moreover ; for she was county-family, too, and the dames of the loftiest county magnates need not disown her. ' What a comfort,' said Lady Hebblethwaite, at the Manor house, Sir Henry's wife, to Mrs. Mapes, of Maperley, ' to have the old Archdeacon's granddaughter at the Lodge, at Cransdale. The Locksleys, too, were always gentle folk, and the late Colonel a distinguished soldier.

But I had my fears, lest Robert, in his peculiar position, might look out some vulgar rich woman.' ' In his position, dear. How so ? The Cransdale agency must be an excellent thing, I fancy.' 'Excellent, indeed; but still precarious. Any day a quarrel with the Earl, you know, or with the guardians, should a life drop and a minority ensue, eh ?' ' Well to be sure, I never thought of that. And, as you say, a quarrel or a change of dynasty : but Lucy Burkitt is Lucy Locksley now. A dear good little girl she always was, and I had a vast respect for her grandfather, the late Archdeacon ; and I shall drive over to the Lodge and call on Thursday.' And Mrs. Mapes, of Maperley, did call. So did Sir Henry and Lady Hebblethwaite. So did the very Rev. the Dean of St. Ivo and his wife. So did some greater and some lesser personages than these, until the social position of the Locksleys was indisputably and most honourably defined.

Their Edward was born in the same week as Lord Crans dale's heir, and both babies were christened on the same day. The Earl, who stood godfather to little Ned, would say, laughingly, that he and Phil were twins, and often brought one on each arm to be nursed as such by his Coun tess. Lady Constance, in the full dignity of some two years' seniority, called them both ' ickle baby brothers.' She herself had first seen the light in the Government House of an Indian presidency, whence a change of Cabinet it home recalled her parents some months before the birth ->{ Philip. Edward Locksley proved to be an only child, so the Earl insisted upon his being playmate with his own children. One governess taught the three at first ; later, there was one tutor for the two boys. ' Kate,' said the Earl, some time before his death, ' Kate, let the boys grow up together.

Philip will want a brother. Locksley will make a man of his boy if any father can. And if they grow up as brothers, he will be a kind of father, of course, to poor Phil. You are a woman of women, Katty dear ; but a boy wants a man's hold over him.' Her dying husband's wish became to her sacred law. The Lodge, as the Locksleys' dwelling-place was called, stood not far from the great House, and within the pre cincts of its park. The boys had rooms in either, where all things were ordered for them as for brothers of one blood. Their little beds, their bookshelves, their desks, all in duplicate, save in so far as individual character will stamp differences even on the very features of very twins. But the time was come when both boys must leave home. From father to son, for many generations, all Cranleighs had been Etonians.

Catherine, Countess of Cransdale, spite of the desperate hug in which her widowed heart held her boy, was not the woman to let her weakness falter from the manly educational traditions of his race. Philip must go to Eton, and Edward must go with him, of course. The boys were eager to confront the adventures of that new world. Had not each himself, and each the other, to rely upon ? But that eagerness was hard for two mothers' hearts to note. It is not only when prodigals insist on leaving home that parent hearts are wrung; dutiful aud loving children wring them sometimes by their cheerful parting smiles. Poor Lady Cransdale ! She wished in her secret soul she could detect, in Philip's laughing eyes, a passing trace of that feeling which it was costing herself such heroic effort to conceal.

Lucy felt a touch of the same anguish, but between her noble friend and her there was a world of difference. Lady Cransdale had been a happy wife ; Lucy was one. Neither, however, would betray to her son the keenness of her inward pang. It was lest to Lady Constance to do this. She was indignant at what she thought their heartlessness, and did her best to punish them both for it. She went pricking about with sharp words to find a soft spot of cowardice or of tenderness in either, but with little enough success at first. She racked her brains to think of all the cruelties she had heard or read that big bullies inflicted upon luckless youngsters. But this bugbear startled them not. They were country-bred lads, bold, active, and hardy. More over, they declared it would take a strapping big fellow to lick them both together, and they would fight for one another to the death.

Lady Constance thought that was likely enough, to be sure. She tried an appeal to Phil's possible fastidiousness. ' You know you're nice enough about things at home, Philip. How shall you like to boil your big boys' eggs, and bake his toast, and fry his sausages, and, may be, black his boots.' ' Prime ! ' he retorted, ' especially the cooking. You've a taste that way yourself, Con, or had, at least. Don't you re member the row you got into with Mademoiselle, for warm ing veal " croquettes " on the school-room shovel once ! ' ' Years ago, when I was a little girl,' she said, firing up with the conscious dignity of a lady in her teens. ' No Lady-bird, nor Light-foot, nor Selim for you, Phil; not one gallop the whole dreary half ! Oh dear 1 ' This was an artful and unexpected stroke. It told upon his Lordship evidently, whose face lengthened, till Ned came to the rescue with a suggestion of ' capital fun in boats.' ' Boats, indeed !

As if either of you could row a bit. Nice blisters you'll have on both your hands 1 ' This was a relapse into the Cassandra vein, and was accordingly derided. ' Oh, ah ! blisters. Much we should mind them, I suppose. Maybe we didn't blister our hands with pickaxes when we dug out the badger in Cransmere wood.' ' Selfish creatures boys are, to be sure !' she said again, after a pause, ' Neither of you seem to care a bit for leaving me here all alone. No one to ride with but old James, pounding behind ! No one to go fishing with up on the moor. No one to walk with as far as the " Long Beeches," or over to Cransmere wood, where your badger was.' ' Why, Con, you know we shall be very sorry to leave you, and all that, you know ; but fellows must go to school. There's Hebblethwaite minor, in the ' lower fourth,' at Eton, and even young Mapes, from Rugby, conceited monkeys, that try to lord it over us whenever we come across them.' ' It's not so strange of Ned, perhaps, not to care for leaving me,' she continued, with a slight flush, perhaps indicative of Junonian resentment aster all ; ' but for you, Phil, my own, own, only brother,' and here her voice began to tremble, and Philip to feel queer again. ' How can you talk of being lest alone, Con ?

Won't there be Mrs. Locksley left, and mammy, too, whom you pretend sometimes to love much more than I do. As if a fellow could help go-go-going to schoo-oo-ool ; ' he answered, with an approach to a downright whimper. ' No, indeed,' exclaimed her Ladyship, brightening up in view of the adversary 's faltering, ' but you needn't talk so much about its being " precious jolly " to go.' ' When did you ever hear me call it precious jolly ? ' demanded luckless Philip, with some asperity. ' After tea, on Monday, before the lights were brought into the library,' she replied at once, with that fatal female accuracy in the record of minor events. The reminiscence was too precise to be gainsaid. ' Mrs. Locksley heard it, and felt it too, I could see by her face.' Here Ned' s valiance began oozing out, and he quietly left the room. ' Yes,' she continued, ' and so did poor mammy, too.

I saw her face by the firelight, looking so pale and sad. You might have some feeling, Phil, for her at least.' ' Oh, Con, how dare you say that I don't feel for her, my own poor darling mammy ! ' As he spoke he heard his mother's footfall close behind him, and turning, the boy's bravery gave way at sight of her. He ran and threw his arms around her with a sob. Ned, meanwhile, went home, whistling, to the Lodge. But Lady Constance's word had pricked his heart also. His father and mother were out and would be back late to tea, the servant said. ' Good thing, too,' muttered he, striding up stairs to his own room ; ' time for a think, and I want one.' Ned's ways were quaint occasionally. He bolted the door, shut the shutters, and lit a pair of candles. Then he took down a slate, and tilting it up upon a Latin dictionary, proceeded to write, as if taking down the data of a problem in arithmetic, ' If Philip goes to Eton, but my mother don't like me to go so far from home, why need I ? ' Plunging both hands into his curly brown hair, and propping both elbows on the table, he glared at the slate, and thought.

When the tea-bell rang, he washed his hands and face with scrupulous nicety, brushed and combed his tumbled locks, returned the dictionary to its shelf, the slate to its peg, extinguished the candles carefully, and went very de liberately down stairs. ' I say, pappy dear,' he began, soon after tea was done, ' I've a favour to beg ; important too.' ' Well, Ned, what is it ?' ' I want to go to school at St. Ivo.' ' To school at St. Ivo, Ned !' cried his father in amazement, and his mother dropped her knitting to stare at him. ' There's a first-rate master,' he said, ' at the Cathedral school.' ' Pray, Ned, who told you that ?' ' Oh, I heard the Dean say, one day, at the Park, that the new man there, Mr. Ryder, had put a new life into the whole concern.' 'Well, I believe he's done wonders, but not made an Eton of St. Ivo— eh, Ned V ' Hardly ; but it's a deal cheaper, you know,' insinuated artful Edward. ' That's more my look-out than yours, my boy.

I wonder what's put this freak in your head V Lucy was not so strong of heart, perhaps, as Lady Crans dale ; at least, she had not known the cruel need to brace it, which the Countess knew so well. The boy's freak flashed a gleam of hope upon her. St. Ivo was not ten miles off: Eton close on two hundred. At St. Ivo she might have weekly, daily sight of Ned, if she were minded. No need for mother lips to thirst so many weary months for kisses. It was a sore temptation. With an effort to conceal her eagerness, she asked : ' Should you, then, really like St. Ivo better, Ned ?' He looked her full in the face, and the boy, too, was tempted by the craving tenderness which gleamed in her soft eyes. But his father's look was on him also, full of manful help. ' I didn't quite say that, dear mammy.' ' What did you say, then ?' ' Only that I wanted, if pappy would allow, to go to the Cathedral school.' ' You are not afraid of facing so many strangers as at Eton, surely,' said his father. ' The more the merrier,' he bounced out inadvertently ; 1 I like a jolly lot of fellows !' He caught the fall upon his mother's countenance, and was acute enough to see that he had betrayed once more to her the feeling which Lady Constance said had hurt her.

Lucy seemed to lose again the clue she thought to hold. The fledgling's wing was not so weak as she had almost hoped. It was ready for a long flight from the nest. She plied her knitting again, part sorrowful, part proud, to note the spirit of her boy. Presently she put the knitting by for good and all. Her head ached a little, and she was going early to bed. Ned ran after her for another passing kiss before she reached her room . It sent her to sleep happy. ' What put this notion of St. Ivo in your head ?' asked Mr. Locksley once more when the boy returned. ' If you don't mind, I'd rather say no more about it,' answered Ned, discomfited. ' But if I do ?' ' Of course, then, I shall out with it.' ' Out with it, then, my boy,' said Mr. Locksley. So he told his father how Lady Constance ' went on ' at him and Philip about their obdurate cheerfulness in face of approaching departure ; and how her ladyship had given them to understand, among other things, that their respec tive mothers were pining at the prospect. ' Then, to put the question as your mother did herself just now, you wouldn't like St. Ivo better ?' ' Oh, my !

Better ! What ? St. Ivo, with thirty fellows in the poky little close, better than Eton with hun dreds, and the playing fields, and the river, and " Pop," and Montem, and all that ! I should not, just about.' ' But if your mother should wish to keep you nearer home, you're ready to give it up V He nodded assent. ' You'll have to give up Phil, too, remember. He won't go to St. Ivo.' Ned gave a sigh ; but said resolutely, ' She's more to me than Phil, or half-a-dozen. I'll do what she likes, please.' ' Well, sleep on it to-night, Ned ; we'll talk it over again to-morrow.' Lady Constance, proud of having crushed her brother into contrition, looked anxiously the next day for signs of relenting in Master Ned. Perhaps she wished, perhaps she seared, to know whether, amongst other things, the boy would care a little for leaving her.

Some say, to use a dyer's simile, that jealousy must be the mordant to fix any tint of true love, even be it only sisterly. I fancy that with women it is almost always so — much more invariably than with our less sensitive brotherhood. But Ned gave no sign. His countenance was imperturbable when, in the afternoon, as the ponies came round, his father told him that he must walk home with him, instead of riding with the others. There was a whole catechism of questionings in Lady Con stance's eyes as she rode off with Philip ; but Ned went, whistling and incurious, with his father. ' Don't, Ned. It worries me,' said Mr. Locksley. ' I want to have a reasonable talk with you.' ' All right then,' and he ceased his whistling. ' One good turn deserves another, doesn't it, my boy ? ' ' To be sure, and more.' ' Why more ? ' ' Because the first's the first, and done out of mere good will.' ' Right, Ned.

Saint John has said it : " Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us." Love's nobler than gratitude. The second turn wants multiplying to come up to the first.' ' Ah ! just about,' said Ned, relapsing into a whistle to ease the overcharge of seriousness. ' Don't, boy ; but listen.' Trust begets trust, which little else has power to beget. Locksley knew this much of the secret to win a son's heart well. He therefore told his boy far more explicitly than ever yet what were his obligations to the Cransdale family. How he had found a father in the old Earl when the Frenchman's bullet had made him fatherless ; how his re lations with the late Lord had but increased the debt. ' I say nothing, Ned, of what his widow has ever been to you yourself.' ' No need, pappy. No fear I shall forget it.' ' Well, now, supposing you had set your heart on staying here at home — ' ' Which I haven't, mind,' interpolated Ned. ' But if you had, and we into the bargain, but Lady Cransdale wanted a friend for her boy Phil at school ? ' ' Why, what a father owes a son owes ; I should have to go- It was a singular saying for a boy.

Locksley turned it over in his mind aloud. ' " What a father owes a son owes," eh ? That's not a thought with which my own life ever set me face to face. But you're right about it, Ned, quite right.' Then, after a bit, ' You needn't speak again about St. Ivo to your mother.' ' Wasn't going to,' quoth Edward. ' For better or for worse you go with Phil to Eton.' ' For worse, indeed ! You silly pappy ! Floreat Etona ! ' And up went Ned's hat, with a whoop, into the air. c

Chapter III

' We shall have a " tuft " in the class-list, for a wonder, this term,' said a student of Christchurch to another undergraduate of that stately house of learning. ' High up ? ' ' A safe " second." ' What, Royston a safe second ? ' ' First, perhaps.' ' Oh, nonsense about that.' ' Will you give me two to one in half-crowns against him ? ' ' Willingly, ' Done with you, then.' ' Done. But, I say, what makes you risk your small cash that way ? Royston's too dressy to be cut out for " a first." ' ' Well, Grymer, who " coaches " me too, says he's lots of logic in him for a lord. And he was a bit of a " sap " at Eton all along, they say.' This logical lord, Baron Royston, of Rookenham, was a distant kinsman of the Cransdale family, and their near neighbour in the county. He was like Philip, his own son, as they say ; but had lost both parents in early life.