mingled with kindness. Take KENAN, HAECKEL, HUXLEY, STRAUSS,
and DRAPER--the names, I mean; it is quite useless and might
do harm to read their books,--shake them up together and make
into a paste, add some poetical excerpts of a moral tendency,
and spread thick over a violent lad smarting under a sense
of demerit justly scorned, Turn him out into the world,
then scrape clean and return him to his true friends. Cards,
race-meetings, and billiards may be introduced _ad lib._, also
passion, prejudice, a faithful dog, and an infant prattler.
Death-scenes form an effective relief. I have several which
only need a touch or two to be complete. That is the way to
please the publishers and capture the public. Try it, and let
me know what you think.--R.T."]


CHAPTER I.

Ah me, how shall we know the true,
How mark the old, how fix the new?
Or teach the babe in arms to say,
"Base, bold, bad boys are cheap to-day"?

NARR. _The White Witch_.

[Illustration]

SONOGUN scarcely knew what to do. He had been up all day, wandering
about the lanes which surrounded the family mansion. A fitful light
blazed in his magnificent eyes, his brow contracted until it assumed
that peculiarly battered expression which is at once characteristic