That process having been gone through more than once, Mr Poulter felt that he had acted with scrupulous conscientiousness and said, `Well, now, Master Tulliver, if I take the crown-piece, it is to make sure as you'll do no mischief with the sword.'

`O no, indeed, Mr Poulter,' said Tom delightedly handing him the crown-piece, and grasping the sword, which, he thought, might have been lighter with advantage.

`But if Mr Stelling catches you carrying it in,' said Mr

Poulter, pocketing the crown-piece provisionally while he raised this new doubt.

`O he always keeps in his upstairs study on Saturday afternoons,' said Tom, who disliked anything sneaking, but was not disinclined to a little stratagem in a worthy cause. So he carried off the sword in triumph mixed with dread - dread that he might encounter Mr or Mrs Stelling - to his bedroom, where, after some consideration, he hid it in the closet behind some hanging clothes. That night he fell asleep in the thought that he would astonish Maggie with it when she came - tie it round his waist with his red comforter, and make her believe that the sword was his own and that he was going to be a soldier. There was nobody but Maggie who would be silly enough to believe him, or whom he dared allow to know that he had a sword. And Maggie was really coming next week, to see Tom before she went to a boarding-school with Lucy.

If you think a lad of thirteen would not have been so childish, you must be an exceptionally wise man, who, although you are devoted to a civil calling, requiring you to look bland rather than formidable, yet never, since you had a beard, threw yourself into a martial attitude and frowned before the looking-glass. It is doubtful whether our soldiers would be maintained if there were not pacific people at home who like to fancy themselves soldiers. War, like other dramatic spectacles, might possibly cease for want of a `public.'