his second year with the infants, how many more years shall I be at school?' The teacher gave the problem the consideration which it deserved, and returned the correct answer to the inquirer. 'Then,' said Albert emphatically, 'I shall get nine medals.' But he didn't. One year it was measles, another year it was mumps, a third year it was snowy weather and an absence of boots (his father being out of work), that dashed his hopes to the ground; and once he got safely to within three weeks of the end of the year when an unlucky piece of orange-peel sent him crawling home in bitter tears-tears that were shed more for the lost medal than for the pain in his ankle. Indeed, it was not until he was eleven, and fairly high up among the big boys, that Albert was called up before the school to have the shining thing pinned over his beating heart by the School Board member for the division in which the school was situated.

Life in the boys' division was sterner but more glorious than it had been among the infants. There were no women teachers here, but men, and over all the great head-master himself-Mr. Braid. Mr. Braid had been head-teacher of the boys' department ever since the school had been built, in what was then a rough neighbourhood, three-and-twenty years before. Often enough opportunities had been his of taking charge of newer and more palatial schools, but he felt that his vocation lay in the place where he had worked so long, and remained at his post watching, with no pang of jealousy, the appointment of younger and less capable men to coveted positions. Perhaps he had his reward. Years before, shortly after he came, it had been his duty to give sharp punishment to an ill-behaved youth. Next day a half-drunken gas stoker burst into the room, strode up to the head-teacher, and felled him to the ground. It was the culprit's father, who swore that no teacher should lay finger on son of his. Happily the other masters rushed to the rescue, and Mr. Braid escaped with his life and with a scar that he will carry to the grave. It was a crisis in the history of the school and of the district, and Mr. Braid proved equal to it. Instead of calling in the police, he went, as soon as he was well enough, to the man's house, found him sober and ashamed, and spoke to him as man to man. 'I've got my duty to do,' he said, in conclusion, and I'll do it if I die for it; and, what is more, I look to you parents to help us teachers, not to make things harder for us.' They shook hands at parting, and from that hour Mr. Braid had no firmer supporter than the man who had half killed

him. No such incident would be possible now. Most of the younger men in the district have passed through his hands. The parents know that their lads are safe in his care. The managers of the school have implicit confidence in his judgment. The clergy consult him in their perplexities about Sunday-school and choir practice. Often you will see a tanned soldier or a nut-brown sailor making his way to the head-master's private room; it is one of his old pupils come to shake hands with Mr. Braid, and, perhaps, to become his disciple in harder questions than can be solved by the rule of three.

It was seldom enough that Albert came into official contact with the head-teacher, for most of the instruction was given by the assistant-masters; indeed, Albert could have wished that the occasions had been even less frequent. To tell the truth, Albert was approaching the awkward age, and the interviews took place for the most part after school hours, and were painful to both parties. 'I should be sorry to rule by means of the cane,' said Mr. Braid once, but I should be sorry, indeed, to have to rule without it,' and a certain set of boys, of whom Albert was an admiring follower, gave the master ample opportunities of putting his theories into practice. But, in spite of these interludes, school-time was happy enough, and our young scapegrace learned many a thing which he was destined to forget as soon as school years were ended. Of these elementary arithmetic was not one; the lad kept his calcu lating powers bright by exercising them upon certain simple sums connected with the betting odds.

It was at this time of his life that Albert first made his real acquaintance with the country. Of course, he had spent various hours at the seaside and in Epping Forest on the occasion of Sunday-school treats, and he had once been by steamer to Hampton Court when the annual choir excursion took that direction, (shortly afterwards his brief career in the choir ended ingloriously owing to a rash indulgence in cigarettes in the vestry), but he had never spent a night out of London. One day in the late spring, however, Mr. Braid came into the class-room and said: "If any of you boys want to go into the country this summer by means of the Children's Country Holiday Fund you must give in your names before the end of next week.' It suddenly occurred to Albert that he would like to go, and he easily succeeded in badgering his mother into giving the required permission and into putting by the necessary pence to pay the small sum required of him towards the expenses.,,

The eventful day of departure arrived, and Albert found himself with forty other youngsters in the school playground. After a searching examination by the district nurse, which resulted in two unfortunates being detained to work out their destiny in measles at home instead of carrying destruction to the countryside, the whole crew were packed into a borrowed coal-van under the charge of one of the local committee, to be conveyed to the railway terminus three miles away. Each child had a large pink ticket of identification pinned on the breast, a bundle of some kind containing a more or less sufficient change of clothing, and a paper bag of provisions meant for the journey, but consumed before the school was out of sight; each was pale with the summer heat of London; each was wildly excited; and the unhappy gentleman sitting in the coal dust with his legs hanging over the tailboard had a singularly interesting time. But somehow or other they were all despatched safely by train, and the conductor made his way to the nearest wash and brush up, 2d.,' with a sense of relief in his heart and lifelong vows trembling upon his lips.

Albert's letters home during the succeeding fortnight were scanty and formal. They made no mention of the terrible day when the good farmer's wife with whom he was lodged was within an ace of sending him straight home; nor, indeed, did they tell of that adventurous sail across the duckpond on a flimsy raft, which resulted in the complete ruin of the three pairs of trousers belonging to the three sailors; nor yet of the hasty visit of the doctor to deal with an anguish born of green apples. Something leaked out later concerning Albert's terror lest cows should bite; and the day when the pigs unlatched the gates of their styes and had to be caught and driven home by Albert (that was how he explained matters) is still remembered in the village. All that is certain, however, is that when the too brief fortnight ended, and a fat red-cheeked Albert, many times too stout for his waistcoat, had to return, his hostess was in tears at the thought of separation, and sent him home laden with good things packed in a great big basket; and that thereafter kindly letters were exchanged between town and country; and that Christmas brought the twin brother of the August hamper.

The lad had to help to swell the family income before he left school for regular work. The number of his brothers and sisters had grown steadily, with the result that whereas Sunday saw a magnificent hot dinner, which usually lasted through most of the

afternoon, and Monday and Tuesday were marked by the rapid disappearance of the remnants of Sunday's feast, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were kept as days of abstinence. During the last half of the week the children's dinners consisted of a slice of bread and a farthing to buy sweets, the mother living on bread soaked in tea that her husband might have sustenance enough to keep him going at his heavy work. In the winter things were harder, and many a time did Albert go blue and hungry to school, till the family pride gave way and he was suffered to breakfast on the mug of cocoa and the hunk of bread which certain poor but charitable folk enabled the vicar to supply, morning by morning, to a hundred children.

Fortunately it happened that the local barber's business was growing, and, after a brief and businesslike conversation between the barber and Mr. Hawkins, Albert took up his duties out of school hours as lather-boy at the haircutting saloon. The busiest times were Saturday night and Sunday morning, when the little shop was packed with the men of the district, each of them armed with a black clay pipe, a week's growth of beard, and a newspaper. In turn they dropped into the shaving-chairs and lay back luxuriously while Albert, whom they humorously designated 'Young Sweeney Todd,' lathered them in preparation for the barber's opera tions. It was a perfectly scientific instance, had they but known it, of economic division of labour.

Occasionally there was a press of business on the other days of the week, and on such days Albert was absent from school, while one of his brothers carried a note with a trumped-up and very transparent excuse to the head-master; but Mr. Braid knew his district, and a glance at the broken boots of the messenger told him all that he required to know of the real necessities of the case.

One day Albert came home with a queer feeling of mingled desolation and expectation: schooldays were done. His mind was running on a few words of excellent advice from his head-master, and he carried in his pocket a few lines of recommendation from the same friend, which enabled him to get a place with the newsagent in the main thoroughfare. He had entered, at fourteen, upon man's estate. Man's estate did not prove, in practice, to be singularly eventful. Work began at half-past six with selling the morning papers to workmen as they hurried to catch the early trains; it continued, with sweeping out the shop and delivering more morning papers at the houses of a few resident subscribers;

it ended whenever the last edition of the latest evening paper was got rid of. Albert was not sorry when he was old enough and big enough to get another place.

This time it was outdoor work. There were a few small factories in the neighbourhood, one of which supplied a hungering world with pickles and the surrounding population with pungent fumes. The company's goods were distributed by vans, and Albert entered the pickle business as a van-boy. His chief duties were to sit on the back of the van and perform extraordinary balancing feats in crowded traffic, to goad stout 'bus-drivers to madness with personal remarks, and, on pain of skilful lashes from his driver's whip, to unload the pickle-jars and deliver them at retail shops without undue delay or breakages.

The days were pleasant enough, for there was little actual work to be done, and Albert was perfectly happy when swaggering in his apron of sacking and learning his way about London. The evenings were the dull time. Work was generally over by six or seven, and when he had washed and had had his tea there were still three or four hours to be got through before bedtime. It was no good staying at home, for there was hardly room for a lad of sixteen in that place of washing and bed-going children. There remained only the street corners and the society of other youths of like age and in the same predicament. But street corners pall; when the betting calculations based upon the evening paper's recommendations are consummated in a slip of paper and a coin handed furtively to the bookmaker's tout as he strolls by, and when the same old conversation has been repeated for the fifteenth evening in succession, it only remains to attract the policeman's attention, with a view to hasty flight round two or three streets, and then the possibilities are exhausted.

Once or twice Albert sneaked into a cosy-looking, well-lighted publichouse, encouraging himself with the reflection that his money was as good as anybody else's, and that he had as much right there as anyone; but the first time that he tried the experiment the older men who frequented the place frowned him out-they wanted no saucy boys there, and let him know it-and the second time funds were low, and it was conveyed to him that he could not expect to have the run of the place for unlimited hours on the strength of one glass of beer.

It was this monotony that led to the great expedition. 'Look 'ere, you blokes,' said one of the bigger lads one dismal evening