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CHAPTER IX.

DEN IS SENT TO SCHOOL.

As to bidding him let the birds and his pencils alone, they might as well have told the boy not to drink when he was thirsty. His friends soon found this to be so; and when Den was about twelve years old his father concluded that it would be better for him to go to school; the birds claimed too much of the boy's time; he feared he would become too desultory and roving in his habits. Later on he would expect him to work at the same trade as himself: his desire was that the boy should become a good scholar in those studies which would conduce to improve and enlarge his own business; book-keeping he specially wished him to become proficient in. Den had no such ambi

tion his whole heart was in nature and art; so far he had tried to learn with a view only to increased knowledge in these. It pained and disheartened him at times that his father frowned on his rapidly improving attempts to reproduce on slate or paper what he saw and loved outside. When he ventured to remonstrate with him, and to appeal to his parent's own love of art, and the—to the boy-really beautiful pictures painted by him which were hung in his kinsman's rooms, Philip only frowned the more, telling him they had done him no good in life.

"You think you can paint, Denzil,” he would say in most disparaging tones. "You will never have the power or the means to become an artist; give it up, and be a good bookkeeper, and make our business. worth more than it has been to me."

The boy fretted in the chimney-corner over his books and slate. Sometimes, too, he would cast an appealing, longing glance at a stained-glass window which adorned the staircase of their equally obdurate kinsman's dwelling; but there was no pity shown, no relenting in the eyes of his stern parent, and “he had to hide all these things in his heart."

The window represented Christ wearing the crown

of thorns. Philip Magnier had designed it, and had stained and burned the glass himself; in fact, made every part of it. It would have done credit to a church as it was, it graced the old oak staircase, and it had roused many vague images of beauty and goodness in Den, as he lingered on the stairs. It seemed hard and strange to him that his father, who had made that, would not sympathise with him in his own boyish efforts. Larry was the only one of his relatives on his father's side who understood him and admired his young work.

The window is there still, and when the sun sinks low on the marsh flats, the light flashes through its many colours and illumines the old staircase, suffusing the calm face of the Son of man with a clear soft radiance; but the boys, whose feet once pattered up and down the solid stairs, know the place no more.

Yes, the boy must go to school," said both father and mother; he was getting to be out too much with the shore-shooters and the wild fisher lads. Philip Magnier went first and had a long private talk with the schoolmaster, and then Den was committed to his care.

The schoolhouse was in the same street as their

relative's home. It was a far older building than even that old Dutch mansion. Every portion of the outside carved woodwork was of solid oak, but it had been long bleached grey by exposure to the weather.

Wide steps led up to a finely carved portico, which was as large as the lych-gate of any ancient southern county church. Through a massive six-panelled door you entered a long corridor, the walls of which were panelled with oak from the skirting to the ceiling. From this passage a fine old staircase, with solid oak balustrades and hand-rail, led to the long low schoolroom, which had quaintly shaped windows on one side only, the side looking over the flats.

The living-rooms used by the master and his family were all in the same style, of solid oak throughout. From the arrangement and make of those old quarried windows, with their curves and circles and lozenge-shaped devices, a soft light was diffused over the whole place; the fierce glare of a midsummer sun never made the old house hot or the light dazzling.

The gentle old schoolmaster was in keeping with these surroundings. Picture a tall, slightly stooping figure that had seen sixty-four years pass away, with

all their changes of storm and sunshine. His features once seen were not likely to be forgotten: he had dark-grey eyes, under dark eyebrows, and hair that had once been nearly black, but was at that time grizzled in places. It was the lower part of his face that struck you most; for there was something in the firm set of his lips and the outline of his square chin that told you he was used to be obeyed rather than to obey, although at times a rare smile would light up his face for a time, transfiguring it. Now and again, too, his lips would quiver, in the effort to repress his amusement on hearing of some mad prank that had been played by one of his scholars. His voice was low and very persuasive. One of the most daring and impish of his boys once remarked, "That he believed the master could fetch a cuckoo off a bough in spring, if he only talked to it." But at times, few and far between, his voice rang out like a trumpet, having no uncertain sound. "That was when he was wexed," the same imp would have

told you.

The master dressed in a quaint precise fashion. He always wore a swallow-tailed coat, short breeches gartered at the knee, fine white stockings, and low

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