thankfulness, and, watching my opportunity, I replaced the paper, unseen by Mrs. Clayton, with the remains of a gum-arabic draught which had been prescribed for his cough.  I knew that, after experiencing such condign punishment, he would return no more to the scene of his destruction, and that he might forget both injury and discovery, I devoted myself to his amusement during that active, long, rainy day with unhoped-for success.

The glazier had announced to Mrs. Clayton that his return might be deferred for four-and-twenty hours, and, as the succeeding day was clear and warm, I proceeded, in spite of broken sashes, to take my daily bath as usual at twelve o’clock.

Mrs. Clayton, with her prison-key in her pocket, and her snuffbox at hand, yielded herself to the delight of ginger-nuts and her stocking-basket, and rested calmly after her fatigues of the preceding day; and Ernie, attracted by the crunching noise—­the sound of dropping nuts, perhaps, which betrayed the presence of his favorite article of food—­hastened to keep her company—­a thing he never did disinterestedly, it must be confessed.

An opportunity now presented itself for observation which I knew might not again occur during my whole captivity; and surely no sailor ever ascended to the mast-head of the Pinta with a heart more heaved with emotion than was mine, as I placed my foot on the last rung of the ladder, and towered from my waist upward above the skylight.  I had drawn the bolt within, as I invariably did while bathing, and with a feeling of proud security I stood and surveyed the scene beneath and around me.  The angle of vision did not, it is true, embrace objects immediately below me, owing to the projecting cornices of the flat roof (a mere excrescence from the original structure, as this was), but beyond this the eye swept for some distance uninterruptedly.

Bathed in the golden light of that autumn noonday sun, I saw and recognized a long-familiar scene, and for a moment I reeled on the slender step as I did so, and all grew dark around me.  But, with one of those energetic impulses that come to us all in time of emergency, I recovered my balance in time to save myself from falling; and eagerly and wistfully, as looks the dying wretch on the dear faces he is soon to see no more, I gazed upon the paradise from which fiends had driven me.

There, indeed, just as I had left it, lay the deep-green grassy lawn, with its richly-burdened flower-pots, its laburnums, and white and purple lilacs, and drooping guelder-rose bushes, and its great English walnut-tree towering, like a Titan, in the centre.  There was the hawthorn-hedge my father’s hand had planted, and the fountain-like weeping-willow my mother had set, in memory of her dead, whose graves were far away; and there towered the lofty elm-trees, with their long, low, sweeping branches, meeting in friendly greeting, to two of which a swing had once been attached as a bond of union—­a swing in which it had once been my childish pleasure to sway and read, while Mabel sat beside me with her head upon my shoulder, held securely in her place by my strong, loving, encircling arm.