he is in himself, for that which stands up in the four fleshly walls of him, apart from clothes, rank, fortune, and all externals whatsoever.  Which belief I take to be a wholesome corrective of all political opinions, and, if held sincerely, to make all opinions equally harmless, whether they be blue, red, or green.  As a necessary corollary to this belief, Squire Brown held further that it didn’t matter a straw whether his son associated with lords’ sons or ploughmen’s sons, provided they were brave and honest.  He himself had played football and gone bird-nesting with the farmers whom he met at vestry and the labourers who tilled their fields, and so had his father and grandfather, with their progenitors.  So he encouraged Tom in his intimacy with the boys of the village, and forwarded it by all means in his power, and gave them the run of a close for a playground, and provided bats and balls and a football for their sports.

Our village was blessed amongst other things with a well-endowed school.  The building stood by itself, apart from the master’s house, on an angle of ground where three roads met—­an old gray stone building with a steep roof and mullioned windows.  On one of the opposite angles stood Squire Brown’s stables and kennel, with their backs to the road, over which towered a great elm-tree; on the third stood the village carpenter and wheelwright’s large open shop, and his house and the schoolmaster’s, with long low eaves, under which the swallows built by scores.

The moment Tom’s lessons were over, he would now get him down to this corner by the stables, and watch till the boys came out of school.  He prevailed on the groom to cut notches for him in the bark of the elm so that he could climb into the lower branches; and there he would sit watching the school door, and speculating on the possibility of turning the elm into a dwelling-place for himself and friends, after the manner of the Swiss Family Robinson.  But the school hours were long and Tom’s patience short, so that he soon began to descend into the street, and go and peep in at the school door and the wheelwright’s shop, and look out for something to while away the time.  Now the wheelwright was a choleric man, and one fine afternoon, returning from a short absence, found Tom occupied with one of his pet adzes, the edge of which was fast vanishing under our hero’s care.  A speedy flight saved Tom from all but one sound cuff on the ears; but he resented this unjustifiable interruption of his first essays at carpentering, and still more the further proceedings of the wheelwright, who cut a switch, and hung it over the door of his workshop, threatening to use it upon Tom if he came within twenty yards of his gate.  So Tom, to retaliate, commenced a war upon the swallows who dwelt under the wheelwright’s eaves, whom he harassed with sticks and stones; and being fleeter of foot than his enemy, escaped all punishment, and kept him in perpetual anger.  Moreover, his presence about