“I think you’d look very well with a cross on, Count,” Baines said, “so keep steady while we decorate you.”

As he spoke he was mixing up a paste with tallow and candle-snuff, and, when it was ready, came near to daub the cross on Livingstone’s forehead.

The two who held him had been quite deceived by his unexpected tranquillity, and had somewhat relaxed their gripe as they leaned forward to witness the operation; but the fourth, standing idle, saw all at once the pupils of his eyes contract, and his lips set so ominously, that the words were in his mouth, “Hold him fast!” when Guy, exerting the full force of his arms, shook himself clear, and grasping a brass-candlestick within his reach, struck the executioner straight between the eyes.  The effort of freeing himself to some extent broke the force of the blow, or the great Baines dynasty might have ended there and then; as it was, Buttons fell like a log, and, rolling once over on his face, lay there bleeding and motionless.

While the assistants were too much astounded to detain him, Guy walked out without a glance at his prostrate enemy; and going straight to the head of the house, told him what had happened.  The character of the aggressor was so well known, that, when they found he was not seriously hurt, they let Guy off easy with “two books of the Iliad to write out in Greek.”  Buttons kept the sick-room for ten days, and came out looking more pasty than ever, with his pleasant propensities decidedly checked for the time.

In his parish church at Birmingham, two tons of marble weighing him down, the old button-maker sleeps with his father (to pluralize his ancestors would be a grave historical error), and Joseph II. reigns in his stead, exercising, I doubt not, over his factory-people the same ingenuity of torture which in old times nearly drove the fags to rebellion.  He is a Demosthenes, they say, at vestries, and a Draco at the Board of Guardians; but in the centre of his broad face, marring the platitude of its smooth-shaven respectability, still burns angrily a dark red scar—­Guy’s sign-manual—­which he will carry to his grave.

The exultation of the lower school over this exploit was boundless.  Fifty energetic admirers contended for the honor of writing out the punishment inflicted on the avenger; and one sentimentalist, just in Herodotus, preserved the fatal candlestick as an inestimable relic, wreathing its stem with laurel and myrtle, in imitation of the honors paid by Athens to the sword that slew the Pisistratid.

CHAPTER II.

     “My only books
     Were woman’s looks,
       And folly all they taught me.”