Immediately after their departure Father Somazzo called his pupils into the chapel and there they commended their small companion to the Blessed Virgin and the holy guardian angels.  Of all there assembled small Peppo prayed most earnestly.

“O holy guardian angel, thou who art my protector,” he said in his childish simplicity, “Willy will now have need of two guardian angels instead of one, if God will permit, go and help Willy’s guardian angel to protect him from the bad man who has taken him away.  You see here where I am the good Fathers will watch over me, and it will be enough if each day you but look at me and then fly away to Willy.  But, dear angel, come to me when I am in danger and call for help.”

After this the boys returned to the schoolroom, and as soon as they were at work, Father Somazzo took his hat and walking-stick and went to the city to consult Mr. Black, an English lawyer.  To him he stated the case assuring the learned gentleman that the father would not willingly have placed his child under the guardianship of this younger brother, who was a gambler and a spendthrift, and asked if there was any way of getting the boy a way from him.  Mr. Black said that according to law the uncle, as next of kin, could claim the guardianship of his brother’s children, and unless sufficient proof that he was not a fit person to have such guardianship could be secured immediately, months might elapse before he could be taken from him.  At the time of our story Hongkong was not connected with Europe by telegraph, as it now is, and it took from eight to ten weeks to communicate with people in Dublin.

CHAPTER III.

Aboard the “St. George.”

The Captain took his nephew directly to the harbor.  The boy cried softly to himself as he trudged along, and at last his uncle said to him in a mild tone of voice, “Willy, stop your crying.  See, all the passersby are looking at you.  If I were a boy like you, I would be only too happy to get out of such a tiresome old place where you just learn and pray all day long.  I am going to take you into quite a different school, one in which all is bright and gay.  On board the ship you won’t have any old exercises to do.”

“Oh, but I liked everything at the College so much, and in the new school there won’t anybody know me,” wailed Willy.  “And you—­are you really my uncle?”

“Most assuredly.  How can you doubt if?  Just look at me!  Have I not the same hooked nose that your father had?”

“Yes, but you have no such friendly eye.  And my father always had so much reverence for the Father Prefect.”

“While I speak to the Father Prefect only compliments in which all the i’s are dotted and all the t’s are crossed most punctiliously—­ha! ha!—­not so bad.  But now see here:  let us strike a bargain.  You recognize me as your uncle to whom you owe obedience, and everything will be all right.  If you go on in this obstinate, defiant way, you shall, so sure as my name is John Brown, this very day make the acquaintance of the cat-o’-nine-tails, and take a diet of bread and water in the company of the rats in the hold of the ship for awhile.”