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This turned the quivering scale. “Jabez Clegg and his friends” were called in; the verdict which changed the current of his life, was pronounced—Jabez Clegg was a Blue-coat boy!

Before the night was out, while the flood-gates of all their hearts were open, Matthew Cooper, though nearly twenty years her senior, asked Bess to be his wife!

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HOWEVER ambitious either Jabez or his kind fosterers had been to see him a Blue-coat boy, the parting between them was a terrible wrench. They were to him all the friends or parents he had ever known.

Then there were his playmates in the yard, with liberty to run in and out at will; and lastly, there were his dumb pets—his kitten (grown to a cat), his pigeons, and the lame linnet, hopping from perch to finger, and paying him for his love with the sweetest of songs.

He was not more stunned by the noise and Easter Monday bustle in the College Yard, or more awed by the imposing presence of Governor Terry and the feoffees, than by the magnitude, order, and antique grandeur of the building henceforth to be his home. Nevertheless, wide open as the gates were for the day, he felt that they would close, and shut him in among the cold strong walls and strangers, never to see his pets or his loving friends again until Whitsuntide should bring another holiday.