with my toes: for at first they did not comprehend, and then they reasoned that the slates were new, and if I failed to kick through them, to pull myself back to the crocket again would be a desperate job.

But they did not know our shoe-leather. Mr. Scougall, whatever his faults, usually contrived to get value for his money, and at the tenth kick or so my toes went clean through the slate and rested on the laths within. Next came the most delicate moment of all, for with a less certain grip on the crocket I had to kick a second hole lower down, and transfer my hand-hold from the stone to the wooden lath laid bare by my first kicks.

This, too, with a long poise and then a flying clutch, I accomplished; and with the rest of my descent I will not weary the reader. It was interminably slow, and it was laborious; but, to speak comparatively, it was safe. My boots lasted me to within twenty feet of the parapet, and then, just as I had kicked my toes bare, a steeplejack appeared at the little doorway with a ladder. Planting it in a jiffy, he scrambled up, took me under his arm, bore me down and laid me against the parapet, where at first I began to cry and then emptied my small body with throe after throe of sickness.

I recovered to find Mr. Scougall and another clergyman (the vicar) standing by the little door and gazing up at my line of holes on the face of the spire. Mr. Scougall was offering to pay.

"But no," said the vicar, "we will set the damage down against the lad's preservation; that is, if I don't recover from the contractor, who has undoubtedly swindled us over these slates."

 

 

 

CHAPTER III.

I AM BOUND APPRENTICE.

Although holidays were a thing unknown at the Genevan Hospital, yet discipline grew sensibly lighter during Mr. Scougall's honeymoon, being left to Miss Plinlimmon on the understanding that in emergency she might call in the strong and secular arm of Mr. George. But we all loved Miss Plinlimmon, and never drove her beyond appealing to what she called our better instincts.

Her dearest aspiration (believe it if you can) was to make gentlemen of us—of us, doomed to start in life as parish apprentices! And to this her 

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