had been handed to the senior curate, so acute an exacerbation of the erythema that, in the ensuing convulsion, he was quite unable to retain me in his grasp.

I say unable, but, as my father pointed out to him immediately after the close of the service, had I suffered any provable damage he would certainly have taken legal advice. Falling from his arms, however, I remained poised for a moment upon the extreme brim of the font, and then fell forward, colliding with the vicar, who stumbled backwards in his efforts to save me. From the tottering vicar I then ricochetted, in what I believe is a military phrase, towards the feet of the junior curate, who became unexpectedly the instrument of Providence. I do not myself practise, nor do I greatly approve, any form of merely athletic exercise. But it was perhaps fortunate that the curate in question happened to be a skilful player of cricket. For just as my head was within an inch of the floor and the blood had receded from every countenance, he shot out his hand and succeeded in catching me in a position technically known, I believe, as the slips.

“Oh, well held, sir!” cried the senior curate, and then for a moment or two his emotion overcame him.

The vicar, still pale, recovered his balance.

“Poor little Augustus,” said my mother; “it’s the irritation.”

My father frowned at her.

“Without prejudice,” he said. And then for perhaps half a minute there was a deathly silence. It was fractured, I have been told, by myself, as the junior curate handed me back to the senior.

But my father intervened.

“Not again,” he said. “Never again; never in this world.”

The silence was resumed, broken only by myself. My father stood holding me, trembling with emotion. The vicar took a deep breath.

“Is the service to proceed?” he asked.

“Certainly,” said my father. “But in other hands.”

It was another instance of his dominating character, but also of his innate sense of justice.

“I am not insensible,” he said to the senior curate, “of the services that you have already rendered. But in the interests of my son, as you must surely agree, I cannot again trust him to your 

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