In that happy hunting-ground we bought and sold the usual illimitable quantities of eggs, and yards of calico, and firkins of butter; and there we should have wallowed until we were old men, had we remained long enough, without ever reaching another heaven. My principal reminiscences of those days are connected with the bully of the school; who, whenever we met in the streets out of school-hours, compelled me to make three very low and humble bows to him before he would allow me to pass. I have not the satisfaction of being able to record that he met with the usual fate (in fiction) of school bullies--that of being soundly licked, and of being compelled to eat humble pie for ever afterwards. He was a successful tyrant. His position occasionally compelled him to fight two boys at a time--one down, the other come up--but he was never beaten. A tyrant he was, and a tyrant he remained until I lost sight of him. In his career, virtue was never triumphant. CHAPTER XI. IN WHICH I TAKE PART IN SOME LAWLESS EXPEDITIONS. In his letter which offered us a home, uncle Bryan had stated, truly enough, that he was a poor man. Although he purchased his stock in very small quantities, he often had as much as he could do to pay his monthly bills. I remember well a certain occasion when he was seriously perplexed in this way. My mother, who had been attentively observant of him during the day, said in the evening: 'You are troubled, Bryan.' 'I am short of money, Emma,' he replied; and he went on to say that he had to pay Messrs. So-and-so and So-and-so to-morrow; and that his last week's takings were two pounds less than he had reckoned upon. How much short are you, Bryan?' He adjusted his horn spectacles, and brought forward his account-book, and his file of bills, and every farthing the till contained. In a few minutes he had his trouble staring him in the face in black and white, in the shape of a deficit of two pounds eighteen shillings--a serious sum. My mother, with a grateful look in her eyes, produced the stone money-box, in which he had said she might put by anything she was able to save out of the money he gave her to keep house with. She shook it; what was in it rattled merrily. It was a hard job to get the money out, the slit in the box was so narrow; but it was managed at last by means of the blade of a knife, and a little pile of copper and silver lay on the table. I think the three of us seated round the table would not make a bad picture; but then you could not put in my mother's delicious laugh. She had saved more than three pounds. I could scarcely tell whether uncle Bryan was sorry or pleased. He bit his lips very hard, but said never a word; and, taking the exact sum he required, put the balance back into the box.