"Thank you," said Trace, half in allusion to the wish, half ironically. "I suppose I may go in now." "Yes," said Mr. Henry, "that is all. Good night, Trace." He went out at the great gates as he spoke. But Trace, instead of hastening in to his studies, that he seemed so anxious over, came to the conclusion to delay them yet a little longer. He had a mind to track Mr. Henry. Following him at a safe distance, keeping under cover of any bit of shade cast by the moon, he saw him pass the front of the college, and make for some houses round by the shops. Mr. Henry was looking about him as if uncertain of his geography; finally he paused before a row of small "genteel" dwellings, and entered one of them. "Number five!" exclaimed Trace, taking his observations. "I'm blest if that's not the place where the Paradynes live!" he continued with sudden conviction, for he had been gathering a little information for himself in the course of the afternoon. "A nice lot to know! Birds of a feather. I shouldn't wonder but he had a share of the spoil in Liverpool! He confesses to having known them well. If ever a fire brand came into a school, it's this same German master. I'll look after him a bit." And, having so far set operations afloat, Mr. Trace galloped back to school as fast as his legs would carry him. Skirting the playground at the back of the college, nearly opposite the large bay window of the master's study, and of the boys' dormitories above it, was a small dwelling-house of rough stone, known amidst the boys as "Mother Butter's." Mother Butter, a tall spare angular lady of fifty, kept a cow and a donkey, and a good many fowls. She sold a little butter, she sold poultry and fresh eggs; she sold choice herbs, mushroom ketchup; lavender, and other sweet dried flowers to scent drawers. Formerly she used to make "bullseyes" for the junior college boys; small square delectable tablets, composed of butter, treacle, and peppermint, and did in this a roaring trade. But differences arose, beginning at first with long credit, and going on to open rupture, and one day last term she flung her treacle saucepan amidst the crew, vowing she would make no more. The saucepan struck Gall's trencher, denting it in and blackening his ear, nearly stunning him besides. Smarting under the infliction, he issued on the spot a general order that no more bullseyes were to be consumed of Mother Butter's, though she "made them till she was blue." Since then there had been open and perpetual warfare. Mrs. Butter carried tales of them to the masters: the boys entered on a system of petty annoyance: their palates suffering under the deprivation of those choice sweetmeats, it was not likely they would spare her. They painted her cow green; they cut off the plume of a handsome cock, the pride of the whole poultry; they tied a bell to the donkey's tail when it was charged with two panniers of eggs, thereby causing the startled animal to smash the lot; and they