was the boy's beau-ideal of a perfect scholar and a perfect being.--It was a curious sight to see the two boys together Power with his fine and thoughtful face beaming with intelligence, Dubbs with large, heavy features and awkward gait; Power sitting down with his book and perfectly mastering the lesson in a quarter of an hour, and then turning round to say, with a bright arch look, "Well, Dubbs, I've learnt the lesson; how far are you?" "Learnt the lesson? O, lucky fellow. I only know one stanza and that not perfectly; let me see--`Nam quid Typhoeus et validus Mimas nam quid'--no; I don't know even that, I see." "Here, let me hear you." Whereupon Dubbs would begin again, and flounder hopelessly at the end of the third line, and then Power would continue it all through with him, fix the sense of it in his memory, read it over, suggest little mnemonic dodges and associations of particular words and lines, and not leave him until he knew it by heart, and was ready with gratitude enough to pluck out his right eye and give it to Power, if needed, there and then. The early failures we have been speaking of took place when Power had been staying out of school with a severe cold, and being in the sickroom had not seen Daubeny at all. He had come out again on the morning when, after Daubeny's failure, Mr Robertson had called him incorrigibly slothful and incapable, and after muttering some more invectives had said something about his being hopeless. As he listened to the master's remarks, although he knew that they only arose from misconception, Power's cheeks flushed up with painful surprise, and his eyes sparkled with indignation for his friend. He wanted Daubeny to tell Mr Robertson how many hours he had spent in being "incorrigibly slothful" over that particular lesson, but this at the time he could not get him to do. "Besides," said Daubeny, "if he knows me to be quite hopeless"-- and here the poor boy grew scarlet as he recalled the undeserved insult--"it's no disgrace to me to fail." When detention was over, Power sought out his friend, and found him sitting on the top of a little hill by the side of the river, alone, and with a most forlornly disconsolate air. Power saw that he had been crying bitterly, but had too much good taste to take any notice of the fact. "Well, Power, you see what credit I get, and yet you know how I try. I'm a `bad, idle boy,' it seems, and `incorrigibly slothful,' and `hardly fit for the school,' and `I must be put down to a lower form if I don't make more effort'--oh! I forgot though, you heard it all yourself. So you know my character," he said, with a melancholy smile. "Never mind, old fellow. You've done your best, and none of us can do more. You know the soldier's epitaph--`Here lies one who tried to do his duty'--a prince could not have better, and you deserve that if anyone ever did."