afterwards, illogically enough, very gentle with Gwynne, and gave him a notably larger share of cake than mine. It would not have been possible to keep me in ignorance forever about Aunt Caroline, of course, but the enlightenment came with a sort of ferocious suddenness. It is one of a good many unpleasant recollections of mine connected with Gwynne's brother, Sam Peters. Sam was the elder by two or three years, a cold, surly, hulking lad of whom I was very much afraid--with reason, for he used his superior strength to browbeat and bully us. That the two brothers should be eternally at odds is not surprising; every nursery has its tyrant, and, remembering our own childish days, we must all be uneasily aware that our youngsters fight like small savages amongst themselves, and, as in most primitive communities, might makes right, and the battle is generally to the strong. Gwynne had a high spirit in his poor little weak body, and he invariably got the worst of it, yet never gave in. Every way but physically he had the advantage of his brother, who was a dull boy--and, I believe, liked Gwynne no better for being cleverer than himself. "Smarty" was one of his favourite names for him; I have known him to pummel his junior unmercifully upon some boyish difference; yet he would sometimes come cringing to both of us for help with his grimy slate and pencil. It would be hard to say in which posture I most disliked and feared him; but I have a fancy now that there was always something uncanny about Sam Peters in his fits of stubborn silence, of unprovoked anger, of repellent and fawning submission. He was most often to be found about the stables, and when his mother's commands--she had scarcely any control over him, and he treated her alternately with insolent indifference, and with a kind of wild affection--or the servants' persuasions brought him indoors, came scowling in upon our mild little games, kicking Gwynne's toys right and left. He took away our "Ivanhoe" and kept it for days, in mere spite, for he was not reading it himself--that I could have understood and almost pardoned; but I never saw him with a book. He invented various fantastically brutal ways of torturing the pet animals; and enjoyed beyond measure our frantic tears and expostulations. Sam never abated his tramping and whistling out of deference to Aunt Caroline; he stormed through the house when and how he chose, and on Gwynne's offering a remonstrance one day: "You shut up!" said Sam coarsely. "Aunt Caroline's crazy, and when I grow up I'm going to send her to the place where they put mad people so she won't be a bother any more." Gwynne's thin face went white; he doubled his feeble fists and struck out at his brother in a blind and futile indignation. "Don't you believe him, Mary," he gasped. "It's a lie! How dare you say that, Sam? How dare you tell?"