Y the time Geoffry returned home for the next holidays, his father and mother were only too glad to be able to forget also

the share of blame which their boy had had in the fire, and to remember much oftener how gallantly he had behaved, and to think how he had won the love of Mrs. Calton by saving her little Bell.

So things at home were just as pleasant as they had always been, and as home should ever be; and Geoffry thoroughly enjoyed himself, sometimes riding, sometimes walking with his father, and only wishing that the days would not go so fast. Whether late events had really had some effect upon him, or whether he did not meet with so many opportunities of forgetting, the holidays passed over without anything of much consequence on Geoffry's part to mark them-so far that his

father and mother would talk him over at night, and feel very glad that their boy had so improved.

So it was settled before he returned to school that Geoffry should come home again for a short time at Easter, which, as the school was a long way off, he had not generally done.

Unfortunately for him, during the next term he found himself a favourite with everybody. Mr. and Mrs. Calton made a great deal of him, Bell loved him more than ever, and the boys chose to make him the fashion. He was captain of the football club, as he had been in the summer captain of the cricket club; and he was head of his Latin class-a place which he kept through the whole term, and everybody said he was pretty sure of the Latin prize. So I am afraid by the time Easter came Master Geoffry's head and heart were rather puffed up by all these things. There was one thing which, from his earliest childhood, Geoffry had been forbidden to do, and that was to touch a gun. On more than one or two occasions he had done so, and had been reproved by his father. More accidents happen through children meddling with guns than you little people can have any idea of. Of course children always suppose that the guns are not loaded, and cannot do any harm; but as children very often make mistakes, the only wise plan is to leave guns quite alone. I knew a boy who took up a pistol to play with as he was sitting at a table. There was a friend of his

sitting just opposite to him. Of course this boy thought the pistol was not loaded; but a minute afterwards, as he turned it round, it went off, and shot his friend quite dead. How do you think that boy could have felt? Think how dreadful to kill another boy; and I daresay he had often been told how unsafe it is to touch fire

arms.

I have heard of two little brothers who were in a field together, and one shot the other dead with a gun which he had taken up. I suppose he thought it was not loaded; or if it was, that he could manage it.

You may be quite sure, when your parents tell you not to do a thing, that they have some good reason for it, and know much more about it than you do. Geoffry might have been quite sure as to what he ought to do, for his father had forbidden him ever to touch a gun or a pistol under any circumstances, whether loaded

or not.

Mr. Lisle was generally very careful to fire off his gun before he came into the house, chiefly because of little Archie, who was such a baby that he might have an excuse for forgetting sometimes what he had been told. One day, during these Easter holidays, Mr. Lisle had been out alone firing at the thrushes and blackbirds which swarmed about the place, and which he wished to drive away from building in his garden. He was suddenly called in to see somebody upon business, and as he meant to go out again presently, he brought in

the gun with one barrel loaded, though the gun was not cocked.

As he came into the house he passed through the kitchen, and, placing his gun in the corner, he said to the cook,

Where are your mistress and the children?'

'Out, sir,' said cook. 'Missus has gone out with all the childer.'

'And Master Geoffry?'

'He went out fishing, sir-leastways he had got a boxful of them nasty, horrid worms.'

'Don't touch my gun, cook,' said Mr. Lisle. 'I will be back in ten minutes.'

'Lawks, sir!' said cook, 'I wouldn't so much as look at it, let alone touch it. I can't abide guns.'

And after her master was gone, she added to herself, 'I'll go into the back kitchen out of sight of it. It sets me all of a tremble!'

The back kitchen was on the other side of the yard so that cook was out of hearing as well as sight of what went on in the kitchen, unless it should be something very unusual.

Geoffry had gone out with his mother and his little brothers; but when they stopped to pay some visits, Geoffry, who did not care for that sort of thing any more than most boys of his age, with his mother's leave, ran home.

Everybody was in the habit of running through the

kitchen, as it was the shortest way to the garden. When Geoffry ran in, he looked round for cook, who was a great friend of his, and not seeing her, he called; for he wanted to ask if she knew where his father was. By this time, as he stood in the kitchen, he perceived the gun.

'Why, papa must be home,' said he aloud; and running towards it he took up the gun. He had always had a great wish, as you know, to carry a gun; and now he ran his hand up and down the barrel, looking at it, and examining it and thinking what a nice thing a gun is, and of nothing else. Presently he raised it to his shoulder, cocked the unloaded barrel, and clicked the hammer on to the nipple.

'I am sure I could shoot if papa would let me. I will ask him again. I know exactly the way,' and once more he took aim and snapped the gun. He went on doing this several times, sometimes pointing the gun in one direction, sometimes in another, and laughing to himself, and talking nonsense, so that he did not hear a footstep coming to the kitchen; and just as Geoffry, as much by accident as by intention, changed the barrel and raised the hammer of the loaded one, the gun, being pointed upwards towards the door, Mr. Lisle appeared in the doorway; the hammer came down upon the cap, and Geoffry's father received the charge full in his face.

The gun fell from Geoffry's hands, as his father, blinded by the pain, tripped forward over the stone step at the doorway, and, in falling, struck his head against