he announced his intention of being a carpenter one of these days.

"I hope," said Humility, "you will look higher, and be a preacher of
God's Word, like your father."

His father frowned at this and said: "Jesus Christ was both."

Taffy compromised: "Perhaps I'll make pulpits."

This was how he came to have a bedroom with a vaulted roof and a
window that reached down below the floor.



CHAPTER II.


MUSIC IN THE TOWN SQUARE.

This window looked upon the Town Square, and across it to the
Mayoralty. The square had once been the Franciscans' burial-ground,
and was really no square at all, but a semicircle. The townspeople
called it Mount Folly. The chord of the arc was formed by a large
Assize Hall, with a broad flight of granite steps, and a cannon
planted on either side of the steps. The children used to climb
about these cannons, and Taffy had picked out his first letters from
the words _Sevastopol_ and _Russian Trophy_, painted in white on
their lead-coloured carriages.

Below the Assize Hall an open gravelled space sloped gently down to a