their friends now-a-days. May I put you in?"

"Oh, certainly!" said Richard, placing himself in front of the fire,
putting his feet on the hob, and stroking his curls with an air which
seemed to imply that whatever he was put into would be highly
favoured.

The rest struggled, and pushed, and squeezed themselves into more
modest but equally comfortable quarters; and after a few moments of
thought, Paterfamilias's friend commenced the story of


MELCHIOR'S DREAM.


"Melchior is my hero. He was--well, he considered himself a young man,
so we will consider him so too. He was not perfect; but in these days
the taste in heroes is for a good deal of imperfection, not to say
wickedness. He was not an only son. On the contrary, he had a great
many brothers and sisters, and found them quite as objectionable as my
friend Richard does."

"I smell a moral," murmured the said Richard.

"Your scent must be keen," said the story-teller, "for it is a long
way off. Well, he had never felt them so objectionable as on one
particular night, when, the house being full of company, it was
decided that the boys should sleep in 'barracks,' as they called it;
that is, all in one large room."