for a walk in his garden. The boy was then in the habit of
attending a school for little children, close by, kept by an old
lady. In less than an hour, Mr. Benthall returned to ask if he had
come home. No one had seen him, and we began to be alarmed lest he
might have fallen into a well in the garden; but this apprehension
was speedily ascertained to be groundless. Still he returned not,
and our alarm increased, until his mother thought of the school,
and there he was found, book in hand, intent on his lesson. He knew
it was the school hour, and while Mr. Benthall was speaking to the
gardener, had managed to give him the slip, passing our own door
and proceeding alone to the school, on the opposite side of the
square. Mr. Benthall, who can have seen or heard very little of him
since, was one of the first, on hearing of his recent fate, to send
a subscription to his monument, about to be erected at Totnes.
Perhaps he remembered the incident.

Another anecdote of the child bears upon a leading characteristic
in the after life of the man. My late lamented brother, W.T. Wills,
who has since died at Belleville, in Upper Canada, was on a visit
at my house from abroad. He had occasion to go to Plymouth and
Devonport, and I engaged to drive him over in a gig. A petition was
made to his mother, that little Willy might accompany us. It was
granted, and we put up for the night at the Royal Hotel, at
Devonport, where he became quite a lion. The landlady and servants
were much taken by their juvenile visitor. The next morning, my
brother and I had arranged to breakfast at ten, each having early
business of his own to attend to, in different directions. When we
returned at the appointed time, the boy was missing. None of the
household had seen him for an hour. Each supposed that someone else
had taken charge of him. After a twenty minutes' search in all