or deed interfered again in his grandson's education.

-----------

While the theory of Mr. Thorpe's system of juvenile instruction was
being discussed in the free air of the parlor, the practical working of
that theory, so far as regarded the case of Master Zack, was being
exemplified in anything but a satisfactory manner, in the prison-region
of the dressing-room.

While she ascended the first flight of stairs, Mrs. Thorpe's ears
informed her that her son was firing off one uninterrupted volley of
kicks against the door of his place of confinement. As this was by no
means an unusual circumstance, whenever the boy happened to be locked
up for bad behavior, she felt distressed, but not at all surprised at
what she heard; and went into the drawing-room, on her way up stairs,
to deposit her Bible and Prayerbook (kept in a morocco case, with gold
clasps) on the little side-table, upon which they were always placed
during week-days. Possibly, she was so much agitated that her hand
trembled; possibly, she was in too great a hurry; possibly, the
household imp who rules the brittle destinies of domestic glass and
china, had marked her out as his destroying angel for that day; but
however it was, in placing the morocco case on the table, she knocked
down and broke an ornament standing near it--a little ivory model of a
church steeple in the florid style, enshrined in a glass case. Picking
up the fragments, and mourning over the catastrophe, occupied some
little time, more than she was aware of, before she at last left the
drawing-room, to proceed on her way to the upper regions.

As she laid her hand on the banisters, it struck her suddenly and