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212 enough now. His father still had that lesson to learn, and Archie, during this last week, had begun to understand a little why his father had not yet learned it, if learning it implied the giving up of all that battles stood for.

He recalled himself with a jerk: he wanted to get back into the enchanted land which Blessington's reminiscences outlined for him.

"Yes, that hearthrug," he said. "That was a bad business, wasn't it, Blessington? What do you think put it into my head to empty the fire on to it?"

"Bless the boy, I don't know," said Blessington. "It was just mischief."

"Yes, but what's mischief?" asked Archie.

Blessington was a simple and direct theologian.

"Well, I shouldn't wonder if it's doing what Sapum wants you to do," said she, Sapum being her equivalent for the arch-enemy.

"I shouldn't wonder either," said Archie. "But it's rather beastly of Sapum to take possession of a very small boy with a bad cold in the head."

"Eh, he takes possession of us all, if we let him," observed Blessington. "But that was the naughtiest thing you ever did, dear. I wouldn't lay it up to you now."

"Was I good as a rule?" asked he.

"Yes, Master Archie, for a boy you were," said Blessington. "Boys are more trouble than girls, as is natural and proper."

"But doesn't Sapum enter into girls, too?" asked he, with another thought in his mind.

"Yes, to be sure, but not so violent-like. And when after that you were took ill, and we all went out to—eh, what's the name of that place in Switzerland—I must say you were wonderfully good. It was as if some angel took possession of you, not one of Sapum's