and therefore his own great-uncle. And a very great uncle indeed did Master George Power consider Sir George Plantagenet. Not that he was a big man, for he was only a little one, and so thin that there seemed hardly anything inside his clothes to speak of. The only large thing about him was his head, which was supposed to be bald, but on which he always wore a black velvet skull-cap, with a tassel at the top of it. Georgie and his cousins at Christmas-time used to long to see the top of his head, and to wonder why it was always hidden away from them. But though he was short and small and bald, he was, for all that, extremely grand. He was a general in the army, and had fought the battles of his country, and when he so pleased had a dozen stars and medals, won in these battles, to decorate himself with; and he was desperately dignified and alarmingly courteous in his manners, as severe and strict as it was possible to be, and appeared to consider children as nothing more than necessary nuisances. In fact, if he could help it, he never took any notice of children at all; but to Master Georgie he felt obliged to pay a little attention, because it so happened that he had been named George Plantagenet after him.

Every Christmas he paid a visit to Georgie's parents; and every year, as Georgie grew older, he became more afraid of him, especially as his notion of paying proper attention to the boy was to propose that he should learn a piece of poetry by heart, and say it to him standing bolt upright before him, with his little hands clasped behind his little back.

Sir George Plantagenet Power stayed two days always at Christmas, and the two days seemed as long as ten. He kept them all in great order: papa and mamma, and uncles and aunts, and grown-up cousins, as well as little Georgie, and all felt as if a burden were taken off their backs when the two days were well over, and Uncle George had driven off to the railway-station.

It was not very far from Christmas now, and Georgie was eight years old, when one afternoon he was playing at ball in a field near his father's house. The ball bounded about in a beautiful manner, and at last bounded over a hedge into the road outside, and then rolled down a long steep hill, as fast as any ball could roll. Georgie was not allowed to go into this road, but he saw his dear ball trundling away from him, and he also saw the nicest possible little gap in the hedge, just for all the world as if it had been made on purpose for him to creep through it; and so, without thinking that he was being disobedient, he acted on the impulse of the moment, and almost before

he knew what he was doing found himself on the forbidden road, and running helter-skelter down the hill after the beloved ball.

Now this, you will please to observe, was the first wrong-doing which led to all that followed after it. When Georgie had caught up his ball, which was not until he had run a great way after it, he found, to his surprise, that he was not alone. There was a man hiding, as it seemed to him, under the hedge, who looked at him with startled eyes.

Georgie felt a little startled too; but nobody had ever been unkind to him, or done him any harm in his short, merry life, and so he was not afraid of anybody, except-I forgot the exception when I made that assertion-his great-uncle, Sir George Plantagenet Power.

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Hullo!" said the man under the hedge when he saw little Georgie.

"Hullo!" replied little Georgie.

Then the man crept out from under the hedge, and jumped into the road, giving himself a great shake as he did so. He was rather an ill-looking fellow, and not at all clean or well-dressed. But it was not at him or at his clothes that Georgie was looking, but at something that he had inside his coat buttoned up over his chest: something that was half inside and half out; and the part of it that was out was a little brown head, and a queer, knowing, rather pitiful face, as brown as the head, with a pair of wonderfully bright sharp eyes in it.

In fact, it was a monkey that the man had buttoned up in his breast, and this Georgie knew the minute he saw him, for he had been at the Zoological Gardens in the Regent's Park, and watched numbers of these strange animals.

I suppose no little boy of eight years old would look at any man when the choice lay between him and a monkey, and Georgie's blue eyes grew big and round with excitement and glee when they beheld the sharp, yet pitiful little face, that peeped out at him.

“Oh, it is a monkey!" he cried; and there was a world of delighted meaning in the voice in which he uttered the words.

The man slowly unbuttoned his coat, and taking the monkey out, put him down on the ground, holding in his hand one end of a long string, the other end of which was fastened to a collar round the monkey's neck.

Georgie screamed with rapturous laughter when he did this, for lo and behold! the monkey had on a little red coat and pair of white trousers, and was the very funniest-looking being that could be imagined.

But when the man said, "Now, Jacko, perform !"

but present it to Sir George on the next state occasion, when he was to receive a whole sovereign in exchange for it-to be spent in any manner his mamma thought fit.

So Georgie never remembered that he had no right to spend the half-sovereign, and no right to buy a monkey without the permission of his parents, nor even that his mamma, who was not very strong, and had delicate nerves, had an antipathy to monkeys, and would be quite frightened at seeing it. He thought of nothing at all but the rapturous notion of having a monkey dressed in a scarlet coat and white trousers, and who could dance a hornpipe of his own; so in one second the money was out of his pocket and in the man's, the string was out of the man's hand and in Georgie's, and the man ran away down the hill as fast as his legs could carry him, while Georgie was left alone with his monkey. A monkey of his own!

projecting stone in the wall, he left him there, shutting the door on him, as he thought, securely. He then ran off towards the house, but had not taken twenty steps when he heard a pattering behind him, and there was Jacko in his scarlet coat and white trousers, trailing the string along, and jibbering with alarming loudness.

He made such an absurd figure that merry little Georgie burst out laughing. Then he seized the string, and dragging him back to the tool-house, found a more secure manner of tying him up by help of a window-staple which remained in the wall, though the window had been broken long ago, and a piece of board nailed across the opening. After this he ran home as fast as his legs could carry him, but, with all his speed, arrived late for

tea.

While he was making a hearty meal himself it suddenly occurred to him that Jacko must be fed also. This difficulty had not crossed his small brain

starved he would die.

He knew that monkeys ate nuts, but beyond that he had not an idea what their food was. "However, he is so like us," thought Georgie complacently,

may be said to have begun. The sudden twinge of pain sobered him; he put Jacko down quicker than he had snatched him up, and began to think a little. And the first thought was, Whatever, now that he had a monkey of his own, could he do with it? He did not dare tell his parents what he had done not so much because he was afraid of their being angry with him, but because he knew they would not let him have the monkey at all.

He had been very happy for eight years, and it had never entered into his flaxen head that he could possess a monkey; but now that one was actually in his possession it had become as necessary to him as the clothes he wore, or the food he ate, or the air he breathed.

It was beginning to get dark, though it was not late, for it was near Christmas-time, and daylight was very short, when Georgie hurried through the field, and into the garden by the door in the wall, leading his precious but troublesome charge along with him. What was he to do with him? That was the question which troubled Georgie's little brain. It was a most delightful, but at the same time a most bewildering, thing to own a monkey!

Now there was an old tool-house in an out-of-theway nook in the garden, hidden by evergreen shrubs, with the narrow path that had once led to it quite grown over, and Georgie thought the gardener never had occasion to go there at this time of year; so he took Jacko into it, and tying his string to a

He secreted a good hunch of bread from his supper, though how he was to get it to Jacko was quite another thing, for there was no chance of his being allowed to go out again that day. It was very soon dark, and about eight o'clock the moon glided up into the sky, and made a beautiful light on everything beneath her. But about eight o'clock Master Georgie Plantagenet Power was put to bed. He could not sleep at all for thinking of his monkey. He lay awake nearly two hours, and at ten his mother crept into his room to take a peep at her boy before she went to bed. He closed his eyes, for he did not dare look at her, but when she was gone, and he heard his father go into his study, as was his custom for an hour after his mamma had retired to her room, and when he knew all the servants were in bed, he crept out of his, and slipping himself into his clothes, and taking his shoes in his hand, ran lightly downstairs, let himself out of the back door, the key of which was left in the lock, and scampered off to his monkey. Jacko was very glad to see him, frisked about a little, and ate the bread with relish, using his hands so nicely as he did so that Georgie ejaculated joyfully, "Just like me!" Then Jacko made signs-very clever ones too-seeming to pour out something, and then lifting his paw to his mouth to show that he was thirsty. This new difficulty his little master had never thought of, but an old watering-pot was on the floor and a