Juba to be illuminated; and he determined to spare no cost in illuminating him. His head, therefore, he painted celestial blue; legs in cinnamon colour, with scarlet feet; pea-green tail; body a sort of Mosaic of saffron and rose colour; and, by way of finish to the whole, the ears and tip of the nose he thought proper to gild. Having finished this great work of art, Mr. Ferdinand turned him out for public exhibition. As a point of duty to his master, Juba naturally presented himself first of all in Mr. Mule’s library. That gentleman had just been reading, in the ‘Curiosities’ of Happalius, the part which treats of basilisks; and, as Juba came suddenly bounding in, he fled from him in consternation, under the notion that he was attacked by some hybrid production of a basilisk and a dragon, such as no heraldry has yet attempted to emblazon. Not until the creature barked did he recognise his outraged Juba; and, at the same moment that his eye took in the whole enormity of the guilt, his sagacious wrath detected the hand of the artist.
Such were the steps by which Mr. Ferdinand Lawler, as yet not nine years old, had ascended to the acme of guilt,—and obtained for himself in one house, at least, the title of ‘young malefactor.’ Being already debited in Mr. Mule’s books with all possible crimes, it may be readily supposed that all actual crimes against Mr. Mule—his peace or dignity, were regularly set down to Mr. Ferdinand’s black account. Never was seen such an awful arrear of guilt, so interminable a bill of offences, as Mr. Mule had in his own study filed against the young malefactor. Centuries of virtue would seem insufficient to expiate it. Not a window could be broken in the town, but “of course” it was broken by Mr. Ferdinand; not a snow-ball could be flung at Mr. Mule from behind a wall, but it bore the impress of Mr. Ferdinand’s hands. If Mr. Mule slipped in frosty weather, he felt assured that Mr. Ferdinand had been cultivating and nursing the infant lubricity of that particular path with a view to that particular result. And if Mr. Mule happened in the dark to be tripped up by a string stretched across the street, he affirmed peremptorily that the bare idea of such a diabolic device—the mere elementary conception of so infernal a stratagem—could not possibly have entered into the brain of any European young gentleman, except that of Mr. Ferdinand, since the Christian era, or that of Catiline before it. And he always concluded by saying, “And, sir, you will see that I shall live to see him hanged.”
In this point, however, Mr. Mule appeared to be taking a view too flattering to his own preconceptions; at least his anticipations seemed as yet, in newspaper phrase, to be “premature.” For twice seven years had passed since he had first bespoke young Mr. Ferdinand for the gallows, and as yet Mr. Ferdinand was
