"WHAT do you most want to see?" asked my young nephew, as we mounted the steps to the entrance of the great British Museum.

Without a moment's hesitation I answered his question by saying:

"For years I have been curious about the wax writing-tablets of the Greeks and Romans. How could one write upon wax so legibly and durably that the message could be carried to a distance, perhaps, and then read by another? Surely if, by any rare chance, such a tablet has been preserved through the centuries, it will be found here."

With a nod of satisfaction, my guide, an eager student of Greek and Latin history and literature, conducted me to a case where we found the treasures I had longed to see. Strange to say, the best preserved specimen was that of a schoolboy's exercise dating back to about the second century of the Christian era. Thanks to the courtesy of the museum authorities, we are able to reproduce for the readers of ST. NICHOLAS this interesting tablet, with its scrawling, schoolboy characters still legible, after the lapse of 1700 years.

At first glance, one thinks, "Why, it is only a modern slate, with the usual wooden frame in which are bored two holes, for attaching sponge and slate-pencil!" But closer inspection reveals that what so resembles a slate, inscribed with whitish pencil-marks, is really a thin layer of black wax which covers a tablet of wood, having a raised margin to protect the writing from being rubbed. The whole measures seven by ten inches. The two holes in the rim were for the strings which bound it to a fellow-tablet, making a book with the waxed surfaces inside, such a two-leaved book being called a diptych (twice-folded).

Written upon this tablet are two boyish exercises, separated by a vertical line. The one to the left is the multiplication table, from "once one is one" to 3 times 10 is 30.

On the right side is a column showing the division between word stems and terminations. But what with the evident carelessness of the child,

and the wear and tear of time, the poorly made characters are difficult to decipher and translate. The fact that it is an exercise in etymology rather than one in sentence-making, doubtless accounts, in part, for its obscurity.

Greek Alphabet and Numerals I. A a'

2. B B γ

3. г

4. A S

5. E é

6.

7.

s' (Primitive)

In order that the reader may better follow and understand this old-time exercise in number-work, we append herewith, for comparison with the tablet, the Greek numerals from 1 to 10,-20 and 30. The Greek symbol for one was the first letter of the alphabet, a, with a stroke above it, a'. 2 was B with a stroke, B', and so on, till we come to six, which, instead of being represented by the corresponding sixth letter, was symbolized by a primitive form, s'. This spoils the uniformity of the scheme, as will be seen from the accompanying table. Note, however, that, in this capitals are used in most cases, instead of the small letters with the stroke. With the aid of a magnifying-glass, the different characters can be readily distinguished.

8. II n'

9. O f

10. I

20. K K 30. Λ Α' TAIB=3X4=12

boy's exercise, the

Upon another visit to the museum, we were permitted to hold in our hands the first tablet's twin. This second leaf is carefully inscribed by the schoolmaster with two lines of verse, one from Menander. These are twice copied by the pupil. Our youngster was either quite new to his task, or of a happy-go-lucky nature, since he left so small a space for the second copy that the lines had to be drawn very close together, in order to squeeze in the letters at all; in some places they overlap, and in some come too far within the guiding lines. Neither speed nor beauty, however, was required of the average school-boy in the brave days of

"Nothing is more useful than silence."

Truth, when not sought after, often comes to light."

old. If such were demanded, a slave performed the task. But the child must mind his p's and q's in regard to legibility-only there was no q in the Greek alphabet, and our letter p represented the r sound to him!

The tool with which our small boy traced his letters was the so-called style or stylus. It was

AN IVORY STYLUS, NOW IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

made of wood, bone, or ivory, often of beautiful or fantastic shape and decoration; one end was pointed for writing or ploughing1 (as Roman writers later expressed it) in the wax. The other end was flat and broad, for erasing impressions already made and smoothing over the surface to make ready for further writing. When skilful with the use of the stylus, the boy might be promoted to practise with a reed pen upon papyrus, the "paper" of the Greeks and Romans.

Horace, the Roman poet, gives some good advice, as true to-day as it was then, when he says: "Often turn the style [correct with care], if you expect to write anything worthy of being read."

Would our little heedless school-boy have used his stylus more carefully had he dreamed that his exercise would be examined by curious eyes, almost 2000 years later? This rare human document brings so near to us a little fellow of a school era now so long vanished that we are glad he had no inkling of the immortality his childish labors were to achieve, lest he should have tried to make his alpha, beta, gamma's unboyishly per

fect.

As it is, we are left free to wonder why it was he worked with such apparent carelessness. Was he in haste to join his playfellows in a game of ball, or marbles, or knucklebones? Or was he a beginner, just learning to use an instrument that was new to him and difficult to manage without the teacher's guiding hand?

Whatever the reason for his haste, his numberwork was correct, as can be proved by any school-boy of to-day who has learned the old Greek numerals.

O little school-boy of that distant day,

Full many a line, oft heedless and in haste, Time's pupil, Man, has written and erased, With History's stylus, since yours dropped in play.

Tudor Jenks.

CHAPTER I

GOLIATH LEADS THE WAY

C

YNTHIA sat on her veranda steps, chin in hand, gazing dolefully at the gray September sky. All day, up to half an hour before, the sky had been cloudlessly blue, the day warm and radiant. Then, all of a sudden, the sun had slunk shamefacedly behind a high rising bank of cloud, and its retiring had been accompanied by a raw, chilly wind. Cynthia scowled. Then she shivered. Then she pulled the collar of her white sweater up to her ears and buttoned it over. Then she muttered something about "wishing Joy would hurry, for it 's going to rain!" Then she dug her hands into her sweater pockets and stared across the lawn at a blue hydrangea bush with a single remaining bunch of blossoms hanging heavy on its stem.

Suddenly there was a flash of red on a veranda farther down the street, and a long, musical whistle. Cynthia jumped up and waved madly. The flash of red, speeding toward her, developed into a bright red sweater, cap, and skirt.

"Don't scold! Now you must n't be cross, Cynthia. Anne was just putting a big batch of sugar-cookies in the oven, and I simply had to wait till they were done! I've brought a lot over for you. Here!" The owner of the red sweater crammed a handful of hot cookies into Cynthia's pocket.

"You did keep me waiting an age, Joy," Cynthia began, struggling with a mouthful of cooky; "but I forgive you. I 'd almost begun to beangry!" Joy (her right name was Joyce) ignored the latter remark.

"We can't go! Momsie positively forbade it. Why on earth could n't it have kept sunny a little longer? It'll rain any minute now, I suppose."

"I know," Cynthia sympathized. "Mother for

bade me too, long before you came out. And we counted on it so! Won't be much more chance to go canoeing this season." They sat down listlessly on the veranda steps, and solaced themselves with the last remnants of the cookies. Life appeared a trifle drab, as it usually does when cherished plans are demolished and the sun goes in! Very shortly there were no more cookies. "What on earth has happened to your hydrangea bush? It was full of blossoms yesterday," Joyce suddenly exclaimed.

"Bates's pup!" replied Cynthia, laconically. There was no need of further explanation. Joyce giggled at its shorn appearance, and then relapsed into another long silence. There were

times when these two companions could talk frantically for hours on a stretch. There were other seasons when they would sit silent yet utterly understanding one another for equally prolonged periods. They had been bosom friends from babyhood, as their parents had been before them. Shoulder to shoulder they had gone through kindergarten and day-school together, and were now abreast in their first high-school year. Even their birthdays fell in the same month. And the only period of the year which saw them parted was the few weeks during vacation when their respective parents (who had different tastes in summer resorts) dragged them unwillingly away to mountain and sea-shore. Literally, nothing else ever separated them save the walls of their own dwellings-and the Boarded-up House.

It is now high time to introduce the Boarded-up House, which has been staring us out of countenance ever since this story began! For the matter of that, it had stared the two girls out of countenance ever since they came to live in the little town of Rockridge, one on each side of it. And long before they came there, long before ever they were born, or Rockridge had begun its mushroom growth as a pretty, modern, country town, the Boarded-up House had stared the passers-by out of countenance with almost irritating persistence.

It was set well back from the street, in a big inclosure guarded by a very rickety picket-fence, and a gate that was never shut but hung loosely on one hinge. Unkempt bushes and tall, rank grass flourished in this inclosure, and near the porch grew two pine-trees like sentinels at the entrance. At the back was a small orchard of ancient cherry-trees, and near the rear door a well-curb, with the great sweep half rotted away.

The house itself was a big, rambling affair of the Colonial type, with three tall pillars supporting the veranda roof and reaching above the sec

ond story. On each side of the main part was a generous wing. It stood rather high on a sloping lawn, and we have said that it "stared" at passers-by-with truth, because very near the roof were two little windows shaped like half-circles. They somehow bore a close resemblance to a pair of eyes that stared and stared and stared with calm, unwinking blankness.

As to the other windows and doors, they were all tightly boarded up. The boards in the big front door had a small door fashioned in them, and this door fastened with a very rusty lock. No one ever came in or out. No one ever tended the grounds. The place had been without an occupant for years. The Boarded-up House had always been boarded up, as long as its neighbors could recollect. It was not advertised for sale. When the little town of Rockridge began to build up, people speculated about it for a while with considerable interest. But as they could never obtain any definite information about it, they finally gave it up, and accepted the queer old place as a matter of course.

To Cynthia Sprague and Joyce Kenway, it had, when they first came to live on either side of it, some five years before, afforded for a while an endless source of attraction. They had played house on the broad veranda, climbed the trees in the orchard, organized elaborate games of hideand-seek among the thick, high bushes that grew so close to the walls, and in idle moments had told each other long stories about its former (imaginary) inmates. But as they grew older and more absorbed in outside affairs, their interest in it ceased, till at length it came to be only a source of irritation to them, since it separated their homes by a wide space that they considered rather a nuisance to have to traverse.

So they sat, on this threatening afternoon, cheated of their anticipated canoe-trip on the little stream: that threaded its way through their town to the wide Sound,-sat munching sugarcookies, glowering at the weather, and thinking of nothing very special. Suddenly there was a flash of gray across the lawn, closely pursued by a streak of yellow. Both girls sprang to their feet, Joyce exclaiming indignantly:

"Look at Bates's pup chasing Goliath!" The latter individual was the Kenways' huge Maltese cat, well deserving of his name in appearance, but not in nature, for he was known to be the biggest coward in cat-dom. The girls stood on tiptoe to watch the chase. Over the lawn and through an opening in the picket-fence of the Boarded-up House sped Goliath, his enemy yapping at his heels, and into the tangled thicket of bushes about the nearer wing. Into the bushes