CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

WALTER'S HOLIDAYS.

Such delights As float to earth, permitted visitants, When in some hour of solemn jubilee The massy gates of Paradise are thrown Wide open.

Coleridge _Religious Musings_.

In scenes like these, part sunshine and part storm, the half-year rolled round, and brought the long-desired summer holidays. Once more the end of the half-year saw Power as usual brilliantly successful, and Walter again at the head of his form. Henderson, too, although he could not proceed with Walter _pari passu_, was among the first six, and had gained more than one school distinction. But Kenrick this time had failed as he had never done before; he was but fourth in his form, and although this was the natural fruit of his recent idleness, it caused him cruel mortification.

The end of term did not pass off quite so smoothly and pleasantly as it generally did. The opposition to monitorial authority which Harpour had commenced, and Kenrick abetted, did not pass away at once; it left a large amount of angry feeling in the minds of numerous boys who had, each of them, influence in their several ways. Kenrick himself always went to the verge of impertinence whenever he could possibly do so in dealing with any of the sixth, and to Somers his manner was always intentionally rude, although he just managed to steer clear of any overt insubordination. He could, of course, act thus without the risk of incurring any punishment, and without coming to any positive collision. Many boys were unfortunately but too ready to imitate his example.

These dissensions did not positively break out on the prize day, but they made the proceedings far less pleasant and unanimous than they would have been. The cheers usually given to the head of the school were purposely omitted, from the fear of provoking any counter-demonstration, and there remained an uneasy feeling in many minds. The success of the concert which was yearly given by the school choir after the distribution of prizes was also marred by traces of the same dissension. In this concert Walter had a solo to sing, and although he sang it remarkably well in his sweet ringing voice, he was vexed to hear a few decided hisses among the plaudits which greeted him. Altogether the prize day--a great day at Saint Winifred's--was less successful than it had ever been known to be.

It brought, however, one pleasure to Walter, in the acquaintance of Sir Lawrence and Lady Power, who had heard of him so often in their son's letters, that they begged to be introduced to him as soon as they arrived. He was a great deal with them during the day, and he helped Power to show them all that was interesting about the school and its environs. They saw Eden too, and Lady Power kindly pressed her invitation on Mrs Braemar, who was also present, and who was not sorry that Arty could stay with a family so well connected, and of such high position. When Walter left them, Power earnestly asked his mother what she thought of his friend.

"He is the most charming boy I ever saw," said Lady Power, "and I rejoice that you have chosen him as a friend. But you don't tell me anything about Kenrick, of whom you were once so fond; how is that?"

"I am still fond of him, mother, but he has changed a good deal lately." At that moment Kenrick passed by arm in arm with Harpour, as though to confirm Power's words, and recognised him with an ostentatiously careless nod.

It was thus that Walter's first year at Saint Winifred's ended; and in spite of all drawbacks he felt that it had been a distinguished and happy year. He was now yearning for home, and he felt that he could meet his dear ones with honest pride. He made arrangements to correspond with Henderson and Eden in the holidays, and Power promised again to visit him at Semlyn, on condition that he would come back with him and spend a week at Severn Park, so that there might be a double bond of union between them.

Very early the next morning the boys were swarming into coaches, carriages, brakes, and every conceivable vehicle which could by any possibility convey them to the nearest station. A hearty cheer accompanied each coach as it rolled off with its heavy and excited freight; by nine o'clock not a boy was left behind. The great buildings of Saint Winifred's were still as death; the footfall of the chance passer-by echoed desolately among them. A strange, mournful, conscious silence hung about the old monastic pile. The young life which usually played like the sunshine over it, was pouring unwonted brightness into many happy English homes.

It was late in the afternoon when Walter found himself on the top of the hill which looks down over Semlyn Lake. The water lay beneath him a sheet of placid silver; the flowers were scattered on every side in their beds of emerald and sunlit moss; the air, just stirred by the light breeze, was rich and balmy with the ambrosial scent of the summer groves; and high overhead the old familiar hills reared their magnificent summits into the deep unclouded blue. But Walter's bright eye was fixed on one spot only of the enchanting scene--the spot where the gables of his father's house rose picturesquely on the slope above the lake, and where a little bay in the sea of dark green firs gave him a glimpse of their garden, in which he could discover the figures of his brothers and sisters at their play. A sense of unspoken, unspeakable happiness flowed into the boy's warm heart, and if at the same moment his eyes were suffused with tears, they were the tears that always spring up when the fountain of the heart is stirred by any strong emotion to its inmost depths--the tears that come even in laughter to show that our very pleasures have their own alloy.

The coach was still behind him toiling slowly up the ascent. Leaving it to convey his luggage up to the house, he plunged down a green winding path, ankle-deep in soft grasses and innumerable flowers, which led to his home by a short cut down, the valley, along the burnside, and under the waving woods. That sweet woodland path, cool and fragrant on the most burning summer-day, where he had often gathered the little red ripe wild strawberries that peeped out here and there from between the scented spikes of golden agrimony, and under the white graceful flowers of the circoea, was familiar and dear to him from the earliest childhood. He plunged into it with delight, and springing along with joyous steps, reached in ten minutes the wicket-gate which led into his father's grounds. The first thing to see and recognise him was a graceful pet fawn of his sister's, which at his whistle came trotting to him with delight, jingling the little silver bell which was tied by a blue riband round its neck. Barely stopping to caress the beautiful little creature's head, he bounded through the orchard into the garden, and the next instant the delighted shout of his brothers and sisters welcomed him back, as they ran up, with all the glee of innocent and happy childhood, to greet him with their repeated kisses.

"Ah, there are papa and mamma," he cried, breaking away from the laughing group, as his mother advanced with open arms to meet him, and pressed him to her heart in a long embrace.

"I'm first in my form, papa," he said, looking joyously up into his father's face. "Head remove again."

"Are you, Walter? I am so happy to hear it. Few things could give me more pleasure."

"But that's nothing to being at _home_," he said, shouting aloud in the uncontrolled exuberance of his spirits, and hardly knowing which way to turn in the multiplicity of objects which seemed to claim his instant attention.

"Do come the rounds with me, Charlie," he said to his favourite brother, "and let me see all the dear old places again. We shall be back in a few minutes."

"And then, I dare say, you'll be glad of some tea," said his mother.

"_Rather_!" said Walter; "let's have it out here on the lawn, mother."

The proposal was carried by acclamation, and very soon the table was laid under the witch elm before the house, while Walter's little sisters had heaped up several dishes with freshly plucked fruit, laid in the midst of flowers and vine leaves, and Walter, his face beaming and his eyes dancing with happiness, was asking and answering a thousand incessant questions, while yet he managed to enjoy very thoroughly a large bunch of grapes, and an immense plate of strawberries and cream.

And when tea was over they still sat out in the lovely garden until the witch elm had ceased to chequer their faces with its rain of flickering light; and until the lake had paled from pure gold to rose-colour, and from rose-colour to dull crimson, and from dull crimson to silver grey, and rippled again from silver grey into a deep black blue, relieved by a thousand flashing edges of molten silver and quivering gold, under the crescent moon and the innumerable stars. And the bats had almost ceased to wheel, and in the moist air of early night the flowers were diffusing their luscious sweetness, and the nightingale was flooding the grove with her unimaginable rapture, and the eager talk had hushed itself into a delicious calm of happy silence, before they moved. It was a beautiful picture--the father and mother still youthful enough to enjoy life to the full, happy at heart, and proud of their eldest boy; his two young brothers looking up to him with such eager hope and love; the little sisters with their arms twined round his neck, and their fair hair falling over his shoulders; the noble, mirthful, fearless, thrice happy boy himself--a family circle unseparated by distance, unshadowed by sorrow, unbroken by death, seated in this exquisite scene on the lawn of their own happy English home.

Thrice happy! yes, in spite of sin and sorrow, and retribution and remorse, there _are_ hours when the cup sparkles in our hands, filled to the brim; not (as often) with earthly waters; not with the intoxicating wine that flames in the magic bowl of pleasure; not with the red and ragged lees of wrath and satiety; but with the crystal rivers of the water of life itself. There _are_ such hours at any rate for some. Whether they come to all mankind I know not; whether the squalid Andaman or the hideous Fuegian ever feel them I know not; nay, I know not whether they ever come, whether they ever can come, to the wretched outcasts of earth's abject poverty and fathomless degradation; whether they ever come, whether they ever can come, to the cruel and the proud, to the malicious and the mean, to the cynical and discontented; yet, if they come not to these, God help them! for they are the surest pledges of our immortality; and to the young and innocent--ay, and even to the young and guilty--they do sometimes come--these hours of absorbing limitless enjoyment; these glimpses of dimly remembered paradise; these odours snatched from a primal Eden, from a golden age when justice still lived upon the earth, and crime was as yet unknown. There are such hours, and for this English family this hour was one of them.

Thrice happy Walter! and almost like a dream of happiness these holidays at home--and at _such_ a home--flew by. Every day and hour was a change from pleasure to pleasure; among the hills, in the boat on the sunlit lake, plunging for his cool morning swim in the fresh waters, cricketing, riding, fishing, walking with his father and mother and brothers, sitting and talking at the cool nightfall in the moonlit garden, Walter was as happy as the day was long. And when Power came to spend a week with them, again charming every one whom he saw with his cheerful unselfishness and engaging manners, and himself charmed beyond expression with all he saw at Walter's home, they agreed that nothing was wanting to make their happiness "an entire and perfect chrysolite."

Power, we have seen, was something of a young poet, and on the day he left Semlyn with Walter, who was to accompany him home, he sat a long time silent in the train, and then tore out a leaf of his pocket-book, on which he had scribbled the following lines on Semlyn Lake.

If earthly homes can shine so fair With sky and wave so purely blue, Beneath the balmy purple air, If hills can don so rich a hue;

If fancy fails to paint a scene In Eden's soft and floral glades, Where azure clear and golden green More sweetly blend with silver shades;

If marked and flecked with sinful stains, Earth hath not lost her power to bless, But still, beneath the cloud, remains So steeped in perfect loveliness;

Merged, as we are, in doubt and fear, Yet, when we yearn for realms of bliss, We scarce can dream, while lingering here, Of any fairer heaven than this.

Poor verses, and showing too delicate a sensibility to be healthy in any boy; yet dear to me and dear to Walter for Power's sake, and because they show the strange charm which Semlyn has for those who have the gift of appreciating those natural treasures with which earth plentifully fills her lap.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

## PART II.

OLD AND NEW FACES.

Pudorem, amicitiam, pudicitiam, divina atque humana promiscum, nihil pensi neque moderati habere.

Sallust.

And now, gentle or ungentle reader, we must imagine that two whole years have passed since the conclusion of those summer holidays, before we again meet our young friends of Saint Winifred's.

The two years--as what years are not?--have been full of change. Walk across the court with me, and let us discover what we can about the present state of things.

The first we meet are Walter and Power--taller and manlier looking than they were, but otherwise little changed in appearance. Walter, with his dark hair and blue eyes, his graceful figure and open face, is still the handsome, attractive-looking boy we used to see. Power, too, has the same refined, thoughtful look, the same delicate yet noble features, the same eyes, which we recognise at once as the clear and bright index of a beautiful and unstained soul.

And neither of these boys has failed in their promise of their earlier days, and the warm friendship with which they regarded each other has done much to bring about this result. Each in his own way has rejoiced in his youth, has passed an innocent and happy boyhood, stored with pleasant reminiscences for after days, filled with high hopes and manly principles, with habits well-regulated, and that fine self-control which had taught them--

"Rapt in reverential awe, To sit, self-governed in the fiery prime Of youth, obedient at the feet of law."

They have enjoyed the gifts of early years without squandering them in wasteful profusion; they have felt and known that the purest pleasures were also the sweetest and the most permanent. Their minds are well cultivated, their bodies are in vigorous health, their hearts are glowing with generous impulse and warm enthusiasm; and if sorrow should ever darken their after years, it can never drive them to despair, for they have wandered in the pleasant paths of wisdom, they have drunk the pure cup of innocence, they will carry out of the torrid zone of youth clear consciences, unremorseful memories, and unpolluted minds.

Who is this who saunters across the playground, talking in loud, self-confident tones with two or three fellows round him, his hands in his pockets, his air haughty and nonchalant, and his cap a little on one side? He is still pleasant looking, his face still shows the capabilities for good and great things, but we are obliged to say of him:

"Quantum mutatus ab illo Hectore!"

Yes, Kenrick--for it is he--is altered for the worse. Something or other has left, in its traces upon his face, the history of two degenerate years. His cheek does not look as if it were capable any longer of an ingenuous blush, and there is a curl about his lip and nostril which speaks of perpetual unhealthy scorn, that child of mortified vanity and conceit, which brazens out the reproaches of self-distrust and self-reproach. See with what a careless, almost patronising, air he barely notices the master who is passing by him. He has just flung a slight nod to Power, studiously taking care not to notice Walter at all. Look, too, at the boys who are with him; they are not boys with whom we like to see him; they are an idle lot, precocious only in folly and in vice. And that little fellow, who seems to be his especial favourite, is not at all to our taste; he seems the coolest of them all. For during the last few years Kenrick has entirely lost his balance; he has deserted his best friends for the adulation of younger boys, who fed his vanity, and the society of elder boys, who perverted his thoughts, and vitiated his habits. He has slackened in the career of honourable industry, he has deflected from the straight paths of integrity and virtue. Already the fresh eagerness of youth has palled into satiety, already some of its sparkling-wine for him is bitter as vinegar; with him already pleasure has become hectic fever instead of a healthy glow. Alas! he is not happy. Within these two years he has lost--and his countenance betrays the fact in its ruined beauty--he has lost the true joys of youth, and known instead of them the troubles of the envious, the fears of the cowardly, the heaviness of the slothful, the shame of the unclean. He has lost something of the instinctive shrinking, even in thought, from all that is vile and base, the loathing of falsehood, the kindness that will not willingly give pain, the humility which has lowly thoughts of its own worth; he has lost his joy in things lovely, and excellent, and of good report; he has changed them for the mirth of fools, which is like crackling thorns--changed them for the feet that go down to death, for the steps that lay hold of hell. It is a mean price for which he has sold his peace of conscience--"the sweetness of the cup that is charged with poison, the beauty of the serpent whose bite is death."

Eden, who is seated reading on one of the benches by the wall, has recovered from his illness, but he is not, and never will be, what, but for Harpour's brutality, he might have been. He is a nervous, timid, intellectual boy. No game, unfortunately, has any attraction for him. The large liquid eyes, swimming sometimes with strange lustre, and often varying in colour, the delicate flush which any pulse of emotion drives glowing into the somewhat pale face, give to him an almost girlish aspect, and tell the tale of a weakened constitution. Eden's development has been quite altered by his fright; most of the vivacity and playfulness of his character has vanished; and although it flashes out with pleasant mirth when he is alone with his few closest friends, such as Walter and Power, his manner is, for the most part, very quiet and reserved. Yet Eden has a position of his own in the school; and unobtrusive as he is, his opinion is always listened to with kindness and respect. When he came into school again after his recovery he was received, as I have said already, with almost brotherly affection by all the boys, who felt how much he had been wronged. He became the child and protege of the school, and any cruelty to _him_ would, after this, have been violently resented. Devoting himself wholly to work and reading, he became very successful in his progress, and is now in the second fifth. But what chiefly marks him is his extreme gentleness, and the eager way in which he strives to help all the younger and most helpless boys. Experience of suffering has given him a keen sympathy with the oppressed, and young as he is he is still doing a useful work.

There is Harpour playing rackets, and he is playing remarkably well. He is now nineteen, and a personage of immense importance in the school, for he is head of the cricket eleven, Walter being head of the football. Harpour is quite unchanged, and if he was doing mischief when we knew him two years ago, he is doing twice as much mischief now. His influence is unmitigatedly pernicious. With just enough cunning skill to escape detection, he yet signalises himself by complicity in every form of wrong which goes on in the school, and some new wrongs he introduces and invents. But nothing delights him so much as to instigate other boys to resist the authority of the masters. They know him to be a nucleus of disorder and wickedness, but he has acted with such consummate ingenuity as to avoid even laying himself open to any distinct proof of his many offences.

He is just now stopping for a minute in his game to talk to those three boys, who have been strutting up and down the court arm in arm, and whom we easily recognise. The one with the red puffy face, with an enormous gold pin in his cravat, a bunch of charms hanging to his chain, and a ring on his hand, which he loses no opportunity of displaying, is our friend Jones, with vulgarity as usual stamped on every feature, and displayed in every movement which he makes; the tall slim fellow, with an air of feeble fastness, an indecisive mouth, a habit of running his hand through his light-coloured hair, and a gaze which usually settles in fixed admiration on his faultless boots, can be no one but Howard Tracy; the third, a fellow with far more meaning and strength in his face, betrays himself to be Mackworth, by the insinuating plausibility and Belial-like grace of his manner and aspect. A dangerous serpent this; one never sees him, or hears him speak, or observes the dark glitter of his eye, without being reminded of a cerastes lythely rustling through the dry grass towards its victim.

And there at last--I thought we should never see him--is our dear young joker of jokes, the same unaltered Flip whom we know, running down the school steps. His face is overflowing with mirth and fun, and now he is stopping and holding both his sides for laughter, while, with little touches of his own, he retails some of the strange blunders which Bliss has made in the _viva voce_ examination that morning; to which his friend Whalley listens with the same good-humoured smile which he had of old. Henderson is a perfect mimic, but never uses his powers of mimicry in an ill-natured spirit; and his imitation of Bliss's stolid perplexity and Dr Lane's comments are very ludicrous. While he is in the middle of this narrative, Bliss himself appears on the scene and relieves his feelings by delivering the only pun he ever made in his life, and observing, in a solemn tone of voice--

"Flip, don't be flippant;" a remark which he has substituted for the "I'll lick you, Flip," of old days.

"You dear old Blissidas, I _think_ I've heard that pun once or twice before," observes Henderson, calmly pulling undone the bow of Bliss's necktie, and running off to escape retaliation, followed at his leisure by Whalley, who knows Bliss to be much too lazy to pursue the chase very far.

Let us come and hear--for we have put on our cap of darkness and are invisible, coming and going where we like, unobserved--what our four fast friends at the racket-court are talking about.

"We shall have lots of larks this half," observes Harpour, leaning on his racket.

"Yes; such fun, old boy," answers Jones.

"I declare this dull old place was getting quite lively before last holidays," says Mackworth; "we shall soon get things all right here."

"Fancy that fellow Power head of the school," said Harpour, bursting into a roar of scornful laughter, echoed in faint sniggerings by Jones and Tracy.

"Might as well have a jug of milk and water head of the school," sneered Mackworth.

"Or a bottle of French polish, I should think," casually suggests Henderson, who, _en passant_, has heard the last remark.

"Damn that fellow," says Mackworth, stamping, "by Jove, I'll be even with him some day."

"Is he one of the new monitors?" asks Jones.

"Yes," says Tracy, "and Evson's another;" and at Walter's name the faces of all four grew darker; "and Kenrick's a third."

"O, Kenrick is, is he? that's all right. Jolly fellow is Ken," observes Harpour, approvingly. "Yes, quite up to snuff," adds Jones; "and a thorough gentlemanly chap," assents Mackworth; for, amazing to relate, Kenrick is on good terms with these fellows now, though he has never spoken to Walter yet.

"Of good family, too, on the mother's side," drawls Tracy, with his hand lifting his locks.

"I say, old fellows," says Harpour, with many knowing looks and winks, and poking of his friends in the ribs. "I say, stunning tap at Dan's, you know, eh? I say;" whereupon the others laugh, and Belial Mackworth observes, "And let those monitors try to peach if they dare. We'll soon have _them_ under our thumb."

After which, as their conversation is supremely repulsive, let us go and take a breath of delicious pure sea air, and seat ourselves by Walter and Power on the shore. Walter is in good, and even gay spirits, being fresh from Semlyn, but Power seems a little grave and depressed.

"Look, Walter," he says, shying a round stone at a bit of embedded rock about twenty yards before them, but missing it; "I believe it was that identical rock--"

"_That_ identical rock," said Walter, taking a better shot, and hitting it; "well, what about it?"

"--On which you were standing one autumn evening three years ago, when the tide was coming in--"

"And to save me wet trousers you took off your shoes and stockings, and carried me in on your back," said Walter. "I remember it well, Rex; it was a happy day for me. I recollect I'd been very miserable; it was after the Paton affair, you know, and every one was cutting me. Your coming to speak to me was about the last thing in the world I expected and the best thing I could have hoped. I'd often wanted to know you, longed to have you as a friend; but I used to lock up to you as such a young swell in those days that I never thought we should meet each other."

"Pooh!" said Power; "but wasn't it good now of me to break the ice and speak first? I declare, I think I've never done it with any one else. _You'd_ never have done it--now confess? Only fancy, we mightn't have known each other till this day."

"I shouldn't have done it at _that_ time," said Walter, "because I was in Coventry; but--well, never mind, Rex, we understand each other. I was looking at some porpoises, I remember."

"Yes; happy days they were after that. I wish the time was back again! Fancy you a monitor, and me head of the school!"

"Fancy! we've got up the school so much faster than we used to expect."

"Yes; but I wish we could change places, and you be head and I sixth monitor as you are. You'll help me, Walter, won't you?"

"You don't doubt that, Rex, I'm sure; _all_ the help _I_ can give is yours."

"If it weren't for that, I think I would have left, Walter. I don't think, somehow, I've influence enough for head. I'm not swell enough at the games."

"You play though now, and enjoy them; and I don't half believe you, Rex, when you talked of having wished to leave. That would have been cowardice, you know, and you're not the boy to leave your post."

"Here I am then in my place, armour on, visor down, determined not to fly, like the Roman soldier whose skeleton was found in the sentry box at Pompeii," said Power, playfully getting up and assuming a military attitude.

"And here am I," said Walter, laughing, as he stood beside him with one foot advanced--"I, your sixth Hyperaspistes."

"The sixth!--the _first_ you mean," said Power. "The four monitors, between you and me, won't, I fear, help us much. Browne is very short-sighted, and always shutting up with a headache; Smythe is a mere book-worm, and a regular butt even among the little fellows--worse than useless--no dignity or anything else; Kenrick (for Kenrick had so far kept the advantage of his original start that, much as he had fallen off in work, Walter had not yet got above him)--well, you know what Ken is!"

"Yes, I know what Ken is now--_Hespemor en phthimenoir_--he's our chief danger--a doubtful general in the camp. Hullo, Flip, _you_ here?" said he, as Henderson came up and joined them.

"Myself, O Evides; who's the doubtful general in the camp?--not I, I hope."

"You, Flip? no; but Kenrick. We're talking about the monitors."

"A doubtful general!--a traitor, you mean, an enemy, a spy," said Henderson, hotly. "There, now, don't stop me, Power; abuse is a good safety-valve; the scream of the steam-engine letting off superfluous vapour. I should dislike him far worse if I bottled up against him a silent spite, hated him in the dark, and didn't openly abuse him sometimes."

Power's large and gentle mind, and Walter's generous temper prevented them from joining in Henderson's strong language; but they felt no less than he did that, if they were to work for the good of the school, Kenrick would be their most dangerous, though not their declared, opponent. A monitor who seemed to recognise none of a monitor's duties, who openly broke rules and defied discipline, who smoked and went to public-houses, and habitually associated with inferiors, and those the least creditable set in the school, did more to damage the authority of the upper boys than _any_ number of external assaults on them if they were consistent and united among themselves.

"I foresee storms ahead," said Power, with a sigh. "Flip, you must stand by me as well as Walter."

"Never fear," said Henderson; "but remember I'm only the junior monitor of the lot, and I'm so quick-tempered, I'm always afraid of stirring up a commotion some day with the Harpoons"--as Henderson had christened the Harpour lot.

"You must be like the lightning-kite then," said Power, "and turn the flash away from us."

"`And dash the beauteous terror to the ground, Smiling majestic,'"

observed Henderson, parodying the gesture, and making the others laugh.

"Do you remember Somers, and Dimock, and Danvers? What big fellows the monitors used to be then!" said Power.

"And do you remember certain boys whom Somers, and Dimock, and Danvers praised on a certain occasion?" said Walter. "Come, Rex, don't despond. We weren't afraid then, why should we be now?"

"But then they had Macon, and fellows like that, to uphold them in the school."

"So have _we_," said Henderson; "first and foremost Whalley, who's now got his remove into the upper sixth; then there's dear old Blissidas, who has arms if he hasn't got brains, and who is as staunch as a rock; and best of all, perhaps, there's Franklin, second in both elevens, brave as a lion, strong as a bull. By the by, as I have a lightning-kite ready made for you no doubt; he's accustomed to the experiment."

"Why, Flip, you talk as if we were going to have a pitched battle," said Power, ignoring his joke about Franklin.

"So we are--practically and morally. Look out for skirmishes from the Harpour lot; especially the world, the flesh, and the devil, whom I just saw arm in arm."

"What _do_ you mean, Flip?" asked Walter, laughing.

"Mean! nothing at all--only Tracy, Jones, and Mackworth. Tracy's the world, Jones is the flesh--raw flesh; and Mackworth's the other thing."

"I'll tell you of two more who won't let the school override us if they can help it," said Walter; "Cradock and Eden."

"Briareus and Paradise," said Henderson; "poor Eden, he can't do much for us except look on with large troubled eyes."

"Can't he though, Flip? he's got a good deal of power."

"He's got a great deal of good from Power, I know, but--"

"But don't be a donkey, Flip."

"Do shut up. Why should you two expect such a dead assault on the monitors this half?" said Power.

"Why, the fifth has in it a more turbulent lot just now than I ever knew before; big impudent fellows, with no good in them, and quite at the beck of the Harpour set," said Walter.

"Yes, and with that fellow Kenrick for a protagonist," said Henderson; "he and Harpour have always been at mischief about the monitors since they caught it so tremendously from Somers. Well, never mind; _aide toi et ciel t'aidera_. Why, look, there's Paradise, taking charge as usual of a little new fellow; who is it?"

"Look and see," said Walter, as a little fellow came up, with an unmistakable family resemblance--a pretty boy, with fresh round cheeks, and light hair, which shone like gold when the sunshine fell upon it.

"Why, Walter--why, this must be your brother. Well, I declare! an Evides secundus, Evides redivivus. Just what you were the day you came, and made Jones look small three years ago. How do you do, young 'un?" He shook him kindly by the hand and said, "You're a lucky little fellow to have a monitor brother, and Eden to look after you from the first. I wish _I'd_ been so lucky, I know."

"O Walter, what a _jolly_ place this is," said his little brother,--"jollier than Semlyn even."

"Wait a bit, Charlie; don't make up your mind too soon," said Walter; while Eden looked at the boy with a somewhat sad smile playing on his lips.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

AMONG THE NOELITES.

But, I pray you, who is his companion? Is there no young squarer now that will make a voyage with him to the devil?

Much Ado about Nothing.

Etiam si quis a culpa vacuus in amicitiam ejus inciderat, quotidiano usu per similisque ceteris efficiebatur.--Sallust.

The changes described in the last chapter were not the only ones which seriously affected the prosperity of Saint Winifred's School, for the stall of masters was also partly altered during the last two years, and the alterations had not been improvements. Mr Paton--who had by this time manfully resumed his old theological labours, and who, to please Walter, had often employed him as a willing amanuensis in attempting to replace the burnt manuscript--had retired from his mastership to a quiet country living to which he had been presented by Sir Lawrence Power. Strange as it may seem, Mr Paton chiefly, though of course indirectly, owed this living to Walter, who had first talked to Sir Lawrence about Mr Paton, in terms of deep regard. The opportunity, therefore, which Walter had sought so earnestly, of atoning in some way for the mischief which he had done to his old master, was amply granted to him; and Mr Paton never felt more strongly, that even out of the deepest apparent evils God can bring about undoubted blessings. Saint Winifred's, however, was the loser by his promotion. The benefit of his impartial justice and stern discipline, and the weight of his firm and manly character in the councils of the school, was gone. And Saint Winifred's had suffered a still greater loss in the departure of Mr Percival, who had accepted, some months before, the offer of a tutorship in his own university. Had he continued where he was, his influence, his well-deserved popularity, his kind, wise, conciliatory manner, the gratitude which rewarded his ready and self-denying sympathy, would, in the troubled period which ensued, have been even more useful than his brilliant scholarship and successful method of teaching a form. These two masters had left amid the universal regret of the boys and of their colleagues, and their places had been filled up by younger, less able, and less experienced men.

And worse than this, Dr Lane, soon after the term began, was taken seriously ill, and was ordered to the German baths for two months, during which his work was done by another master, who had not the same influence. From all which causes, this half-year at Saint Winifreds was the most turbulent, the most riotous, and the most unhappy, ever known in that honourable and ancient school.

So little Charlie Evson soon found reason to revise and modify his opinion, that Saint Winifred's--as he _then_ saw it--was jollier than even Semlyn itself. His name had been entered in the list of Mr Percival's house, before it was known that he was going to leave. Walter liked Mr Percival so much better than he did his own tutor, Mr Robertson, and had experienced from him so much more kindness, that he thought it would be an advantage for Charlie to be placed directly under so wise and kind a friend; and Mr Evson, afraid that his little son would be quite overshadowed by his elder brother, and that Walter's influence, which was very transcendent over Charlie's mind, would make him too dependent on another, and prevent him from developing his own natural character, was by no means averse to the arrangement. But since Mr Percival had left, Charlie, with the other boys in the house, was handed over to the charge of Mr Noel, a new master, who had to win his way and learn his work, neither of which he succeeded in doing until he had committed many mistakes.

In this house were Kenrick and Mackworth--Kenrick, as monitor, was in some measure responsible for the character of the house, and he had Charlie as one of his fags. At this time, as I have already observed with sorrow, Kenrick's influence was not only useless for good, but was even positively bad. There was _no_ other monitor who did not try to be of some use to his fags; many of the monitors, by quiet kindnesses and useful hints, by judicious help and unselfish sympathy, were of most real service to the boys who nominally "fagged" for them, but who, in point of fact, were required to do nothing except taking an occasional message, seeing that the study fires did not go out, and carrying up the tea and breakfast for a week each, in order of rotation. Few Saint Winifred's boys would have hesitated to admit that they would have been less happy, and would have had fewer chances in school-life, if they had not been fags at first, and thereby found friends and protectors in the boys for whom they fagged. Kenrick, however, did not follow the good example which had become almost traditional; for, filled as he was with the spirit of wilful pride, and on bad terms with the order to which he belonged, he either spoiled his fags by petting and pampering them, and letting them see his own disregard for duty, or, if they did not take his fancy, he snubbed and disregarded them--at any rate, did nothing whatever to help them.

Kenrick was quite willing to have placed Charlie Evson in the first of these classes, for he was a boy whom it was impossible to see and not to like. His antagonistic position towards most of his own body, made him the head of a sort of faction in the school, and he would have been proud beyond measure to have had any boy like Charlie as one of his followers. But Kenrick had better reasons for wishing to attach Charlie to himself. Deeply as he had degenerated, disgraceful as his present conduct was, Kenrick, in the secret depths of his soul, sighed and pined for better things; though vice, and folly, and pride had their attractions for him, he was still sick at heart for the purer atmosphere which he had left. He looked at Charlie with vague hopes, for through him he thought that he might yet perhaps, without lowering his pride by actually seeming to have made any advance, bring about a reconciliation with his best and earliest friends, bring about a return to his former and more upright course.

But this was not to be. When a boy goes wrong he strews every step of his downward career with obstacles against his own return; and he little dreams how difficult of removal some of these obstacles will be. The obstacle in this case was another little fag of Kenrick's, named Wilton. I am sorry to write of that boy. Young in years, he was singularly old in vice. A more brazen, a more impudent, a more hardened little scapegrace--in schoolboy language, "a cooler hand"--it would have been impossible to find. He had early gained the name of Raven from his artful looks. His manner was a mixture of calm audacity and consummate self-conceit. Though you knew him to be a thorough scamp, the young imp would stare you in the face with the effrontery of a man about town. He was active, sharp, and nice-looking, and there was nothing which he was either afraid or ashamed to do. He had not a particle of that modesty which in every good boy is as natural as it is graceful; he could tell a lie without the slightest hesitation or the faintest blush; nay, while he was telling it, though _he_ knew that you _knew_ it to be a lie, he would not abash for an instant the cold glance of his wicked dark eyes. Yet this boy, like Charlie, was only thirteen years old. And for all these reasons, Wilton was the idol of all the big bad boys in the school; and in spite of all these reasons--for the boy had in him the fascination of a serpent--he was the declared favourite of Kenrick too.

The three boys who gave the tone to Mr Noel's house, were Kenrick, Mackworth, and Wilton. They formed as it were an electric chain of bad influence, and as they were severally prominent in the chief divisions of the school, they had peculiar opportunities for doing harm. Kenrick's evil example told with extraordinary power through the whole house, and especially upon the highest boys, who naturally imitated him. I do not mean to say that Kenrick had sunk so low that wilfully and consciously he lowered the character of the house, which as monitor he ought to have improved and raised; but he _did_ so whether with intention or not; he did so negatively by neglecting all his duties, and by giving no direct countenance to what was right; he did so positively by not openly discountenancing, and by actually practising, many things which he knew to be wrong. The bad work was carried on by Mackworth, who was the most prominent fifth-form boy in the house. This boy's ability, and strength of will, and keenness of tongue, gave him immense authority, and enabled him to carry out almost everything he liked. To complete the mischief, among the lower boys Wilton reigned supreme; and as Wilton was prouder of Kenrick's patronage than of anything else, and by flattery and cajolery could win over Kenrick to nearly anything, the worst part of the characters of these boys acting and reacting on each other, leavened the house through and through with all that is least good, or true, or lovely, or of a good report. The mischief began before Mr Percival left, but it never could have proceeded half so far, if Mr Noel's inexperience, and the very kindness which led him to relax the existing discipline, had not tempted the boys to unwonted presumption.

Such was the state of things when Charlie entered Mr Noel's house. Walter knew that Mr Percival's promotion had frustrated the plan he had formed when he advised his father to put Charlie in that house, but the step could not now be recalled, nor, indeed, was Walter or any other monitor aware how bad the state of things had become. For among other dangerous innovations, Mackworth and Wilton had brought about a kind of understanding, that the house should to some extent keep to itself, resent all intrusion into its own precincts, and maintain a profound silence about its own secrets. Besides all this, Walter bitterly and sorrowfully felt that for some reason, which he was unable to fathom, the whole school was just then in an unsatisfactory state, and that Charlie, for whom his whole heart yearned with brotherly love and pity, would be exposed to severe temptations in whatever house he should be placed. He hoped too that, as Charlie would always have the run of his and of Power's study, it would make little difference to him that he was under a different house master.

To Mackworth and Wilton the arrival of one or two new boys was a matter of some importance, but little anxiety. The new boys were necessarily young, and in the present united state of the house, it was tolerably certain that they would catch the prevalent spirit, and be quickly assimilated to the condition of the others. The task of moulding them-- if they were at all difficult to manage--fell to Wilton, and he certainly accomplished it with astonishing success. A newcomer's sensibilities were not too quickly shocked. The Noelites, for their own purposes, behaved very kindly to him at first; they were first-rate hands at "destroying a boy by means of his best affections," at "seething a kid in its mother's milk." The bad language, the school trickeries and deceits, the dodges for breaking rules and escaping punishments, the agreed-on lies to avoid detection, the suppers, and brandy, and smoking parties, and false keys to get out after lock-up, and all the other detestable symptoms of a vitiated and depraved set, were carefully kept in abeyance at first. The new fellow was treated very kindly, was sounded and fathomed cautiously, was taught to get up a strong house feeling by perpetual endeavours to wake in him the _esprit de corps_, was gently ridiculed if he displayed any good principle, was tremendously bullied if he showed signs of recalcitrance, was according to his temperament led, or coaxed, or initiated, or intimidated, into the condition of wickedness required of him before the house could continue to go to the devil, as fast as it wished to do, and was doing before. This was Mackworth's work, and Wilton acted as his Azazel, and Kenrick did not interfere, though he knew or guessed all that was going on; he did not interfere, he did not prevent it, he did not even remonstrate at first, and afterwards he began by acquiescing, he ended by--yes, the truth must be told--he ended in joining in it all. O Kenrick, when human beings meet face to face before a certain judgment-seat, there are some young souls who will have a bill of indictment against you; the same who may point to Mackworth or to Wilton, and say, as of old, "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat." Five new boys had come this half-year. Four of them had been sounded by the rest of the house; one of them, named Stone, had come from a large private school, and was prepared for whatever he might find in more senses than one. Another, Symes, was a boy ill-trained at home, of no

## particular principles, and quite ready to flow with the stream. A

third, Hanley, had come meaning to be good; he had been shocked when he first heard oaths, and when he was first asked if he would mind telling any of the regular lies--"crams" the boys called them--in the event of any master questioning him; but his wounded sensibilities were very quickly healed, and he had passed with fatal facility from disgust to indifference, from indifference to toleration. The fourth, Elgood, was a timid child, for whom no one cared either way, and whom they took care to frighten into promising to do whatever he was ordered. A terrible state of things--was it not? But, ah me! it was so once upon a time. The fifth new boy in Mr Noel's house was Charles Evson; and with this fifth new boy the devil's agents knew instinctively that they would have a great deal of trouble. But they meant to bait their hook very carefully, and they did not at all despair. Their task was made peculiarly piquant by its very difficulty, and by the fact that Charlie was one in whom their declared enemy, Walter Evson, was so nearly concerned. They were determined by fair means or foul to win him over, and make him their proselyte, until he became as much a child of sin as they were themselves. But they proceeded to their task with the utmost caution, and endeavoured to charm Charlie over to their views by showing him great attention, by trying to make things pleasant for him, by flattering him with notice, and seeming to welcome him cordially as one of themselves. Their dissimulation was profound; at first the new boy found everything quite delightful, and before a week was over had caught, as they meant him to catch, the spirit of party, and always was ready to stick up for the Noelites as the best house in the school. So far so good; but this was only the first step of initiation into these Eleusinian mysteries.

So Master Wilton--Belial junior, as Henderson always called him-- ingratiated himself into Charlie's favour, and tried, not without success, to make himself peculiarly agreeable. At first sight, indeed, Charlie felt an inward repulsion to him. He did not know _why_ he did, for, so far from there being anything obviously repulsive in Wilton's look or manners, there were many who thought him the picture of innocence, and considered his manners quite perfection in their politeness and good breeding. Charlie therefore instantly conquered his first feeling of dislike as uncharitable and groundless; and as Wilton seemed to lay himself out for his friendship, he was oftener with him during the first fortnight than with any other boy. It was strange to see the two together, so utterly different were they in every respect, and so great was the contrast of Charlie's sweet, bright, modest face, with the indescribable dangerous coolness of Wilton's knowing smile.

"Look," said Henderson to Whalley, as he saw them together one day in the playground; "there go Ithuriel and Belial junior, very thick at present."

"Yes; I don't like to see it. I don't hear any good of that fellow Wilton."

"Good! I should rather think not!"

"Give young Evson a hint, Flip, will you, that Wilton's not a good friend for him. He looks a nice little fellow, and I don't like to tell him, because I don't know him."

"Never fear; when Charlie touches him with his spear, or sees him light on the top of Niphates--one of which things will happen soon enough-- he'll not be slow to discover who he is. If not, I'll tell Walter, and he shall be Charlie's Uriel."

"Touches him with his spear!--what spear?--top of Niphates!--Uriel!" said Whalley, with ludicrous astonishment; "here, Power, you're just in time to help me to put a strait-waistcoat on Flip. He says that when Wilton lights on the top of Niphates, which he will do soon, young Evson will discover that he's a scamp. What _does_ it all mean?"

"It only means that Flip and I have been reading the Paradise Lost," said Power, laughing, "and at present Flip's mind is a Miltonic conglomerate." And he proceeded to explain to Whalley that Ithuriel was one of the Cherubs who guarded Eden--

("Only that in this case Eden guards the cherub," observed Henderson, parenthetically.)

"--and who, by touching Satan with his spear, made him bound up in his original state, when he sat like a toad squat at the ear of Eve, and, moreover, that Uriel had recognised Satan through his mask, when, lighting on Niphates, his looks became `Alien from heaven, with passions foul obscured.'"

"Seriously, though," said Henderson, "Uriel must be asleep, or he wouldn't let his little brother get under Belial's wings."

In fact, Wilton was forced to keep on the mask much longer than he had ever meant to do. He could find no joint in Charlie's armour. The boy was so thoroughly manly, so simple-hearted, so trustful and innocent, that Wilton could make nothing of him. If he tried to indoctrinate Charlie into the state of morality among the Noelites, either Charlie did not understand him, or else quite openly expressed his disapproval and even indignation; and when finally Wilton quite tired out, did throw off the mask, Charlie shook him away from him, turned with a sickening sensation from the unbared features of vice, and unfeignedly loathed the boy who had pretended to be his friend--loathed him all the more because he had tried to like him, but now saw the snare which was being spread in his sight.

Every now and then during their early intercourse Charlie had felt a certain restraint in talking to Wilton; he could not be at ease with him though he tried. He caught the gleam of the snake through the flowers that only half concealed his folds. And Wilton, too, had got very tired of playing a part. He could not help his real wickedness cropping out now and then, yet whenever it did, Charlie started in such a way that even Wilton was ashamed; and though generally the shafts of conscience glanced off from the panoply of steel and ice which cased this boy's heart, yet during these days they once or twice reached the mark, and made him smart with long-unwonted anguish. He was conscious that he was doing the devil's work, and doing it for very poor wages, he felt now and then Charlie's immense superiority to himself, and, in a mood of pity, when, as they were standing one day in Mr Noel's private room to say a lesson, he caught sight of their two selves reflected in the looking-glass over the mantelpiece, and realised the immense gulf which separated them--a gulf not of void chaos and flaming space, but the deeper gulf of warped affections and sinful thoughts--he had felt a sudden longing to be other than what he was, to have Charlie for a true friend, to give up trying to make him a bad boy, and to fall at his feet and ask his pardon. And when he had doggedly failed in his lesson, and got his customary bad mark, and customary punishment, and received his customary objurgation, that he was getting worse and worse, and that his time was utterly wasted--and when he saw the master's face light up with a pleased expression as Charlie went cheerfully and faultlessly through his work--a sudden paroxysm of penitence seized Wilton, and, once out of the room, he left Charlie and ran up the stairs to Kenrick's study, in which he was allowed to sit whenever he liked. No one was there, and throwing himself into a chair, Wilton covered his face with both hands, and burst into passionate tears. A long train of thoughts and memories passed through his mind--memories of his own headlong fall to what he was, memories of younger and of innocent days, memories of a father, now dead, who had often set him on his knee, and prayed, before all other things, that he might grow up a good and truthful boy, and with no stain upon his name. But while memory whispered of past innocence, conscience told him of present guilt; told him that if his father could have foreseen what he would become, his heart would have broken; told him, and he knew it, that his name was a proverb and a byeword in the school. But the prominent and the recurring thought was ever this--"Is it too late to mend? Is the door shut against me?" For Wilton remembered how once before his mind was harrowed by fear and guilt as he had listened to Mr Percival's parting sermon on that sad text--one of the saddest in all the Holy Book--"_And the door was shut_."

Suddenly he was startled violently from his reverie, for the door _was_ shut with a bang, and Kenrick, entering, flung himself in a chair, saying, with a vexed expression of voice, "Too late."

It was but a set of verses which Kenrick had written for a prize exercise, and which he had just sent in too late. He had not lost all ambition, but he had no real friend now to inspirit or stimulate him, so that he often procrastinated, and was seldom successful with anything.

But his accidental words fell with awful meaning and strange emphasis on poor Wilton's ear. Wilton had never heard of the Bath Kol, he knew nothing of the power that wields the tongue amid the chances of destiny; but fear made him superstitious, and, forgetting his usual dissimulation, he looked up at Kenrick aghast, without wiping away the traces which unwonted tears had left upon his face.

"Why, Raven, boy, what's the matter?" asked Kenrick, looking at him with astonishment; "much _you_ care for my having a set of iambics too late."

"Oh, is that all?" asked Wilton, still looking frightened.

"All? Yes; and enough, too, for me. But"--stopping suddenly--"why, Raven, what's the row? You've been crying, by all that's odd! Why, I didn't know you'd ever shed a tear since you'd been in the cradle. Raven crying--what a notion! Crocodile tears, eh?"

Wilton was ashamed to have been caught crying, and angry to be laughed at. He was leaving the room silently and in a pet, when Kenrick caught him, and, looking at him, said in a kindlier tone--

"Nonsense, Ra; don't mind a little chaff. What's happened? Nothing serious, I hope?"

But Wilton was angry and miserable just then, and struggled to get free. He did not venture to tell Kenrick what had really been passing through his mind. "Let me go," he said, struggling to get free.

"O, go, by all means," said Kenrick, with his pride all on fire in a moment; "don't suppose that I want you or care for you;" and he turned his back on Wilton, to whom he had never once spoken harshly before.

The current of Wilton's thoughts was turned; he really loved Kenrick, who was the only person for whom he had any regard at all. Besides, Kenrick's support and favour were everything to him just then, and he stopped irresolutely at the door, unwilling to leave him in anger.

"What do you want? Why don't you go?" asked Kenrick, with his back still turned.

Wilton came back to the window, and humbly took Kenrick's hand, looking up at him as though to ask forgiveness.

"How odd you are to-day, Raven," said Kenrick, relenting. "What were you crying about when I came in?"

"Well, I'll tell you, Ken. I was thinking how much better some fellows are than I am, and whether it was _too late_ to begin afresh, and whether the door _was open_ to me still, when you came in, and said, `Too late,' and banged the door, which I took for an answer to my thoughts."

They were the first serious words Kenrick had ever heard from Wilton; but he did not choose to heed them, and only said, after a pause--

"Other fellows better than you? Not a bit of it. Less plucky, perhaps; greater hypocrites, certainly; but you are the jolliest of them all, Ra."

And with that silly, silly speech Wilton was reassured; a gratified smile perched itself upon his lips, and his eyes sparkled with delight; nor was he soon revisited by any qualms of conscience.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.

DISENCHANTMENT.

"How do you get on with the young Evson, Ra?" asked Mackworth of Wilton, with a sneer.

"Not at all," said Wilton. "He's awfully particular and strait-laced, just like that brother of his. No more fun while he's in the house."

"Confound him," said Mackworth, frowning darkly; "if he doesn't like what he sees, he must lump it. He's not worth any more trouble."

"So, Mack, _you_ too have discovered what he's like."

"Yes, I have," answered Mackworth savagely. For all his polish, his courtesies, and civilities had not succeeded in making Charlie conceal how much he feared and disliked him. The young horse rears the first time it hears the adder's hiss, and the dove's eye trembles instinctively when the hawk is near. Charlie half knew and half guessed the kind of character he had to deal with, and made Mackworth hate him with deadly hatred by the way in which, without one particle of rudeness or conceit, he managed to keep him at a distance, and check every approach to intimacy.

With Kenrick the case was different. Charlie thought that he looked one of the nicest and best fellows in the house, but he could not get over the fact that Wilton was his favourite. It was Wilton's constant and daily boast that Ken would do anything for him; and Charlie felt that Wilton was not a boy whom Walter or Power at any rate would even have tolerated, much less liked. It was this that made him receive Kenrick's advances with shyness and coldness; and when Kenrick observed this, he at once concluded that Charlie had been set against him by Walter, and that he would report to Walter all he did and said. This belief was galling to him as wormwood. Suddenly, and with most insulting publicity, he turned Charlie off from being one of his fags, and from that time never spoke of him without a sneer, and never spoke to him at all.

Meanwhile, as the term advanced, Saint Winifred's gradually revealed itself to Charlie in a more and more unfavourable light. The discipline of the school was in a most impaired state; the evening work grew more and more disorderly; few of the monitors did their duty with any vigour, and the big idle fellows in the fifth set the example of insolence towards them and rudeness to the masters. All rules were set at defiance with impunity, and in the chaos which ensued, every one did what was right in his own eyes.

One evening, during evening work, Charlie was trying hard to do the verses which had been set to his form. He found it very difficult in the noise that was going on. Not half a dozen fellows in the room were working or attempting to work; they were talking, laughing, rattling the desks, playing tricks on each other, and throwing books about the room. The one bewildered new master, who nominally kept order among the two hundred boys in the room, walked up and down in despair, speaking in vain first to one, then to another, and almost giving up the farce of attempting to maintain silence. But seeing Charlie seriously at work he came up and asked if he could give him any assistance.

Charlie gratefully thanked him, and the master sat down to try and smooth some of his difficulties. His doing so was the sign for an audible titter, which there was no attempt to suppress; and when he had passed on, Wilton, whose conduct had been more impertinent than that of any one else, said to Charlie--

"I say, young Evson, how you are grinding."

"I have these verses to do," said Charlie simply.

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Wilton, as though he had made some good joke. "Here, shall I give you a wrinkle?"

"Yes, if it's allowed."

The answer was greeted with another laugh, and Wilton said, "I'll save you all further trouble, young 'un. Observe the dodge; we're all up to it."

He put up a white handkerchief to his nose, and walking to the master said, "Please, sir, my nose is bleeding. May I go out for a minute?"

"Your nose bleeding? That's the third time your nose has bled this week, and other boys have also come with their noses bleeding."

"Do you doubt my word, sir?" asked Wilton, his handkerchief still held up, and assuming an injured air.

"I should be sorry to do so until you give me reason," answered the master, courteously. "It seems a strange circumstance, but you may go."

It would have been very easy to see whether his nose was bleeding or not, but the master was trying, very unsuccessfully at present, whether implicit confidence would produce a sense of honour among the boys.

Wilton went out hardly concealing his laughter, and in ten minutes returned with the verses, finished and written out. "There," he said, "Ken did those for me; he knocked them off in five minutes. Ken's an awfully clever fellow, though he never opens a book. Don't bore yourself with verses any more; I'll get them done for you."

Charlie glanced at the paper, and saw at once that the verses were perfectly done. "Do you mean to show up that copy as your own, Wilton?"

"Of course I do."

"But we are marked for them."

"Hear! hear! thanks for the information. So much the better. I shall get a jolly good mark."

"Shut up, young innocence, and don't be a muff," said another Noelite. "We all do the same thing. Take what heaven sends you and be glad to get it."

"Thank you," said Charlie, looking round; "you may, but I'd rather not. It isn't fair."

"Oh, how good we are! how sweet we are! what an angel we are!" said Wilton, turning up the whites of his eyes, while the rest applauded him. But if they meant their jeers to tell on Charlie's resolution, they were mistaken. He looked quietly round at them all with his clear eyes, gravely handed the paper back to Wilton, and quietly resumed his work. They were angry to be so foiled, and determined that, if he would not copy the verses, he should at least do them in no other way. One of them took his paper and tore it, another split his quill pens by dashing them on the desk, while a third seized his dictionary. The master, observing that something was going on at that desk, came and stood by; and as long as he was there, Charlie managed to write out what he had done, while the others, cunningly inserting an occasional mistake, or altering a few epithets, copied out the verses which Kenrick had done for Wilton. But directly the master turned away again, a boy on the opposite side of the table, with the utmost deliberation, took hold of Charlie's fair copy, and emptied the inkstand over it in three or four separate streams.

Vexed as he was--for until this time he had never known unkindness--he took it quietly and good-humouredly. Next morning, before the rest of the boys in his dormitory, who were mainly in his own form, were aware of what he meant to do, he got up early and went to Walter's study, hoping to write out the verses there from memory. But he found the study in the possession of the housemaid; chapel-bell rang, and after chapel he went into morning school with the exercise unfinished. For this, he, the only boy in the form who had attempted to do his duty, received a punishment, while the rest looked on unabashed, and got marks for their stolen work. Wilton received nearly full marks for his. The master, Mr Paton's successor, thought it odd that Wilton could do his verses so much better than any of his other work, but he could not detect the cheating, and Wilton always assured him that the verses were entirely his own composition.

It was about time now, Wilton thought, to hoist his true colours; but, as he had abundance of brass, he followed Charlie out of the schoolroom, talked to him familiarly, as if nothing had happened, and finally took his arm. But this was too much; for the boy, who was as open as the day in all his dealings, at once withdrew his arm, and standing still, looked him full in the face.

"So!" said Wilton, "now take your choice--friends or enemies--which shall it be?"

"If you want me to cheat, and tell lies, and be mean--not _friends_."

"So! enemies then, mind. Look out for squalls, young Evson. One question, though," said Wilton, as Charlie turned away.

"Well?"

"Are you going to sneak about this to your brother?"

Charlie was silent. Without any intention of procuring Walter's interference, he _had_ meant to talk to him about his difficulties, and to ask his advice. But if this was to be stigmatised as sneaking he felt that he had rather not do it, for there is no action a boy fears more, and considers more mean than this.

"Oh, I see," said Wilton; "you _do_ mean to peach, blab, tell tales, do you? Well, it don't matter much; you'll find he can do precious little; and it will be all the worse for you in the long-run."

"I shan't tell him," said Charlie, shortly; and those words sealed his lips, as with a heavy heart he entered the breakfast-room, and meditated on troubles to come.

Which troubles came quite fast enough--very fast indeed. For the house, or rather the leading spirits in it, thought that they had wasted quite enough time, and with quite sufficient success in angling for the new boys, and determined to resume without any further delay their ordinary courses. If Charlie was fool enough to resist them, they said, so much the worse for him. During the day, indeed, he was saved from many of the annoyances which Walter had been obliged to endure, by escaping from the Great Schoolroom to the happy and quiet refuge of Walter's, or Power's or Eden's study. There he could always be unmolested, and enjoy the kindness with which he was treated, and the cheerful, healthy atmosphere which contrasted so strangely in its moral sweetness with the turbid and polluted air of Noelite society. But in the evening at Preparation, and afterwards in the dormitories, he was wholly at the mercy of that bad confederacy which had tried to mould him to its own will. He was in a large dormitory of ten boys, and as this was the principal room in Mr Noel's house, it formed the regular refuge every night for the idle and the mischievously inclined. When the candles were put out at bed-time it was seldom long before they were relit in this room--which was somewhat remote from the others, at the end of a long corridor, and of which the window opened on a secluded part of Dr Lane's garden. If a scout were placed at the end of the corridor he could give timely warning of any danger, so that the chance of detection was very small. Had the candles been relit only for a game of play, Charlie would have been the first to join in the fun. But the Noelites were far too vitiated in taste to be long content with mere bolstering or harmless games. It seemed to Charlie that the candles were relit chiefly for the purpose of eating and drinking forbidden things, of playing cards, or of bullying and tormenting those boys who were least advanced in general wickedness.

"I say, young Evson," said Wilton to him one night soon after the fracas above narrated, "we're going to have some fun to-night. Stone, like a brick as he is, has stood a couple of bottles of wine, and Hanley some cards. We shall have a smoke too."

All this was said in a tone of braggadocio, meant to be exceedingly telling, but it only made Charlie feel that he loathed this swaggering little boy with his premature _savoir vivre_, more and more. He understood, too, the hint that two of the new fellows had contributed to the house carousal, and fully expected that he would be asked next. He secretly, however, determined to refuse, because he knew well that a mere harmless feast was not intended, but rather a smoking and drinking bout. He had subscribed liberally to all the legitimate funds--the football, the racquet court, the gymnasium; but he saw no reason why he should be taxed for things which he disliked and disapproved. The result of that evening confirmed him in his resolution. It was a scene of drinking, gluttony, secret fear, endless squabbling, and joyless excitement.

"Of course you'll play, and put into the pool?" said Wilton.

"No, thank you."

"No, _thank you_," said Wilton, scornfully mimicking his tone. "Of course not; you'll do nothing except set yourself up for a saint, and make yourself disagreeable."

During the evening Stone brought him some wine, which Charlie again declined, with "No, thank you, Stone." Wilton again echoed the refusal, which was chorused by a dozen others; and from that time Charlie was duly dubbed with the nickname of "No-thank-you." He was forcibly christened by this new name, by being held in bed while half a wine-glass of port was thrown in his face. The wine poured down and stained his night-shirt, and then they all began to dread that it would lead to their being discovered, and threatened Charlie with endless penalties if he dared to tell. There was, however, little danger, as the Noelites had bribed the servants who waited on them and cleaned their rooms.

The same scene, with slight variations, was constantly repeated, and every fresh refusal was accompanied by a kick or a cuff from the bigger boys, a sneer or an insult from the younger; for Charlie himself was one of the youngest of them all. One night it was, "I say, you fellow--you, No-thank-you--will you fork out for some wine to-night? No? Well then, take that and that, and be hung to you for a little muff." Another time it would be, "Hi there, No-thank-you--we want sixpence for a pack of cards. Oh, you won't be so sinful as to part with sixpence for cards? Confounded little miser;" "Niggard," said another; "Skinflint," shouted a third. And a general cry of "Saint," which expressed the climax of villainy, ended the verbal portion of the contest. And then, some one would slap him on the cheek, with "take that", "and that," from another, "and that," from a third--the last being a boot or a piece of soap shied at his head.

It cannot be more wearisome to the reader than it is to me to linger in these coarse scenes; but, for Charlie, it was a long martyrdom most heroically borne. He was almost literally alone and single-handed against the rest of the house; yet he would not give way. Walter, and Power, and Henderson, all knew that he was bullied, sorely bullied; this they learnt far more from Eden, and from other sources, than from Charlie himself, for he, poor child, held himself bound by his promise to Wilton, and kept his lips resolutely sealed. But these friends knew that he was suffering for conscience sake; and Walter helped him with tender, brotherly affection, and Power with brave words and kindly sympathy, as well as by noble example, and Henderson by his cheering and playful manner; and this caused him much happiness all day long, until he felt that, with that short but heart-uttered prayer which he breathed so earnestly from "the altar of his own bedside," he had strength sufficient to meet and to conquer the trials which night brought.

In the house one boy and one only helped him. That boy _ought_ to have been Kenrick; his monitorial authority and many responsible privileges were entrusted to him, as he well knew, for the main express purpose of putting down all immorality, and all cruelty, with a strong and remorseless hand. It required very little courage to do this; the sympathies of the majority of boys, unless they be suffered to grow corrupted with an evil leaven, are naturally and strongly on the side of right. In Mr Robertson's house, for instance, where Walter and Henderson were monitors, such wrong-doings could not have gone on with impunity, or rather could not have gone on at all. There, a little boy, treated with gross severity or injustice, would not have hesitated for an instant to invoke the assistance of the monitors, whom he looked upon as his natural guardians, and who would be eager to extend to him a generous and efficient protection.

The same was the case in Mr Edwardes's house, of which Power was the head. Power, indeed, had no coadjutor on whom he could at all rely. One of the monitors associated with him was Legrange, who rather followed Kenrick's lead, and the other was Brown, who, though well-intentioned, was a boy of no authority. Yet these two houses were in a better condition than any others in the school, because the heads of them did their duty; and it was no slight credit to Walter and Henderson that their house stood higher in character than any other, although it contained both Harpour and Jones. This could not have been the case had not those two worthies found a powerful counterpoise in two other fifth-form fellows, Franklin and Cradock, whose excellence was almost solely due to Walter's influence. Kenrick, on the other hand, never interfered in the house, and let things go on exactly as they liked, although they were going to rack and ruin.

Charlie's sole friend and helper in the house then was, not Kenrick, but Bliss. Poor Bliss quite belied his name, for his school work, in which he never could by any effort succeed, kept him in a state of lugubrious disappointment. Bliss lived a dim kind of life, seeing all sorts of young boys get above him and beat him in the race, and vaguely groping in thick mental darkness. Do what he could the stream of knowledge fled from his tantalised lip whenever he stooped to drink; and the fruits, which others plucked easily, sprang up out of his reach when he tried to touch the bough. He was constantly crushed by a desolating sense of his own stupidity; and yet his good temper was charming under all his trials, and he loved with a grateful humility all who tolerated his shortcomings. For this reason he had a sincere affection for Henderson, who plagued him, indeed, incessantly, but never in an unkind or insulting way; and who more than made up for the teasing by patient and constant help, without which Bliss would not have succeeded even as well as he did. Bliss was a strong active fellow, and good at the games, so that with most of the school he got on very well; but, nevertheless, he was generally set down as nearly half-witted--a mere dolt. Dolt or not, he did Charlie inestimable service; and if any boy is in like case with Bliss, let him take courage, for even the merest dolt has immense power for good as well as for harm, and Bliss extended to Charlie a gentle and manly sympathy which many a clever boy might have envied. He knew that Charlie was ill-used. Not being in the same dormitory, and joining very little in the house concerns, he was not able to interfere very directly in his aid; but he never failed to encourage him to resist iniquity of every kind. "Hold out, young Evson," he would often say to him; "you're a good, brave little chap, and don't give in; you're in the right and they in the wrong; and right is might, be sure of that."

It was something in those days to meet with approbation for well-doing among the Noelites; and Charlie, with genuine gratitude, never forgot Bliss's kind support; till Bliss left Saint Winifred's they continued firm friends and fast.

"Have you made any friends in the house?" asked Mr Noel of Charlie on one occasion; for he often seized an opportunity of talking to his younger boys, for whom he felt a sincere interest, and whom he would gladly have shielded from temptation to the very utmost of his power, had he but known that of which he was unhappily so ignorant--the bad state of things among the boys under his care.

"Not many, sir," said Charlie.

"Haven't you? I'm sorry to hear that. I like to see boys forming friendships for future life; and there are some very nice fellows in the house. Wilton, for instance, don't you like him? He's very idle and volatile, I know, but still he seems to me a pleasant boy."

Charlie could hardly suppress a smile, but said nothing; and Mr Noel continued, "Who is your chief friend, Evson, among my boys?"

"Bliss, sir," said Charlie, with alacrity.

"Bliss!" answered Mr Noel in surprise. "What makes you like him so much? Is he not very backward and stupid?"

But Charlie would not hear a word against Bliss, and speaking with all the open trustfulness of a new boy, he exclaimed, "O sir, Bliss is an excellent fellow; I wish there were many more like him; he's a capital fellow, sir, I like him very much; he's the best fellow in the house, and the only one who stands by me when I am in trouble."

"Well, I'm glad you've found _one_ friend, Evson," said Mr Noel; "no matter who he is."

One way in which Bliss showed his friendship was by going privately to Kenrick, and complaining of the way in which Charlie was bullied. "Why don't you interfere, Kenrick?" he asked.

"Interfere, pooh! It will do the young cub good; he's too conceited, by half."

"I never saw a little fellow _less_ conceited, anyhow."

Kenrick stared at him. "What business is it of yours, I should like to know?"

"It _is_ business of mine; he is a good little fellow, and he's only kicked because the others can't make him as bad a lot as they are themselves; there's that Wilton--"

"Shut up about Wilton, he's a friend of mine."

"Then more shame for you," said Bliss.

"He's worth fifty such chickens as little Evson, any day."

"Chickens!" said Bliss, with a tone as nearly like contempt as he had ever assumed; "it's clear you don't know much about him; I wish, Kenrick, you'd do your duty more, and then the house would not be so bad as it is."

Kenrick opened his eyes wide; he had never heard Bliss speak like this before. "I don't want the learned, the clever, the profound Bliss to teach _me my_ duty," he said, with a proud sneer; "what business have you to abuse the house, because it is not full of young ninnies like Evson? You're no monitor of mine, let me tell you."

"You may sneer, Kenrick, at my being stupid, if you like; but, for all your cleverness, I wouldn't be you for something; and if you won't interfere, as you ought, _I will_, if I can." And as Bliss said this, with clear flaming anger, and fixed on Kenrick his eyes, which were lighted up with honest purpose, Kenrick thought he had never seen him look so handsome, or so fine a fellow. "Yes, even _he_ is superior to me now," he thought, with a sigh, as Bliss left the room. Poor Ken-- there was no unhappier boy at Saint Winifred's; as he ate and ate of those ashy fruits of sin, they grew more and more dusty and bitter to his parched taste; as he drank of that napthaline river of wayward pride, it scorched his heart and did _not_ quench his thirst.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.

MARTYRDOM.

"Since thou so deeply dost enquire, I will instruct thee briefly why no dread Hinders my entrance here. Those things alone Are to be feared whence evil may proceed, Nought else, for nought is terrible beside."

Carey's _Dante_.

Gradually the persecutions to which Charlie was subjected mainly turned on one point. His tormentors were so far tired of bullying him, that they would have left him in comparative peace if he would have yielded one point--which was this.

The Noelites were accustomed now and then to have a grand evening "spread" as they called it, and when they had finished this supper, which was usually supplied by Dan, they generally began smoking, an amusement which they could enjoy after the lights were out. The smokers used to sit in the long corridor, which, as I have said, led to their dormitory, and the scout was always posted to warn them of approaching danger; but as they did not begin operations till the master had gone his nightly rounds, and were very quiet about it, there was not much danger of their being disturbed. Yet although the windows of the corridor and dormitory were all left wide open, and every other precaution was taken, it was impossible to get rid of the fumes of tobacco so entirely as to avoid all chance of detection. They had, indeed, bribed the servants to secrecy, but what they feared was being detected by some master. The Noelites, therefore, of that dormitory had been accustomed to agree that if they were questioned by any master about the smell of smoking, they would all deny that any smoking had taken place. The other nine boys in the dormitory, with the doubtful exception of Elgood, had promised that they would stick to this assertion in case of their being asked. The question was, "Would Charlie promise the same thing?" If not, the boys felt doubly insecure--insecure about the stability of their falsehood and the secrecy of their proceedings.

And Charlie Evson, of course, refused to promise this. Single-handed he fought this battle against the other boys in his house, and in spite of solicitation, coaxing, entreaty, threats and blows, steadily declared that he was no tell-tale, that he had never mentioned anything which had gone on in the house, but that _if he were directly asked_ whether a

## particular act had taken place or not, he would still keep silence, but

_could not and would not_ tell a lie.

Now some of the house--and especially Mackworth and Wilton--had determined, by the help of the rest, to crush this opposition, to conquer this obstinacy, as they called it; and, since Charlie's reluctance could not be overcome by persuasion or argument, to break it down by sheer force. So, night after night, a number of them gathered round Charlie, and tried every means which ingenuity or malice could suggest to make him yield on this one point; the more so, because they well knew that to gain one concession was practically to gain all, and Charlie's uprightness contrasted so unpleasantly with their own base compliances, that his mere presence among them became, from this circumstance, a constant annoyance. One boy with a high and firm moral standard, steadily and consistently good, can hardly fail to be most unpopular in a large house full of bad and reckless boys.

It was a long and hard struggle; so long that Charlie felt as if it would last for ever, and his strength would give way before he had wearied-out his persecutors. For now it seemed to be a positive amusement, a pleasant occupation to them, night after night, to bully him. He dreaded, he shuddered at the return of evening; he knew well that from the time when Preparation began, till the rest were all asleep, he could look for little peace. Sometimes he was tempted to yield. He knew that at the bottom the fellows did not really hate him, that he might be very popular if he chose, even without going to nearly the same lengths as the others, and that if he would but promise not to tell, his assent would be hailed with acclamations. Besides, said the tempter, the chances are very strongly in favour of your not being asked at all about the matter, so that there is every probability of your not being called upon to tell the "cram;" for by some delicate distinction the falsehood presented itself under the guise of a "cram," and not of a naked lie; _that_ was a word the boys carefully avoided applying to it, and were quite angry if Charlie called it by its right name. One evening the poor little fellow was so weary and hopeless and sad at heart, and he had been thrashed so long and so severely, that he was _very_ near yielding. A paper had been written, the signing of which was tacitly understood to involve a promise to deny that there had been any smoking at night if they were taxed with it; and all the boys except Elgood and Charlie had signed this paper. But the fellows did not care for Elgood; they knew that he dared not oppose them long, and that they could make him do their bidding whenever the time came. Well, one evening, Charlie, in a weak mood, was on the verge of signing the paper, and thus purchasing a cessation of the long series of injuries and taunts from which he had been suffering. He was sitting up in bed, and had taken the pencil in hand to sign his name. The boys, in an eager group round him, were calling him a regular brick, encouraging him, patting him on the back, and saying that they had been sure all along that he was a nice little fellow, and would come round at last. Elgood was among them, looking on with anxious eyes. He had immensely admired Charlie's brave firmness, and nothing but reliance on the strength of his stronger will had encouraged him in the shadow of opposition. "If young Evson does it," he whispered, "I will directly." Charlie caught the whisper; and in an agony of shame flung away the pencil. He had very nearly sinned himself, and forgotten the resolution which had been granted him in answer to his many prayers; but he had seen the effects of bad example, and nothing should induce him to lead others with him into sin. "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil," was the instant supplication which rose from his inmost heart, as he threw down the pencil and pushed the paper aside.

"I _can't_ do it," he said; "I _must_ not do it; I never told a lie in my life that I remember. Don't ask me any more." Instantly the tone and temper of the boys changed. A shower of words, which I will not repeat, assailed his ears; he was dragged out of bed and thrashed more unmercifully than he had ever been before. "You shall give way in the end, mind that," was the last admonition he received from one of the bigger fellows, as he dragged himself to his bed, sobbing for pain, and aching with disquietude of heart. "The sooner it is the better; for you little muffs and would-be saints don't go down with us."

And then for a few evenings, when the candles were put out, and the fellows had nothing better to do, it used to be the regular thing for some one to suggest, "Come, let's _bait_ No-thank-you; it'll be rare fun." Then another would say, "Come, No-thank-you, sign the paper like a good fellow, and spare yourself all the rest."

"Do," another insidious friend would add; "I am quite sorry to see you kicked and thrashed so often."

"I'll strike a light in one second if you will," suggested a fourth. "No, you won't? oh, then, look out, Master No-thank-you, look out for squalls." But still, however beaten or insulted, holding out like a man, and not letting the tears fall if he could help it, though they swam in his eyes for pain and grief, the brave boy resisted evil, and would not be forced to stain his white soul with the promise of a lie.

There were some who, though they dared not say anything, yet looked on at this struggle with mingled shame and admiration--shame for themselves, admiration for Charlie. It could not be but that there were some hearts among so many which had not seared the tender nerves of pity, and more than once Charlie saw kindly faces looking at him out of the cowardly group of tormentors, and heard timid words of disapprobation spoken to the worst of those who bullied him. More often, too, some young Noelite who met him during the day would seem to address him with a changed nature, would speak to him warmly and with friendliness, would show by little words and actions that he felt for him and respected him, although he had not courage enough to resist publicly the opposing stream. And others of the baser sort observed this. What if this one little new fellow should beat them after all, and end their domination, and introduce in spite of them a truer and better and more natural state of things? it was not to be tolerated for a moment, and he must be put down with a strong hand at once.

Meanwhile Charlie's heart was fast failing him, dying away within him; for under this persecution his health and spirits were worn out. His face, they noticed, was far paler than when he came, his looks almost haggard, and his manner less sprightly than before. He had honourably abstained hitherto from giving Walter any direct account of his troubles, but now he yearned for some advice and comfort, and went to Walter's study, not to complain, but to ask if Walter thought there was any chance of his father removing him to another school, because he felt that at Saint Winifred's he could neither be happy nor in any way succeed.

"Well, Charlie boy, what can I do for you?" said Walter, cheerfully pushing away the Greek Lexicon and Aristophanes over which he was engaged, and wheeling round the armchair to the fire, which he poked till there was a bright blaze.

"Am I disturbing you at your work, Walter?" said the little boy, whose dejected air his brother had not noticed.

"No, Charlie, not a bit; _you_ never disturb me. I was just thinking that it was about time to shut up, for it's almost too dark too read, and we've nearly half an hour before tea-time; so come here and sit on my knee and have a chat. I haven't seen you for an age, Charlie."

Charlie said nothing, but he was in a weary mood, and was glad to sit on his brother's knee and put his arm round his neck; for he was more than four years Walter's junior, and had never left home before, and that night the homesickness was very strongly upon him.

"Why, what's the matter, Charlie boy?" asked Walter playfully. "What's the meaning of this pale face and red eyes? I'm afraid you haven't found Saint Winifred's so jolly as you expected; disenchanted already, eh?"

"O Walter, I'm very, very miserable," said Charlie, overcome by his brother's tender manner towards him; and leaning his head on Walter's shoulder he sobbed aloud.

"What is it, Charlie?" said Walter, gently stroking his light hair. "Never be afraid to tell me anything. You've done nothing wrong, I hope?"

"O no, Walter. It's because I won't do wrong that they bully me."

"Is that it? Then dry your tears, Charlie boy, for you may thank God, and nothing in earth or under the earth can _make_ you do wrong if you determine not--determine in the right way, you know, Charlie."

"But it's so hard, Walter; I didn't know it would be so _very_ hard. The house is so bad, and no one helps me except Bliss. I don't think you were ever troubled as I am, Walter."

"Never mind, Charlie. Only don't go wrong whatever they do to you. You don't know how much this will smooth your way all the rest of your school-life. It's quite true what you say, Charlie, and the state of the school is far worse than ever knew it; but that's all the more reason we should do our duty, isn't it."

"O Walter, but I _know_ they'll make me do wrong some day. I wish I were at home. I wish I might leave. I get thrashed and kicked and abused every night, Walter, and almost all night long."

"_Do_ you?" asked Walter, in angry amazement. "I knew that you were rather bullied--Eden told me that--but I never knew it was so bad as you say. By jove, Charlie, I should like to catch some one bullying you, and--well, I'll warrant that he shouldn't do it again."

"O, I forgot, Walter, I oughtn't to have told you; they made me promise not. Only it _is_ so wretched."

"Never mind, my poor little Charlie," said Walter. "Do what's right and shame the devil. I'll see if I can't devise some way of helping you; but anyhow, hold up till the end of term, and then no doubt papa will take you away if you still wish it. But what am I to do without you, Charlie?"

"You're a dear, dear good brother," said Charlie, gratefully; "and but for you, Walter, I should have given in long ago."

"No, Charlie, not for me, but for a truer friend than even I can be, though I love you with all my heart. But will you promise me one thing faithfully?"

"Yes, that I will."

"Well, promise me then that, do what they will, they shan't make you tell a lie, or do anything else that you know to be wrong."

"I'll promise you, Walter, if I can," said the little boy humbly; "but I've been doing my best for a long time."

"You _couldn't_ tell a lie, Charlie boy, without being found out; _that_ I feel sure of," said Walter, smiling, as he held his brother's ingenuous face between his hands, and looked at it. "I don't doubt you for an instant; but I'll have a talk with Power about you. As head of the school he may be able to do something, perhaps. It's Kenrick's duty properly, but--"

"Kenrick, Walter? He's of no use; he lets the house do just as it likes, and I think he must have taken a dislike to me, for he turned me off quite roughly from being his fag."

"Never mind him or any one else, Charlie. You're a brave little fellow, and I'm proud of you. There's the tea-bell; come in with me."

"Ah, Walter, it's only in the evenings when you're away that I get pitched into. If I were but in the same house with you, how jolly it would be." And he looked wistfully after his brother as they parted at the door of the hall, and Walter walked up to the chief table where the monitors sat, while he went to find a place among the boys in his own form and house. He found that they had poured his tea into his plate over his bread and butter, so he got very little to eat or drink that evening.

It was dark as they streamed out after tea to go into the Preparation-room, and he heard Elgood's tremulous voice saying to him, "Oh, Evson, shall you give way to-night, and sign?"

"Why to-night in particular, Elgood?"

"Because I've heard them say that they're going to have a grand gathering to-night, and to make you, and me too; but I can't hold out as you do, Evson."

"I shall try not to give way; indeed, I _won't_ be made to tell a lie," said Charlie, thinking of his interview with Walter, and the hopes it had inspired.

"Then _I_ won't either," said Elgood, plucking up courage. "But we shall catch it awfully, both of us."

"They can't do more than lick us," said Charlie, trying to speak cheerily, "and I've been licked so often that I'm getting accustomed to it."

"And I'd rather be licked," said a voice beside them, "and be like you two fellows, than escape being licked, and be like Stone and Symes, or even like myself."

"Who's that?" asked Elgood hastily, for it was not light enough to see.

"Me--Hanley. Don't you fellows give in; it will only make you miserable, as it has done me."

They went in to Preparation, which was succeeded by chapel, and then to their dormitories. They undressed and got into bed, as usual, although they knew that they should be very soon disturbed, for various signs told them that the rest had some task in hand. Accordingly, the lights were barely put out, when a scout was posted, the candles were re-lighted, and a number of other Noelites, headed by Mackworth, came crowding into the dormitory.

"Now you, No-thank-you, you've got one last chance--here's this paper for you to sign; fellows have always signed it before, and _you_ shall too, whether you like or no. We're not going to alter our rules because of you. We want to have a supper again in a day or two, and we can't have you sneaking about it." Mackworth was the speaker.

"I don't want to sneak," said Charlie firmly; "you've been making me wretched, and knocking me about, all these weeks, and I've never told of you yet."

"We don't want any orations; only Yes or No--will you sign?"

"Stop," said Wilton, "here's another fellow, Mac, who hasn't signed;" and he dragged Elgood out of bed by one arm.

"Oh, _you_ haven't signed, haven't you? Well, we shall make short work of you. Here's the pencil, here's the paper, and here's the place for your name. Now, you poor little fool, sign without giving us any more trouble."

Elgood trembled and hesitated.

"Look here," said Mackworth brutally; "I don't want to break such a butterfly as you upon the wheel, but--how do you like that?" He drew a cane from behind his back, and brought it down sharply on Elgood's knuckles, who, turning very white, sat down and scrawled his name hastily on the paper; but no sooner had he done it than, looking up, he caught Charlie's pitying glance upon him, and running the pencil through his signature, said no more, but pushed the paper hastily away and cowered down, expecting another blow, while Charlie whispered, "Courage."

"You must take the other fellow first, Mac, if you want to get on," suggested Wilton. "Evson, as a friend, I advise you not to refuse."

"_As a friend_!" said Charlie, with simple scorn, looking full at Wilton. "You are no friend of mine; and, Wilton, I wouldn't even now change places with you."

"Wouldn't you?--Pitch into him, Mac. And you," he said to Elgood, "you may wait for the present." He administered a backhander to Elgood as he spoke, and the next minute Charlie, roused beyond all bearing, had knocked him down. Twenty times before he would have been tempted to fight Wilton, if he could have reckoned upon fair play; but what he could stand in his own person was intolerable to him to witness when applied to another.

Wilton sprang up in perfect fury, and a fight began; but Mackworth at once pulled Charlie off, and said, "Fight him another time, if you condescend to do so, Raven; don't you see now that it's a mere dodge of his to get off. Now, No-thank-you, the time has come for deeds; we've had words enough. You stand there." He pushed Charlie in front of him. "Now, will you sign?"

"_Never_," said Charlie, in a low but firm tone.

"Then--"

"_Not with the cane, not with the cane_, Mackworth," cried several voices in agitation, but not in time to prevent the cane descending with heavy hand across the child's back.

Charlie's was one of those fine, nervous, susceptible temperaments, which feel every physical sensation, and every mental emotion, with tenfold severity. During the whole of this scene; so painfully anticipated, in which he had stood alone among a group of boys, whose sole object seemed to be to show their hatred, and who were twice as strong as himself, his feelings had been highly wrought; and though he had had many opportunities of late to train his delicate organisation into manly endurance, yet the sudden anguish of this unexpected blow quite conquered him. A thrilling cry broke from his lips, and the next moment, when the cane again tore his shoulders, a fit of violent hysteria supervened, which alarmed the brutes who were trying to master his noble resolution.

And at this crisis the door burst open with a sudden crash, and Bliss entered in a state of burning indignation, followed more slowly by Kenrick.

"O, I am too late," he said, stamping his foot; "what _have_ you been doing to the little fellow?" and thrusting some of them aside, he took up Charlie in his arms, and gradually soothed and calmed him till his wild sobs and laughter were hushed, while the rest looked on silent. But feeling that Charlie shrank as though a touch were painful to him, Bliss unbared his back, and the two blue weals all across it showed him what had been done.

"Look there, Kenrick," he said, with great sternness, as he pointed to the marks; and then, laying Charlie gently down on his bed, he thundered out, in a voice shaken with passion, "You _dogs_, could you look on and allow this? By heavens, Kenrick, if _you_ mean to suffer this, I won't. Out of my way, you." Scattering the rest before him like a flock of sheep, he seized Mackworth with his strong hands, shook him violently by both shoulders, and then tearing the cane out of his grasp, he demanded, "Was it you who did this?"

"What are you about, you Bliss?" said Mackworth, with very ruffled dignity. "Mind what you're after, and don't make such a row, you ass's head," he continued authoritatively, "or you'll have Noel or some one in here."

"Ho! that's your tone, you cruel, reprobate bully," said Bliss, supplied by indignation with an unusual flow of words; "we've had enough of that, and too much. You can look at poor little Evson there, and not sink into the very earth for shame! By heavens, Belial, you shall receive what you've given. I'll beat you as if you were a dog. Take that." The cut which followed showed that he was in desperate earnest, and that, however immovable he might generally be, it was by no means safe to trifle with him in such a mood as this.

Mackworth tried in vain to seize the cane; Bliss turned him round and round as if he were a child; and as it was quite clear that he did not mean to have done with him just yet, Mackworth's impudent bravado was changed into abject terror as he received a second weighty stroke, so heartily administered that the cane bent round him, in the hideous way which canes have, and caught him a blow on the ribs.

Mackworth sprang away, and fled, howling with shame and pain, through the open door, but not until Bliss had given him two more blows on the back, with one of the two cutting open his coat from the collar downwards, with the other leaving a mark at least as black as that which he had inflicted on the defenceless Charlie.

"To your rooms, the rest of you wretches," said he, as they dispersed in every direction before him. "Kenrick," he continued, brandishing the cane, "I may be a dolt, as you've called me before now, but since you won't do your duty, henceforth I will do it for you."

Kenrick slank off, half afraid that Bliss would apply the cane to _him_; and, speaking in a tone of authority, Bliss said to the boys in the dormitory, "If one of you henceforth touch a hair of Evson's head, look out; you know me. You little scamp and scoundrel, Wilton, take especial care." He enforced the admonition by making Wilton jump with a little rap of the cane, which he then broke, and flung out of the window. And then, his whole manner changing instantly into an almost womanly tenderness, he sat by poor little Charlie, soothing and comforting him till his hysterical sobs had ceased; and, when he felt sure that the fit was over, gently bade him good-night, and went out, leaving the room in dense silence, which no one ventured to break but the warm-hearted little Hanley, who, going to Charlie's bedside, said--

"Oh, Charlie, are you hurt much?"

"No, not very much, thank you, Hanley."

Hanley pressed his hand, and said, "You've conquered, Charlie; you've held out to the end. Oh, I wish I were like you!"

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

A CONSPIRACY FOILED.

As the feathery snows Fall frequent on some wintry day... The stony volleys flew.

Cowper.

Yes, Charlie had conquered, thanks to the grace that sustained him, and thanks, secondarily, to a good home training, and to Walter's strong and excellent influence. And in gaining that one point he had gained all. No one dared directly to molest him further, and he had never again to maintain so hard a struggle. He had resisted the beginnings of evil; he had held out under the stress of persecution; and now he could enjoy the smoother and brighter waters over which he sailed.

His enemies were for the time discomfited, and even the hardy Wilton was abashed. For a week or two there was considerably less bravado in his face and manner, and his influence over those of his own age was shaken. That little rap of the cane which Bliss had given him had a most salutary effect in diminishing his conceit. Hanley retracted his promise to deny all knowledge of anything wrong that went on, and openly defied Wilton; even Elgood ceased to fear him. Charlie had felt inclined to cut him, but, with generous impulse, he forgave all that was past, and, keeping on civil terms with him, did all he could to draw him to less crooked paths.

Mackworth was so ashamed that he hardly ventured to show his face. He had always made Bliss a laughing-stock, had nicknamed him Ass's Head, and had taught others to jeer at his backwardness. He had presumed on his lazy good humour, and affected to patronise and look down on him. An eruption in a long-extinct volcano could not have surprised him more than the sudden outburst of Bliss's wrath, and if the two blows which he had received as he fled before him in sight of the whole house had been branded on his back with a hot iron, they could hardly have caused him more painful humiliation. For some time he slunk about like a whipped puppy, and imagined, not without some ground, that no one saw him without an inclination to smile.

Kenrick, too, had reason to blush. Every one knew that it was Bliss, and not he, who had rescued the house from attaching to its name another indelible disgrace; and when he heard the monitors and sixth-form talking seriously among themselves of the bad state into which the Noelites had fallen, he felt that the stigma was deserved, and that _he_, as being the chief cause of the mischief, must wear the brand.

All Kenrick's faults and errors had had their root in an overweening pride, a pride which grew fast upon him, and the intensity of which increased in proportion as it grew less and less justifiable. But now he had suffered a salutary rebuke. He had been openly blamed, openly slighted, and openly set aside, and was unable to gainsay the justice of the proceeding. He felt that with every boy in the school, who had any right feeling, Bliss was now regarded as a more upright and honourable-- nay, even as a more important and influential, person than himself. Among other mortifications, it galled him especially to hear the warm thanks and cordial praise which Power and Walter and Henderson expressed when first they happened to meet Bliss. He saw Walter wring his hand, and overheard him saying in that genial tone in which he himself had once been addressed so often--"Thank you, Bliss, a thousand times for saving my dear little brother from the hands of those brutes. Charlie and I will not soon forget how much we owe you." Walter said it with tears in his eyes, and Bliss answered with a happy smile--"Don't thank me, Walter; I only did what any fellow would have done who was worth anything."

"And you'll look after Charlie for me now and then, will you?"

"That I will," said Bliss; "but you needn't fear for him--he's a hero, a regular hero--that's what I call him, and I'd do anything for him."

So Kenrick, vexed and discontented, almost hid himself in those days in his own study, the victim of that most wearing of intolerable and sickening diseases--a sense of shame. Except to play football occasionally, he seldom left his room or took any exercise, and fell into a dispirited, broken way of life, feeling unhappy and alone. He had no associates now except his inferiors, for his conduct had forfeited the regard of his equals, and with many of them he was at open feud. The only pleasure left to him was desperately hard work. Not only was he stimulated by a fiery ambition, a mad desire to excel in the half-year's competition, and show what he was yet capable of, and so to some extent redeem his unhappy position, but also his heart was fixed on getting, if possible, the chief scholarship of Saint Winifred's--a scholarship sufficiently valuable to pay the main part of those college expenses which it would be otherwise impossible for his mother to bear. He feared, indeed, that he had little or no chance against Power, or even against Walter, who were both competitors, but he would not give up all hope. His abilities were of the most brilliant order, and if he had often been idle at Saint Winifred's, he had, on the other hand, often worked exceedingly hard during the holidays at Fuzby, where, unlike other boys, he had little or nothing else to amuse him. Mrs Kenrick, sitting beside him silent at her work for long hours, would have been glad enough to see in him more elasticity, more kindliness, less absorption in his own selfish pursuits; but she rejoiced that at home, at any rate, he did not waste his vacant days in idleness, or spend them in questionable amusements and undesirable society.

Almost the only boy of whom he saw much now was Wilton, and but for him, I do believe, that in those days he would have changed his whole tone of thought and mode of life. But he had a strange liking for this worthless boy, who kept alive in him his jealousy of Walter, his opposition to the other monitors, his partisanship, his recklessness, and his pride. Sometimes Kenrick felt this. He saw that Wilton was bad as well as attractive, and that their friendship, instead of doing Wilton any good, only did himself harm. But he could not make up his mind to throw him off, for there was no one else who seemed to feel for him as a close and intimate friend. Many of Kenrick's failings rose from that. He had offended, and rejected, and alienated his early and true friends, and he felt now that it was easier to lose friends than to make them, or to recover their affection when it once was lost.

But the bad set at Saint Winifred's, though in one house their influence was weakened, were determined not to see it wane throughout the school. Harpour and his associates organised a regular conspiracy against the monitors. When the first light snow fell they got together a very large number of fellows, and snowballed all the monitors except Kenrick, as they came out of morning school. The exception was very much to Kenrick's discredit, and in his heart he felt it to be so. During the first day or two that this lasted the monitors took it good-humouredly, returning the snowballs, and regarding it as a joke, though an annoying one; but when it became more serious, when some snowballs had been thrown at the masters also, and when some of the worst fellows began to collect snowballs beforehand and harden them into great lumps of ice as hard as stones, and when Brown, who was short-sighted, and was therefore least able to protect himself, had received a serious blow, Power, by the advice of the rest, put up a notice that from that time the snowballing must cease, or the monitors would have to punish the boys who did it. This notice the school tried to resist, but the firmness of Power and his friends put a stop to their rebellion. If the notice was disregarded he determined, by Walter's, advice, to seize the ringleaders, and not notice the younger boys whom they incited. Accordingly next morning they found the school gathered as usual, in spite of the notice, for the purpose of pelting them, and, saying nothing, they kept their eyes on the biggest fellows in the group. A shower of snowballs fell among them, hitting several of them, and, to the great amusement of the school, knocking over several hats into the snow.

"Harpour," said Walter, very sternly, "I saw you throw a snowball. Aren't you ashamed of yourself that you, a fellow at the head of the eleven, should set such a bad example? Don't suppose that your size or position shall get you off. Come before the monitors directly after breakfast."

"Hanged if I do," answered Harpour, with a sulky laugh.

"Well, I daresay you _will_ be hanged in the long-run," was the contemptuous reply; "but come, or else take the consequences."

"Tracy," said Henderson, "I saw you throw a snowball which knocked off Power's hat. It was a hard one too. You come before the monitors with Harpour."

"I shall be quaite delaighted," drawled out Tracy.

"Glad to hear it; I hope you'll be quaite equally delaighted when you leave us." The mimicry was so perfect that all the boys broke into a roar of laughter, which was all the louder because Tracy immediately began to chafe and "smoke."

"And, Jones," said Power, as the laugh against Tracy subsided, "I think I saw _you_ throw a snowball and hit Smythe. I strongly suspect, too, that you were the fellow who hit Brown yesterday. I think every one will know, Jones, why you chose Smythe and Brown to pelt, instead of any other monitors. You too come to the sixth-form room after breakfast."

"I didn't throw one," said Jones.

"You astounding liar," said Henderson, "I saw you with my own eyes."

"Oh, ay; of course you'll say so to spite me."

"_Spite_ you," said Henderson scornfully; "my dear fellow, you don't enter into my thoughts at all. But mark you, Master Jones, I know moreover that you've been the chief getter-up of this precious demonstration. You told the fellows that you'd lead them. I'm not sure that you didn't quote to them the lines--

"`Press where ye see my _white plume_ shine amid the ranks of war, And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of--Jones.'"

Another peal of laughter followed this allusion to Jones's well-known nickname of White-feather, a nickname earned by many acts of conspicuous cowardice.

"Hush, Flip," whispered Power, "we mustn't make this quite a joke. Jones," he continued aloud, "do you deny throwing a snowball just now at Smythe?"

"I didn't throw one," said Jones, turning pale as he heard the hiss, and the murmur of "White-feather again," which followed his denial.

"Why, what a pitiful, wretched, sneaking coward you are," burst out Franklin; "I heard you egging on these fellows to pelt the monitors-- they wouldn't have done it but for you and Harpour--and I saw you hit Smythe just now. You took care to pelt no one else, and now you deny it before all of us who saw you. Upon my word, Jones, I feel inclined to kick you, and I will too."

"Stop, Franklin," said Walter, laying his hands on his shoulder, "leave him to us now. Do you still deny throwing, Jones?"

"Well, it was only just a little piece of snow," said Jones, showing in his blotched face every other contemptible passion fused into the one feeling of abject fear.

"Faugh!" said Power, with scorn and disgust curling his lip and burning in his glance; "really, Jones, you're almost too mean and nasty to have any dealings with. I don't think we can do you the honour of convening you. You shall apologise to Smythe here and now, and that shall be enough for _you_."

"What! do you hesitate?" said Franklin; "you don't know when you're well off. Be quick, for we all want our breakfast."

"Never mind making him apologise," said Smythe; "he's sunk quite low enough already."

"It's his own doing," said Walter. "We can't have lies like his told without a blush at Saint Winifred's. Apologise he must and shall."

"Don't do it," said Mackworth.

"What!" said Henderson, "is that Mackworth speaking? Ah! I thought so--Bliss isn't here!"

Henderson's manner was irresistibly comic; and as Mackworth winced and slunk back to the very outside of the crowd, the loud laugh which followed showed that the complete exposure of the worthlessness of their champions had already turned the current of feeling among the young conspirators, and that they were beginning to regret their unprovoked attack on the upper boys.

"Now then, Jones, this is what you have to read," said Walter, who had been writing it on a slip of paper--"I humbly beg Smythe's pardon for pelting him, and the pardon of all present for my abominable lies."

Jones began to mumble it out, but there arose a general shout of--

"On your knees, White-feather; on your knees, and much louder."

Franklin, who was boiling over with anger and contempt, sprang forward, took Jones by the neck, and forced him on his knees in the snow, where he made him read the apology, and then let him loose. A shower of snowballs followed him as he ran to the refuge of the breakfast-hall, for there was not a boy present, no matter to what faction he belonged, who did not feel for Jones a very hearty contempt.

"I hope we shall have no more of this, boys," said Power, before the rest dispersed. "There have been monitors at Saint Winifred's for a hundred years now, and it's infinitely better for the school that there should be. I suppose you would hardly prefer to be at the mercy of such a fellow as that," he said, pointing in the direction of Jones's flight. "I don't know why we should be unpopular amongst you. You know that not one of us has ever abused his authority, or behaved otherwise than kindly to you all. But I am sorry to see that you are set on--set on by fellows who ought to know better. Don't suppose, any of you, that they will frighten us from doing what we know to be right, or that _you_ can intimidate us when we are acting for the good of the school."

They cheered his few simple words, for they were proud of him as head-monitor. They had never had at Saint Winifred's a better scholar, or a more honourable boy; and though Harpour and his friends affected to sneer at him, Power was a general favourite, and the firm attitude which he now assumed increased the respect and admiration which he had always inspired.

"No more notice will be taken of this, you little fellows," said Walter to the crowd of smaller boys; "we know very well that you have merely been the tools in other hands, and that is why we only singled out three fellows. I am quite sure you won't behave in this way again; but if you do, remember we shan't pass it over so lightly."

"Come here you, Wilton," said Henderson, as the rest were dispersing. "You've been particularly busy, I see. So! six good hard snowballs in your jacket pocket, eh? Now, you just employ yourself in collecting every one of these snowballs that are lying ready here, and throw them into the pond. Don't let me see _one_ when I come out. Belial junior will have to curtail his breakfast-time this morning, I guess," he continued to Whalley; "the young villain! shall we ever bring him to a right mind?"

Wilton, in a diabolical frame of mind, began his appointed task, and had just finished it as the boys came out of breakfast. "That will do," said Henderson. "I must trouble you for one minute more. Come with me." Shaking with cold and alarm, Wilton obeyed, muttering threats of vengeance, and driven almost frantic by the laughter with which Henderson received them. He walked across to the sixth-form room, and then seeing that all the monitors were assembled, sent him "to tell his friends, Harpour and Tracy, that their presence was demanded immediately."

"Never mind, Raven," said Kenrick to him; "it's a shame of them to bully you."

"I have made him collect some snowballs which he had a chief hand in making, and with one of which yesterday a monitor was seriously hurt; then I have sent him a message for two worthless fellows, whose counsels he generally follows; both of which things I have done to teach him a mild but salutary lesson. Is that what you call bullying?"

"I believe you spite the boy because you know I like him. It's just the kind of conduct worthy of you."

"If it gives you any comfort to say so, Kenrick, pray do; but let me tell you, that after the way you have allowed young Evson and others to be treated in your house, the charge of bullying comes with singularly ill grace from you."

An angry retort sprang to Kenrick's lips; but at that moment the two offenders came to the door, and Power said, "Hush, you two. We need unity now, if ever, and it will be very harmful if these fellows find a quarrel going on Kenrick, I wish you would try to--"

"Oh; yes; it's always Kenrick, of course," said he angrily. "I'll have nothing to do with your proceedings;" and, rising, from his place, he flung out of the room, not sorry to be absent from a scene which he thought might compromise his popularity with some of those who excepted him from the list of the monitors, whom they professed to consider as their natural enemies.

Harpour and Tracy had thought that when convened before the monitors they would have an opportunity for displaying plenty of insolence and indifference; but when they found themselves standing in the presence of those fifteen upper boys, each one of whom was in all respects their superior, all their courage evaporated. But they were let off very easily. The monitors were content with the complete triumph they had gained that morning, and with the disgrace to which these fellows had been compelled to submit. All that they now required from them was an expression of regret for what they had done, and a promise not to offend in the same way again; and when these had been extorted, they were dismissed by Power with some good advice, and a tolerably stern reprimand. Power did this with an ease and force which moved the admiration of all his brother monitors; no one could have done it as he did it, who was not supported by the authority of a high and stainless character consistently maintained. What he said was not without effect; even the coarse burly Harpour dared not look up, but could only fix his eyes on the floor and kick the matting in sullen wrath while this virtuous and noble boy looked at him and rebuked him; but Tracy was more deeply moved. Tracy, weak, foolish, and feebly fast as he was, had some elements of good and gentlemanly feeling in him, and, with more wisely chosen associates, would have developed a much less contemptible character. When Power had done speaking, he looked up and said, without one particle of his usual affectation--

"I really am sorry for helping to get up this affair. I see I've been in the wrong, and I beg pardon sincerely. You may depend on my not having anything more to do with a thing of this kind."

"Thank you, Tracy," said Walter; "that was spoken like a man. We've known each other for some time now, and I wish we could get on more unitedly. You might do some good in the school if you chose."

"Not much, I'm afraid now," said Tracy, "but I'll tr(ai)y."

"Well, then, Tracy, we'll shake hands on that resolve, and bygones shall be bygones," said Henderson. "You'll forgive my making fun of you this morning."

He shook hands with Henderson and with Walter, while Power, holding out his hand, said, smiling, "It's never too late to mend."

"No," said Tracy, looking at one of his boots, which he had a habit of putting out before the other.

"He applied your remark to his boots, Power," said Henderson, laughing. "Did you observe how the hole in one of them distressed him."

So the monitors separated, not without hopes that things were beginning to look a little brighter than before.

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE.

THE FINAL FRACAS.

Harpour, and all who, like him, had long been endeavouring to undermine the authority which was the only safeguard to the morality of the school, felt themselves distinctly baffled. Mackworth had been put to utter rout by Bliss, and though he was almost bursting with dark spite, would not venture to do much; Jones had become a perfect joke through the whole school, and was constantly having white hen's feathers and goose-feathers enclosed to him in little envelopes until he was half mad with impotent wrath; Harpour himself had been made very decidedly to swallow the leek of public humiliation; and as for Wilton, he began to feel rather small.

Tracy again had openly deserted them. After the interview with Power, Harpour had abused him roundly as a turncoat, and he had told his former associates that he was sorry to have had anything to do with their machinations; that they were going all wrong, and were ruining the school, and that he at any rate felt that he had done mischief enough already, and meant to do no more. This proof of their failing influence exasperated them greatly. Harpour threatened, and Mackworth said all the pungent and insulting things he could, contemptuously mimicking all Tracy's dandiacal affectations. Tracy winced under this treatment; high words followed, and after a scene of noisy altercation, Tracy broke with his former "party," and after the quarrel spoke to them no more.

Dr Lane, too, had now recovered from his fever, and returned to the school. When the reins were in his strong hands, the difference was soon perceived. The abuses which had crept in during his absence were quietly and firmly rectified, and all tendencies to insubordination were repressed with a stern and just decision which it was impossible to gainsay or to resist. The whole aspect of things altered, and, lonely as he was among the Noelites, even Charlie Evson began to like Saint Winifred's better, and to feel more at home in its precincts.

Still, those who were rebelliously inclined were determined not to give in at once, and anxiously looked out for some opportunity in which they could have Kenrick on their side. If they could but secure this, they felt tolerably confident of giving the monitors a rebuff, and of carrying with them that numerous body in the school who had been taught under their training to resist authority on every possible occasion.

The opportunity was not long wanting. One fine afternoon a poor old woman had come up to the playground with a basket of trifles, by the sale of which she hoped to support herself during the unexpectedly long absence of a sailor son. Her extreme neatness of person, and her quiet, respectable manners had interested some of the boys in her appearance; and when she came up to sell the little articles, many of which her own industry had made, she generally found ready purchasers. Walter, who knew her well, had visited her cottage, and had often seen the sailor boy on whose earnings she in a great measure depended. This only son had now been away for some time on a distant voyage, and the poor woman, being pressed for the necessaries of life, took her basket once more to the playground of Saint Winifred's. Charlie had often heard about her from Walter, and he gladly made from her a few small purchases, in which the other boys followed his example. While he was doing this, he distinctly saw one of the Noelites--an ill-conditioned fellow in the shell, named Penn--thrust his hand into the old woman's basket, which was now surrounded by a large group of boys, and secrete a small bottle of scent. Charlie waited a moment, expecting to see him pay for it, but Penn, who fancied that he had been unobserved, dropped it quietly into his pocket, and stood looking on with an innocent and indifferent air.

Instantly Charlie's indignation knew no bounds. He could hardly believe his own eyes; he knew that a few of the very worst in the school, and some in his own house in particular, would regard this as a venial offence. They would not call it stealing but "bagging a thing," or, at the worst, "cribbing it"--concealing the villainy under a new name, a name with no very odious associations attached to it; just as they called lying "cramming," under which title it sounded much less repulsive. In fact, these young Noelites took a most Spartan view of these petty larcenies, confining the criminality to the incurring of detection. But they had never succeeded in making Charlie take this view; he never would adopt the change of language by which they altered the accepted meaning of words in accordance with their own propensities and dispositions, and to him this particular act which Penn committed with perfect nonchalance, appeared to be not only a theft, but a theft accompanied by a cruelty and deadness to all sense of pity, which dipped it in the very blackest and most revolting dye. He could not restrain, and did not attempt to restrain, the passionate contempt and horror which he felt for this act.

"Penn," he said, in a loud and excited voice, not doubting that the sympathies of the others would be as warm as his own, "Penn, you wicked brute, you have stolen that bottle of scent. Here, Mrs Hart, _you_ shan't suffer at any rate if there _is_ a fellow so base and wicked," and he at once pulled out his last half-crown, and insisted on her taking it in payment for the stolen article.

Penn, for the moment, was quite taken aback by the scathing flame of Charlie's righteous anger. If there had been none but Noelites there he would have made very light of the accusation, and probably have laughed it off; but there were others looking on who would, he knew, view the transaction in a very different light, so he thought that his safest course lay in a flat denial. It was not reasonable to expect that he would stick at this; a boy who has no scruples about "bagging" the property of a poverty-stricken old woman, is not likely to hesitate about telling a "cram" to escape exposure.

"What's all this about, you little fool? I haven't bagged anything."

Charlie was still more amazed; he positively could not understand a great brazen lie like this, and yet it was impossible to doubt that it _was_ a lie, against the evidence of his own senses.

"You didn't take that scent-bottle? oh! how _can_ you tell such a lie? I saw you with my own eyes."

"What do I care for you or your eyes?" was the only answer which Penn vouchsafed to return.

"You're always flying out at fellows like a young turkey-cock, you No-thank-you," said Wilton. "Why don't you thrash him, Penn, for his confounded impudence?"

"Thrash him yourself if you like, Raven; I don't care the snap of a finger for what he says."

"What do you mean, No-thank-you, by charging him with bagging the thing when he says he didn't?" said Wilton in a threatening tone to Charlie; and as Charlie took no notice, he enforced the question by a slap on the cheek; for Wilton had old grudges against Charlie to pay off.

"I didn't speak to _you_, Wilton; but you shan't hit me for nothing; you force me to fight against my will," said Charlie, returning the blow; "you can't say that I'm doing it to get off anything this time, as you did once before."

A long and desperate fight ensued between Charlie and Wilton; too long and too desperate in the opinion of several of the bystanders; but as there was no one near who had any authority, nobody liked to interfere. So, as they were very equally matched, neither of the combatants showed the least sign of giving in, though their faces and clothes were smeared with blood. At last Henderson and Whalley, who were strolling through the playground, caught sight of the crowd, and came up to see what was the matter.

"It's a fight," said Henderson; "young Evson and Belial junior; I'd much rather see them fight than see them friends."

"Yes, Flip; but they've evidently been fighting quite long enough to be good for them. You're a monitor--couldn't you see if they ought not to be separated, and shake hands?"

"Hallo, stop, you two," said Henderson, pushing his way into the crowd. "What's all this about? let's see that it's all right."

"It's a fair fight," said several; "you've no right to stop it."

"I won't stop it unless there's good reason, though I think it's gone on long enough. What began it?"

"No-thank-you charged Penn with--"

"Who is No-thank-you?" asked Whalley.

"Young Evson, then," said Mackworth sulkily, "charged Penn with bagging a scent-bottle from the old woman's basket, and then he was impudent, so Wilton was going to pitch into him."

"And couldn't manage it, apparently," said Whalley; "come, you two, shake hands now."

Charlie, after a moment's hesitation, frankly held out his hand; but Wilton said, "He'd no right to accuse a Noelite falsely as he did."

"It wasn't falsely," said Charlie; "I saw him take it, and a horrid shame it was."

"Is one of your bottles missing, Mrs Hart?" asked Whalley.

"Yes, sir; but now young Master Evson has paid for it, and I don't want no more fighting about it, sir, please."

"Well, my good woman, there's something for you," said Henderson, giving her a shilling; "and I hope nobody will treat you so badly again; you'd better go now. And now, Penn, if you didn't take the bottle, of course you won't mind being searched?"

"Of course I _shall_," said Penn, edging uneasily away to try if possible to get rid of the unlucky bottle, which now felt as if it burned his pocket.

"Stay, my friend," said Whalley, collaring him; "no shuffling away, if you please."

"What the devil is your right to search me?" said Penn, struggling in vain under Whalley's grasp; "don't you fellows let him search me."

The attention of all was now fairly diverted from the fight, which, therefore, remained undecided; while the boys, especially the Noelites, formed an angry group round Henderson and Whalley, to prevent them, if possible, from any attempt to search Penn. Meanwhile, seeing that something was going on, other boys came flocking up until a large number of the school were assembled there, while Whalley still kept tight hold of Penn, and Henderson watched that he should play no tricks; the Noelites meantime exclaiming very loudly against the supposed infringement of their abstract rights.

Kenrick was one of those who had now come up; and as several fellows entreated him to stick up for his own house, and not to let Penn be searched, he worked himself into a passion, and pushing into the circle, said loudly, "You've no right to search him; you shan't do it."

"Here's the head of the school, he shall decide," said Henderson, as Power and Walter approached. "State your own case, Kenrick."

"Well, the case simply is, that a scent-bottle has been taken from Mrs Hart; and Penn doesn't see--nor do I--why he should be searched."

"You haven't mentioned that young Evson says he _saw_ him take it."

"Why, Charlie, what _have_ you been doing?" said Walter, looking at his brother's bruised and smeared face in surprise.

"Only a fight," said Charlie; "I couldn't help it, Walter; Wilton struck me because I charged Penn with taking the bottle."

"Are you absolutely certain that you saw him, Charlie?"

"Yes; I couldn't possibly be mistaken."

"Well, then, clearly Penn must be searched," said Walter.

"But stop," said Power; "aren't we beginning at the wrong end? Penn, no doubt, if we ask him quietly, will empty his pockets for our satisfaction?"

"No I won't," said Penn, who was now dogged and sullen.

"Well, Kenrick has taken your part, will you let him or me search you privately?"

"No!"

"Then search him, Henderson."

Instantly a rapid movement took place among the boys as though to prevent this; but before anything could be done, Henderson had seized Penn by both wrists and Whalley, diving a hand into his right pocket, drew out and held up a little ornamental scent-bottle!

This decisive proof produced for a moment a dead silence among the loud voices raised in altercation; and then Power said--

"Penn, you are convicted of lying and theft. What is Saint Winifred's coming too, when fellows can act like this? How am I to punish him?" he asked, turning to some of the monitors.

"Here and now, red-handed, _flagrante delicto_," said Walter. "Some of these lower fellows need an example."

"I think you are right. Symes, fetch me a cane."

"You shan't touch him," said Kenrick; "you'd no right to search him, in the first place."

"I mean to cane him, Kenrick. Who will prevent me?"

"We will," said several voices; among which Harpour's and Mackworth's were prominent.

"You mean to try and prevent it by force?"

"Yes."

"And, Kenrick, you abet this?"

"I do," said Kenrick, who had lost all self-control.

"I shall do it, nevertheless; it is my plain duty."

"And I recommend you all not to interfere," said Walter; "for it must and shall be done."

"Harpour," said Franklin, "remember, if you try force, I for one am against you the moment you stir."

"And I," said Bliss, stepping in front of Power; "and I," said Eden, Cradock, Anthony, and others--among whom was Tracy--taking their places by the monitors, and forming a firm front together.

Symes brought the cane. Power took it, and another monitor held Penn firmly by the wrists. At the first stroke, some of the biggest fifth-form fellows made a rush forward, but they were flung back, and could not break the line, while Harpour measured his full length on the turf from the effects of the buffet which Franklin dealt him. Kenrick was among those who pressed forward; and then, to his surprise and shame, Walter, who was the stronger of the two, grasped him by the shoulder, held him back, and said in a low tone, firm yet kind, "You must excuse my doing this, Kenrick; but otherwise you might suffer for it, and I think you will thank me afterwards."

Kenrick was astonished, and he at once desisted. Those were the first and only words which Walter had spoken to him, the only time Walter had touched him, for nearly three years; and in spite of all the abuse, calumny, and opposition which Walter had encountered at his hands, Kenrick could not but feel that they were wise words, prompted, like the

## action itself, by the spirit of true kindness. He said nothing, but

abruptly turned away and left the ground.

The struggle had not lasted a moment, and it was thoroughly repulsed. There could not be the least doubt of that, or of the fact that those who were on the side of righteous order outnumbered and exceeded in strength the turbulent malcontents. Power inflicted on Penn a severe caning there and then. The attempt to prevent this, audacious and unparalleled as it was, afforded by its complete failure yet another proof that things were coming round, and that these efforts of the monitors to improve the tone of the lower boys would tell with greater and greater force. Even the character of the Noelites was beginning to improve; in that bad house not a single little new boy had successfully braved an organised antagonism to all that was good, and by his victorious virtuous courage had brought over others to the side of right, triumphing, by the mere force of good principle, over a banded multitude of boys far older, abler, and stronger than himself.

So that now Harpour, Mackworth, and Jones, were confined more and more to their own society, and were forced to keep their misconduct more and more to themselves. They sullenly admitted that they were foiled and thwarted, and from that time forward left the school to recover as fast as it could from their vicious influence. Among their other consolations--for they found themselves shunned on all sides--they proposed to go and have a supper at Dan's. One day, before the events last narrated, Power had seen them go in there. He had sent for them at once, and told them that they must know how strictly this was forbidden, what a wretch Dan was, and how ruinous such visits to his cottage must be. They knew well that if he informed of them they would be instantly expelled, and entreated him with very serious earnestness to pass it over this time, the more so because they had no notion that any monitor would ever tell of them, _because since he had been a monitor, Kenrick had accompanied them there_. Shocked as he was to hear this, it had determined Power not to report them, on the condition, which he made known to the other monitors, and of which he specially and pointedly gave warning to Kenrick, that they would not so offend again. This promise they wilfully broke, feeling perfectly secure, because Dan's cottage was at a remote and lonely part of the shore, where few boys ever walked, and where they had very little chance of being seen, if they took the precaution of entering by a back gate. But within a week of Penn's thrashing, Walter was strolling near the cottage with Eden and Charlie, and having climbed the cliff a little way to pluck for Eden (who had taken to botany) a flower of the yellow horned poppy which was waving there, he saw them go into Dan's door, and with them--as he felt sure--little Wilton. The very moment, however, that he caught sight of them, the fourth boy, seeing him on the cliff, had taken vigorously to his heels and scrambled away behind the rocks. Walter had neither the wish nor the power to overtake him, and as he had not so much _seen_ Wilton as inferred with tolerable certainty that it was he, he only reported Harpour, Mackworth, and Jones to Dr Lane; at the same time sending for Wilton to tell him of his suspicion, and to give him a severe and earnest warning.

Dr Lane, on the best possible grounds, had repeatedly announced that he would expel any boy who had any dealings with the scoundrel Dan. He was not likely to swerve from that declaration in any case, still less for the sake of boys whose school career had been so dishonourable and reprobate as that of these three offenders. They were all three publicly expelled without mercy and without delay; and they departed, carrying with them, as they well-deserved to do, the contempt and almost the execration of the great majority of the school.

In the course of their examination before the headmaster, Jones, with a meanness and malice thoroughly characteristic, had said, "that he did not know there was any harm in going to Dan's, because Kenrick, one of the monitors, had done the same thing." At the time, Dr Lane had contemptuously silenced him, with the remark, "that he would gain nothing by turning informer;" but as Dr Lane was always kept pretty well informed of all that went on by the Famulus, he had reason to suspect, and even to know, that what Jones said was in this instance true. He knew, too, from other quarters how unsatisfactorily Kenrick had been going on, and the part he had taken in several acts of insubordination and disobedience. Accordingly, no sooner had Harpour, Jones, and Mackworth been banished from Saint Winifred's, than he sent for Kenrick, and administered to him a reprimand so uncompromising and stern, that Kenrick never forgot it to the end of his life. After upbraiding him for those many inconsistencies and follies, which had forfeited the strong esteem and regard which he once felt for him, he pointed out finally how he was wasting his school-life, and how little his knowledge and ability could redeem his neglect of duty and betrayal of trust; and he ended by saying, "All these reasons, Kenrick, have made me seriously doubt whether I should not degrade you altogether from your position of monitor and head of a house. It would be a strong step, but not stronger than you deserve. I am alone prevented by a deep and sincere wish that you should yet recover from your fall; and that, by knowing that some slight trust is still reposed in you, you may do something to prove yourself worthy of that trust, and to regain our confidence. I content myself, therefore, with putting you from your present place to the _lowest_ on the list of monitors--a public mark of my displeasure, which I am sure you will feel to be just; and I must also remove you from the headship of your house--a post which I grieve to know that you have very grievously misused. I shall put Whalley in your place, as it happens that no monitor can be conveniently spared. He, therefore, is now the head of Mr Noel's house; and, so far, you will be amenable to his authority, which, I hope, you will not attempt to resist."

Kenrick, very full of bitter thoughts, hung his head, and said nothing. To know Dr Lane was to love and to respect him; and this poor fatherless boy _did_ feel very great pain to have incurred his anger.

"I am unwilling, Kenrick," continued the Doctor, "to dismiss you without adding one word of kindness. You know, my dear boy, that I have your welfare very closely at heart, and that I once felt for you a warm and personal regard; I trust that I may yet be able to bestow it upon you again. Go and use your time better; remember that you are a monitor; remember that the well-being of many others depends in no slight measure on your conscientious discharge of your duties; check yourself in a career which only leads fast to ruin; and thank God, Kenrick, that you are not actually expelled as those three boys have been, but that you have still time and opportunity to amend, and to win again the character you once had."

Turned out of his headship to give way to a fifth-form boy, turned down to the bottom of the monitors, poor Kenrick felt unspeakably degraded; but he was forced to endure a yet more bitter mortification. Before going to Dr Lane he had received a message that he was wanted in the sixth-form room, and, with a touch of his old pride, had answered, "Tell them I won't come." Hardly had he reached his own study after leaving the Doctor, when Henderson entered with a grave face, and saying, "I am sorry, Kenrick, to be the bearer of this," handed to him a folded sheet of paper. Opening it he found that, at the monitors' meeting, to which he had been summoned, an unanimous vote of censure had been passed upon him in his absence, for the opposition which he had always displayed against his colleagues, and for the disgraceful part which he had taken in attempting to coerce them by force in the case of Penn. The document concluded, "We are therefore obliged, though with great and real reluctance, to take the unusual step of recording in the monitors' book this vote of censure against Kenrick, fourth monitor, for the bad example he has set and the great harm he has done, in at once betraying our interests and violating the first conditions on which he received his own authority: and we do this, not in a spirit of anger, but solely in the earnest and affectionate hope that this unanimous condemnation of his conduct by all his coadjutors may serve to recall him to a sense of his duty."

Appended were the names of all the monitors--but, no; as he glanced over the names he saw that one was absent, the name of Walter Evson. Evidently, it was not because Walter _disapproved_ of the measure, for, had this been the case, Kenrick knew that his name would have appeared at the end as a formal dissentient; no, the omission of his name was due, Kenrick saw, to that same high reserve, and delicate, courteous consideration which had marked the whole of Walter's behaviour to him since the day of their disastrous quarrel.

Kenrick appreciated this delicacy, and his eyes were suffused with tears. Wilton, somewhat cowed by recent occurrences, was the only boy in his study at the time, and though Kenrick would have been glad to have some one near him, to whom he could talk of the disgraces which had fallen so heavily upon him, and to whom he could look for a little sympathy and counsel, yet to Wilton he felt no inclination to be at all communicative. There was, indeed, something about Wilton which he could not help liking, but there was and could be no sort of equality between them.

"Ken," said Wilton, "do you remember telling me the other day that I was shedding crocodile tears?--what are crocodile tears? I've always been wanting to ask you."

"It's just a phrase, Ra, for sham tears; and it was very rude of me, wasn't it? Herodotus says something about crocodiles; perhaps he'll explain it for us. I'd look and see if I had my Herodotus here, but I lost it nearly three years ago."

By one of those curious coincidences, which look strange in books, but which happen daily in common life, Tracy at this moment entered with the lost Herodotus in his hand, saying--

"Kenrick, I happened to be hunting out the classroom cupboard just now for a book I'd mislaid, when I found a book with your name in it--an Herodotus; so I thought I'd bring it you."

"By Jove!" said Wilton, "talk of--"

"Herodotus, and he'll appear," said Kenrick; "how very odd. It's mine, sure enough! I lost it, as I was just telling Wilton, I don't know how long ago. Now, Raven, I'll find you all he says about crocodiles."

"Before you look, may I tell you something?" asked Tracy. "I wanted an opportunity to speak with you."

"Well?"

"Do you mind coming out into the court, then?" said Tracy, glancing at Wilton.

"Oh, never mind me," said Wilton; "I'll go out."

"I shan't be a minute," said Tracy, "and then you can come back. What I wanted to say, Kenrick, was only this, and it was a great shame of me not to tell you before; but I see now that I've been a poor tool in the hands of those fellows. Jones made you believe, you know, _that Evson had told him_ all about your home affairs, and about the pony-chaise, and so on," said Tracy, hurrying over the obnoxious subject.

"Yes, yes," said Kenrick impatiently. "Well, he never did, you know. I've heard Jones confess it often with his own lips."

"How can I believe him in one lie more than another, then? I believe the fellow couldn't open his lips without a lie flying out of them. How could Jones possibly have known about it any other way? There was only one fellow who could have told him, and that was Evson. Evson _must_ have told me a lie when he said that he'd mentioned it to no one but Power."

"I don't believe Evson ever told a lie in his life," said Tracy. "However, I can explain your difficulty. Jones was in the same train as Evson; he saw you and him ride home; and, staying at Littleton, the next town to where you live, he heard all about you there. I've heard him say so."

"The black-hearted brute!" was all that Kenrick could ejaculate, as he paced up and down his study with agitated steps. "O Tracy, what an utter, utter ass, and fool, and wretch, I've been."

"So have I," said Tracy; "but I'm sorry now, and hope to improve. Better late than never. Good morning, Kenrick."

When Wilton returned to the study a quarter of an hour after, he found Kenrick's attention riveted by a note which he held in his hand, and which he seemed to be reading with his whole soul. So absorbed was he that he was not even disturbed by Wilton's entrance. Listlessly turning over the pages of his Herodotus to divert his painful thoughts by looking for the passage about the crocodiles, Kenrick had found an old note directed to himself. Painful thoughts, it seems, were to give him no respite that day; how well he knew that handwriting, altered a little now, more firm and mature, but even then a good, though a boyish hand. He tore it open; it was dated three years back, and signed Walter Evson. It was the long lost note in which Walter, once or twice rebuffed, had frankly and even earnestly asked pardon for any supposed fault, and begged for an immediate reconciliation--the very note of which Walter of course imagined that Kenrick had received, and from his not taking any notice of it, inferred, that all hope of renewing their friendship was finally at an end. Kenrick could not help thinking how very different a great part of his school-life would have been, had that note but come to hand!

He saw it all now as clearly as possible--his haste, his rash and false inferences, his foolish jealousy, his impetuous pride, his quick degeneracy, all the mischief he had caused, all the folly he had done, all the time he had wasted. Disgraced, degraded, despised by the best fellows in the school, censured unanimously by his colleagues, given up by masters whom he respected, without a single true friend, grievously and hopelessly in the wrong from the very commencement, he now felt _bowed down and conquered_, and, to Wilton's amazement, he laid his head upon his arms on the table before him without saying a word, and broke into a heavy sob. If his conscience had not declared against him, he could have borne everything else; but when conscience is our enemy, there is no chance of a mind at ease. Kenrick sat there miserable and self-condemned; he had injured his friend, injured his fellows, and injured, most deeply of all, himself. For, as the poet sings--

"He that wrongs his friend, Wrongs himself more; and ever bears about A silent court of justice in his breast; Himself the judge and jury, and himself The prisoner at the bar, ever condemned. And that drags down his life."

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX.

IN THE DEPTHS.

How easy to keep free from sin, How hard that freedom to recall! For dreadful truth it is, that men _Forget_ the heavens from which they fall.

Cov. Patmore.

It may be thought strange that Kenrick did not at once, while his heart was softened, and when he saw so clearly how much he had erred, go there and then to Walter, confess to him that everything was now explained, that he had never received his last note, and that, for his own sake, he desired to be restored, as far as was possible, to his former footing. If that had not been for Kenrick a period of depression and ill-repute, he would undoubtedly have done so; but he did not like to go, now that he was in disgrace, now that his friendship could do no credit, and, as he feared, confer no pleasure on any one, and under circumstances which would make it appear that he had changed his views under the influence of selfish interest, rather than of true conviction or generous impulse. He thought, too, that friendship over was like water spilt, and could not be gathered up again; that it was like a broken thread which cannot again be smoothly reunited. So things remained on the same footing as before, except that Kenrick's whole demeanour was changed for the better. He bore his punishment in a quiet and manly way; took his place without a murmur below Henderson at the bottom of the monitors; did not by any bravado attempt to conceal that he felt justly humiliated, and gave Whalley his best assistance in governing the Noelites, and bringing them back by slow but sure degrees to a better tone of thought and feeling. Towards Walter especially his whole manner altered. Hitherto he had made a point of always opposing him, and taking every opportunity to show him a strong dislike. If Walter had embraced one opinion at a monitors' meeting, it was quite sufficient reason for Kenrick to support another; if Walter had spoken on one side at the debating society, Kenrick held it to be a logical consequence that, whatever he thought, he should speak on the other, and use his powers of speaking, which were considerable, to throw on Walter's illustrations and arguments all the ridicule he could. All this folly and virulence was now abandoned; the swagger which Kenrick had adopted was from that time entirely laid aside. At the very next meeting of the debating society he spoke, as indeed he generally thought, on the same side with Walter; and spoke, not in his usual flippant conceited style, but more seriously and earnestly, treating Walter's speech with approval and almost with deference. Every one noticed and rejoiced in this change of manner, and none more so than Walter Evson and Power.

Kenrick finished with these words--"Gentlemen, before I sit down I have a task to perform, which, however painful it may be to me, it is due to you that I should not neglect. I may do it now, because I see that none but the sixth-form are present, and because I may not have another early opportunity. I have incurred, as you are all well aware, a unanimous vote of censure from my colleagues--unanimous, although, through a delicacy which I am thankful to be still capable of keenly appreciating, the name of one..." the word "friend" sprang to his lips, but humility forbade him to adopt it, and he said... "the name of one monitor is absent from the appended signatures. Gentlemen, I do not like public recantations or public professions, but I feel it my duty to acknowledge without palliation that I feel the censure to have been deserved." His voice faltered with emotion as he proceeded: "I have been misled, gentlemen, and I have been labouring for a long time under a grievous mistake, which has led me to do much injustice and inflict many wrongs; for these errors I now ask the pardon of all, and especially of those who are most concerned. Your censure, gentlemen, concluded with a kind and friendly wish, and I cannot trust myself to say more now, than to echo that wish with all my heart, and to hope that ere long the efforts which I shall endeavour to make may succeed in persuading you to give me back your confidence and esteem, and to erase from the book the permanent record of your recent disapproval."

Every one present felt how great must have been the suffering which could wring such an expression of regret from a nature so proud as Kenrick's. They listened in silence, and when he sat down greeted him with an applause which showed how readily he might win their regard; while many of them came round him and shook hands with warmth.

"Gentlemen," said Power, rising, "I am sure we all feel that the remarks we have just heard do honour to the speaker. I hold in my hand the monitors' book, open at the page on which our censure was written. After what we have heard there can be no necessity why that page should remain where it is for a single day. I beg to move that leave may be given me to tear it out at once."

"And I am eager to second the motion," said Henderson, starting up at the same moment with several others; "and, Kenrick--if I may break through, on such an occasion as this, our ordinary forms, and address you by name--I am sure you will believe that though I have very often opposed you, no one will be more glad than myself to welcome you back as a friend, and to hope that you may soon be, what you are so capable of being, not only our greatest support, but also one of the brightest ornaments of our body." He held out his hand, which Kenrick readily grasped, whispering, with a sigh, "Ah, Flip, how I wish that we had never broken with each other!"

The proposal was carried by acclamation, and Power accordingly tore out the sheet and put it in the fire. And that night brightened for Kenrick into the dawn of better days. Twenty times over Walter thought that Kenrick was going to speak to him--for his manner was quite different; but Kenrick, though every particle of ill-will had vanished from his mind, and had been replaced by his old unimpaired affection, put off the reconciliation until he should have been able in some measure to recover his old position, and to meet his friend on a footing of greater equality.

Do not let any one think that his reformation was too easy. It took him long to conquer himself, and he found the task sorely difficult; but after many failures and relapses, the words of another who had sinned and suffered three thousand years ago, and who, after many a struggle, had discovered the true secret, came home to Kenrick and whispered to him the message--"Then I said, _It is mine own infirmity: but I will remember the years of the right-hand of the Most Highest_."

It was not long before one great difficulty confronted him, the consequence of former misdeeds, and put him under circumstances which demanded the whole courage of his character, and thoroughly tested the sincerity of his repentance.

After Mackworth's expulsion, and under Whalley's good government, the state of the Noelites greatly improved. Charlie Evson, for whom, now, by the by, Kenrick always did everything that lay in his power, became far more a model among the younger boys than Wilton had ever been, and there was a final end of suppers, smoking parties, organised cribbing, and recognised "crams." But just as the house was recovering lost ground, and had ceased to be quite a byeword in the school, it was thrown into consternation by a long-continued series of petty thefts.

Small sums were extracted from the boys' jacket pockets after they had gone to bed; from the play-boxes which were not provided with good locks and keys; from the private desks in the classrooms, from the dormitories, and from several of the studies. There was no clue to the offender, and first of all suspicion fell strongly on the new boy, little Elgood. A few trifling items of circumstantial evidence seemed to point him out, and it began to be gradually whispered, no one exactly knew how or by whom, that he must be the guilty boy. Hints were thrown out to him to this effect; little bits of paper, on which were written the words "Thou shalt not steal," or "The devil will have thieves," were dropped about in his books and wherever he was likely to find them, and whenever the subject was brought on the tapis his manner was closely watched. The effect was unsatisfactory; for Elgood was a timid nervous boy, and the uneasiness to which this nervousness gave rise was set down as a sign of guilt. At length a sovereign and a half were stolen out of Whalley's study, and as Elgood, being Whalley's fag, had constant access to the study, and might very well have known that Whalley had the money, and in what place he kept it, the prevalent suspicions were confirmed. The boys, with their usual thoughtless haste, leapt to the conclusion that he must have been the thief.

The house was in a perfect ferment. However lightly one or two of them, like Penn, may have thought about taking trifles from small tradesmen, there was not a single one among them, not even Penn himself, whose morality did not brand this thieving from schoolfellows as wicked and mean. The boys felt, too, that it was a stigma on their house, and unhappily Just at the time when the majority were really anxious to raise their corporate reputation. Every one was filled with annoyance and disgust, and felt an anxious determination to discover and give up the thief.

At last the suspicions against Elgood proceeded so far, that out of mere justice to him the heads of the house, Whalley, Kenrick, and Bliss, thought it right that he should be questioned. So, after tea, all the house assembled in the classroom, and Elgood was formally charged with the delinquency, and questioned about it, Wilton, in particular, urging him in almost a bullying tone to surrender and confess. The poor child was overwhelmed with terror--cried, blushed, answered incoherently, and lost his head, but would not for a moment confess that he had done it, and protested his innocence with many sobs and tears.

"Well, I suppose if he persists in denying it, we can't go any further," said Kenrick; "but I'm afraid, Elgood, that you must have had something to do with it, as every one seems to see ground for suspecting you."

"Oh, I hadn't, I hadn't; indeed I hadn't," wailed Elgood; "I wish you wouldn't say so, Kenrick; indeed I'm innocent, and I'd rather write home for the money ten times over than be suspected."

"So would any one, you little fool," said Wilton.

"Don't bully him in that way, Wilton," said Whalley; "it's not the way to get the truth out of him. Elgood, I should have thought you innocent, if you didn't behave so oddly."

"May I speak?" modestly asked a new voice. The speaker was Charlie Evson.

"Yes, certainly," said Kenrick, in an encouraging tone.

"Well then, please, Kenrick, and the whole of you, I think you _have_ had the truth out of him; and I think he _is_ innocent."

"Why, Charlie?" said Whalley; "what makes you think so?"

"Because I've asked him, and talked to him privately about it," said Charlie; "when you frighten him he gets confused, and contradicts himself, but he can explain whatever looks suspicious if you ask him kindly and Quietly."

"Bosh!" said Wilton; "who frightened him?"

"Silence, Wilton," said Whalley. "Well, Charlie, will you question him now for us?"

"That I will," said Charlie, advancing and putting his hand kindly round Elgood's shoulder, as he seated himself on the desk by which Elgood was standing. "Will you tell us, as I ask you, all you told me this morning?"

"Yes," said Elgood eagerly, while his whole manner changed from nervous tremor to perfect simplicity and quiet new that he had a friend to stand by him.

"Well, now, about the money you've been spending lately?" questioned Charlie, with a smile. "You usen't to be so flush of cash, you know, a month ago."

"I can tell you," answered Elgood; "I had a very large present--large for me, I mean--three weeks ago. My father sent me a pound, because it was my birthday, and my big brother and aunt sent me each a pound too."

"I can answer for that being perfectly true," said Charlie, "for I went with my brother to the post-office this afternoon and asked, and found that Elgood had had three money-orders changed there. And now, Elgood, can you trust me with your purse?"

"Of course I can, Charlie," said Elgood, readily producing it, and almost forgetting that the others were present.

"Ah, well, now you see _I'm_ going to rifle it. Ah! what have we here? why, here's a whole sovereign, and eight shillings; that looks suspicious, doesn't it?" said Charlie archly.

"No," said Elgood, laughing; "you went with me yourself when I bought my desk for eighteen shillings, and the rest--"

"All right," said Charlie. "Look, you fellows: Elgood and I put down this morning the other things he's bought, and they come to fourteen shillings. I know they're right, for I didn't like Elgood to be wrongly suspected, so Walter want with me to the shops; indeed it was chiefly spent at Coles's"--at which remark they all laughed, for Coles's was the favourite "tuck shop" of the boys. "Well, now, 1 pound, 8 shillings plus 18 shillings plus 14 shillings makes 3 pounds, the sum which Elgood received from home. Is that plain?"

"As plain as a pike-staff," said Bliss; "and you're a little brick, Evson; and it's a chouse if any one suspects Elgood any more."

Wilton suggested something about Elgood being Whalley's fag.

"Shame, Raven," said Kenrick; "why, what a suspicious fellow you must be; there's no ground whatever to suspect Elgood now."

"I only want the fellow found out for the honour of the house," said Wilton, with a sheepish look at this third rebuff.

"Oh, I forgot about that for the moment," said Charlie; "Whalley, please, you know the time, don't you, when the money was taken from your desk?"

"Yes; it must have been between four and six, for I saw it safe at four, and it was gone when I came back after tea."

"Then all right," said Charlie joyfully, "for at that very time, all of it, Elgood was in my brother's study with me, learning some lessons. Now then, is Elgood clear?"

"As clear as noonday," shouted several of them, patting the poor child on the head.

"And really, Charlie, we're all very much obliged to you," said Whalley, "for setting this matter straight. But now, as it _isn't_ Elgood, who _is_ the thief? We must all set ourselves to discover."

"And we _shall_ discover," said Bliss; "he's probably here now. Who is it?" he asked, glancing round. "Well, whoever it is, I don't envy him his sensations at this minute."

The meeting broke up, and Kenrick accompanied Whalley to his study to concert further measures.

"Have you any suspicion at all about it, Whalley?"

"Not the least. Have you? No. Well, then, what shall we do?"

"Why the thief isn't likely to visit _your_ study again, Whalley; very likely he'll come to mine. Suppose we put a little marked money in the secret drawer. It's rather a joke to call it the _secret_ drawer, for there's no secret about it; anyhow, it's an open secret."

"Very good; and then?"

"Why, you know the money generally goes at one particular time on half-holidays. I'm afraid the rogue, whoever he is, has got a taste for it by this time, and will come to money like a fly to a jam-pot. Now, outside my room, a few yards off, is the shoe-cupboard; what if you and I, and a few others, agree to shut ourselves up there in turns, now and then, on half-holidays between roll-call and tea-time?"

"I see," said Whalley; "well, it's horribly unpleasant, but I'll take my turn first. Isn't the door usually locked, though?"

"Yes, but so much the better; we can easily get it left open, and the thief won't suspect an ambuscade. He _must_ be found out, for the sake of all the boys who are innocent and to wipe out the blot against the house."

"All right; I'll ensconce myself there to-morrow. I say, Ken, isn't young Evson a capital fellow? how well he managed to clear Elgood, didn't he? I declare he taught us all a lesson."

"Yes," said Kenrick; "he's his brother all over; just what Walter was when he came."

"What, _you_ say that?" said Whalley, smiling and arching his eyebrows.

"Indeed I do," said Kenrick, with some sadness; "I haven't always thought so, the more's the pity;" and he left the room with a sigh.

After his turn for incarceration in the shoe-cupboard, Bliss complained loudly that it wasn't large enough to accommodate him, and that it cramped his long arms and legs, to say nothing of the unpleasant vicinity of spiders and earwigs. But the others, laughing at him, told him that, if the experiment was to be of any use whatever, they must persevere in it, and Bliss allowed himself to be made a victim. For a time nothing happened, but they had not to wait very long.

One day, Kenrick had been mounting guard for about half an hour, and was getting very tired, when a light and hasty step passed along the passage, and into his room. The boy found the study empty, and proceeded noiselessly to open Kenrick's desk, and examine the contents. At length he pulled open the secret drawer; it opened with a little click, and _there_ lay before him two half-sovereigns and some silver. He was a wary fellow, for he scrutinised these all over most carefully to see if they were marked, and finding no mark of any kind on them--for it almost required a microscope to see the tiny scratch between the w.w. on the smooth edge of the neck--he took out his purse, and was proceeding to drop them into it, when _a heavy hand was laid upon his shoulder_, and Kenrick and Wilton--the detected thief--stood face to face. The purse dropped on the floor.

For a moment they stood silent, staring at each other, and drawing quick breaths. Wilton stood there pale as death, and looked up at Kenrick trembling, and with a frightened stare. It was too awful to be so suddenly surprised; to have had an unknown eye-witness standing by him all the while that, fancying himself unseen, he was in the very act of committing that secret deed of sin; to be arrested, detected, exposed, as the boy whose hidden misdoings had been, for so long, a source of discomfort, anxiety, and shame.

"_You_, Wilton--_you, you, you_, the disturber of the house, _you_, who have so long been treated by me as a friend, and allowed at all times to use my study; _you_, the foremost to throw the suspicion on others!" He stopped, breathless, for his indignation was rushing in too deep and strong a torrent to find vent in words.

"O Kenrick, don't tell of me."

"Don't _tell_ of you! Good heavens! is that all you can find to say? Not one word of sorrow--not one word of shame. Abandoned, heartless, graceless fellow!"

"I was driven to it, Kenrick, indeed I was. I owed money to Dan, and to--to other places, and they threatened to tell of me if I didn't pay. Then Harpour and those fellows quite cleared me out at cards; I believe they did it by cheating. O, don't tell of me."

"I cannot screen a thief," was the freezing reply; and the change from flame to ice showed into what commotion his feelings had been thrown.

"Well, then, if it comes to that," said Wilton, turning sullen, "_I'll_ tell of _you_. It'll all come out; remember it was you who first took me to Dan's, and that's not the only thing I could tell of you. O Kenrick, don't tell, or it will get us all into trouble."

"This, then, is the creature whom I have suffered to call me friend!" said Kenrick; "for whom I have given up some of the best friends in the school! And this is your gratitude! Why, you worm, Wilton, what do you take me for? Do you think that fear of _your_ disclosures will make me hush up twenty thefts? You enlist the whole strength of my conscience against you, lest I should seem to screen you for my own sake. Faugh! your very touch sickens me!--go!"

"O Kenrick, don't be so angry; I didn't mean to say it; I didn't know what I was saying; I am driven into a corner by shame and misery. I know I have been a mean dog; but even if you tell of me, don't crush me so with your anger, for indeed, indeed, I _have_ been grateful, and have loved you, Kenrick. But oh, don't tell, I implore, I entreat you, Ken. How little I thought that I should have to speak to you like this!"

But Kenrick could only say--"_You_ the thief; _you_, the _last_ fellow of all I should have suspected; _you_ whom I have called friend, O heavens! Yes, I know that I've done you harm by bad example, I know that I've much to answer for but at any rate I never taught you to be a thief."

"But one thing comes of another, Ken; it all came of my being so much with those brutes, and going to Dan's; it all came of that. I shouldn't have thought myself that I could do it or do half the bad things I _have_ done, two months ago. It all came of that; and you used to go with those fellows, Ken, and you went with me to Dan's;" and the boy wrung his hands, and wept, and flung himself on his knees. "I must tell all, if you tell of _me_."

"Say that again," said Kenrick, spurning him scornfully away, "say it once again, and I go straight to Dr Lane. Poor worm, you don't understand me, you don't seem to have the capability of a high thought in you. I tell you that nothing you can say of me shall shake my purpose. I am going now."

But before he could get his straw hat Wilton had clasped him by the knees, and in a voice of agony was beseeching him to relent.

"It's all true, Kenrick; I am base, I know it; I have quenched all honour in me. I won't say that again, but do, for God's sake, forgive me this once, and not tell of me. O Kenrick, have _you_ never had to say forgive? Do, do, pity me, as you hope to be forgiven; don't ruin me, and give me a bad name; I am so young, so young, and have fallen into bad hands from the first."

He still knelt on the floor, exhausted with the violence of his passion, hanging his head upon his breast, sobbing as if his heart would break. It was sad to see him, a mere child still, who might have been so different, long a little reprobate, and now a convicted thief. His face bathed in tears, his voice choked with sobs, the memory of the past, consciousness that much which he said was only too true, touched Kenrick with compassion; the tears rolled down his own face fast, and he felt that, though personal fear could not influence him, pity would perhaps force him to relent, and wring from him in his weakness a reluctant promise not to disclose Wilton's discovered guilt.

"What can I say to you, Wilton? you know that I have liked you, but I never thought that you could act like this."

"Nor I, Kenrick, a short time ago; but the devil tempted me, and I have never learned to resist."

"From my very heart I _do_ pity you; but I fear I _must_ tell; I fear it's my duty, and I have neglected so many that I dare neglect no more; though indeed, I'd rather have had any duty but this."

Wilton was again clasping his knees and harrowing his soul by his wild anguish, imploring to be saved from the horror of open shame, and, accustomed as Kenrick was to grant anything to this boy, he was reduced to great distress. Already his whole manner had relented from the loathing and anger he first displayed. He could stand no more at present.

"O Wilton," he said, "you will make me ill if you go on like this. I cannot, must not, will not make you any promise now; but I will think what to do."

"I will go," said Wilton, deeply abashed; "but before I go, promise me one thing, Ken, and that is, even if you tell of me, don't quite cast me off. I shouldn't like to leave and think that I hadn't left _one_ behind me to give me a kind thought sometimes."

"O Ra, Ra, to think that it was _you_ all the while who were committing all these thefts!"

"You _will_ cast me off then?" said Wilton, in a voice broken by penitence; "O! what a bitter bitter thing it is to feel shame like this."

"I have felt it too in my time, Raven. Poor, poor fellow! who am I that I should cast you off? No, you unhappy child, I may tell of you, but I will not cease to be fond of you. Go, Wilton; I will decide between this and tea-time--you may come and hear about it after tea."

He was already outside the door when Kenrick called out "Wilton, stop!"

"What is it?" asked Wilton, returning alarmed, for conscience had made him a coward.

"There!" Kenrick only pointed to the purse lying on the floor.

"Oh, don't ask me to touch it again, the money is in it," said Wilton, hastily leaving the room. There was no acting here; it was plain that he was penitent--plain that he would have given worlds not to have been guilty of the sin.

Very sadly, and with pain and doubt, Kenrick thought the matter over, and thus much at least was clear to him: first, that the house must be informed, though not necessarily the masters or the other boys; secondly, that Wilton must make full and immediate restitution to all from whom he had stolen; thirdly, there could be no doubt about it, that Wilton must get himself removed at once. On these conditions he thought it possible that the matter might be hushed up; but his conscience was uneasy on this point. That unlucky threat or hint of Wilton's, that he could and would tell some of his wrong-doings, was his great stumbling-block; whenever extreme pity influenced him to screen the poor boy from full exposure, he began to ask himself whether this was a mere cowardly alternative suggested by his own fears. But for this, he would have determined at once on the more lenient and merciful course; but he had to face this question of self-interest very earnestly, nor could he come to any conclusion about it until he had determined to take a step in all respects worthy of the highest side of his character, by going, in any case, spontaneously to Dr Lane and laying before him a frank confession of past delinquencies, leaving him to act as he thought fit.

Having thus disentangled the question from all its personal bearings he was able to review it on its merits, and went to ask the counsel of Whalley, to whom he related, in confidence, the whole scene exactly as it had occurred. Whalley, too, on hearing the alternative conditions which Kenrick had planned, was fully inclined to spare Wilton as much as possible, but, as neither of them felt satisfied to do this on their own authority, they sought Power's advice and, as he too felt very doubtful on the matter, he suggested that they should put it to Dr Lane, without mentioning any names, _as a hypothetical case_, and be finally guided by his directions.

Accordingly Kenrick sought Dr Lane's study, and laid the entire difficulty before him. He listened attentively, and said, "If the boy is so young, and has been, as you say, misled, and accepts the very sensible conditions which you have proposed, I am inclined to think that the course you have suggested will be the wisest and the kindest one. You have my full authority, Kenrick, to arrange it so, and I am happy to tell you that you have behaved throughout this matter in an honourable and straightforward way."

"I fear, sir, I very little deserve your approval," said Kenrick, with downcast eyes. "In coming to ask your advice in this case, I wanted also to say that I have gone so far wrong that I think you ought to be told how badly I have behaved. It may be that after what I say, you may not think right to allow me to stay here, sir; but at any rate I shall have disburdened my own conscience by telling you, and shall perhaps feel less wretched."

"My dear Kenrick," said Dr Lane, "it was a right and a brave thing of you to come here for this purpose. Confession is often the first, as it is one of the most trying parts of repentance; and I hail this as a new proof of your strong and steady desire to amend. But tell me nothing, my dear boy. It may be that I know more than you suppose; at any rate, I accept the will for the deed, and wish to hear no more, unless, indeed, you desire to consult me as a clergyman, and as your spiritual adviser, rather than as your master. I do not seek this confidence; only if there is anything on your conscience of which my advice may help to relieve you, I do not _forbid_ you to proceed, and I will give you what help I can."

"I think it would relieve me, sir," said Kenrick; "I have no father; I have, I am sorry to say, no friend in the school to whom I could speak."

"Then sit down, Kenrick, and be assured beforehand of my real sympathy."

He sat down, and, twitching nervously at the ribbon of his straw hat, told Dr Lane much of the history of the last two years, confessing, above all, how badly he had behaved as head of the house, and how much harm he feared his example had done.

Dr Lane did not attempt to extenuate the heinousness of his offence, but he pointed out to him what were the fruits and the means of repentance. He exhorted him to let the sense of his past errors stimulate him to double future exertions. He told him of many ways in which, by kindness, by moral courage, by Christian principle, he might be a help and a blessing to other boys. He earnestly warned him to look to God for strength, and to watch and pray lest he should enter into temptation. And then promising him a full and free oblivion of the past, he knelt down with him and offered up from an overflowing heart a few words of earnest prayer.

"There is nothing like prayer to relieve the heart, Kenrick," said Dr Lane; "and now, good-night, and God bless you!"

With a far lighter heart, with far brighter hopes, Kenrick left him, feeling as if a great burden had been rolled away, and inwardly blessing the doctor for his comforting kindness. He found Wilton anxiously awaiting his arrival in his study; and thinking that their cases in some respects resembled each other, he strove not to be like the unforgiving debtor of the parable, and spoke to Wilton with great gentleness.

"Come here, my poor child; first of all, let me tell you that you shall not be reported." Wilton repaid him by a look of grateful joy.

"But you must restore all the stolen money, Wilton; the house must be told privately; and you must leave at once."

"Well, Kenrick, I ask only one favour," said Wilton, after a short pause.

"What is that?"

"That the house may not be told who stole the money until it is nearly time for me to go."

"No; it shall be kept close till then, otherwise the next fortnight would be too hard for you to bear."

"But _must_ I leave?" asked Wilton, appealingly.

"It must be so, Wilton; _I_ shall be sorry for you, but it must be settled so. Can you manage it?"

"O yes," said Wilton, crying quietly; "I'll write home and tell my poor mother all about it, and then of course she'll send me some money and take me away at once, to save me from being expelled. My poor mother, how wretched it will make her!"

"Sin makes us all wretched, Raven boy. I'm sure it makes me wretched enough. And that you mayn't think that fear has had anything to do with our letting you off, I must tell you, Wilton, that I've been to Dr Lane himself and told him all the many sins I've been guilty of."

"Have you? Oh! I'm so sorry; it was all through me."

"Yes; but I'm not sorry; I'm all the happier for it, Raven. There's nothing so miserable as undiscovered sin--is there?"

"Oh, indeed, there isn't. I'm sure I feel happier now in spite of all. No one knows, Ken, how I've suffered this last fortnight. I've been in a perpetual fright; I've had fearful dreams; I've felt ready to sink for shame; and I've always been fancying that fellows suspected me. Do you know, I am almost glad you caught me, Ken. I'm _very_ glad it was you and no one else, though it was a _horrid, horrid_ moment when you laid your hand on my shoulder. Yet even this isn't so bad as to have gone on nursing the guilt secretly, and not to have been detected."

Kenrick was musing; the boy who could talk like that was clearly one who _might_ have been, very unlike what Wilton then was.

"Wilton," he said, "come here and draw your chair by mine while I read you a little story."

"O Ken, I'm so grateful that you don't hate and despise me though I am a--"; he murmured the word "thief" with a shudder, and under his breath, as he drew up his chair, and Kenrick read to him in a low voice the story of Achan, till he came to the verses--

"And Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was taken.

"And Joshua said, _My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession unto him_; and tell me now what thou hast done, hide it not from me.

"And Achan answered Joshua and said, Indeed I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done."

And there Kenrick stopped, while Wilton said, "My son! You see Joshua still called him `my son' in spite of all his sin and mischief."

"Yes, Raven boy, but that wasn't why I read you the story which has often struck me. What I wanted you to see was this: The man was detected--the thing had been coming, creeping horribly near to him; first his tribe marked by the fatal lot, then his family, then his house, then himself; and while he's standing there, guilty and detected, in the very midst of that crowd who had been defeated because of his baseness, and when all their eyes were scowling on him, and when he knows that he, and his sons, and his daughters, are going to be burned and stoned--at this very moment Joshua says to him, `My son, _give, I pray thee, glory to the God of Israel_.' You see he's to _thank God_ for detecting him--thank God even at that frightful moment, and with that frightful death before him as a consequence. One would have thought that it wasn't a matter for much gratitude or jubilation; but you see it _was_, and so both Joshua and Achan seem to have admitted."

"Ah, Kenrick!" said Wilton, sadly, "if you'd always talked to me like that, I shouldn't be like Achan now."

Kenrick said nothing, but as he had received infinite comfort from Dr Lane's treatment of himself, he took Wilton by the hand, and, without saying a word, knelt down. Wilton knelt down beside him, and he prayed for forgiveness for them both. A few broken, confused, uncertain words only, but they were earnest, and they came fresh and burning from the heart. They were words of true prayer, and the poor, erring, hardened little boy rose from his knees too overcome to speak.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN.

THE RECONCILIATION AND THE LOSS.

The few remain, the many change and pass, Heaven's light alone remains, earth's shadows flee; Life, like a dome of many coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity, Until death shiver it to atoms.

Shelley's _Adonais_.

The termination of Wilton's sojourn at Saint Winifred's soon arrived. As yet none but the two head boys in the house knew of his detection. The thefts indeed had ceased; but the name of the offender was still a matter of constant surmise, and it was no easy task for Wilton-- conscious how soon they would be informed--to listen to the strong terms of disgust which were applied to the yet unknown delinquent. The barriers of his conceit, his coolness, his audacity, were all broken down; he was a changed boy; his manner was grave and silent, and he almost hid himself during those days in Kenrick's study, where Kenrick, with true kindness, still permitted him to sit.

Meanwhile it became generally known that he was going to leave almost immediately; and as boys often left in this way at the division of the quarter, his departure, though rather sudden, created no astonishment, nor had any one as yet the most distant conjecture as to the reasons which led to it. It is not too much to say, that Wilton was one of the last boys whom the rest would have suspected; they knew indeed that he never professed to be guided by any strong moral principles; but they thought him an unlikely fellow to be guilty of acts which sinned so completely against the schoolboy's artificial code, and which branded him who committed them with the charge of acknowledged meanness.

On the very evening of his departure, the house was again summoned by a notice from Whalley and Kenrick to meet in the classroom after Preparation. They came, not knowing for what they were summoned. Whalley opened the proceedings by requesting that any boy who had of late had money stolen from him would stand up. Four or five of them rose, and on stating the sums, mostly small, which they had lost, immediately received the amount from Whalley, much to their surprise, and no less to their content.

The duty which still remained was far less pleasing and more delicate, and it was by Wilton's express and earnest request that it was undertaken by Kenrick and not by Whalley. It was a painful moment for both of them when Kenrick rose, and very briefly, with all the forbearance and gentleness he could command, informed the house that there was every reason to hope that, from that time forward, these thefts which had caused them all so much distress, would cease. The offender had been discovered, and he begged them all, having confidence that they would grant the request, not to deal harshly with him, or think harshly of him. The guilty boy had done all that could be done by making full and immediate restitution, so that none of them now need remember any injury received at his hands, except Elgood, on whom suspicion had been unjustly thrown, and whose forgiveness the boy earnestly begged.

At this part of his remarks there arose in the deep silence a general murmur of "Who is it? who is it?"

Wilton, trembling all over with agitation and excitement? was seated beside Kenrick, and had almost cowered behind him for very shame, but now Kenrick stood aside, and laying his hand on Wilton's head, continued, "He is one of ourselves, and he is sitting here," while Wilton covered his face with both hands, and did not stir.

An expression of surprise and emotion thrilled over all the boys present; not a word was spoken; and immediately after Kenrick said to them, "He is punished enough; you can understand that this is a terrible thing for him. He has made reparation as far as he can, and besides this, he is _on this account_ going to leave us to-day. I may tell you all, too, that he is very, very, very sorry for what he has done, and has learned a lesson that he will carry with him to his grave. May I assure him that we all forgive him freely? May I tell him that we are grieved to part with him, and most of all grieved for this which has caused it? May I tell him that, in spite of all, he carries with him our warmest wishes and best hopes, and that he leaves no enemy behind him here?"

"Yes, yes!" was murmured on all sides, and while the sound of Wilton's crying sounded through the room, many of the others were also in tears. For this boy was popular; bad as he had been--and the name of his sins was legion--there was something about him which had endeared him to most of them. Barring this last fault, they were generally proud of him; there had been a certain generosity about him, a gay thoughtlessness, a boyish daring, which won their admiration. He was a promising cricketer, active, merry, full of spirits: before he had been so spoiled by the notice of bigger fellows, there was no one who did not like him and expect that he would turn out well.

"Then my unpleasant task is over," said Kenrick, "and I have no more to say. Oh, yes; I had forgotten, there was one very important thing I had to say, as Whalley reminds me. It is this: You know that the Noelites have kept other secrets before now, not always good secrets, I am sorry to say. But will you all now keep this an honourable secret? Will you not mention (for there is no occasion for it) to any others in the school, who it was that took the money? The matter will very soon be forgotten; do not let Wilton's sin be bruited through the whole school, so as to give him a bad name for life."

"Indeed we won't, not one of us will tell," said the boys, and they kept the promise admirably afterwards.

"Then we may all separate. You may bid Wilton good-bye now if you wish to do so, for he starts to-night, almost at once; the carriage is waiting for him now, and you will have no opportunity of seeing him again."

They flocked round him and said "good-bye" without one word of reproach, or one word calculated to wound his feelings; many of them added some sincere expressions of their good wishes for the future. As for Wilton himself, he was far too much moved to _say_ much to them, but he pressed their hands in silence, only speaking to beg Elgood to pardon his unkindness, which the little fellow begged him not to think of at all.

Charlie Evson lingered among the last, and spoke to him with frank and genial warmth.

"How you must hate me, Charlie, for annoying you so, and trying to lead you wrong!" said Wilton, penitently.

"Indeed I don't, Wilton," said Charlie; "I wish you weren't going to leave. I'm sure we should all get on better now."

"Don't think me as bad as I have seemed, Charlie. I was ashamed at heart all the time I was trying to persuade you to crib and tell lies, and do like other fellows. I felt all the while that you were better than me."

"Well, good-bye, Wilton. Perhaps we shall meet again some day, and be good friends; and I wish you happiness with all my heart."

Charlie was the last of them, and Kenrick and Wilton were left alone. For Wilton's sake Kenrick tried to show all the cheerfulness he could, as he went with him through the now silent and deserted court to the gate where the carriage was waiting.

"Have you got all your luggage, and everything all right, Raven?"

"Yes, everything," he said, taking one last long look at the familiar scene. It was dim moonlight; the lights twinkled in the studies where the upper boys were working, and in the dormitories where the rest were now going to bed. The tall trees round the building stood quite black against the faintly-lighted sky, waving their thinned remnant of yellow leaves in the November air. In the stillness you heard every slight sound; and the murmur of boys' voices came mingled with the plashing of the mountain stream, and the moaning of the low waves as they broke upon the shore. A merry laugh rang from one of the dormitories, jarring painfully on Wilton's feelings, as he stood gazing round in silence.

He got into the carriage, sighing heavily and grasping Kenrick's hand.

"Well, good-bye, Ken; it _must_ be said at last. May I write to you?"

"I wish you would. I shall be so glad to hear of you."

"And you will answer me, Ken?"

"Of course I will, my poor child. Good-bye. God bless you!" They still lingered for a moment, and Kenrick saw in the moonlight that Wilton's face was bathed in tears.

"All right, sir?" said the driver.

"Yes," said Wilton; "but it's all wrong, Ken, I think. Good-bye." He waved his hand, the carriage drove off into the darkening night with the little boy alone, and Kenrick with a sinking heart strolled back to his study. Do not pry into his feelings, for they were very terrible ones, as he sat down to his books with the strong conviction that there is nothing so good as the steady: fulfilment of duty for the driving away of heavy thoughts.

All his time was taken up with working for the scholarship. It was a scholarship of ninety pounds a year for four years, founded by a princely benefactor of the school, but only falling vacant biennially. There were other scholarships besides this, but this was by far the most valuable one at Saint Winifred's; the tenure of it was circumscribed by no conditions, and it was therefore proportionably desirable that Kenrick, who was poor, should obtain it. He had, indeed, hardly a chance, as he well knew; for even if he succeeded in beating Walter, he could not expect to beat Power. But Power, though a most graceful and finished scholar, was not strong in mathematics, and as they counted something in the examination, Kenrick's chief chance lay in this, for as a scholar he was by no means to be despised; and with a just reliance on his own abilities, he hoped, if fortunate, to make up for being defeated in classics, by being considerably ahead in the other branches of the examination. How he longed now to have at his command the time he had so largely wasted! Had he but used that aright he might have easily disputed the palm in any competition with Power himself. Few boys had been gifted with stronger intellects or clearer heads than he. But though _fresh_ time may be carefully and wisely used, the _past_ time that has once been wasted can never be recovered or redeemed.

And as he worked hard day by day the time quickly flew by, the scholarship examination took place, and the Christmas holidays came on. The result of the competition could not be known until the boys returned to school.

Mrs Kenrick thought that this Christmas was the happiest she had known. They spent it, of course, very quietly. There were for them none of those happy family gatherings and innocent gaieties that made the time so bright for others, yet still there was something peaceful and something brighter than usual about them. Harry's manner, she thought, was more affectionate, more tenderly respectful, than it often was. There seemed to be something softer and more lovable about his ways. He bore himself with less haughty indifference towards the Fuzbeians; he entered with more zest into such simple amusements as he could invent or procure; he condescended to play quite simply with the curate's little boys, and seemed to be more humble and more contented. She counted the days he spent with her as a miser counts his gold; and he, when he left her, seemed more sorry to leave, and tried to cheer her spirits, and did not make so light, as his wont had been, of the grief which the separation caused.

The first event of importance on the return of the boys to school, was the announcement of the scholarship. The list was read from the last name upwards; Henderson stood sixth, Kenrick third, Evson second, _Power first_. "But," said Dr Lane, "Power has communicated to me privately that he does not wish to receive the emoluments of the scholarship, he will therefore be _honorary_ scholar, while the scholarship itself will be held by Evson."

Disappointed at the result, as he undoubtedly was, yet Kenrick would have been glad at that moment to be able to congratulate Walter. He took it very quietly and well. Sorrow and failure had come on him so often lately, that he hardly looked for anything else; so, when he had heard the result announced, he tried to repress every melancholy thought and walking back to his study, resumed his day's work as though nothing had happened.

And as he sat there, making believe to work, but with thoughts which, in spite of himself, sadly wandered, there was a knock at the door, and to his great joy, no less than to his intense surprise, Walter Evson entered.

"O Evson," he said, blushing with awkwardness, as he remembered how long a time had passed since they had exchanged a word; "I'm glad you've come. Sit down. Let me congratulate you."

"Thanks, Kenrick," said Walter, holding out his hand; "I thought we had gone on in this way long enough. I have never had any ill-feeling for you, and I feel sure now from your manner that you have none towards me."

"None, Walter, none; I _had_ at one time, but it has long ceased; my error has long been explained to me. I have done you wrong, Walter, for two years and more; it has been one of my many faults, and the chief cause of them all. Can you forgive me?"

"Heartily, Ken, if I have anything to forgive. We have both been punished enough, I think, in losing the happiness which we should have been enjoying if we had continued friends."

"Ah, Walter, it pains me to think of that irrevocable past."

"But, Ken, I have come now for a definite purpose," said Walter. "You'll promise me not to take offence?"

"Never again, Walter, with you."

"Well, then, tell me honestly, was it of any consequence to you to gain this scholarship, in which, so unexpectedly to myself, some accident has placed me above you?"

Kenrick reddened slightly, and made no answer, while Walter quickly continued--"You know, Ken, that I am going to stay here another year; are you?"

"I'm afraid not; my guardian does not think that we can afford it."

"Well, then, Ken, I think I may say, without much presumption, that, as I stay here for certain, I may safely reckon on getting a scholarship next year. At any rate, even if I don't, my father is quite rich enough to bear my university expenses unaided without any inconvenience. It would be mere selfishness in me, therefore, to retain this scholarship, and I mean to resign it at once; so that let me now congratulate _you_ heartily on being Marsden scholar."

"Nay, Walter, I can't have you make this sacrifice for my sake."

"You can't help it, Ken; for this is a free country," said Walter, smiling, "and I may waive a scholarship if I like. But it's no sacrifice whatever, my dear fellow; don't say anything more about it. It gives me ten times the pleasure that you should hold it rather than I. So again I congratulate you; and now, as you must have had enough of me, I'll say good morning."

He rose with a smile to leave the room, but Kenrick, seizing him by the hand, exclaimed--

"O Walter, you heap coals of fire on my head. Am I never to receive anything from you but benefits which I can never return?"

"Pooh, Ken, there are no benefits between friends; only let us not be silent and distant friends any longer. Power is coming into my study to tea to-night; won't you join us as in old days?"

"I will, Walter; but can the ghost of old days be called to life?"

"Perhaps not; but the young present, which is no ghost, shall replace the old past, Ken. At six o'clock, mind. Good-bye."

"Don't go yet: do stay a little. It is a greater pleasure than I can tell you to see you here again, Walter. I want to have a talk with you."

"To make up for two years' arrears, eh, Ken? Why, what a pretty little study you've got! Isn't it odd that I should never have been in it before? It seems quite natural to me to be here, somehow. You must come and see mine this evening; I flatter myself it equals even Power's, and beats Flip's in beauty, and looks out on the sea: such a jolly view. But you mustn't see it till this evening. I shall make Charlie put it to rights in honour of your visit. Charlie beats any fag for neatness; why did you turn him off, eh? I've made him my fag now, to keep his hand in."

"Let him come back to me now, Walter; I'm sadder and wiser since those days."

"That I will, gladly. I know, too, that he'll be delighted to come. Ah, Wilton's photograph, I see," said Walter, still looking about him, "I thought him greatly improved before he left."

Kenrick was pleased to see that Walter had no suspicion _why_ he left, so that the secret had been kept. They talked on very, very pleasantly, for they had much to say to each other, and Walter had, by his simple, easy manner, completely broken the ice, and made Kenrick feel at home with him again. Kenrick was quite loth to let him go, and kept detaining him so eagerly that more than half an hour, which seemed like ten minutes, had slipped away before he left. Kenrick looked forward eagerly to meet him again in the evening, with Power, and Henderson, and Eden; their meeting would fitly inaugurate his return to the better feelings of past days; but it was not destined that the meeting should take place; nor was it till many evenings afterwards that Kenrick sat once more in the pleasant society of his old friends.

When Walter had at last made good his escape, playfully refusing to be imprisoned any longer, Kenrick rose and paced the room. He could hardly believe his own happiness; it was the most delightful moment he had experienced for many a long day; the scholarship, so long the object of his hope and ambition, was now attained; impossible as it had seemed, it was actually his, and, at the same moment, the truest friend of his boyhood--the friend for whose returning respect and affection he so long had yearned--was at last restored to him.

With an overflowing heart he sat down to write to his mother, and communicate the good news that he was reconciled to Walter, and that Power and Walter had resigned the scholarship in his favour. He had never felt in happier spirits than just then; and then, even at the same moment, the cup of sincere and innocent joy, so long untasted, was, with one blow, dashed away from his lip.

For at that moment the post came in, and one of his fags, humming a lively tune, came running with a letter to his door.

"A letter for you, Kenrick," the boy said, throwing it carelessly on the table, and taking up his merry song as he left the room. But Kenrick's eyes were riveted on the letter: it was edged with the deepest black, and bore the Fuzby post-mark. For a time he sat stupidly staring at it: he dared not open it.

At length he made an effort, and tore it open. It was a rude, blurred scrawl from their old servant, telling him that his mother had died the day before. A brief note enclosed in this, from the curate of the place, said, "It is quite true, my poor boy. Your mother died very suddenly of spasms in the heart. God's ways are not as our ways. I have written to tell your guardian, and he will no doubt meet you here."

Kenrick remained stupefied, unable to think, almost unable to comprehend. He was roused to his senses by the entrance of his fag to remove his breakfast things, which still lay on the table; and with a vague longing for some comfort and sympathy, he sent the boy to Walter with the message that Kenrick wanted him.

Walter came at once, and Kenrick, not trusting his voice to speak, pushed over to him the letter which contained the fatal news. In such a case human consolation cannot reach the sorrow. It passes like the idle wind over the wounded heart. All that _could_ be done by words, and looks, and acts of sympathy Walter did; and then went to arrange for Kenrick's immediate journey, not returning till he came to tell him that a carriage was waiting to take him to the train.

That evening Kenrick reached the house of death, which was still as death itself. The old faithful servant opened the door to his knock, and using her apron to wipe her eyes, which were red with long weeping, she exclaimed--

"O Master Harry, Master Harry, she's gone. She had been reading and praying in her room, and then she came down to me quite bright and cheerful, when the spasms took her, and I helped her to bed, and she died."

Harry flung down his hat in the hall, and rushed up stairs to his mother's room, but when he had opened the door, he stood awe-struck and motionless--for he was alone in the presence of the dead.

The light of winter sunset was streaming over her, whose life had been a winter day. Never even in life had he seen her so lovely, so beautiful with the beauty of an angel, as now with the smiling never-broken calm of death upon her. Over the pure pale face, from which every wrinkle made by care and sorrow had vanished, streamed the last cold radiance of evening, Illuminating the peaceful smile, and seeming to linger lovingly as it lit up strange glories in the golden hair, smoothed in soft bands over her brow. There she lay with her hands folded, as though in prayer, upon her quiet breast; and the fitful fever of life had passed away. Dead--with the smile of heaven upon her lips, which should never leave them more!

Hers had been a hard, mysterious life. In all the sweet bloom of her youthful beauty she had left her rich home, not, indeed, without the sanction, but against the wishes of her relatives, to brave trial and poverty with the man she loved. How bitter that poverty, how severe, how unexpected those trials had proved to be, we have seen already; and then, still young, as though she were meant to tread with her tender feet the whole thorny round of human sorrow, she had been left a widow with an only son. And during the eight years of her widowed loneliness, her relatives had neglected with cold pride both her and her orphan boy; even that orphan boy, in the midst of all his love for her, had by his pride and waywardness caused her many an anxious hour and many an aching heart, yet she clung to him with an affection whose yearning depth no tongue can utter. And now, still young, she had died suddenly, and left him on the threshold of dangerous youth almost without a friend in the wide world; had passed, with a silence which could never more be broken, into the eternal world; had left him, whom she loved with such intensity of unspeakable affection, without a word, without a look, without a sign of farewell. She had passed away in a moment to the far-off untroubled shore, whence waving hands cannot be seen, and no sounds of farewell voices heard. How must that life expand in the unconceived glory of that new dawn--the life which on earth so little sunshine visited!

She was one of the most sweet, the most pure, the most unselfish, the most beautifully blameless of all God's children; and she had lived in hardship, in neglect, in anxiety, in calumny; she had lived among those mean and wretched villagers: an angel was among them, and they knew it not; she had tasted no other drink but the bitter waters of affliction; no hope had brightened, no love sustained, her earthly course. And now her young orphan son, his heart dead within him for anguish, his conscience tortured by remorse, was kneeling in that agony which no weak words can paint, was kneeling for the last time, _too late_, beside her corpse.

Truly life is a mystery, which the mind of man cannot fathom till the glory of eternal truth enlighten it!

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT.

THE STUPOR BROKEN.

The white stone, unfractured, ranks as most precious; The blue lily, unblemished, emits the finest fragrance; The heart, when it is harassed, finds no place of rest; The mind, in the midst of bitterness, thinks only of grief.

_The Sorrows of Han, a Chinese Tragedy_.

After these days Kenrick returned to Saint Winifred's, as he supposed, for the last time. His guardian, a stiff, unsympathising man, had informed him, that as his mother's annuity ceased with her life, there was very little left to support him. The sale, however, of the house at Fuzby, and the scholarship which he had just won, would serve to maintain him for a few years, and meanwhile his guardian would endeavour to secure for him a place in some merchant's office, where gradually he would be able to earn a livelihood.

It was a very different life from that which this fine, clever high-spirited boy had imagined for himself, and he looked forward to the prospect with settled despair. But he seemed now to regard himself as a victim of destiny, regretting nothing, and opposing nothing, and caring for nothing. He told Walter with bitter exaggeration "that he must _indeed_ thank him for giving up the scholarship, as he supposed that it had saved him from starvation. His guardian, who had a family of his own, didn't seem to care a straw for him; and he had no friend in the world besides."

And as, for days and weeks, he brooded over these gloomy thoughts and sad memories, he fell into a weary, broken, aimless kind of life. Many tried to comfort him, but they could not reach his sorrow; in their several ways his school friends did all they could to cheer him up, but they all failed. He grew moody, solitary, silent. Walter often sought him out, and talked in his lively, cheerful, happy strain; but even _his_ society Kenrick seemed to shun. He was in that morbid, unhealthy state when to meet others inspires a positive shrinking of mind. He seemed to have no pleasure except in shutting himself up in his study, and in taking long lonely walks. He performed his house duties mechanically, and by routine; when he read the lessons in chapel, his voice sounded as though it came from afar, like the voice of one who dreamed; he sat with his books before him for long hours, and made no progress, hardly knowing the page on which he was employed. In school, he sat listlessly playing with his pen, taking no notes, seeming as though he heard nothing, and was scarcely aware of what was going on. His friends could not guess what would come of it, but they grew afraid for him when they saw him mope thus inconsolably, and pine away without respite, till his eyes grew heavy, and his face pale and thin. He had changed all his ways; he seemed to have altered his very nature; he played no games, took no interest in anything, and dropped all his old pursuits. His work was quite spiritless, and he grew so absent that he forgot the commonest occupations of every day--living as in a waking sleep.

Power and Walter, in talking of him, often wondered whether it was the uncertainty of his future prospects which had thus affected him; and in the full belief that this must have something to do with his morbid melancholy, Power mentioned the matter to Dr Lane as soon as he had the opportunity.

Dr Lane had observed, with much pity, the depression which had fastened on Kenrick like a disease. He was not surprised to see him come back deeply affected; but if "the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts," its sorrows are usually short and transient, and he looked upon it as unnatural that Kenrick's grief should seem thus incurable, and that a young boy like him should thus refuse to be comforted. It was not long before he introduced the subject, while talking to Power after looking over his composition.

"Kenrick has just been here, Power," he said; "it pains me to see him so sadly altered. I can hardly get him to speak a word; all things seem equally indifferent to him, and his eyes look to me as though they were always ready to overflow with tears. What can we manage to do for him? Would not a little cheerful society brighten him up? We had him here the other day, but he did not speak once the whole evening. Can't even Henderson get him to smile somehow?"

"I'm afraid not, sir," said Power. "Henderson and Evson and I have all tried, but he seems to avoid seeing any one. It makes him ill at ease apparently. I am afraid, for one thing, that he is vexing himself about not being allowed to return, and about being sent into a merchant's office, which he detests."

"If that is all, there can be no difficulty about it," said the Doctor; "we have often kept deserving boys here, when funds failed, and I can easily assure his guardian, without his knowing of it, that the expense need not for a moment stand in the way of his return."

These generous acts are common at Saint Winifred's, for she is indeed an _alma mater_ to all her children; and since Kenrick had confided this

## particular sorrow to _Walter_, Walter undertook to remove it by telling

him that Dr Lane would persuade his guardian to let him return. Kenrick appeared glad of the news, as though it brought him a little relief, but it made no long change in his present ways.

Nor even did a still further piece of good fortune, when his guardian wrote and told him that, _on condition of his being sent to the University_, an unknown and anonymous friend had placed at his disposal 100 pounds a year, to be continued until such time as he was able to maintain himself; and that this generous gift would of course permit of his receiving the advantage of an Oxford training, and obviate the necessity of his entering an office, by clearing for him the way to one of the learned professions. This news stirred him up a little, and for a time--but not for long. He looked upon it all as destiny: he could not guess, he hardly tried to surmise, who the unknown friend could be. Nor did he know till years afterwards that the aid was given by the good and wealthy Sir Lawrence Power, at his son's earnest and generous request. For Power did this kind deed by stealth, and mentioned it to no one, not even to Walter; and Kenrick little thought when he told the good news to Power, and received his kind congratulations, that Power had known of it before he did himself. But still, in spite of all, Kenrick seemed sick at heart, and his life crept on in a sluggish course, like a river that loses its bright stream in the desert, and all whose silver runnels are choked up with dust and sand.

The fact was, that the blows of punishment had fallen on him so fast and so heavily that he felt crushed to the very earth. The expulsion of the reprobates with whom he had consorted, his degradation and censure, Wilton's theft and removal, the violent tension and revulsion of feeling caused by his awakened conscience, his confession, and the gnawing sense of shame, the failure of his ambition, and then his mother's death coming as the awful climax of the calamities he had undergone, and followed by the cold unfeeling harshness of his guardian, and the damping of his hopes--all these things had broken the boy's spirit utterly. Disgrace, and sorrow, and bereavement, and the stings of remorse, and the suffering of punishment--the forfeiture of a guilty past, and the gloom of a lonely future--these things unmanned him, bowed him down, poisoned his tranquillity of mind, unhinged every energy of his soul, seemed to dry up the very springs of life. The hand of man could not rouse him from the stupor caused by the chastisements of God.

But the rousing came at last, and in due time; and it all came from a very little matter--so slight a matter as a little puff of seaward air. A trivial accident, you will say; yes, one of those very trivial accidents that so often affect the destinies of a lifetime, and:

"Shape our ends, Rough-hew them how we will."

Kenrick, as usual, was walking along the top of the cliffs alone-- restless, aimless, and miserable--"mooning," as the boys would have called it--unable even to analyse his own thoughts, conscious only that it was folly in him to nurse this long-continued and hopeless melancholy, yet quite incapable of making the one strong effort which would have enabled him to throw it off. And in this mood he sat down near the cliff, thinking of nothing, but watching, with idle guesses as to their destination and history, the few vessels that passed by on the horizon. The evening was drawing-in, cold and windy; and suddenly remembering that he must be back by tea-time, he rose up to return. The motion displaced his straw hat, and the next moment the breeze had carried it a little way over the edge of the cliff, where it was caught in a low bush of tamarisk. It rested but a few feet below him, and the chalky front of the cliff was sufficiently rough to admit of his descent. He climbed to it, and had just succeeded in disengaging it with his foot, when before he had time to seize it, it again fell, and rolled down some thirty feet. Kenrick, finding that he had been able to get down with tolerable ease, determined to continue his descent in order to secure it. It never occurred to him that the hat was of no great importance, and that it would have been infinitely less trouble to walk home without it, and buy a new one, than to run the risk and encounter the trouble of his climb. However, he _did_ manage to reach it, and put it on with some satisfaction, when, as he was beginning to remount, a considerable mass of chalk crumbled away under his feet, and made him cling on with both hands to avoid being precipitated. He had been able to get down well enough, because, if the chalk slipped, he glided on safely with it, but in climbing up he was obliged to press his feet strongly downwards in order to gain his spring; and every time he did this, he found that the chalk kept giving way, exhausting him with futile efforts, filling his shoes with dust and pebbles, slipping into his clothes, and blinding his eyes. Every person who has climbed at all, whether in the Alps or elsewhere, knows that it is easy enough to get down places which it is almost impossible to mount again; and Kenrick, after many attempts, found that he had been most imprudent, and becoming seriously alarmed, was forced, when he had quite tired himself with fruitless exertions and had once or twice nearly fallen, to give up the attempt altogether, and do his best to secure another way of escape.

This was to climb down quite to the bottom of the cliff, and make his way, as best he could, over rocks and shingle round the bluff which shut in one side of the little bay on which he stood, and along the narrow line of beach, to Saint Winifred's head. This was possible sometimes, and he fancied that the tide was sufficiently far out to enable him to do it now. At any rate herein lay, so far as he saw, his only chance of safety.

Down the cliff then he climbed once more, and though it was some ninety feet high he found no difficulty in doing this, with care, till he came to a place where its surface was precipitous for a height of some ten feet, worn smooth by the beating of the waves. Holding with his hands to the edge, he let himself fall down this height, and found himself standing, a little shaken though unhurt, in a small pebbly bay or indentation of the shore formed by a curve in the line of cliffs, with a series of headlands and precipices trending away on one side far to his right, and with the Ness of Saint Winifred's reaching out to his left. Once round that headland he would be safe, and indeed if he once got beyond the little pebbly inlet where he stood, he hoped to find some place where he might scale the rocks, and so cross the promontory and get home.

There was no time to be lost, and he ran with all his speed over the loose stones towards the bluff, letting the unlucky straw hat drop on the shore, as it had no string, and it impeded him to be obliged to hold it on with one hand. Reaching the end of the shingle, he stumbled with difficulty over some scattered rocks slimy with ooze and seagrass, hoping with intense hope that when he rounded the projection of cliff, he would see a line of beach, narrow indeed, but still wide enough to allow of his running along it before the tide had come in, and reaching some part of Saint Winifred's Head which he might be able to scale by means of a sheep-path, or with the help of hands and knees. Very quickly he reached the corner, and hardly dared to look; but when he _did_ look, a glance showed him that but slender hope was left. At one spot the tide had already reached the foot of the cliffs; but if he could get to that spot while the water was yet sufficiently shallow to allow him to run through it, he trusted that he might yet be saved. The place was far-off, but he ran and ran; and ever as he ran the place seemed to get farther and farther, and his knees failed him for fatigue, as he sank at every step in the noisy and yielding mixture of sand and pebbles.

Reader, have you ever run a race with the sea? If not, accept the testimony of one who has had to do it more than once, that it is a very painful and exciting race. I ran it once successfully with one who, though we then escaped, has since been overtaken and swallowed up by the great dark waves of that other sea, whose tides are ever advancing upon us, and must sooner or later absorb us all--the great dark waves of Death. But to take your life in your hand, and run and to know that the sea is gaining upon you, and that, however great the speed with which fear wings your feet, your subtle hundred-handed enemy is intercepting you with its many deep inlets, and does not bate an instant's speed, or withhold itself a hair's-breadth for all your danger--is an awful thing to feel. And then to see that it _has_ intercepted you is worst of all; it is a moment not to be forgotten. And all this was what Kenrick had to undergo. He ran until he panted for breath, and stumbled for very weariness--but he was too late. A broad sheet of water now bathed the bases of the cliff, and the waves, as though angry with the opposing breeze, were leaping up with a frantic hiss, and deluging the rocks with sheets of spray and foam.

Experience had taught him with what speed and fury on that dangerous coast the treacherous tide came in. There was not a moment to spare, and as he flew back to the small shelter of the pebbly cove, the water was already gliding close to him, and stretching its arms like a hungry medusa round the seaweed-matted lumps of scattered rock over which he strode.

His face wetted with the salt dew, his brown hair scattered on the rising wind, he flew rather than ran once more to the place where he had descended, to renew the wild attempt to scale the cliff which seemed to afford him the only shadow of a hope. Yet a mere glance might have been enough to show him that this hope was vain. Both at that spot, and as far as he could see, the sheer base of the cliff offered him no place where it was possible to rest a foot, no place where he could mount three feet above the shingle. But his scrutiny brought home to him another appalling fact--namely, that the sea-mark, where the highest tide fringed its barriers with a triumphal wreath of hanging seaweed, and below which no foliage grew, was high up upon the cliff, far above his head.

It was too late to curse his rashness and folly, nor would he even try to face his frightful situation till he had thought of every conceivable means by which to escape. A friend of mine had, and I suppose still has, a pen-and-ink sketch which made one shudder to look at it. All that you see is a long sea-wall, apparently the side of some stone pier, so drawn as to give the impression of great height, and the top of it not visible in the picture; by the side of this ripples and plashes a long dark reach of sea water, lazily waving the weeds which it has planted in the crevices of stone, and extending, like the wall itself, farther than you can guess. The only living thing in the picture is a single spent, shaggy dog, its paws rested for a moment on a sort of hollow in the wall, and half its dripping body emergent from the dark water. It is staring up with a look of despondent exhaustion, yet mute appeal. The sketch powerfully recalls and typifies the exact position in which poor Kenrick: now found himself placed--before him the hungry, angry darkening sea, behind him the inaccessible bastions of forbidding cliff. It is a horrible predicament, and those can most thrillingly appreciate it who, like the author, have been in it themselves.

There was yet one thing, and one thing only, to be tried, and it was truly the refuge of desperation. Kenrick was an excellent swimmer; many a time in bathing at Saint Winifred's, even when he was a little boy, he had struck out boldly far into the bay, even as far as the huge tumbling red buoy, that spent its restless life in "ever climbing with the climbing wave." If he could swim for pleasure, could he not swim for life? It was true that the swim before him was, beyond all comparison, farther and more hazardous than he had ever dreamt of. But swimming is an art which inspires extraordinary confidence; it makes us fancy that drowning is impossible to us, because we cannot imagine ourselves so fatigued as to fail in keeping above water. Kenrick knew that the attempt was only one to be undertaken at dire extremity; but that extremity had now arrived, and it was literally the last chance that lay between him and--what he would not think of yet.

So, in the wintry air, with the strong wind blowing keenly and the red gleam of sunset already beginning to fail, he flung off his clothes on the damp beach, and as one who rushes on a forlorn hope in the teeth of an enemy, he ran down the rough uneven shore, hardly noticing how much it hurt his feet, and plunged boldly into the hideous yeast of seething waves. The cold made him shiver and shiver in every limb; his teeth chattered; he was afraid of cramp; the slimy seaweeds that his feet touched, the tangled and rotting string of sea-twine that waved about his legs, sent a strong shudder through him; and there was a sick clammy feeling about the frothy spume through which he had to plunge. But when he had once ploughed his way through all this, and was fairly out of his depth, the exercise warmed him, and he rose with a swimmer's triumphant motion over the yielding waves. On and on he swam, thinking only of that, not looking before him; but when he began to feel quite tired, and _did_ look, he saw that he was not nearly halfway to the headland. He saw, too, how the breakers were lashing and fighting with the iron shore which he was madly striving to reach. Even if he could swim so far--and he now _felt_ that he could not--how could he ever land at such a spot? Would not one of those billows toss him up in its playful spray, and dash him as it dashed its own unpitied offspring, dead upon the rocks? And as this conviction dawned on him, withering all his energy of heart, the wind wailed over him, the water bubbled in his ears, and the sea-mew, napping as it flew past him, uttered above his head its plaintive scream. His heart sank within him. With a quick motion he turned in the water, and with arms wearied-out he swam back again, as for dear life, towards the little landing-place which alone divided him from instant death; struggling on heavily, with limbs so weary that he could barely move them through the waves, whose increasing swell often broke around his head. Already the tide had reached the spot where he had let his straw hat drop on the beach; the sea was scornfully playing with it, tossing it up and down, whirling it round and round like a feather; the wind blew it to the sea, and the sea, receiving no gifts from an enemy, flung it back again; but the wind carried the day, and while Kenrick was wringing the brine out of his dripping hair, and huddling his clothes again over his wet, benumbed, and aching limbs, he saw the straw hat fairly launched, and floating away over the waves.

And then it was that, as the vision of sudden death glared out before his eyes, and the horror of it leapt upon him, that a scream--a loud, wild, echoing scream, which sounded strange in that lonely place, and rose above the rude song that the wind was now singing,--broke from his blanched lips. And another, and another, and then silence; for Kenrick was now crouching at the cliff's foot furthest off from the swelling flood, with his eyes fixed motionless in a wild stare on its advancing line of foam. He was conjuring up before his imagination the time when those waves should have reached him; should have swept him away from the shelter of the shore, or risen above his lips; should have forced him again to struggle and swim, until his strength, already impaired by hunger, and thirst, and cold, and fatigue, should have failed him altogether, and he would sink, and the water gurgle wildly in his ears, and stop his breath--and all would be still. And when he had pictured this scene to himself with a vividness which made him experience all its agony, for a time his mind flew back through all the faultful past up to that very day; memory lighted her lantern, and threw its blaze on every dark corner, on every hidden recess, every forgotten nook--left no spot unsearched, unilluminated with sudden flash; all his past sins were before him, words, looks, thoughts, everything. As when a man descends with a light in his diving-bell into the heaving sea, the strange monsters of the deep, attracted by the unknown glimmer, throng and wallow terribly around him, so did uncouth thoughts and forgotten sins welter in fearful multitudes round this light of memory in the deep sea of that poor human soul. And finally, as though in demon voices, came this message whispered to him, touted to him tauntingly, rising and falling with maddening alternation on the rising and falling of the wind--"You have been wasting your life, moodily abandoning yourself to idle misery, neglecting your duties, letting your talents rust--_God will take from you the life you know not how to use_." And then, as though in answer to this, another voice, low, soft, sweet, that his heart knew well--another voice filling the interspaces of the others with unseen music, whispered to him soothingly--"It shall be given you again, use it better; awake, use it better, _it shall be given you again_."

Those three wild shrieks of his had been heard; he did not know it, but they had been heard. The whole coast was in general so lonely that you could usually pace it for miles without meeting a single human being, and it never even occurred to him that some one might pass that way. But it so happened that the boisterous weather of the last few days had cast away a schooner at a place some five miles from Saint Winifred's, and Walter Evson had walked with Charlie to see the wreck, and was returning along the cliff. As they passed the spot where Kenrick was, they had been first startled and then horrified by those shrieks, and while they stood listening another came to their ears, more piercing, more heart-rending than the rest.

"Good heavens! there _must_ be some one down there!" exclaimed Walter.

"Why, how could any one have got there?" asked Charlie.

"Well, but didn't you hear some one scream?"

"Yes, several times. O Walter, do look here!" Charlie pointed to the traces on the cliff showing that some one had descended there.

"Who could have wanted to get down _there_, I wonder; and for what possible purpose?"

"Do you see any one, Walter?"

"No, I don't; there's nothing but the sea"--for Kenrick, crouching under the cliff, was hidden from sight, and now the tide had come up so far that, from the summit, none of the shingle was visible--"but what's that?"

"Why, Walter, _it's a straw hat_; it must be one of our fellows down there; I see the ribbon distinctly, dark blue and white, twisted together."

"_Dark blue and white_! why, then, it must be some one in the football eleven: Charlie, it must be Kenrick! Heavens, what can have happened?"

"Kenrick!" they both shouted at the top of their voices.

But the cliff was high, and the wind, momently rising to a blast, swept away their shouts, and although Kenrick might have heard them distinctly under ordinary circumstances, they now only mingled with, and gave new form and body to, the wild madness which terror was beginning to kindle in his brain. So they shouted, and no answer came.

"No answer comes, Charlie; but there's someone down there as sure as we are here," said Walter. Charlie had already begun to try and descend the face of the cliff. "Stop, stop, Charlie," said Walter, seizing him and dragging him up again, "you mustn't try that--nay, Charlie, you really _must not_. If it's possible _I_ will." He tried, but three minutes showed him that, however practicable a descent might be, an ascent afterwards would be wholly beyond his power. Besides, if he did descend, what could he do? Clearly nothing; and with another plan in view, he with difficulty reached his former position.

"Nothing to be done that way, Charlie." At that moment another cry came, for Kenrick, in a momentary lull of the wind, had fancied that he had heard sounds and voices other than those of his perturbed and agitated fancy. "Ha! you heard that?" said Walter, and he shouted again, but no sound was returned.

"We must fly to Saint Winifred's, Charlie; there's a boy down on the shore beyond a doubt. You stay behind, if you like, for you can't run as fast as me. I'm afraid, though, it's not the least good. Saint Winifred's is three miles from here, and long before I've got help and come three miles back, it's clear that no one can be alive down there; still we must try," and he was starting when Charlie seized his arm.

"Don't you remember, Walter, the hut at Bryce's cove? There's an old boat there, and it's a mile and a half nearer than Saint Win's."

"_Capital_ boy, Charlie," said Walter; "how good of you to think of it; it's the very thing. Come."

They flew along at full speed, Walter taking Charlie's hand, and saying, "Never mind stretching your legs for once, even if you _are_ tired. How well you run! we shall be there in no time."

They gained the cove, flew down the steep narrow path, and reached the hut door. Their summons was answered only by the furious barking of a dog. No one was in.

"Never mind: there's the boat; we must take French leave;" and Walter, springing down, hastily unmoored it.

"Wah! what a horrid old tub, and it wants baling, Walter."

"We can't stay for that, Charlie boy; it's a good thing that Semlyn Lake has taught us both to row, isn't it?"

"O yes; don't you wish we had the little _Pearl_ here now, Walter? Wouldn't we make it fly, instead of this cranky old wretch."

"Well, we must fancy that this is the _Pearl_ and this Semlyn Lake," said Walter, wading up to the knees to launch the boat, and springing in when he had given it the final shove.

They were excellent rowers, but Charlie had never tried his skill in a sea like that, and was timid, for which there was every excuse.

"How very rough it is, Walter," he said, as the boat tossed up and down like an egg-shell on the high waves.

"Keep up your heart, Charlie, and row steadily; don't be afraid."

"No, Walter, I won't, as you're with me; but--Walter?"

"Well?"

"It'll be dark in half an hour."

"Not quite, and we shall be there by that time; we needn't go far out, and the tide's with us." So the two brave brothers rowed steadily on, with only one more remark from Charlie, ushered in by the word--

"Walter?"

"Anything more to frighten me with, Charlie?" he answered cheerily; "you shan't succeed."

"Well, Walter," he answered, with a little touch of shame, "I was only going to say that, if you look, you'll see that your oar's been broken, and is only spliced together."

"I've seen it all along, Charlie, and will use the oar gingerly; and now, Charlie, I see you're a little frightened, my boy. I'm going to brace you up. Rest on your oar a minute."

He did so. "Now turn round and _look_."

He pointed with his finger to a dark figure, now distinctly seen, cowering low at the white cliff's foot.

"O Walter, I'm ready; I won't say a word more;" and he leant to his oar, and plied it like a man.

It is a pretty, a delightful thing, in idle summer-time to lie at full length upon the beach on some ambrosial summer evening, when a glow floats over the water, whose calm surface is tenderly rippled with gold and blue. And while the children play beside you, dabbling and paddling in the wavelets, and digging up the ridges of yellow sand, which take the print of their pattering footsteps, nothing is more pleasant than to let the transparent stream of the quiet tide plash musically with its light and motion to your very feet; nothing more pleasant than to listen to its silken murmurs, and to watch it flow upwards with its beneficent coolness, and take possession of the shore. But it is a very different thing when there rises behind you a wall of frowning cliff, precipitous, inaccessible, affording no hope of refuge; and when, for the golden calm of summer eventide, you have the cheerless drawing-in of a loud and stormy February night; and when you have the furious hissing violence of rock-and-wind-struck breakers for the violet-coloured margin of rippling waves--knowing that the wind is wailing forth your requiem, and that, with the fall of every breaker, unseen hands are ringing your knell of death.

The boy crouched there, his face white as the cliffs above him, his undried limbs almost powerless for cold, and his clothes wetted through and through with spray--pushing aside every moment the dripping locks of hair which the wind scattered over his forehead, that he might look with hollow, staring eyes on the Death which was advancing towards him, wrapping him already in its huge mantle-folds, calling aloud to him, beckoning him, freezing him to the very bone with the touch of its icy hands.

And the brutal tide coming on, according to the pitiless irreversible certainty of the fixed laws that governed it--coming on like a huge wallowing monster, dumb and blind--knew not, and recked not, of the young life that quivered on the verge of its advance--that it was about to devour remorselessly, with no wrath to satiate, with no hunger to appease. None the less for the boy's presence, unregardful of his growing horror and wild suspense, it continued its uncouth play--leaping about the rocks, springing upwards and stretching high hands to pluck down the cliffs, seeming to laugh as it fell back shattered and exhausted, but unsubdued; charging up sometimes like a herd of white horses, bounding one over the other, shaking their foaming manes-- hissing sometimes like a brood of huge sea-serpents, as it insinuated it winding streams among the boulders of the shore.

It might have seemed to be in sport with _him_ as it ran first up to his feet, and playfully splashed him, as a bather might splash a person on the shore from head to heel, and then ran back again for a moment, and then up again a little farther, till, as he sat on the extreme line of the shore and with his back huddled up close against the cliff, it first wetted the soles of his feet, and then was over his shoes, then ankle-deep, then knee deep, then to the waist. Already it seemed to buoy him up; he knew that in a few moments more he would be forced to swim, and the last struggle would commence.

His brain was dull, his senses blunted, his mind half-idiotic, when first (for his eyes had been fixed downwards on the growing, encroaching waters) he caught a glimpse, in the failing daylight, of the black outline of a boat, not twenty yards from him, and caught the sound of its plashing oars. He stared eagerly at it, and just as it came beside him he lost all his strength, uttered a faint cry, and slipped down fainting into the waves.

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE.

ON THE DARK SEA.

Boys Leaning upon their oars, with splash and strain, Made white with foam the green and purple sea.

Shelley.

In a moment Walter's strong arms had caught him, and lifted him tenderly into the boat. While the waves tossed them up and down they placed him at full length as comfortably as they could,--which was not very comfortably--and though his clothes were streaming with salt water, and his fainting fit still continued, they began at once to row home. For, by this time, it was dim twilight; the wind was blowing great guns, the clouds were full of dark wrath, and the stormy billows rose higher and higher. There was no time to spare, and it would be as much as they could do to provide for their own safety. The tide was already bumping them against the cliff at the place where, just in time, they had rescued Kenrick, and, in order to get themselves fairly off, Walter, forgetting for a moment, pushed out his oar and pressed against the cliff. The damaged oar was weak enough already, and instantly Walter saw that his vigorous shove had weakened and displaced the old splicing of the blade. Charlie too observed it, but neither of them spoke a word; on the contrary, the little boy was at his place, oar in rowlock, and immediately smote lightly and in good time the surface of the water, splashed it into white foam, and pulled with gallant strokes.

They made but little way; the waves pitched them so high and dropped them with such a heavy fall between their rolling troughs, that rowing became almost impossible, and the miserable old boat shipped quantities of water. At last, after a stronger pull than usual, Walter's oar creaked, snapped, and gave way, flinging him on his back. The loosened twine with which it had been spliced was half rotten with age; it broke in several places, the oar blade fell off and floated away, and Walter was left holding in both hands a broken and futile stump.

"My God, it is all over with us!" was the wild cry that the sudden and awful misfortune wrung from his lips; while Charlie, shipping his now useless oar, clung round his brother's neck and cried aloud. The three boys--one of them faint, exhausted, and speechless--were in an unsafe and oarless boat on the open tempestuous sea, weltering hopelessly at the cruel mercy of winds and waves; a current was sweeping them they knew not whither, and the wind, howling like a hurricane, was driving them farther and farther away from land.

"O Walter, I can't die, I can't die yet; and not out on this black sea, away from every one."

"From every one but God, Charlie; and I am with you. Cheer up, little brother, God will not desert us."

"O Walter, pray to God for you and me and Kenrick | pray to Him for life."

"We will both pray, Charlie;" and folding his arms round him, for now that the rowing was over and there was nothing left to do, the little boy was frightened at the increasing gloom, Walter, calm even at that wild moment, with the calm of a clear conscience and a noble heart, poured forth his soul in words of supplication, while Charlie, his voice half stifled with tears, sobbed out a terrified response and echo to his prayer.

And after the prayer Walter's heart was lightened and his spirit strengthened, till he felt ready in himself to meet anything and brave any fate; but his soul ached with pity for his little brother and for his friend. It was his duty to cheer them both and do what could be done. Kenrick had so far recovered as to move and say a few words, and the brothers were by his side in a moment.

"You have saved my life, Walter, when I had given it up; saved it, I hope, to some purpose this time," he whispered, unconscious as yet of his position; and he dragged up his feet out of the pool of water in which they were lying at the bottom of the boat. But gradually the situation dawned upon him. "How is it you're not rowing?" he asked; "are you tired? let _me_ try, I think I could manage."

"It would be of no use, Ken," said Walter; "I mean that we can't row," and he pointed to the broken oar.

"Then you have saved me at the risk, perhaps at the cost, of your own lives. O you noble, noble Walter!" said Kenrick, the tears gushing from his eyes. "How awfully terrible this is! I seem to be snatched from death to death. Life and death are battling for me to-night; yes, eternal life and death too," he whispered in Walter's ear, catching him by the wrist. "All this danger is for me, Walter, and for my sin. I am like Jonah in the ship; I have been buffeting death away for hours, but he has been sent for me, he must do his mission. I see that _I_ cannot escape, but, O God, I hope that _you_ will escape, Walter. Your life and Charlie's must not be spilt for mine."

It was barely light enough to see his face, but it looked wild and haggard in the ragged gleams of moonlight which the black flitting clouds suffered to break forth at intervals; and his words, after this, were too incoherent to understand. Walter saw that the long intensity of fear had rendered him half delirious and not master of himself. Soon after he sank into a stupor, half sleep, half exhaustion, and even the lurching of the boat did not rouse him any more.

"Walter, he's asleep, or--oh! is he dead, Walter?" asked Charlie, in horror.

"No, no, Charlie; there, put your hand upon his heart. You see it beats; he is only exhausted, and in a sort of swoon."

"But he will be pitched over, Walter."

"Then I'll show you what we'll do, Charlie. We must make the best of everything." Walter lifted up the useless rudder, pulled out the string of it to lash Kenrick safely to the stern bench by which he lay, and took off his own coat in order to cover him up that he might sleep; and then, anxious above all things to relieve Charlie's terror, the unselfish boy, thinking only of others, sat beside him on the centre bench, and encircled him with a protecting arm. And, as though to increase their misery, the cold rain began to fall in torrents.

"O Walter, it's so cold, and wet, and stormy, and pitch dark. I'm frightened, Walter. I try not to be, but I can't help it. Take me on your knees and pray for us again."

Walter took him on his knees, and laid his head against his own breast, and folded him in his arms, and wiped his tears; and the little boy's sobs ceased as Walter's voice rose once more in a strain of intense prayer.

"Walter, God _must_ grant that prayer; I'm sure He must; He can't reject it," said Charlie simply.

"He will answer it in the way best for us, Charlie; whatever that is."

"But shall we die?" asked his brother again, with a cold shudder at the word.

"Remember what you said just now, Charlie, and be brave. But even if we were to die, could we die better, little brother, than in doing our duty, and trying to save dear Ken's life? It isn't such a terrible thing, Charlie, after all. We must all die some time, you know, and boys have died as young and younger than you or me."

"Ay, but not like this, Walter: out in these icy, black, horrid waters."

"Yes, they have indeed, Charlie; little friendless sailor-boys dashed on far-away rocks that splintered their ships to atoms, or swallowed up when their vessel foundered in great typhoons, thousands of miles away from home and England, in unknown seas; little boys like you, Charlie; and they have died bravely, too, though no living soul was near them to hear their cries, and nothing to mark their graves but the bubble for one minute while they sank."

"Have they, Walter?"

"Ay, many and many a time they have; and the same God Who called for their lives gave them courage and strength to die, as He will give us if there is need."

There was a pause, and then Charlie said, "Talk to me, Walter; it prevents my listening to the flapping and plunging of the boat, and all the other noises. Walter, I think... I think we shall die."

"Courage, brother, I have hope yet; and if we die we will die like this together--I will not let you go. Our bodies shall be washed ashore together--not separated, Charlie, even in death."

"You have been a dear, dear good brother to me. How I love you, Walter!" and as he pressed yet closer to him, he said more bravely, "What hope have you then, Walter?"

"Look up, Charlie; you see that light?"

"Yes; what is it?"

"Sharksfin Lighthouse; don't you remember seeing it sometimes at night from Saint Win's? Yes; and those lights twinkling far-off are Saint Win's. Those must be the school lights; and those long windows you can just see are the chapel windows. They are in chapel now, or the lights wouldn't be there. Perhaps some of our friends--Power, perhaps, and Eden--are praying for us; they must have missed us since tea-time."

"How I wish we were with them!"

"Perhaps we may be again; and all the wiser and better in heart and life for this solemn time, Charlie. If we are but carried by this wind and current within hearing of the lighthouse!"

The Sharksfin Lighthouse is built on a sharp high rock two miles out at sea. I have watched it from Bleak Point on a bright, warm summer's day, when the promontory around me was all ablaze with purple heather and golden gorse, and there was not breeze enough to shake the wing of the butterfly as it rested on the blue-bell, or disturb the honey-laden bee as it murmured in the thyme. Yet even then the waters were seething and boiling in never-ended tumult about those hideous sunken rocks; and the ocean all around was hoary as with the neesings of a thousand leviathans floundering in its monstrous depths. You may guess what they are on a wild February night--how, in the mighty rush of the Atlantic, the torn breakers beat about them with tremendous rage, till the whole sea is in angry motion like some demon caldron that seethes over roaring flame.

Drifting along, or rather flung and battered about on the current, they passed within near sight of the lighthouse, and they might have thanked God that they passed no nearer, for to have passed nearer would have been certain death. The white waves dashed over it, enveloped its tall strong pillar that buffeted them back, like a noble will in the midst of calumny and persecution; _they_ fell back hissing and discomfited, and could not dim its silver or quench its flame but _it_ glowed on with steady lustre in the midst of them--flung its victorious path of splendour over their raging motion, warned from the sunken reef the weary mariner, and looked forth untroubled with its broad, calm eye into the madness and fury of the tempest-haunted night.

Through this broad track of light the boat was driven, and Walter shouted at the top of his voice with all his remaining strength. The three men in the lighthouse fancied indeed, as they acknowledged afterwards, that they had heard some shouts; but strange, mysterious, inarticulate voices are often borne upon the wind, and haunt always the lonely wastes of foamy sea. The lighthouse men had often heard these unexplained wailings and weird screams. Many a time they had looked out, and been so continually deceived, that unless human accents were unmistakable and well-defined, they attribute these sounds to other agencies, or to the secret phenomena of the worst storms. And even if they _had_ heard, what could they have done, or how have launched their boat when the billows were running mountain-high about their perilous rock?

Charlie had been quiet for a long time, his face hidden on Walter's shoulder; but he had seen the glare which the light threw across the waves, and had observed that they had gradually been driven through it into the blackness again, and he asked, "Have we passed the lighthouse, Walter?"

"We have."

"Oh, I am so hungry and burning with thirst! Oh! what shall we do?"

"Try not to think about it, Charlie; a little fasting won't hurt us much."

Another long pause, during which they clung more closely to each other, and their hearts beat side by side, and then Charlie said, in a barely articulate whisper--

"Walter!"

"I know what you are going to say, Charlie."

"The water in the boat is nearly up to my knees."

"We have shipped a great deal, you know."

"Yes; and besides that--"

"Yes, it is true; there is a leak. Do you mind my putting you down and trying what I can do to bail the water out?"

"O Walter, don't put me off your knee--don't let go of me."

"Very well, Charlie; it wouldn't be of much use."

"Good God!" cried the little boy in a paroxysm of agony, "we are sinking--we are foundering!"

They wound their arms round each other, and Walter said, "It is even so, my darling brother. Death is near, but God is with us; and if it is death, then death means rest and heaven. Good-bye, Charlie, good-bye; we will be close together till the end."

CHAPTER FORTY.

WHAT THE SEA GAVE UP.

The sands and yeasty surges mix At midnight in a dreary bay;-- And on thy ribs the limpet sticks, And o'er thy bones the scrawl shall play.

Tennyson.

Anxiety reigned at Saint Winifred's, succeeded by consternation and intense grief. Little was thought of the absence of the three boys at tea-time, but when it came to chapel-time and bed-time, and they had not yet appeared, and when next morning it was found that they had not been heard of during the night, everyone became seriously alarmed, and all the neighbouring country was searched for intelligence.

The place on the cliff where Kenrick had descended was observed, but as the traces showed that only _one_ boy had gone down there, the discovery, so far from explaining matters, only rendered them more inexplicable. Additional light was thrown on the subject by the disappearance of Bryce's boat, and the worst fears seemed to be confirmed by his information that it was a ricketty old concern, only intended to paddle in smooth weather close to the shore. But what earthly reason could have induced three boys to venture out in such a tub on so wild a night? That they did it for pleasure was inconceivable, the more so as rowing was strictly forbidden; and as no other reason could be suggested, all conjecture was at fault.

The fishermen went out in their smacks, but found no traces, and gained no tidings of the missing boys; and all through that weary and anxious day the belief that they had been lost at sea gained ground. Almost all day Power, and Eden, and Henderson, had been gazing out to sea, or wandering on the shore, in the vain hope of seeing them come rowing across the bay; but all the sailors on the shore affirmed that if they _had_ gone out in an open boat, and particularly in Bryce's boat, it was an utter impossibility that they could have outlived the tempest of the preceding night.

At last, towards the evening, the sea gave up, not indeed her dead, but what was accepted as a positive proof of their wretched fate. Henderson, who was in a fever of excitement, which Power vainly strove to allay, was walking with him and Eden, who was hardly less troubled, along the beach, when he caught sight of something floating along, rising and falling on the dumb sullen swell of the advancing tide. He thought and declared at first, with a start of horror, that it was the light hair of a drowned boy; but they very soon saw that it could not be that, and dashing in waist-deep after it, Henderson brought out _the torn and battered fragments of a straw hat_. The ribbon, of dark blue and white, though soaked and discoloured, still served to identify it as having belonged to a Saint Winifred's boy; and, carefully examining the flannel lining, they saw on a piece of linen sewn upon it--only too legible still--the name "H. Kenrick." Nor was this all they found. The discovery had quickened their search, and soon afterwards Power, with a sudden suppressed cry, pointed to something black, lying, with a dreadful look about it, at a far part of the sand. Again their hearts grew cold, and running up to it they all recognised, with fresh horror and despair, _the coat which Walter had last worn_. They recognised it, but besides this, to place the matter beyond a doubt, his name was marked on the inside of the sleeve. In one of the pockets was his school notebook, with all the notes he had taken, and the playful caricatures which here and there he had scribbled over the pages; and in the other, stained with the salt water, and tearing at every touch, were the letters he had last received.

All the next day the doubt was growing into certainty. Mr and Mrs Evson were summoned from Semlyn, and came with feelings that cannot be depicted. Power gave to Mrs Evson the coat he had picked up, and he and Henderson hardly ever left the parents of their friend, doing all they could to cheer their spirits and support in them the hopes they could hardly feel themselves. To this day Mrs Evson cherishes that coat as a dear and sacred relic, which reminds her of the mercy which sustained her during the first great agony which she had endured in her happy life. Power kept poor Kenrick's hat, for no relation of his was there to claim it.

Another day dawned, and settled grief and gloom fell on all alike at Saint Winifred's--the boys, the masters, the inhabitants. The sight of Mr and Mrs Evson's speechless anguish impressed all hearts, and by this time hope seemed quenched for ever. For now one boy only,--though young hearts are slow to give up hope--had refused to believe the worst. It was Eden. He _persisted_ that the three boys must have been picked up. The belief had come upon him suddenly, and grown upon him he knew not how, but he was _sure_ of it; and therefore his society brought most relief and comfort to the torn heart of the mother. "What made him so confident?" she asked. He did not know; he had seen it, or dreamt it, or _felt_ it somehow, only he felt unalterably convinced that so it was. "They will come back, dear Mrs Evson, they will come back, you will see," was his repeated asseveration; and oppressed as her heart was with doubt and fear, she was never weary of those words.

And on the fourth day, while Mr Evson was absent, having gone to make enquiries in London of all the ships which had passed by Saint Winifred's on that day, Eden, radiant with joy, rushed into Dr Lane's drawing-room, where Mrs Evson was sitting, and utterly regardless of _les convenances_, burst out with the exclamation, "O Mrs Evson, it is true, it is true what I always told you. Didn't I say that I knew it? They _have_ been picked up."

"Hush, my boy; steady," whispered Mrs Lane; "you should have delivered the message less suddenly. The revulsion of feeling from sorrow to joy will be too much for her."

"O Eden, tell me," said the mother faintly, recalling her senses bewildered by the shock of intelligence; "are you certain? Oh, where are my boys?"

"You will see them soon," he said very gently; and the next moment, to confirm his words, the door again new open, and Charlie Evson was wrapped in his mother's arms, and strained to her heart, and covered with her kisses, and his bright young face bathed in her tears of gratitude and joy.

"Charlie, darling Charlie, where is Walter?" were her first words.

"What, don't you know me then, mother; and have you no kiss to spare for me?" said the playful voice of a boy enveloped in a sailor's blue shell-jacket; and then it was Walter's turn to feel in that long embrace what is the agonising fondness of a mother's love.

Kenrick was looking on a little sadly--not envious, but made sorrowful by memory. But the next moment Walter, taking him by the hand, had introduced him to his mother and she kissed him too on the cheek. "Your name is so familiar to me, Kenrick," she said; "and you have shared their dangers."

"Walter has twice saved my life, Mrs Evson," he answered, "and this time, I trust, he has saved it in more senses than one."

The boys' story was soon told. Just as their boat was beginning to sink, and the bitterness of death seemed over, Walter caught sight of the lights of a ship, and saw her huge dark outline looming not far from them, and towering above the waves. Instantly he and Charlie had shouted with all the frantic energy of reviving hope. By God's mercy their shouts had been heard; in spite of the risk and difficulty caused by the turbulence of the night, the ship hove to, the long-boat was manned, and the amazed sailors had rescued them not ten minutes before their wretched boat swirled round and sank to the bottom.

Nothing could exceed the care and tenderness with which the sailors and the good captain of the _Morning Star_ had treated them. The genial warmth of the captain's cabin, the food and wine of which they stood so much in need, the rest and quiet, and a long, long sleep, continued for nearly twenty-four hours, had recruited their failing strength, and restored them to perfect health. Past Saint Winifred's Bay extends for miles and miles a long range of iron-bound coast, and this circumstance, together with the violence of the breeze blowing away from land, had prevented the captain from having any opportunity of putting them ashore until the morning of this day, when, with kind-hearted liberality, he had also supplied them with the money requisite to pay their way to Saint Winifred's.

"You can't think how jolly it was on board, mother," said Charlie. "I've learnt all about ships, and it was such fun; and they were all as kind to us as possible."

"You mustn't suppose we didn't think of you, mother dearest," said Walter, "and how anxious you would be; but we felt sure you would believe that some ship had picked us up."

"Yes, Walter; and to taste this joy is worth any past sorrow," said his mother. "You must thank your friend Eden for mainly keeping up my spirits, for he was almost the only person who maintained that you were still alive."

"And now, Mrs Evson," said Power, "you must spare them for ten minutes, for the masters and all the school are impatient to see and congratulate them."

The whole story had spread among the boys in ten minutes, and they were again proud to recognise Walter's chivalrous daring. When he appeared in the blue jacket with which Captain Peters had replaced the loss of his coat, with Kenrick's arm in his, and holding Charlie's hand, cheer after cheer broke from the assembled boys; and finally, unable to repress their joy and enthusiasm, they lifted the three on their shoulders and chaired them all round the court.

You may suppose that it was a joyful dinner party that evening at Dr Lane's. Mr Evson, as they had conjectured, had heard of his son's safety in London from the captain of the _Morning Star_, to whom he had tendered his warmest and most grateful thanks, and to whom, before leaving London, he had presented, in testimony of his gratitude, an exquisite chronometer. Returning to Saint Winifred's he found his two boys seated happily in the drawing-room awaiting him, each with their mother's hand in theirs, and in the company of their best boy-friends. Walter was still in the blue shell-jacket, which became him well, and which neither Mrs Lane nor the boys would suffer him to change. It was indeed an evening never to be forgotten, and hardly less joyous and memorable was the grand breakfast which the Sixth gave to Walter and Kenrick in memory of the event, and to which, by special exception, little Charlie was also invited.

Rejoicings are good, but they were saved for greater and better things. These three young boys had stood face to face with sudden death. Death, as it were, had laid his hand on their shoulders, had taken them by the hair and looked upon them, and bade them commune with themselves; and, when he released them from that stern cold grasp, it gave to their lives an awful reality. It did not quench, indeed, their natural mirthfulness, but it filled them with strong purposes and high thoughts. Kenrick returned to Saint Winifred's a changed boy; long-continued terror had quite altered the expression of his countenance, but, while this effect soon wore off, the _moral_ effects produced in him were happily permanent. He began a life in earnest; for him there was no more listlessness, or moody fits of sorrow, or bursts of wayward self-indulgence. He became strenuous, diligent, modest, earnest, kind; he too, like Walter and Charlie, began his career "_from strength to strength_." Under him, and Power, and Walter, and others, whom their influence had formed or who had been moulded by the tradition they had left behind them, Saint Winifred's flourished more and more, and added new honours and benefits to its old and famous name. At the end of that half-year Power left, but not until he had won the Balliol Scholarship and carried off nearly all the prizes in the school. Walter succeeded him as head of the school; and he and Kenrick (who was restored to his old place on the list) worked heart and soul together for the good of it. In those days it was indeed in a happy and prosperous state-- renowned and honoured without, well governed and high toned within. Dr Lane felt and acknowledged that much of this success was due to the example and to the vigour of these head boys. Power, when he left, was beloved and distinguished; Walter and Kenrick trod in his steps. To the boundless delight of the school they too carried off in one year the highest open scholarship at each University; and when they also left, they had been as successful as Power, and were, if possible, even more universally beloved. Whalley carried on for another year the high tradition, and, in due time, little Charlie also attained the head place in the school, and so behaved as to identify his name and Walter's with some of its happiest and wisest institutions for many years.

CHAPTER FORTY ONE.

L'ENVOI.

Is not to-day enough? why do I peer Into the darkness of the day to come? Is not to-morrow e'en as yesterday?

Relics of Shelley.

May I not leave them here? Where could I leave them better than on this marble threshold of a promising boyhood; still happy and noble in the freshness of their feelings, the brightness of their hopes, the enthusiasm of their thoughts? Need I say a word of after-life, with the fading of its earlier visions, and the coldness and hardness of its ways? I should like to linger with them here; to shake hands here in farewell, and leave them as the boys I knew. They are living still, and are happy and highly honoured in the world. In their case "the boy has been father to the man;" and the reader who has understood and sympathised with them in their early life will not ask me to draw aside the curtain, even for a moment, to show them as they appeared when a few more summers had seen them grow to the full stature of their manhood.

I said that they were living still; but it is not so with all of them.

Charlie Evson alone, of the little band who have been amongst the number of our friends at Saint Winifred's--alone, though the youngest of them all--is now dead. He died a violent death. Filled with a missionary spirit, and desirous, like Edward Irving, of "something more high and heroical in religion than this age affecteth," he joined a mission to one of the great groups of Pacific Islands. And there, many a time, in the evening, after a day spent in teaching the natives how to plant their fields and build their houses, he would gather them round him in the twilight, and, while the cool wind wandered over his hair and brow, and shook overhead the graceful plumes of the cocoa-palm, he would talk to them in low sweet tones, until the fireflies were twinkling in the thicket and the stars stole out one after another in their silent myriads, of One Who came from the highest Heaven to redeem them from savagery and degradation, and to make them holy as He was holy, and pure as He was pure. He was eminently successful; but when he had planted in some islands the first seeds of a fruitful Christianity, he sailed to other reefs, still carrying the everlasting gospel in his hands. One evening as the little missionary ship, which Charlie himself had built, drew near the land, they saw that the natives were drawn up in a threatening attitude on the beach. Trusting to conciliate them by kindness and by presents, the young missionary, taking with him a few glittering trifles to attract their notice, proceeded with a small band of followers towards the shore. At first the natives seemed inclined to receive them well, but suddenly, by the wild impulse to which barbarians are so liable, one of the savages pierced a sailor with his spear. Evson, by an effort of strength, wrenched the weapon out of his hand and told his men to take up the wounded sailor and retreat. This they effected in safety, for the islanders were struck and awed by the young Englishman's high bearing and firm attitude; and his eye fixed quietly upon them kept them back. He was himself the last to step into the boat, and, as he turned to do so, one of the wretches struck him on the head with his accursed club. He fell stunned and bleeding upon the beach, and in an instant was dispatched by the spears and clubs of a hundred savages, while the boat's crew barely escaped with their lives, and the little mission vessel, spreading all her sails, could with difficulty elude the pursuit of the canoes, which swarmed out of the creeks to give her chase. The corpse lay bleeding upon a nameless strand, and the soft fair hair that a mother's hand had fondled and a mother's lips had kissed, dangled as a trophy at the girdle of a cannibal. Thus it was that Charlie died; and a marble tablet in Semlyn Church, ornamented with the most delicate and exquisite sculpture, records his tragic fate, and stands as a monument of his parents' tender love. As a boy he had shown a martyr's dauntless spirit; as a man he was suffered to win the rare and high glory of a martyr's crown.

Of Walter, and Henderson, and Sir Reginald Power--for Power has succeeded only too early to his father's title and estates--I need say no more. Their days from youth to maturity were linked together by a natural progress in all things charitable, and great, and good. They did not belie their early promise. The breeze of a happy life bore them gently onward, and they cast no anchor in its widening stream. They were brave and manly and honourable boys, and they grew up into high-minded and honourable men.

I do not wish you to suppose that they had not their own bitter trials to suffer, or that they were exempt in any degree from our common sorrows. In that turbulent and restless period of life when the passions are strong and the heart wild and wilful and full of pride, while, at the same time, the judgment is often weak and the thoughts are immature and crude, they had (as we all have) to purchase wholesome experience at the price of suffering; to remember with shame some follies, and mourn over some mistakes. In saying this, I only say that they were not faultless; which of us is? But, at the same time, I may fairly say that we do not often meet with nobler or manlier boys and youths than these; that the errors which they committed they humbly endeavoured by patience and carefulness to amend; that they used their talents well and wisely, striving to live in love and charity with all around them; that above all they kept the fear of God before their eyes and never lost the freshness and geniality of early years, but kept "The young lamb's heart amid the fall grown flocks;"--kept the heart of boyhood taken up and purified in the powers of manhood. And this is the reason why the eye that sees them loves them, and the tongue that speaks of them blesses them. And when the end comes to them which comes to all; when--as though a child should trample out the sparks from a piece of paper--death comes upon them and tramples out for ever their joys and sorrows, their hopes and fears--then, sure I am, that those who mourn for them, that those who cherish their memory and regret their loss, will neither be insincere nor few, and that they themselves will meet calmly and gladly that Great Shadow, waiting and looking with sure though humble hope to a better and less transient life; to a sinless and unstained world; to the meeting with long lost friends; to the rest which remaineth for the People of God.

And here, gentle reader, let us bid them all farewell.

THE END.