Part II. (continued 2)

“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.”