neighbour's
exercises. This Jolland (who had looked forward to an arrangement of a
very opposite kind) nevertheless cheerfully allowed him to do, though he
expressed doubts as to the wisdom of a servile imitation--more, perhaps,
from prudence than conscientiousness.

Jolland, in the intervals of study, was deeply engaged in the production
of a small illustrated work of fiction, which he was pleased to call
_The Adventures of Ben Buterkin at Scool_. It was in a great measure an
autobiography, and the cuts depicting the hero's flagellations--which
were frequent in the course of the narrative--were executed with much
vigour and feeling.

He turned out a great number of these works in the course of the term,
as well as faces in pen and ink with moving tongues and rolling eyes,
and these he would present to a few favoured friends with a secretive
and self-depreciatory giggle.

Amidst scenes and companions like these, Paul sat out the evening hours
on his hard seat, which was just at the junction of two forms--an
exquisitely uncomfortable position, as all who have tried it will
acknowledge--until the time for going to bed came round again. He
dreaded the hours of darkness, but there was no help for it--to protest
would have been madness just then, and, once more, he was forced to pass
a night under the roof of Crichton House.

It was even worse than the first, though this was greatly owing to his
own obstinacy.

The boys, if less subdued, were in better temper than the evening
before, and found it troublesome to keep up a feud when the first flush
of resentment had died out. There was a general disposition to forget
his departure from the code of schoolboy honour, and give him an
opportunity of retrieving the past.

But he would not meet them half-way; his repeated repulses by the Doctor
and all the difficulties that beset his return to freedom had made him
very sulky and snappish. He had not patience or adaptability enough to
respond to their advances, and only shrank from their rough good
nature--which naturally checked the current of good feeling.

Then, when the lights were put out, some one demanded a story. Most of
the bedrooms possessed a professional story-teller, and in one there was
a young romancist who began a stirring history the very first night of
the term, which always ran on until the night before the holidays, and,
if his hearers were apt to yawn at the sixth week of it, he himself
enjoyed and beli