outs of the _Martha_.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

'TWIXT SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS.

Perhaps no epoch of a schoolboy's life is more critical--especially if
he be of the open-hearted nature of Dick and Heathcote--than that which
immediately follows his first punishment at the hands of the law.

On the one hand he has the sense of disgrace which attends personal
chastisement, as well as the discomfort of a forfeited good name, and
the feeling of being down on the black books of the school authorities
generally. On the other hand, he is sure to meet with a certain number
of companions who, if they do not exactly admire what he has done,
sympathise with him in what he has suffered; and sympathy at such a time
is sweet and seducing. A little too much sympathy will make him feel a
martyr, and a little martyrdom will make him feel a hero, and once a
hero on account of his misdeeds, he needs a stout heart and a steady
head to keep himself from going one step further and becoming a
professional evil-doer, and ending a fool and his own worst enemy.

Dick and Heathcote ran a serious risk of being shunted on to the road to
ruin after the escapade of the Grandcourt match.

The former discovered that his popularity with the Den was by no means
impaired by adversity. In fact, he jumped at one bound to the hero
stage of his ordeal. He was but a boy of flesh and blood, and sympathy
is a sweet salve for smarting flesh and blood.

After the first burst of contrition it pleased him to hear fellows say--

"Hard lines on you, old man. Not another in a hundred would have
cheeked it the way you did."

It pleased him, too, to see boys smaller than himself look round as they
passed him, and whisper something which made their companions turn round
too. Dick grew fond of small boys as the term went on.

It pleased him still more to be taken notice of by a few bigger boys, to
find himself claimed by Hooker and Duffield as a crony, to be bantered
by the aesthetic Wrangham, and patronised by the stout Bull.

All this made him go over the adventures of that memorable day often in
his mind, and think that after all it wasn't a bad day's sport, and
that, though he said so who shouldn't, he had managed things fairly
well, and got his money's worth.

His money's worth, however, reminded him of his lost half-sovereign and
his mother's photograph, and these reflections usually pulled him up
short in his reminiscences.

Heathcote, in a more philo