elight Eric heard it announced next morning, when the new
school list was read, that he had got his remove into the "Shell," as
the form was called which intervened between the fourth and the fifth.
Russell, Owen, and Montagu also got their removes with him, but his
other friends were left for the present in the form below.

Mr Rose, his new master, was in every respect a great contrast with Mr
Gordon. He was not so brilliant in his acquirements, nor so vigorous in
his teaching, and therefore clever boys did not catch fire from him so
much as from the fourth-form master. But he was a far truer and deeper
Christian; and, with no less scrupulous a sense of honour and
detestation of every form of moral obliquity, he never yielded to those
storms of passionate indignation which Mr Gordon found it impossible to
control. Disappointed in early life, subjected to the deepest and most
painful trials, Mr Rose's fine character had come out like gold from
the flame. He now lived in and for the boys alone, and his whole life
was one long self-devotion to their service and interests. The boys
felt this, and even the worst of them, in their worst moments, loved and
honoured Mr Rose. But he was not seeking for gratitude, which he
neither expected nor required; he asked no affection in return for his
self-denials; he worked with a pure spirit of human and self-sacrificing
love, happy beyond all payment if ever he were instrumental in saving
one of his charge from evil, or turning one wanderer from the error of
his ways.

He was an unmarried man, and therefore took no boarders himself; but
lived in the school buildings, and had the care of the boys in Dr
Rowlands's house.

Such was the master under whom Eric was now placed, and the boy was
sadly afraid that an evil report would have reached his ears, and given
him already an unfavourable impression. But he was soon happily
undeceived. Mr Rose at once addressed him with much kindness, and he
felt that, however bad he had been before, he would now have an
opportunity to turn over a new leaf, and begin again a career of hope.
He worked admirably at first, and even beat, for the first week or two,
his old competitors, Owen and Russell.

From the beginning, Mr Rose took a deep interest in him. Few could
look at the boy's bright blue eyes and noble face without doing so, and
the more when they knew that his father and mother were thousands of
miles away, leaving him alone in the m