and the little boy,
putting up his hand, hastily brushed off the horrid wick.

"What a shame," he said, as it fell on his letter, and made a smudge.

"Who told you to interfere?" said Barker, turning fiercely to Russell.
Russell, as usual, took not the slightest notice of him, and Barker,
after a little more bluster, repeated the trick on another boy. This
time Russell thought that every one might be on the look-out for
himself, and so went on with his work. But when Barker again chanted
maliciously--

"I see a chimney!" every boy who happened to be reading or writing,
uneasily felt to discover whether this time he were himself the victim
or no; and so things continued for half an hour.

Ridiculous and disgusting as this folly was, it became, when constantly
repeated, very annoying. A boy could not sit down to any quiet work
without constant danger of having some one creep up behind him and put
the offensive fragment of smoking snuff on his head; and neither Barker
nor any of his little gang of imitators seemed disposed to give up their
low mischief.

One night, when the usual exclamation was made, Eric felt sure, from
seeing several boys looking at him, that this time some one had been
treating him in the same way. He indignantly shook his head, and sure
enough the bit of wick dropped off. Eric was furious, and, springing
up, he shouted--

"By Jove! I _won't_ stand this any longer."

"You'll have to sit it, then," said Barker.

"Oh, it was you who did it, was it? Then take that!" and seizing one of
the tin candlesticks, Eric hurled it at Barker's head. Barker dodged,
but the edge of it cut open his eyebrow as it whizzed by, and the blood
flowed fast.

"I'll kill you for that," said Barker, leaping at Eric, and seizing him
by the hair.

"You'll get killed yourself then, you brute," said Upton, Russell's
cousin, a fifth-form boy, who had just come into the room--and he boxed
Barker's ears as a premonitory admonition. "But I say, young 'un,"
continued he to Eric, "this kind of thing won't do, you know. You'll
get into rows if you shy candlesticks at fellows' heads at that rate."

"He has been making the room intolerable for the last month by his
filthy tricks," said Eric hotly; "some one must stop him, and I will
somehow, if no one else does."

"It wasn't I who put the thing on your head, you passionate young fool,"
growled Barker.

"Who was it, then? how was I to know? You began it."

"You s