I'm always sermonising. But I hope that I
know the difference between what's right and what's wrong, and do let me
say that you will be so much happier, if you try not to yield to all the
bad things round us. Remember, I know more of school than you."

The two boys strolled on silently. That night Eric knelt at his
bedside, and prayed as he had not done for many a long day.

And here let those scoff who deny "the sinfulness of little sins"--but I
remember the words of one who wrote, that:

The most childish thing which man can do,
Is yet a sin which Jesus never did
When Jesus was a child,--and yet a sin
For which in lowly pain he came to die
That for the _bravest_ sin that e'er was praised
The King Eternal wore the crown of thorns.

VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER NINE.

"DEAD FLIES," OR "YE SHALL BE AS GODS".

In the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night.
Proverbs seven, 9.

At Roslyn, even in summer, the hour for going to bed was half-past nine.
It was hardly likely that so many boys, overflowing with turbulent
life, should lie down quietly, and get to sleep. They never dreamt of
doing so. Very soon after the masters were gone, the sconces were often
relighted, sometimes in separate dormitories, sometimes in all of them,
and the boys amused themselves by reading novels or making a row. They
would play various games about the bedrooms, vaulting or jumping over
the beds, running races in sheets, getting through the windows upon the
roofs, to frighten the study-boys with sham ghosts, or playing the
thousand other pranks which suggested themselves to the fertile
imagination of fifteen. But the favourite amusement was a bolstering
match. One room would challenge another, and stripping the covers off
their bolsters, would meet in mortal fray. A bolster well wielded,
especially when dexterously applied to the legs, is a very efficient
instrument to bring a boy to the ground; but it doesn't hurt very much,
even when the blows fall on the head. Hence these matches were
excellent trials of strength and temper, and were generally accompanied
with shouts of laughter, never ending until one side was driven back to
its own room. Many a long and tough struggle had Eric enjoyed, and his
prowess was now so universally acknowledged, that his dormitory, Number
7, was a match for any other, and far stronger in this warfare than most
of the rest. At bolstering. Duncan was a perfect champion;