iserable at his
morning's rencontre, and his answers were short and sheepish, his only
desire being to get away as soon as possible. It was an additional
vexation to feel sure that his manner did not make a favourable
impression.

Before he had got out of the playground, Russell ran up to him. "I'm
afraid you won't like this, or think much of us, Williams," he said.
"But never mind. It'll only last a day or two, and the fellows are not
so bad as they seem; except that Barker. I'm sorry you've come across
him, but it can't be helped."

It was the first kind word he had had since the morning, and after his
troubles kindness melted him. He felt half inclined to cry, and for a
few moments could say nothing in reply to Russell's soothing words. But
the boy's friendliness went far to comfort him, and at last, shaking
hands with him, he said--

"Do let me speak to you sometimes, while I am a new boy, Russell."

"Oh yes," said Russell, laughing, "as much as ever you like. And as
Barker hates me pretty much as he seems inclined to hate you, we are in
the same box. Good-bye."

So Eric left the field, and wandered home, like Calchas in the Iliad,
"sorrowful by the side of the sounding sea." Already the purple mantle
had fallen from his ideal of schoolboy life. He got home later than
they expected, and found his parents waiting for him. It was rather
disappointing to them to see his face so melancholy, when they expected
him to be full of animation and pleasure. Mrs Williams drew her own
conclusions from the red mark on his cheek, as well as the traces of
tears welling to his eyes; but, like a wise mother, she asked nothing,
and left the boy to tell his own story,--which in time he did, omitting
all the painful part, speaking enthusiastically of Russell, and only
admitting that he had been a little teased.

VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER THREE.

BULLYING.

Give to the morn of life its natural blessedness.
_Wordsworth_.

Why is it that new boys are almost invariably ill-treated? I have often
fancied that there must be in boyhood a pseudo-instinctive cruelty, a
sort of "wild trick of the ancestral savage," which no amount of
civilisation can entirely repress. Certain it is, that to most boys the
first term is a trying ordeal. They are being tested and weighed.
Their place in the general estimation is not yet fixed, and the
slightest circumstances are seized upon to settle the category, under
which the boy is