to be classed. A few apparently trivial accidents of
his first few weeks at school often decide his position in the general
regard for the remainder of his boyhood. And yet these are not
accidents; they are the slight indications which give an unerring proof
of the general tendencies of his character and training. Hence much of
the apparent cruelty with which new boys are treated is not exactly
intentional. At first, of course, as they can have no friends worth
speaking of; there are always plenty of coarse and brutal minds that
take a pleasure in their torment, particularly if they at once recognise
any innate superiority to themselves. Of this class was Barker. He
hated Eric at first sight, simply because his feeble mind could only
realise one idea about him, and that was the new boy's striking contrast
with his own imperfections. Hence he left no means untried to vent on
Eric his low and mean jealousy. He showed undisguised pleasure when he
fell in form, and signs of disgust when he rose; he fomented every
little source of disapproval or quarrelling which happened to arise
against him; he never looked at him without a frown or a sneer; he
waited for him to kick and annoy him as he came out of, or went in to,
the schoolroom. In fact, he did his very best to make the boy's life
miserable, and the occupation of hating him seemed in some measure to
fill up the vacuity of an ill-conditioned and degraded mind.

Hatred is a most mysterious and painful phenomenon to the unhappy person
who is the object of it, and more especially if he have incurred it by
no one assignable reason. Why it happens that no heart can be so
generous, no life so self-denying, no intentions so honourable and pure,
as to shield a man from the enmity of his fellows, must remain a dark
question for ever. But certain it is, that to bear the undeserved
malignity of the evil-minded, to hear unmoved the sneers of the proud
and the calumnies of the base, is one of the hardest lessons in life.
And to Eric this opposition was peculiarly painful; he was utterly
unprepared for it. In his bright joyous life at Fairholm, in the little
he saw of the boys at the Latin-school, he had met with nothing but
kindness and caresses, and the generous nobleness of his character had
seemed to claim them as a natural element. "And now, why," he asked
impatiently, "should this bulldog sort of fellow have set his whole aim
to annoy, vex, and hurt me?" Incapable him