pearance for the
occasion, followed by a loud "Amen" from Miss Henniker, and in almost
the same breath, on this occasion, the award of a bad mark to Philpot
for having opened his eyes twice during the ceremony.

After this we partook of a silent breakfast, and adjourned for study.
Miss Henniker dogged us wherever we went and whatever we did. She sat
and glared at us all breakfast time; she sat and glared at us while Mr
Ladislaw, or Mr Hashford, the usher, were drilling Latin grammar and
arithmetic into us. She sat and glared while we ate our dinner, and she
stood and glared when after school we assembled in the boot-room and
prepared to escape to the playground. Even there, if we ventured to
lift our voices too near the house, a bad mark was shot at us from a
window, and if an unlucky ball should come within range of her claws it
was almost certainly "confiscated."

I don't suppose Stonebridge House, except for Miss Henniker, was much
worse than most schools for "backward and troublesome boys." We were
fairly well fed, and fairly well taught, and fairly well quartered. I
even think we might have enjoyed ourselves now and then, had we been
left to ourselves. But we never _were_ left to ourselves. From morning
to night, and, for all we could tell, from night till morning, we were
looked after by the lady housekeeper, and that one fact made Stonebridge
House almost intolerable.

We were lounging about in the so-called "playground" that afternoon, and
I was beginning to discover a little more about some of my new
schoolfellows, when there appeared walking towards us down the gravel
path a boy about my own age.

He was slender and delicate-looking, I remember, and his pale face
contrasted strangely with his almost black clustering hair and his dark
big eyes. He wasn't a handsome boy, I remember thinking; but there was
something striking about him, for all that. It may have been his solemn
expression, or his square jaw, or his eyes, or his brow, or his hair, or
the whole of them put together. All I know is, that the sight of him as
he appeared that afternoon walking towards us in the playground, has
lived in my memory ever since, and will probably live there till I die.

"Here comes the new boy," said Philpot. Of course we all knew it must
be he.

"And a queer fish, too, by all appearances," responded Flanagan.

"Very queer indeed," said Hawkesbury. Hawkesbury was one of the two
"backwards,"--but for all t