proceedings, and
that another was being saved up for me when I got well.

It was quite a melancholy day for me when the doctor pronounced me
convalescent, and said I might resume my ordinary duties. It was
announced to me at my first appearance in school, that on account of my
delinquencies I was on the "strict silence" rule for the rest of the
term, that my bed was removed to the other dormitory, and that I was
absolutely forbidden to hold any further communication, either by word
or gesture, with my friend Smith.

Thus cheerfully ended my first term at Stonebridge House.

CHAPTER SIX.

HOW THINGS CAME TO A CRISIS AT STONEBRIDGE HOUSE.

A year passed, and found us at the end of it the same wretched,
spiritless boys as ever. Stonebridge House had become no more
tolerable, the Henniker had grown no less terrible, and our fellow
"backward and troublesome boys" were just as unpleasant as they had
been. No new boys had come to give us a variety, and no old boys had
left. Except for the one fact that we were all of us a year older,
everything was precisely the same as it had been at the time of the
adventure related in my last chapter. But that one year makes a good
deal of difference. When Smith and I slid down the water-pipe a year
ago we were comparatively new friends, now we had grown to love one
another like brothers. When the Henniker, on the same occasion, put an
end to our scheme of escape, we had endured her persecutions but three
months, now we had endured them for fifteen. A great deal of secret
working may go on in a fellow's mind during a year, and in that way the
interval _had_ wrought a change, for we were a good deal more to one
another, Smith and I, and a good deal more desperate at our hard lot,
both of us, than we had been a year ago.

It had been a miserable time. My holidays alone with my uncle had been
almost as cheerless as my schooldays at Stonebridge House with Miss
Henniker. If it hadn't been for Smith I do believe I should have lost
every vestige of spirit. But happily he gave me no chance of falling
into that condition. He seemed always on the verge of some explosion.
Now it was against Hawkesbury, now against the Henniker, now against Mr
Ladislaw, and now against the whole world generally, myself included. I
had a busy time of it holding him in.

He still showed aversion to Hawkesbury, although I differed from him on
this point, and insisted that Hawkesbury was not such