to keep off
the smaller fry.

Happy would it have been for all of them if Bull had never been placed
in No. 7; happier still if he had never come to Roslyn school. Backward
in work, overflowing with vanity at his supposed good looks, of mean
disposition and feeble intellect, he was the very worst specimen of a
boy that Eric had ever seen. Not even Barker so deeply excited Eric's
repulsion and contempt. And yet, since the affair of Upton, Barker and
Eric were declared enemies, and, much to the satisfaction of the latter,
never spoke to each other; but with Bull--much as he inwardly loathed
him--he was professedly and apparently on good terms. His silly love of
universal popularity made him accept and tolerate the society even of
this worthless boy.

Any two boys talking to each other about Bull would probably profess to
like him "well enough," but if they were honest, they would generally
end by allowing their contempt.

"We've got a nice set in No. 7, haven't we?" said Duncan to Eric one
day.

"Capital. Old Llewellyn's a stunner, and I like Attlay and Graham."

"Don't you like Bull then?"

"O yes; pretty well."

The two boys looked each other in the face, then, like the confidential
augurs, burst out laughing.

"You know you detest him," said Duncan.

"No, I don't. He never did me any harm that I know of."

"Him!--well, _I_ detest him."

"Well!" answered Eric, "on coming to think of it, so do I. And yet he is
popular enough in the school. I wonder how that is."

"He's not _really_ popular. I've often noticed that fellows pretty
generally despise him, yet somehow don't like to say so."

"Why do you dislike him, Duncan?"

"I don't know. Why do you?"

"I don't know either."

Neither Eric nor Duncan meant this answer to be false, and yet if they
had taken the trouble to consider, they would have found out in their
secret souls the reasons of their dislike.

Bull had been to school before, and of this school he often bragged as
the acme of desirability and wickedness. He was always telling boys what
they did at "his old school," and he quite inflamed the minds of such as
fell under his influence by marvellous tales of the wild and wilful
things which he and his former school-fellows had done. Many and many a
scheme of sin and mischief, at Roslyn was suggested, planned, and
carried out on the model of Bull's reminiscences of his previous life.

He had tasted more largely of the tree of the knowledge of