s. Do you hear? and I hope he'll thrash you till you can't
stand."

"He daren't; Robertson's punished me already."

"He dare, and will; you won't get off so lightly as all that."

"You're a set of sneaks; and I'll be even with you yet," growled
Harpour, too much cowed to resent Henderson's defiance.

Henderson laughed scornfully; and Cradock said, "And _I'll_ tell the
whole school what bullies you've been, Harpour and Jones."

"And _I_," said Franklin; "I don't envy you two."

"The school doesn't consist altogether of such softs as your lot,
luckily," answered Harpour.

"Softs or not, we've put a spoke in _your_ wheel for the present,"
answered Franklin. "I congratulate you on the rich black eye which one
of the softs, half your size, has given you."

"They're not worth snarling with, Franklin," said Henderson; "we shall
be rid of him and Jones from Number 10 henceforth; that's one blessing."

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

A TURBULENT SCHOOL MEETING.

I hate when vice can bolt her arguments,
And virtue have no tongue to check her pride.

Milton's Comus.

Next morning, after second school, Power went to see how Eden and Walter
were getting on. He opened the door softly, and they did not observe
his entrance.

Eden, very pale, and with an expression of pain and terror still
reflected in his face, lay in a broken and restless sleep. Walter was
sitting as still as death at the head of the bed. A book lay on his
knees, but he had not been reading. He was in a "brown study," and the
dreamy far-off look with which his eyes were fixed upon vacancy showed
how his thoughts had wandered. It was the same look which attracted
Power's attention when he first saw Walter in chapel, and which had
shown him that he was no common boy. It often made him watch Walter,
and wonder what _could_ be occupying his thoughts.

It was looking at poor little Eden that had suggested to Walter's mind
the train of thought into which he had fallen. As he saw the child
tossing uneasily about, waking every now and then to half-consciousness
with a violent start, occasionally delirious, and to all appearances
seriously ill--as he thought over Dr Keith's remark, that even when he
was quite well again his nervous system would be probably found to have
received a shock of which the effects would _never_ be obliterated
during life, he could not help fretting very bitterly over the injury
and suffering of his friend. And his own spi