mong the boys; on the other hand, I
always do; it helps me to understand these fellows, and do more for them
than I otherwise could."

"You observe them to some purpose, Percival, at any rate, for your
influence among them is wonderful--as I have occasion to discover every
now and then."

"But Kenrick puzzles me. `_Nemo repente fuit turpissimus_' one used to
think; yet that boy has dropped from the society of such a noble fellow
as Power, with his exquisite mind and manners, plumb into the abyss of
intimacy with Harpour. There must be something all wrong."

A very little observation showed Mr Percival that his conjectures about
Kenrick were correct. Clever as he was, his work deteriorated rapidly;
the whole expression of his countenance changed for the worse; he was
implicated more than once in very questionable transactions; he lost
caste among the best and most honourable fellows, and proportionately
gained influence among the worst and lowest lot in the school, whose
idol and hero he gradually became. His descent was sudden, because his
character had always been unstable. The pride and passion which were
mollified and restrained as long as he had moved with wise and upright
companions, broke forth with violence when once he fancied himself
slighted, and had committed himself to a course which he well knew to be
wrong. There was one who conjectured much of this at a very early
period. It was Kenrick's mother; his letters always indicated the exact
state of his thoughts and feelings; and Mrs Kenrick knew that the
coldness and recklessness which had lately marked them were proofs that
her boy was going wrong. The violence, too, with which he spoke of
Evson, and the indications that he had dropped his old friends and taken
up with new and worse companions, filled her mind with anxiety and
distress; yet what could she do, poor lady, in her lonely home? There
was one thing only that she could do for him in her weakness; and those
outpourings of sorrowful and earnest prayer were not in vain.

Mr Percival tried to make some effort to save Kenrick from the wrong
courses which he had adopted; he asked him quietly to come and take a
glass of wine after dinner; but the interview only made matters worse.
Kenrick, not undated by his popularity among the lower forms as a
champion of the supposed "rights" of the school, chose to adopt an
independent and almost patronising tone towards his tutor; he entered in
a jaunty m