with poison, the beauty of the
serpent whose bite is death."

Eden, who is seated reading on one of the benches by the wall, has
recovered from his illness, but he is not, and never will be, what, but
for Harpour's brutality, he might have been. He is a nervous, timid,
intellectual boy. No game, unfortunately, has any attraction for him.
The large liquid eyes, swimming sometimes with strange lustre, and often
varying in colour, the delicate flush which any pulse of emotion drives
glowing into the somewhat pale face, give to him an almost girlish
aspect, and tell the tale of a weakened constitution. Eden's
development has been quite altered by his fright; most of the vivacity
and playfulness of his character has vanished; and although it flashes
out with pleasant mirth when he is alone with his few closest friends,
such as Walter and Power, his manner is, for the most part, very quiet
and reserved. Yet Eden has a position of his own in the school; and
unobtrusive as he is, his opinion is always listened to with kindness
and respect. When he came into school again after his recovery he was
received, as I have said already, with almost brotherly affection by all
the boys, who felt how much he had been wronged. He became the child
and protege of the school, and any cruelty to _him_ would, after this,
have been violently resented. Devoting himself wholly to work and
reading, he became very successful in his progress, and is now in the
second fifth. But what chiefly marks him is his extreme gentleness, and
the eager way in which he strives to help all the younger and most
helpless boys. Experience of suffering has given him a keen sympathy
with the oppressed, and young as he is he is still doing a useful work.

There is Harpour playing rackets, and he is playing remarkably well. He
is now nineteen, and a personage of immense importance in the school,
for he is head of the cricket eleven, Walter being head of the football.
Harpour is quite unchanged, and if he was doing mischief when we knew
him two years ago, he is doing twice as much mischief now. His
influence is unmitigatedly pernicious. With just enough cunning skill
to escape detection, he yet signalises himself by complicity in every
form of wrong which goes on in the school, and some new wrongs he
introduces and invents. But nothing delights him so much as to
instigate other boys to resist the authority of the masters. They know
him to be a nucleus of d