e stony volleys flew.

Cowper.

Yes, Charlie had conquered, thanks to the grace that sustained him, and
thanks, secondarily, to a good home training, and to Walter's strong and
excellent influence. And in gaining that one point he had gained all.
No one dared directly to molest him further, and he had never again to
maintain so hard a struggle. He had resisted the beginnings of evil; he
had held out under the stress of persecution; and now he could enjoy the
smoother and brighter waters over which he sailed.

His enemies were for the time discomfited, and even the hardy Wilton was
abashed. For a week or two there was considerably less bravado in his
face and manner, and his influence over those of his own age was shaken.
That little rap of the cane which Bliss had given him had a most
salutary effect in diminishing his conceit. Hanley retracted his
promise to deny all knowledge of anything wrong that went on, and openly
defied Wilton; even Elgood ceased to fear him. Charlie had felt
inclined to cut him, but, with generous impulse, he forgave all that was
past, and, keeping on civil terms with him, did all he could to draw him
to less crooked paths.

Mackworth was so ashamed that he hardly ventured to show his face. He
had always made Bliss a laughing-stock, had nicknamed him Ass's Head,
and had taught others to jeer at his backwardness. He had presumed on
his lazy good humour, and affected to patronise and look down on him.
An eruption in a long-extinct volcano could not have surprised him more
than the sudden outburst of Bliss's wrath, and if the two blows which he
had received as he fled before him in sight of the whole house had been
branded on his back with a hot iron, they could hardly have caused him
more painful humiliation. For some time he slunk about like a whipped
puppy, and imagined, not without some ground, that no one saw him
without an inclination to smile.

Kenrick, too, had reason to blush. Every one knew that it was Bliss,
and not he, who had rescued the house from attaching to its name another
indelible disgrace; and when he heard the monitors and sixth-form
talking seriously among themselves of the bad state into which the
Noelites had fallen, he felt that the stigma was deserved, and that
_he_, as being the chief cause of the mischief, must wear the brand.

All Kenrick's faults and errors had had their root in an overweening
pride, a pride which grew fast upon him, and the intensity