attempt to prevent this, audacious and
unparalleled as it was, afforded by its complete failure yet another
proof that things were coming round, and that these efforts of the
monitors to improve the tone of the lower boys would tell with greater
and greater force. Even the character of the Noelites was beginning to
improve; in that bad house not a single little new boy had successfully
braved an organised antagonism to all that was good, and by his
victorious virtuous courage had brought over others to the side of
right, triumphing, by the mere force of good principle, over a banded
multitude of boys far older, abler, and stronger than himself.

So that now Harpour, Mackworth, and Jones, were confined more and more
to their own society, and were forced to keep their misconduct more and
more to themselves. They sullenly admitted that they were foiled and
thwarted, and from that time forward left the school to recover as fast
as it could from their vicious influence. Among their other
consolations--for they found themselves shunned on all sides--they
proposed to go and have a supper at Dan's. One day, before the events
last narrated, Power had seen them go in there. He had sent for them at
once, and told them that they must know how strictly this was forbidden,
what a wretch Dan was, and how ruinous such visits to his cottage must
be. They knew well that if he informed of them they would be instantly
expelled, and entreated him with very serious earnestness to pass it
over this time, the more so because they had no notion that any monitor
would ever tell of them, _because since he had been a monitor, Kenrick
had accompanied them there_. Shocked as he was to hear this, it had
determined Power not to report them, on the condition, which he made
known to the other monitors, and of which he specially and pointedly
gave warning to Kenrick, that they would not so offend again. This
promise they wilfully broke, feeling perfectly secure, because Dan's
cottage was at a remote and lonely part of the shore, where few boys
ever walked, and where they had very little chance of being seen, if
they took the precaution of entering by a back gate. But within a week
of Penn's thrashing, Walter was strolling near the cottage with Eden and
Charlie, and having climbed the cliff a little way to pluck for Eden
(who had taken to botany) a flower of the yellow horned poppy which was
waving there, he saw them go into Dan's door, and with t