Meanwhile I had not neglected my fellow-students, unattractive to me as most of them were, and more than once had I offered my spiritual services to an inexperienced or erring class-mate. That these had been fruitless I am not prepared to say. But it was perhaps not surprising, considering the standard of the masters, that the general moral status of their pupils should have left almost everything to be desired. Such a rule, for example, as that forbidding the ingestion of sweetmeats during the hours set apart for study was daily infringed, not only by the younger boys, but by many far older than myself. Exhibitions, too, of personal violence were only too common in the playground, and I had even heard boys, presumably the sons of gentlemen, making use of the word damn.[3] Footnote 3: I repeat this with regret. But truth is often best served, I have found, by being completely outspoken. It was not until nearly half-term, however, under the eyes of Mr. Lorton, and in the most sacred hour of the scholastic week, that I suddenly became conscious of the existence of an evil that for a moment completely paralysed me. Himself an organiser rather than a scholar, a proprietor rather than a professor, Mr. Lorton confined himself, in respect of actual teaching, to the exposition of the Holy Scriptures. For this purpose he visited each class once a week in rotation, the text-book employed being the Lorton Bible for Schools, published by his brother, Mr. Chrysostom Lorton. We had been studying, I remember, the Second Book of Kings, and considering the evil reign of Pekahiah, when Mr. Lorton suddenly asked the head boy of the form if he could tell him the name of his successor. This was of course Pekah, the son of Remaliah, with whom I had been familiar for several years. But unfortunately my position in the centre of the class forbade my giving an immediate answer. Nevertheless I perceived, as boy after boy mutely revealed the depths of his ignorance, that I had probably been destined by the grace of Providence to become the means of their enlightenment. What was my horror, then, on this beautiful autumn day, with the November sunlight slanting through the window, to observe Harold Harper, the boy on my left, and Henry Hancock, the boy on my right, each studying the Second Book of Kings under the shelter conferred by his desk. Objectionable lads as I knew them both to be, I had never dreamed them to have been capable of this, and when Henry Hancock rose in his place and without a tremor said, “Pekah, son of Remaliah,” it was as though each syllable had been a knife deeply plunged into my very vitals. Pale with wrath I rose to my feet. “Sir,” I cried, “Henry Hancock was deceiving you. He read his answer from the open Scripture.” There was a deathly pause. “And not only that,” I said, “but Harold Harper was prepared to do the same.” Mr. Lorton removed his eye-glasses. “Hancock and Harper,” he said, “stand up.”