Frank's desire for a military life was based chiefly upon the fact that it would enable him to travel to many parts of the world, and to indulge his taste for natural history to the fullest. He was but ten years old when he left India with the regiment, but he had still a vivid recollection of the lovely butterflies and bright birds of that country. His father had been at pains to teach him that a student of natural history must be more than a mere collector, and that like other sciences it must be methodically studied. He possessed an excellent library of books upon the subject, and although Frank might be ignorant of the name of any bird or insect shown to him he could at once name the family and species. In the year which Frank had been at school at Dr. Parker's he had made few intimate friends. His habits of solitary wandering and studious indoor work had hindered his becoming the chum of any of his schoolfellows, and this absence of intimacy had been increased by the fact that the straitness of his mother's means prevented his inviting any of his schoolfellows to his home. He had, indeed, brought one or two of the boys, whose tastes lay in the direction of his own, to the house, to show them his collections of birds and insects. But he declined their invitations to visit them, as he was unable to return their hospitality, and was too proud to eat and drink at other fellows' houses when he could not ask them to do the same at his own. It was understood at Dr. Parker's that Frank Hargate's people were poor, but it was known that his father had been killed in battle. There are writers who depict boys as worshipers of wealth, and many pictures have been drawn of the slights and indignities to which boys, whose means are inferior to those of their schoolfellows, are subject. I am happy to believe that this is a libel. There are, it is true, toadies and tuft hunters among boys as among men. That odious creature, the parasite of the Greek and Latin plays, exists still, but I do not believe that a boy is one whit the less liked, or is ever taunted with his poverty, provided he is a good fellow. Most of the miseries endured by boys whose pocket money is less abundant than that of their fellows are purely self inflicted. Boys and men who are always on the lookout for slights will, of course, find what they seek. But the lad who is not ashamed of what is no fault of his own, who frankly and manfully says, “I can't afford it,” will not find that he is in any way looked down upon by those of his schoolfellows whose good opinion is in the smallest degree worth having. Certainly this was so in the case of Frank Hargate. He was never in the slightest degree ashamed of saying, “I can't afford it;” and the fact that he was the son of an officer killed in battle gave him a standing among the best in the school in spite of his want of pocket money.