looked at him without a frown or a sneer; he waited for him to kick and annoy him as he came out of, or went into, the school-room. In fact, he did his very best to make the boy’s life miserable, and the occupation of hating him seemed in some measure to fill up the vacuity of an ill-conditioned and degraded mind. Hatred is a most mysterious and painful phenomenon to the unhappy person who is the object of it, and more especially if he have incurred it by no one assignable reason. To Eric it was peculiarly painful; he was utterly unprepared for it. In his bright joyous life at Fairholm, in the little he saw of the boys at the Latin school, he had met with nothing but kindness and caresses, and the generous nobleness of his character had seemed to claim them as a natural element. “And now, why,” he asked impatiently, “should this bull-dog sort of fellow have set his whole aim to annoy, vex, and hurt me?” Incapable himself of so mean a spirit of jealousy at superior excellence, he could not make it out; but such, was the fact, and the very mysteriousness of it made it more intolerable to bear. But it must be admitted that he made matters worse by his own bursts of passion. His was not the temper to turn the other cheek; but, brave and spirited as he was, he felt how utterly hopeless would be any attempt on his part to repel force by force. He would have tried some slight conciliation, but it was really impossible with such a boy as his enemy. Barker never gave him even so much as an indifferent look, much less a civil word. Eric loathed him, and the only good and happy part of the matter to his own mind was, that conscientiously his only desire was to get rid of him and be left alone, while he never cherished a particle of revenge. While every day Eric was getting on better in form, and winning himself a very good position with the other boys, who liked his frankness, his mirth, his spirit, and cleverness, he felt this feud with Barker like a dark background to all his enjoyment. He even had to manoeuvre daily how to escape him, and violent scenes were of constant occurrence between them. Eric could not, and would not, brook his bullying with silence. His resentment was loud and stinging, and, Ishmaelite as Barker was, even _his_ phlegmatic temperament took fire when Eric shouted his fierce and uncompromising retorts in the hearing of the others.