“Why, Russell, I did feel very much ashamed, and I would have explained it, and said so; but that Gordon spites me so. It is such a shame; I don’t feel now as if I cared one bit.” “I am sorry you don’t get on with him; but remember you have given him in this case good cause to suspect. You never crib, Eric, I know, but I can’t help being sorry that you wrote the paper.” “But then Graham asked me to do it, and called me cowardly because I refused at first.” “Ah, Eric,” said Russell, “they will ask you to do worse things if you yield so easily. I wouldn’t say anything to Dr. Rowlands about it, if I were you.” Eric took the advice, and, full of mortification, went home. He gave his father a true and manly account of the whole occurrence, and that afternoon Mr. Williams wrote a note of apology and explanation to Mr. Gordon. Next time the form went up, Mr. Gordon said, in his most freezing tones, “Williams, at present I shall take no further notice of your offence beyond including you in the extra lesson every half-holiday.” From that day forward Eric felt that he was marked and suspected, and the feeling worked on him with the worst effects. He grew more careless in work, and more trifling and indifferent in manner. Several boys now beat him whom he had easily surpassed before, and his energies were for a time entirely directed to keeping that supremacy in the games which he had won by his activity and strength. It was a Sunday afternoon, towards the end of the summer term, and the boys were sauntering about in the green playground, or lying on the banks reading and chatting. Eric was with a little knot of his chief friends, enjoying the sea breeze as they sat on the grass. At last the bell of the school chapel began to ring, and they went in to the afternoon service. Eric usually sat with Duncan and Llewellyn, immediately behind the benches allotted to chance visitors. The bench in front of them happened on this afternoon to be occupied by some rather odd people, viz., an old man with long white hair, and two ladies remarkably stout, who were dressed with much juvenility, although past middle age. Their appearance immediately attracted notice, and no sooner had they taken their seats than Duncan and Llewellyn began to titter. The ladies’ bonnets, which were of white, trimmed with long green leaves and flowers, just peered over the top of the boys’ pew, and excited much amusement. But Eric had not yet learnt to disregard the solemnity of the place, and the sacred act in which they were engaged. He tried to look away, and attend to the service, and for a time he partially succeeded, although, seated as he was between the two triflers, who were perpetually telegraphing to each other their jokes, he found it a difficult task, and secretly he began to be much tickled.