He was now sixteen years old, and high in the fifth form, and, besides this, he was captain of the school eleven. In work he had fallen off and no one now expected the fulfilment of that promise of genius which he had given when he first came. But in all school sports he had improved, and was the acknowledged leader and champion in matters requiring boldness and courage. His popularity made him giddy; favor of man led him to forgetfulness of God; and even a glance at his countenance showed a self-sufficiency and arrogance which ill became the refinement of his features, and ill replaced the ingenuous modesty of former years. And Vernon Williams was no longer a new boy. The worst had happened to him, which Eric in his better moments could have feared. He had fallen into thoroughly bad hands, and Eric, who should have been his natural guardian and guide, began to treat him with indifference, and scarcely ever had any affectionate intercourse with him. It is by no means unfrequent that brothers at school see but little of each other, and follow their several pursuits, and choose their various companions, with small regard to the relationship between them. Yet Eric could not overlook or be blind to the fact, that Vernon’s chief friend or leader was the most undesirable whom he could have chosen. It was a new boy named Brigson. This boy had been expelled from one of the most ill-managed schools in Ireland, although, of course, the fact had been most treacherously concealed from the authorities at Roslyn; and now he was let loose, without warning or caution, among the Roslyn boys. Better for them if their gates had been open to the pestilence! the pestilence could but have killed the body, but this boy--this fore-front fighter in the devil’s battle--did ruin many an immortal soul. He systematically, from the very first, called evil good and good evil, put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. He openly threw aside the admission of any one moral obligation. Never did some of the Roslyn boys, to their dying day, forget the deep, intolerable, unfathomable flood of moral turpitude and iniquity which he bore with him; a flood, which seemed so irresistible, and the influence of such boys as Montagu and Owen to stay its onrush seemed as futile as the weight of a feather to bar the fury of a mountain stream. Eric might have done much, Duncan might have done much, to aid the better cause, had they tried; but they resisted at first but faintly, and then not at all, until they too were swept away in the broadening tide of degeneracy and sin.