To-night, the boys whose story I am telling had not much appetite for supper. As soon as prayers were finished, they went back to their room and made preparations for bed. Gerald Eversley, having divested himself of his jacket, knelt down by his bedside, took from his pocket a little volume of prayers which his father had given him, and prayed. He had been always in the habit of saying his prayers night and morning. It would be difficult to say whether he was conscious of a definite help or happiness in prayer. Perhaps it is truer to say that he would have experienced a pain or void if he had not prayed. Prayer was to him a natural act of life, like eating or walking. He had always been accustomed to pray; it did not occur to him that there could be any persons who did not pray. He was entirely free from the shyness which boys of greater worldly wisdom than his own feel about prayer. He knelt down, and his thoughts ascended to heaven. Will it be always so with him in after days? God grant it! Harry Venniker, too, was in the habit of saying his prayers. His mother had taught him to say them, and many a time had heard him say them at her knee. She had begged him, when he first went to school, not to give up the habit of praying. But he did not always say them. Sometimes he omitted them in the morning, if he got up too late, or in the evening, if he felt too tired. Probably he would have omitted them on the first night at St. Anselm’s, his mind being full of other things, or would have hurried over them in bed when the light had gone out. But seeing Gerald Eversley kneel down, and seeing him lose all consciousness of another’s presence in the communion of his soul with its Maker, he too knelt by his bedside, spent perhaps a minute in devotion, then rose from his knees, having done all that he wanted or was wont to do. Gerald was still kneeling when Harry’s prayer was finished, his lips were moving earnestly, reverently, upon his face was the far-away look of one who sees visions. At last he rose, hardly before the light went out, and crept into bed. ‘Good night,’ said Harry cheerfully; ‘what a time you’ve been!’ There was a certain sadness, such as can hardly be defined, unless by the beautiful French expression, ‘tears in the voice,’ in the tone of the answering ‘Good night.’ It was not long before Mr. Brandiston’s step was heard in the passage. He opened the door; his candle played upon the faces of the two boys, and seeing they were still awake, he said, as if speaking to himself, ‘Let me see; yes, Venniker and Eversley; I have put you in a room together, I hope you will get on well. Good night, I will see you to-morrow.’ Harry Venniker wished the schoolmaster ‘Good night’; Gerald Eversley had not the courage to say it. And Mr. Brandiston went out, shutting the door softly behind him.