One of the topics to which Mr. Eversley referred in almost the earliest of their walks through the fields was the suspicion entertained against Gerald of having reported the Sunday boxing to Mr. Brandiston. Several letters about it had already passed between them. Gerald had not failed to tell his father of the kind part played by Mr. Selby. He was convinced, though he could not have proved, that he owed his deliverance from suspicion to Mr. Selby’s advocacy. Mr. Eversley had expressed the hope of being able some day to thank Mr. Selby personally for his kindness. But of the boxing on Sunday he spoke in emphatic terms. He looked upon it as a definite act of sin, the violation of an express divine commandment. He regretted extremely that any boys in Mr. Brandiston’s house should have been guilty of it. He thought that the house, having been implicated in the sin, ought to make some sort of special atonement for it. But he accepted the suspicion which had lain upon Gerald as part of the discipline which the children of God are called to undergo in a wicked world. He was not anxious that Gerald should escape it; he was only anxious that he should bear it in the spirit of Christ. The story of Joseph, which was much in Mr. Eversley’s mind just then, afforded an example of unmerited accusation and of good resulting from it under Divine Providence. But the subject on which Gerald talked most eagerly, and his father listened with the keenest interest, was his friendship with Harry Venniker. To his father Gerald descanted in terms of generous enthusiasm, and even more during later holidays than at first, upon the achievements and attractions of his boyish hero. Mr. Eversley heard him with somewhat mingled feelings. It was only a partial pleasure to him to learn that his boy’s heart had been so drawn out towards a schoolfellow. No doubt he appreciated the sympathy and protection which Gerald owed--more, perhaps, than he was aware of--to his robust and popular friend. It is possible, too, that he felt a secret satisfaction in his boy’s connection with a member of the social class which he had himself always regarded with a distant and respectful veneration as being in some unexplained manner a necessary part of the constitution. But he could not conceal from himself that the friendship was not altogether free from danger. It might excite in Gerald’s mind ideas and ambitions which a country clergyman like himself could not hope to satisfy. It might render him indifferent to the narrow circumstances in which he had been brought up, and in which his father and his family were destined to live. It might--oh! painfullest thought of all!--it might alienate Gerald’s affection from himself. For deep down in Mr. Eversley’s mind there was a jealousy (though he himself understood it not) of whatever could come between his dear boy and himself. Nor could he be blind to the fact that Harry Venniker, though