After the reading over was finished and the lessons that followed immediately on it, and the boys went out to wash their hands for luncheon, the boys of the second division crowded round Hart Minor and asked him how he could have perpetrated such a horrible and daring crime. The matter, however, was soon forgotten by the boys, but Hart Minor had not heard the last of it. On the following Sunday in chapel, at the evening service, the Head Master preached a sermon. He chose as his text “Thou shalt not steal!” The eyes of the whole school were fixed on Smith and Hart Minor. The Head Master pointed out in his discourse that one might think at first sight that boys at a school might not have the opportunity to violate the tremendous Commandments; but, he said, this was not so. The Commandments were as much a living actuality in school life as they were in the larger world. Coming events cast their shadows before them; the child was the father of the man; what a boy was at school, such would he be in after life. Theft, the boys perhaps thought, was not a sin which immediately concerned them. But there were things which were morally the same if not worse than the actual theft of material and tangible objects--dishonesty in the matter of marks, for instance, and cheating in order to gain an undue advantage over one’s fellow-schoolboys. A boy who was guilty of such an act at school would probably end by being a criminal when he went out into the larger world. The seeds of depravity were already sown; the tree whose early shoots were thus blemished would probably be found to be rotten when it grew up; and for such trees and for such noxious growths there could only be one fate--to be cut down and cast into the unquenchable fire! In Hart Minor’s half-term report, which was sent home to his parents, it was stated that he had been found guilty of the meanest and grossest dishonesty, and that should it occur again he would be first punished and finally expelled. THE STAR