"Then," said Power, "the next speaker talked about sneaking and cowardice. Well, those charges had been sufficiently answered by Whalley, and, indeed, on behalf of his friends Evson and Henderson, he perhaps need hardly condescend to answer them at all. His friend Henderson had been long enough among them to need no defence, and if he _did_, it would be sufficiently supplied by the high courage, of which they had just seen a specimen. As for Evson, any boy who had given as many proofs of honour and manliness as _he_ had done during his two terms at Saint Winifred's, certainly required no one's shield to be thrown over _him_. Would any of them show their courage by walking across the Razor on some dark foggy winter's night? and would they find in the school any other fellow of Evson's age who would not shrink from standing up in a regular fair fight with another of twice his own strength and size? Those charges he thought he might throw to the winds; he was sure that no one believed them; but there was, he admitted, one cowardice of which his two friends had often been guilty, and it was a cowardice for which they need not blush; he meant the cowardice, the arrant, the noble cowardice of being afraid _not_ to do what they thought right, and of being afraid to do what they _knew_ to be base and wrong." In these remarks Power quite carried his audience away with him; the strain was of a higher mood than boys had often heard from boys, and it was delivered with an eloquence and earnestness that raised a continuous applause. This, however, Power checked by going on speaking until he was obliged to stop and take breath; but _then_ it burst out in the most unmistakable and enthusiastic manner, and entirely drowned the few and timid counter-demonstrations of the Jones and Mackworth school.