The last to offer him the right-hand of forgiveness, but the best and warmest friend to him when once he had done so, was Mr Percival. He still passed him with only the coldest and most distant recognition, for he not only felt Mr Paton's loss with peculiar sorrow, but was also vexed and disappointed that a boy whose character he had openly defended should have proved so unworthy of his encomium. It happened that the _only_ time that Walter was ever again sent to detention was for a failure in a long lesson, including much which had been learnt on the morning that he was out of school, which, in consequence, he found it impossible, with all his efforts, to master. Mr Paton saw how mortified and pained he was to fail, and when he sent him to detention, most kindly called him up, and told him that he saw the cause of his unsuccess, and was not _in the least_ displeased at it, although, as he had similarly punished other boys, he could not make any exception to the usual rule of punishment. On this occasion, it was again Mr Percival's turn to sit with the _detenus_, and seeing Walter among them, he too hastily concluded that he was still continuing a career of disgrace. "What! you here again?" he said with chilling scorn, as he passed the seat where Walter sat writing. "After what has happened, I should have been ashamed to be sent here, if I were you." After his days and nights of toil, after his long, manly, noble struggle to show his penitence, after his heavy and disproportionate punishment, it was hard to be so addressed by one whom he respected, in the presence of all the idlest in the school, and in consequence of a purely accidental and isolated failure. Walter looked up with an appealing look in his dark blue eyes; but Mr Percival had passed on, and he bent his head over his paper with the old sense that the past could _never_ be forgotten, the recollection of his disgrace _never_ obliterated. No one was observing him; and as the feeling of despair grew in him, a large tear dropped down upon his paper; he wiped it quietly away, and continued writing, but another and another fell, and he could not help it. For Mr Percival was almost the only master whose goodwill he very strongly coveted, and whose approval he was most anxious to attain. When next Mr Percival stopped and looked at Walter, he saw that his words had wounded him to the heart, and knew well why the boy's lines were blurred and blotted, when he showed them up with a timid hand and downcast look. He was touched. "I have been too hard on you, Evson," he said; "I see it now. Come to tea with me after chapel this evening; I want to speak with you." CHAPTER ELEVEN. HAPPIER HOURS. "Sir, you are one of those that will not serve God if the devil bid you." Othello, act 1, scene 1.