r what could have made me think of him in connection
with heroes; his lovableness, I suppose--certainly not his heroic
qualities. I can recall his boyish face now (it was always a boyish
face), the tears streaming down it as he sat in the schoolyard beside a
bucket, in which he was drowning three white mice and a tame rat. I sat
down opposite and cried too, while helping him to hold a saucepan lid
over the poor little creatures, and thus there sprang up a friendship
between us, which grew.

Over the grave of these murdered rodents, he took a solemn oath never to
break school rules again, by keeping either white mice or tame rats, but
to devote the whole of his energies for the future to pleasing his
masters, and affording his parents some satisfaction for the money being
spent upon his education.

Seven weeks later, the pervadence throughout the dormitory of an
atmospheric effect more curious than pleasing led to the discovery that
he had converted his box into a rabbit hutch. Confronted with eleven
kicking witnesses, and reminded of his former promises, he explained that
rabbits were not mice, and seemed to consider that a new and vexatious
regulation had been sprung upon him. The rabbits were confiscated. What
was their ultimate fate, we never knew with certainty, but three days
later we were given rabbit-pie for dinner. To comfort him I endeavoured
to assure him that these could not be his rabbits. He, however,
convinced that they were, cried steadily into his plate all the time that
he was eating them, and afterwards, in the playground, had a stand-up
fight with a fourth form boy who had requested a second helping.

That evening he performed another solemn oath-taking, and for the next
month was the model boy of the school. He read tracts, sent his spare
pocket-money to assist in annoying the heathen, and subscribed to _The
Young Christian_ and _The Weekly Rambler_, an Evangelical Miscellany
(whatever that may mean). An undiluted course of this pernicious
literature naturally created in him a desire towards the opposite
extreme. He suddenly dropped _The Young Christian_ and _The Weekly
Rambler_, and purchased penny dreadfuls; and taking no further interest
in the welfare of the heathen, saved up and bought a second-hand revolver
and a hundred cartridges. His ambition, he confided to me, was to become
"a dead shot," and the marvel of it is that he did not succeed.

Of course, there followed the usual di