who were now getting easily ahead of him in marks. Eric's was
careless, hurried, and untidy; the other two were neat, spirited, and
painstaking, and had, therefore, been marked much higher. They
displayed all the difference between conscientious and perfunctory work.

"Your exercises _used_ to be far better--even incomparably better," said
Mr Rose; "what is the cause of this falling off?"

Eric was silent.

Mr Rose laid his hand gently on his head. "I fear, my boy, you have
not been improving lately. You have got into many scrapes, and are
letting boys beat you in form who are far your inferiors in ability.
That is a very bad _sign_, Eric; in itself it is a discouraging fact,
but I fear it indicates worse evils. You are wasting the golden hours,
my boy, that can never return. I only hope and trust that no other
change for the worse is taking place in your character."

And so he talked on till the boy's sorrow was undisguised. "Come," he
said gently, "let us kneel down together before we part."

Boy and master knelt down humbly side by side, and, from a full heart,
the young man poured out his fervent petitions for the boy beside him.
Eric's soul seemed to catch a glow from his words, and he loved him as a
brother. He rose from his knees full of the strongest resolutions, and
earnestly promised amendment for the future.

But poor Eric did not yet know his own infirmity. For a time, indeed,
there was a marked improvement; but daily life flowed on with its usual
allurements, and when the hours of temptation came, his good intentions
melted away like the morning dew, so that, in a few more weeks, the
prayer, and the vows that followed it, had been obliterated from his
memory without leaving any traces in his life.

VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

ERIC IN COVENTRY.

And either greet him not,
Or else disdainfully, which shall shake him more
Than if not looked on.
_Troilus and Cressida_, Act Three, Scene 3.

Upton, expatriated from his study, was allowed to use one of the smaller
classrooms which were occupied during play-hours by those boys who were
too high in the school for "the boarders' room," and who were waiting to
succeed to the studies as they fell vacant. There were three or four
others with him in this classroom, and although it was less pleasant
than his old quarters, it was yet far more comfortable than the
Pandemonium of the Shell and fourth-form boys.

As a general rule, no boys