ecause he's found out that Castle's father's so rich'--the truth
being that little Castlefield, a delicate and precocious boy, was the
cleverest pupil in the school, his tasks always faultlessly prepared, and
his power of taking in what he was taught wonderfully great, though,
fortunately for himself, his extreme good humour and merry nature made it
impossible for his companions to dislike him or set him down as a prig.

"Jack laughed and pretended--believed indeed--that he did not care.

"'I don't want him to say my verses are good if they're not good,' he
maintained stoutly. But all the same he did feel, and very acutely too,
the mortification to which more than once Mr. Sawyer's uncompromising
censure exposed him, little imagining that the fault-finding was far more
painful to the teacher than to himself, that the short, unsympathising
manner in which it was done was actually the result of the young man's
tender-hearted reluctance to cause pain to another, and that other the
very boy to whom of all in the school he felt himself most attracted.

"And from this want of understanding his master's real feelings towards
him arose the first cloud of prejudice to dim Jack's reasonable judgment.

"Now at Ryeburn, as was in those days the case at all schools of old
standing, there were legends, so established and respected that no one
ever dreamed of calling them into question; there were certain customs
tolerated, not to say approved of, which yet, regarded impartially, from
the outside as it were, were open to objection. Among these, of which
there were several, were one or two specially concerning the younger
boys, which came under the junior master's direction, and of them all,
none was more universally practised than the feat of what was called
'jumping the bar.' The 'bar,'--short in reality for 'barrier,'--was a
railing of five or six feet high, placed so as to prevent any of the
junior boys, who were late in the morning, from getting round by a
short cut to the chapel, where prayers were read, the proper entrance
taking them round the whole building, a matter of at least two minutes'
quick walking. Day after day the bar was 'jumped,' day after day the fact
was ignored; on no boy's conscience, however sensitive, would the
knowledge of his having made his way into chapel by this forbidden route
have left any mark. But alas, when Mr. Sawyer came things struck him in a
different light.

"I cannot go into the question of