."

"But I did not know where I was going. I never meant to enter a house."

"But you did both; and what you suffered will prevent your letting
yourself be led into such a scrape again. As for the money part of the
matter--a school is to boys what the world is when they become men.
They must manage their own affairs among themselves. The difference is,
that here is the master to be applied to, if we choose. He will advise
you about your money, if you choose to ask him: but, for my part, I
would rather put up with the loss, if I were you."

"Nobody will ever understand what I mean about justice," muttered Hugh.

"Suppose," said Firth, "while you are complaining of injustice in this
way, somebody else should be complaining in the same way of your
injustice."

"Nobody can--fairly," replied Hugh.

"Do you see that poor fellow, skulking there under the orchard-wall?"

"What, Holt?"

"Yes, Holt. I fancy the thought in his mind at this moment is that you
are the most unjust person at Crofton."

"I! Unjust!"

"Yes; so he thinks. When you first came, you and he were companions.
You found comfort in each other while all the rest were strangers to
you. You were glad to hear, by the hour together, what he had to tell
you about India, and his voyages and travels. Now he feels himself
lonely and forsaken, while he sees you happy with a friend. He thinks
it hard that you should desert him because he owes you a shilling, when
he was cheated quite as much as you."

"Because he owes me a shilling!" cried Hugh, starting to his feet, "as
if--"

Once more he had nearly fallen from his perch. Firth caught him; and
then asked him how Holt should think otherwise than as he did, since
Hugh had been his constant companion up to that Saturday afternoon, and
had hardly spoken to him since.

Hugh protested that the shilling had nothing to do with the matter; and
he never meant to take more than sixpence from Holt, because he thought
Lamb was the one who ought to pay the shilling. The thing was, he did
not, and could not, like Holt half so well as Dale. He could not make a
friend of Holt, because he wanted spirit--he had no courage. What could
he do? He could not pretend to be intimate with Holt when he did not
like him; and if he explained that the shilling had nothing to do with
the matter, he could not explain how it really was, when the fault was
in the boy's character, and not in his having given any particular
o