t contempt.

My dear boy-reader, don't suppose that I want you to imitate Owen in
this matter. I despise a boy who "tells" as much as you do, and it is a
far better and braver thing to bear bullying with such a mixture of
spirit and good humor, as in time to disarm it. But Owen was a peculiar
boy, and remember he had _no_ redress. He bore for a time, until he felt
that he _must_ have the justice and defence, without which it would
have been impossible for him to continue at Roslyn school.

But why, you ask, didn't he tell the monitors? Unfortunately at Roslyn
the monitorial system was not established. Although it was a school of
250 boys, the sixth form, with all their privileges, had no prerogative
of authority. They hadn't the least right to interfere, because no such
power had been delegated to them, and therefore they felt themselves
merely on a par with the rest, except for such eminence as their
intellectual superiority gave them. The consequence was, that any
interference from them would have been of a simply individual nature,
and was exerted very rarely. It would have done Owen no more good to
tell a sixth-form boy, than to tell any other boy; and as he was not a
favorite, he was not likely to find any champion to fight his battles or
maintain his just rights.

All this had happened before Eric's time, and he heard it from his best
friend Russell. His heart clave to that boy. They became friends at once
by a kind of electric sympathy; the first glance of each at the other's
face prepared the friendship, and every day of acquaintance more firmly
cemented it. Eric could not have had a better friend; not so clever as
himself, not so diligent as Owen, not so athletic as Duncan, or so
fascinating as Montagu, Russell combined the best qualities of them all.
And, above all, he acted invariably from the highest principle; he
presented that noblest of all noble spectacles--one so rare that many
think it impossible--the spectacle of an honorable, pure-hearted, happy
boy, who, as his early years speed by, is ever growing in wisdom, and
stature, and favor with God and man.

"Did that brute Barker ever bully you as he bullies me?" said Eric, one
day, as he walked on the sea-shore with his friend.

"Yes," said Russell; "I slept in his dormitory when I first came, and he
has often made me so wretched that I have flung myself on my knees at
night in pretence of prayer, but really to get a little quiet time to
cry like a c