by without their
own wealth of life and joy. He remembered how he had first walked across
that playground, hand in hand with his father, a little boy of twelve.
He remembered his first troubles with Barker, and how his father had at
last delivered him from the annoyances of his old enemy. He remembered
how often he and Russell had sat there, looking at the sea, in pleasant
talk, especially the evening when he had got his first prize and head
remove in the lower fourth; and how, in the night of Russell's death, he
had gazed over that playground from the sick-room window. He remembered
how often he had got cheered there for his feats at cricket and
football, and how often he and Upton in old days, and he and Wildney
afterwards, had walked there on Sundays, arm in arm. Then the stroll to
Port Island, and Barker's plot against him, and the evening at the Stack
passed through his mind; and the dinner at the Jolly Herring, and, above
all, Vernon's death. Oh! how awful it seemed to him now, as he looked
through the darkness at the very road along which they had brought
Verny's dead body. Then his thoughts turned to the theft of the pigeons,
his own drunkenness, and then his last cruel, cruel experiences, and
this dreadful end of the day which, for an hour or two, had seemed _so_
bright on that very spot where he stood. Could it be that this (oh, how
little he had ever dreamed of it)--that this was to be the conclusion of
his school days?

Yes, in those rooms, of which the windows fronted him, there they lay,
all his schoolfellows--Montagu, and Wildney, and Duncan, and all whom he
cared for best. And there was Mr. Rose's light still burning in the
library window; and he was leaving the school and those who had been
with him there so long, in the dark night, by stealth, penniless and
broken-hearted, with the shameful character of a thief.

Suddenly Mr. Rose's light moved, and, fearing discovery or interception,
he roused himself from the bitter reverie and fled to Starhaven through
the darkness. There was still a light in the little sailors' tavern;
and, entering, he asked the woman who kept it, "if she knew of any ship
which was going to sail next morning?"

"Why, your'n is, bean't it, Maister Davey!" she asked, turning to a
rough-looking sailor, who sat smoking in the bar.

"Ees," grunted the man.

"Will you take me on board?" said Eric.

"You be a runaway, I'm thinking?"

"Never mind. I'll come as cabin-boy--anything