f an evolution of opinion. One day
while some companions, with whom he happened to be loitering, scurried
behind a fence, he stopped a runaway horse, clinging to the bridle
though his arm had been dislocated in the earliest effort. Another time,
when a comrade had been visited, unjustly it appeared, with some
terrible punishment--five hundred lines, perhaps, or something equally
direful--Tristrem made straight for the master, and argued with him to
such effect that the punishment was remitted. And again, when a tutor
asked how it was that there was no W in the French language, Tristrem
answered, "Because of Waterloo."

Boys are generous in their enthusiasms; they like bravery, they are not
deaf to wit, but perhaps of all other things they admire justice most.
And Tristrem seemed to exhale it. It is said that everyone has a
particular talent for some one thing, whether for good or evil, and the
particular talent which was accorded to Tristrem Varick was that of
appreciation. He was a born umpire. In disputes his school-fellows
turned to him naturally, and accepted his verdict without question. When
he reached the altitudes which the Upper School offers, no other boy at
St. Paul's was better liked than he. At that time the form of which he
was a member--and in which, parenthetically, he ranked rather low--was
strengthened by a new-comer, a turbulent, precocious boy who had been
expelled from two other schools, and with whom, so ran the gossip, it
would go hard were he expelled again. His name was Royal Weldon, and on
his watch, and on a seal ring which he wore on his little finger, he
displayed an elaborate coat-of-arms under which for legend were the
words, _Well done, Weldon_, words which it was reported an English king
had bawled in battle, ennobling as he did so the earliest Weldon known
to fame.

Between the two lads, and despite the dissimilarity of their natures, or
perhaps precisely on that account, there sprang up a warm friendship
which propinquity cemented, for chance or the master had given them a
room in common. At first, Tristrem fairly blinked at Weldon's precocity,
and Weldon, who was accustomed to be admired, took to Tristrem not
unkindly on that account. But after a time Tristrem ceased to blink and
began to lecture, not priggishly at all, but in a persuasive manner that
was hard to resist. For Weldon was prone to get into difficulties, and
equally prone to make the difficulties worse than they need hav