dared not tell Reginald his trouble; and he felt afraid to pray--he did
not remember that, though our Heavenly Father knows all our thoughts and
wants, He requires that all our care and sin should be poured out before
Him. The Christian does not love sin; and when, through unwatchfulness
or neglect of prayer, he has been betrayed into the commission of it,
let him remember, that He alone can remove it and restore peace to his
wounded conscience, who has said, "Return, ye backsliding children, and
I will heal your backslidings."

* * * * *

Louis got on very ill the next Wednesday, and Reginald, extremely vexed,
spoke very angrily to him. Louis answered as unkindly, and walked proudly
away from him to the other end of the school-room, where, in spite of
his abhorrence of such company, he was soon surrounded by his worst
companions. Hamilton was standing near Reginald at the time; he watched
Louis in his proud descent, and saw that, though he turned away with
an erect head and high words, his step soon grew more listless, and an
expression of indefinable weariness usurped the place of the independence
he had assumed.

"Louis is unwell, I am sure, Reginald," he said.

"He is well enough," said Reginald, abruptly; "but he is sadly altered:
I never saw a boy so changed. He is quite ill-tempered now, and so
horridly idle. Why, Hamilton, you'd never believe that in to-day's
examination in _Prometheus Vinctus_, he got down below Harris!--he's
positively at the bottom. He hardly answered any thing, and seemed
quite stupefied."

"The more reason to think he's not well," said Hamilton; "for, to my
certain knowledge, he would have stood an examination on Prometheus
better than that, a week after we came back. Why, Harris and Peters,
and half the rest, are not to be compared with him."

"I know it," said Reginald; "and that makes it the more vexatious.
It's bad enough to think that Clifton should get ahead of him,
but one may comfort one's self in the idea of his genius; but when
it comes to those donkeyfied ignorami, it is past endurance. He
has not tried a bit: I have seen him lately with his book before
him, dreaming about some wonderful story of some enchanted ass, or
some giantess Mamouka, I suppose; or imagining some new ode to some
incomprehensible, un-come-at-able Dulcinea. He is always shutting
himself up in his air-castles, and expecting that dry Latin and Greek,
and other such miser