g--

"Very well; you'll catch it another time, let me promise you."

"That's right!" exclaimed Ernest's companion. "I'm glad you treated him
so. It's the only way. If I was bigger I would, but he thrashes me so
unmercifully whenever I stick up against him that I've got rather sick
of opposing him."

"Help me," said Ernest, "and we'll see what can be done."

The other boy put out his hand, and pressing that of the new-comer,
said, "I will." The compact was then and there sealed, not to be
broken; and the boys felt that they understood each other.

"What is your name?" said Ernest. "It is curious that I should not know
it, and yet I feel as if I was a friend of yours."

"My name is John Buttar," answered the boy. "I have heard yours. You
are to be in our room, for the matron told me a new boy was coming
to-day, though I little thought what sort of a fellow he was to be. But
come along, I'll show you round the bounds. We may not go outside for
the next three weeks, for some of the big fellows got into a row, and we
have been kept in ever since."

So Johnny Butter, as he was called, ran on. He let Ernest into the
politics of the school, and gave him a great deal of valuable
information.

Ernest listened attentively, and asked several questions on important
points, all of which Buttar answered in a satisfactory way.

"This is a very jolly place altogether, you see," he remarked; "what is
wrong is generally owing to our own faults, or rather to that of the big
fellows. For instance, the Doctor knows nothing of the bullying which
goes forward; if he knew what sort of a fellow Blackall is he would very
soon send him to the right-about, I suspect. We might tell of him, of
course, but that would never do, so he goes on and gets worse and worse.
The only way is to set up against him as you did to-day. If everybody
did that we should soon put him down."

Ernest was very much interested in all he saw. Notwithstanding the
example he had just had, he thought that it might be a very good sort of
place. Buttar introduced him to several boys, who, he said, were very
nice fellows; so that before many hours had passed Ernest found himself
with a considerable number of acquaintances, and even Dawson and Bouldon
condescended to speak rationally to him.

A number of boys having collected, a game of Prisoners' Base was
proposed. Ernest did not know the rules of the game, but he quickly
learnt them, and soon got as