and Julian had never done him any wrong; on
the contrary, he liked the boy; he remembered distinctly how the first
seeds of ill-will against him had been sown, by the reserve with which
Julian, as a school-fellow, had received his advances. Without being
rude and uncivil, he had yet managed to hold aloof from him, and as
Brogten was in some repute at Harton, when Home came, and was moreover
an Hartonian of much longer standing, his sensitive pride had been stung
by the fact that the "new fellow," whose pleasant face and manners had
attracted his notice, did not at once and gratefully embrace his
proffered friendship. Circumstances had tended to widen the breach
between them, but secretly he liked Home still, and would have gladly
been his friend. "And, after all," he thought, "Home has never once
retaliated any injury which I have undoubtedly done him; he has never
done me any harm. Even in the affair at the boats, he only did what was
quite justifiable, and I was far more in the wrong than he was when I
struck him. And now they all say I shall have prevented him from
getting this confounded Clerkland. And I know how he longed for it, and
how much all his hopes and wishes were fixed upon it. Upon my word,
when I come to think of it, it was a very blackguard thing of me to do,
and I wish I had been at the bottom of the sea before I did it. I
think--yes--I think I'll go and see Home, and ask his pardon; yes, upon
my word I need his forgiveness, and would give a good deal to get it.
He's a grand fellow after all. I wish he'd take me as a friend. I
should be infinitely better for it; and I _will_ be better, too." And
as he thus reasoned with himself, Brogten began to yearn for better
things, and for Julian's friendship as a means of helping him to higher
aims; and he remembered the lines--

"I would we were boys as of old,
In the field, by the fold;
His outrage. God's patience, man's scorn,
Were so easily borne."

So his thoughts ran on, but when it occurred to him that no such
humiliation on his part would perhaps go very far to mend the general
disgust with which he had been greeted, he began to waver again. "What
business had they to assume that I meant the worst? I may be a bad
fellow, but," (and a mental oath followed), "I'm not a black-leg after
all. That fellow Kennedy--curse him!--I'll be even with him yet. I
swear that he shall rue it. I'll be a very fiend in the vengeance I
take--curse