Mr Paton saw how
mortified and pained he was to fail, and when he sent him to detention,
most kindly called him up, and told him that he saw the cause of his
unsuccess, and was not _in the least_ displeased at it, although, as he
had similarly punished other boys, he could not make any exception to
the usual rule of punishment. On this occasion, it was again Mr
Percival's turn to sit with the _detenus_, and seeing Walter among them,
he too hastily concluded that he was still continuing a career of
disgrace.

"What! you here again?" he said with chilling scorn, as he passed the
seat where Walter sat writing. "After what has happened, I should have
been ashamed to be sent here, if I were you."

After his days and nights of toil, after his long, manly, noble struggle
to show his penitence, after his heavy and disproportionate punishment,
it was hard to be so addressed by one whom he respected, in the presence
of all the idlest in the school, and in consequence of a purely
accidental and isolated failure. Walter looked up with an appealing
look in his dark blue eyes; but Mr Percival had passed on, and he bent
his head over his paper with the old sense that the past could _never_
be forgotten, the recollection of his disgrace _never_ obliterated. No
one was observing him; and as the feeling of despair grew in him, a
large tear dropped down upon his paper; he wiped it quietly away, and
continued writing, but another and another fell, and he could not help
it. For Mr Percival was almost the only master whose goodwill he very
strongly coveted, and whose approval he was most anxious to attain.

When next Mr Percival stopped and looked at Walter, he saw that his
words had wounded him to the heart, and knew well why the boy's lines
were blurred and blotted, when he showed them up with a timid hand and
downcast look.

He was touched. "I have been too hard on you, Evson," he said; "I see
it now. Come to tea with me after chapel this evening; I want to speak
with you."

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

HAPPIER HOURS.

"Sir, you are one of those that will not serve God if the devil bid
you."

Othello, act 1, scene 1.

When chapel was over, Walter, having brushed his hair, and made himself
rather neater and more spruce than a schoolboy usually is at the middle
of a long half, went to Mr Percival's room. Mr Percival, having been
detained, had not yet come in; but Henderson, Kenrick, and Power, who
had also been asked to