“How very sad!” said Montagu.

“How very contemptible!” said Owen.

“Did you observe what they were doing?”

“Smoking?”

“Worse than that a good deal.  They were doing something which, if Eric doesn’t take care, will one day be his ruin.”

“What?”

“I saw them drinking.  I have little doubt it was brandy.”

“Good heavens!”

“It is getting a common practice with some fellows.  One of the ripples, you see, of Brigson’s influence.”

Before they got home they caught up Wright and Vernon, and walked in together.

“We’ve been talking,” said Wright, “about a bad matter.  Vernon here says that there’s no good working for a prize in his form, because the cribbing’s so atrocious.  Indeed, it’s very nearly as bad in my form.  It always is under Gordon; he can’t understand fellows doing dishonorable things.”

“It’s a great bore in the weekly examinations,” said Vernon; “every now and then Gordon will even leave the room for a few minutes, and then out come dozens of books.”

“Well, Wright,” said Montagu, “if that happens again next examination, I’d speak out about it.”

“How?”

“Why, I’d get every fellow who disapproves of it to give me his name, and get up and read the list, and say that you at least have pledged yourselves not to do it.”

“Humph!  I don’t know how that would answer.  They’d half kill me for one thing.”

“Never mind; do your duty.  I wish I’d such an opportunity, if only to show how sorry I am for my own past unfairness.”

And so talking, the four went in, and the two elder went to their study.

It was too true that drinking had become a common vice at Roslyn school.  Accordingly, when Eric came in with Wildney about half an hour after, Owen and Montagu heard them talk about ordering some brandy, and then arrange to have a “jollification,” that evening.

They got the brandy through “Billy.”  One of Brigson’s most cursed legacies to the school was the introduction of this man to a nefarious intercourse with the boys.  His character was so well known that it had long been forbidden, under the strictest penalty, for any boy ever to speak to him; yet, strange to say, they seemed to take a pleasure in doing so, and just now particularly it was thought a fine thing, a sign of “pluck” and “anti-muffishness,” to be on familiar and intimate terms with that degraded and villainous scoundrel.

Duncan had made friends again with Eric; but he did not join him in his escapades and excesses, and sat much in other studies.  He had not been altogether a good boy, but yet there was a sort of rough honesty and good sense about him, which preserved him from the worst and most dangerous failings, and his character had been gradually improving as he mounted higher in the school.  He was getting steadier, more diligent, more thoughtful, more manly; he was passing through