only I trust that those of your schoolfellows who saw you staggering and rolling into the room on Saturday evening in a manner so unspeakably shameful and degrading, will learn from that melancholy sight the lesson which the Spartans taught their children by exhibiting a drunkard before them—­the lesson of the brutalising and fearful character of this most ruinous vice.  Eric Williams and Charles Wildney, your punishment will be public expulsion, for which you will prepare this very evening.  I am unwilling that for a single day either of you—­especially the elder of you—­should linger, so as possibly to contaminate others with the danger of so pernicious an example.”

Such a sentence was wholly unexpected; it took boys and masters equally by surprise.  The announcement of it caused an uneasy sensation, which was evident to all present, though no one spoke a word; but Dr. Rowlands took no notice of it, and only said to the culprits—­

“You may return to your seats.”

The two boys found their way back instinctively, they hardly knew how.  They seemed confounded and thunderstruck by their sentence, and the painful accessories of its publicity.  Eric leaned over the desk with his head resting on a book, too stunned even to think; and Wildney looked straight before him with his eyes fixed in a stupid and unobserved stare.

Form by form the school dispersed, and the moment he was liberated Eric sprang away from the boys, who would have spoken to him, and rushed wildly to his study, where he locked the door.  In a moment, however, he re-opened it, for he heard Wildney’s step, and, after admitting him, locked it once more.

Without a word Wildney, who looked very pale, flung his arms round Eric’s neck, and, unable to bear up any longer, burst into a flood of tears.  Both of them felt relief in giving the reins to their sorrow.

“O my father! my father!” sobbed Wildney at length.  “What will he say?  He will disown me, I know; he is so stern always with me when he thinks I bring disgrace on him.”

Eric thought of Fairholm, and of his own far-distant parents, and of the pang which his disgrace would cause their loving hearts; but he could say nothing, and only stroked Wildney’s dark hair again and again with a soothing hand.

They sat there long, hardly knowing how the time passed; Eric could not help thinking how very, very different their relative positions might have been; how, while he might have been aiding and ennobling the young boy beside him, he had alternately led and followed him into wickedness and disgrace.  His heart was full of misery and bitterness, and he felt almost indifferent to all the future, and weary of his life.

A loud knocking at the door disturbed them.  It was Carter, the school servant.

“You must pack up to go this evening, young gentlemen.”

“O no! no! no!” exclaimed Wildney; “cannot be sent away like this.  It would break my father’s heart.  Eric, do come and entreat Dr. Rowlands to forgive us only this once.”