“Well, well; at least do hope the best, Eric,” said Graham.

“Yes!” urged Wildney; “only think, dear old fellow, what lots of worse scrapes we’ve been in before, and how we’ve always managed to get out of them somehow.”

“No, my boy; not worse scrapes,” answered Eric.  “Depend upon it this is the last for me; I shall not have the chance of getting into another at Roslyn, anyhow.”

“Poor Eric! what shall I do if you leave?” said Wildney, putting his arm round Eric’s neck.  “Besides it’s all my fault, hang it, that you got into this cursed row.”

     “’The curse is come upon, me, cried
     The Lady of Shallott,’

“those words keep ringing in my ears,” murmured Eric.

“Well, Eric, if you are sent away, I know I shall get my father to take me too, and then we’ll join each other somewhere.  Come, cheer up, old boy—­being sent isn’t such a very frightful thing after all.”

“No” said Graham; “and besides, the bagging of the pigeons was only a lark, when one comes to think of it.  It wasn’t like stealing, you know; that’d be quite a different thing.”

Eric winced visibly at this remark, but his companions did not notice it.  “Ah,” thought he, “there’s one passage of my life which I never shall be able to reveal to any human soul.”

“Come now, Eric,” said Wildney, “I’ve got something to propose.  You shall play cricket to-day; you haven’t played for an age, and it’s high time you should.  If you don’t you’ll go mooning about the shore all day, and that’ll never do, for you’ll come back glummer than ever.”

“No!” said Eric, with a heavy sigh, as the image of Vernon instantly passed through his mind; “no more cricket for me.”

“Nay, but you must play to-day.  Come, you shan’t say no.  You won’t say no to me, will you, dear old fellow?” And Wildney looked up to him with that pleasant smile, and the merry light in his dark eyes, which had always been so charming to Eric’s fancy.

“There’s no refusing you,” said Eric with the ghost of a laugh, as he boxed Wildney’s ears.  “O you dear little rogue, Charlie, I wish I were you.”

“Pooh! pooh! now you shan’t get sentimental again.  As if you wern’t fifty times better than me every way.  I’m sure I don’t know how I shall ever love you enough, Eric,” he added more seriously, “for all your kindness to me.”

“I’m so glad you’re going to play, though,” said Graham; “and so will everybody be; and I’m certain it’ll be good for you.  The game will divert your thoughts.”

So that afternoon Eric, for the first time since Verny’s death, played with the first eleven, of which he had been captain.  The school cheered him vigorously as he appeared again on the field, and the sound lighted up his countenance with some gleam of its old joyousness.  When one looked at him that day with his straw hat on and its neat light-blue ribbon, and the cricket dress (a pink jersey and leather belt, with a silver clasp in front), showing off his well-built and graceful figure, one little thought what an agony was gnawing like a serpent at his heart.  But that day, poor boy, in the excitement of the game he half forgot it himself, and more and more as the game went on.