My dear boy-reader, don’t suppose that I want you to imitate Owen in this matter.  I despise a boy who “tells” as much as you do, and it is a far better and braver thing to bear bullying with such a mixture of spirit and good humor, as in time to disarm it.  But Owen was a peculiar boy, and remember he had no redress.  He bore for a time, until he felt that he must have the justice and defence, without which it would have been impossible for him to continue at Roslyn school.

But why, you ask, didn’t he tell the monitors?  Unfortunately at Roslyn the monitorial system was not established.  Although it was a school of 250 boys, the sixth form, with all their privileges, had no prerogative of authority.  They hadn’t the least right to interfere, because no such power had been delegated to them, and therefore they felt themselves merely on a par with the rest, except for such eminence as their intellectual superiority gave them.  The consequence was, that any interference from them would have been of a simply individual nature, and was exerted very rarely.  It would have done Owen no more good to tell a sixth-form boy, than to tell any other boy; and as he was not a favorite, he was not likely to find any champion to fight his battles or maintain his just rights.

All this had happened before Eric’s time, and he heard it from his best friend Russell.  His heart clave to that boy.  They became friends at once by a kind of electric sympathy; the first glance of each at the other’s face prepared the friendship, and every day of acquaintance more firmly cemented it.  Eric could not have had a better friend; not so clever as himself, not so diligent as Owen, not so athletic as Duncan, or so fascinating as Montagu, Russell combined the best qualities of them all.  And, above all, he acted invariably from the highest principle; he presented that noblest of all noble spectacles—­one so rare that many think it impossible—­the spectacle of an honorable, pure-hearted, happy boy, who, as his early years speed by, is ever growing in wisdom, and stature, and favor with God and man.

“Did that brute Barker ever bully you as he bullies me?” said Eric, one day, as he walked on the sea-shore with his friend.

“Yes,” said Russell; “I slept in his dormitory when I first came, and he has often made me so wretched that I have flung myself on my knees at night in pretence of prayer, but really to get a little quiet time to cry like a child.”

“And when was it he left off at last?”

“Why, you know, Upton in the fifth is my cousin, and very fond of me; he heard of it, though I didn’t say anything about it, and told Barker that if ever he caught him at it, he would thrash him within an inch of his life; and that frightened him for one thing.  Besides, Duncan, Montagu, and other friends of mine began to cut him in consequence, so he thought it best to leave off.”

“How is it, Russell, that fellows stand by and let him do it?”