Eric was one of his greatest favorites, as indeed he and Vernon were with all of us; and when the unhappy boy had run away without even having the opportunity for bidding any one farewell, Mr. Rose displayed such real grief, that for weeks he was like a man who went mourning for a son.  After those summer holidays, when we returned to school, Montagu and Wildney brought back with them the intelligence of Eric’s return to Fairholm, and of his death.  The news plunged many of us in sorrow, and when, on the first Sunday in chapel, Mr. Rose alluded to this sad tale, there were few dry eyes among those who listened to him.  I shall never forget that Sunday afternoon.  A deep hush brooded over us, and before the sermon was over, many a face was hidden to conceal the emotion which could not be suppressed.

“I speak,” said Mr. Rose, “to a congregation of mourners, for one who but a few weeks back was sitting among you as one of yourselves.  But, for myself, I do not mourn over his death.  Many a time have I mourned for him in past days, when I marked how widely he went astray,—­but I do not mourn now; for after his fiery trials he died penitent and happy, and at last his sorrows are over for ever, and the dreams of ambition have vanished, and the fires of passion have been quenched, and for all eternity the young soul is in the presence of its God.  Let none of you think that his life has been wasted.  Possibly, had it pleased heaven to spare him, he might have found great works to do among his fellow-men, and he would have done them as few else could.  But do not let us fancy that our work must cease of necessity with our lives.  Not so; far rather must we believe that it will continue for ever; seeing that we are all partakers of God’s unspeakable blessing, the common mystery of immortality.  Perhaps it may be the glorious destiny of very many here to recognise that truth, more fully when we meet and converse with our dear departed brother in a holier and happier world.”

I have preserved some faint echo of the words he used, but I can give no conception of the dignity and earnestness of his manner, or the intense pathos of his tones.

The scene passed before me again as I looked at him, while he lingered over Eric’s verses, and seemed lost in a reverie of thought.

At last he looked up and sighed.  “Poor Eric!—­But no, I will not call him poor; after all he is happier now than we.  You loved him well,” he continued; “why do you not try and preserve some records of his life?”

The suggestion took me by surprise, but I thought over it, and at once began to accomplish it.  My own reminiscences of Eric were numerous and vivid, and several of my old schoolfellows and friends gladly supplied me with other particulars, especially the Bishop of Roslyn, Mr. Rose, Montagu, and Wildney.  So the story of Eric’s ruin has been told, and told as he would have wished it done, with simple truth.  Noble Eric!  I do not fear that I have wronged your memory, and you I know would rejoice to think how sorrowful hours have lost something of their sorrow, as I wrote the scenes in so many of which we were engaged together in our school-boy days.