The little dark man stood on the raised platform and surveyed them all.  His expression was nearly a grimace; as though he had just swallowed a disagreeable medicine.  He pursed his lips and held tight to the lapels of his coat, his piercing yet distressful eyes blinking rapidly behind their glasses with a kind of nervous malice.

“Well, my delightful and learned young friends——­”

The class wilted in anticipation.  But before he spoke again the door opened and they rose thankfully with a shuffle of feet and surreptitious clatter of desks.  The clergyman waved to them.  If the little dark man was like a blackbird, captive and resentful, the newcomer was like a meagre and somewhat fluttered hen.  His hands and wrists were long and yellow and sinewy.  He wore no cuffs, but one could see the beginnings of his Jaeger undervest under the black sleeve.  He rubbed his chin or smoothed the back of his small head almost ceaselessly.

“You can sit down, boys.  One moment, Mr. Ricardo, one moment only——­”

He spoke in an undertone.  Robert knew it was about him.  They both looked in his direction.  The little man jerked his head.

“Robert Stonehouse.”

He sat motionless, trying to hide from them.  But it was of no good.  The clergyman made an elevating gesture, and he rose automatically as though he were tied to that gentleman’s hand by an invisible string.  The desk was much too small for him and he had to wiggle to get free from it.  The lid banged.  Instantly every boy had turned in his seat to gaze at him, and he saw that this was the worst place that could have fallen to his lot.  In his corner he was trapped, a sea of mocking, curious faces between him and his tormentors.

The clergyman smiled palely at him.

“I understand that you are a new boy, Stonehouse, and I don’t wish to be too severe with you.  At the same time we must begin as we are to go on.  And you were not behaving very well at prayers this morning, were you?”

Robert moved his lips soundlessly.  But no answer was expected of him.  The question was rhetorical.  “You weren’t,” the enemy said, “attending.  You were trying to make your companions laugh——­” This, at least, was unbearably unjust.

“I wasn’t,” Robert interrupted loudly.

Someone moved to compassion hissed, “Say ‘sir’—­say sir,’” but he was beyond help.  From that moment on he was beyond fear.  He dug himself in, dogged and defiant.

“Come now, Stonehouse, I saw you myself.  You were only pretending to join in, now weren’t you?  How was it?  Didn’t you know the prayer?”

“No.”

“Don’t be so abrupt, my boy.  Say ‘sir’ when you answer me.  How is it that you don’t know it?  You go to church, don’t you?”

“No.”

“Say ‘sir.’”

“Sir.”

“Well, chapel, then.  You go to chapel, no doubt?”

Robert stared blankly.