Gradually a kind of cloud stole over me.  I no longer liked to ask for pocket-money; I was clad in a suit of plain cloth; I was banished from the parlour, and only on Sunday was I permitted to go to Julia.  I ceased to live in myself.  Through the whole course of lessons, at play-time, in my bed, and round to morning bell, I was hunting my father in an unknown country, generally with the sun setting before me:  I ran out of a wood almost into a brook to see it sink as if I had again lost sight of him, and then a sense of darkness brought me back to my natural consciousness, without afflicting me much, but astonishing me.  Why was I away from him?  I could repeat my lessons in the midst of these dreams quite fairly; it was the awakening among the circle of the boys that made me falter during a recital and ask myself why I was there and he absent?  They had given over speculating on another holiday and treat from my father; yet he had produced such an impression in the school that even when I had descended to the level of a total equality with them, they continued to have some consideration for me.  I was able to talk of foreign cities and could tell stories, and I was, besides, under the immediate protection of Heriot.  But now the shadow of a great calamity fell on me, for my dear Heriot announced his intention of leaving the school next half.

’I can’t stand being prayed at, morning and evening, by a fellow who hasn’t the pluck to strike me like a man,’ he said.  Mr. Rippenger had the habit of signalizing offenders, in his public prayers, as boys whose hearts he wished to be turned from callousness.  He perpetually suspected plots; and to hear him allude to some deep, long-hatched school conspiracy while we knelt motionless on the forms, and fetch a big breath to bring out, ’May the heart of Walter Heriot be turned and he comprehend the multitudinous blessings,’ etc., was intensely distressing.  Together with Walter Heriot, Andrew Saddlebank, our best bowler, the drollest fellow in the world, John Salter, and little Gus Temple, were oftenest cited.  They declared that they invariably uttered ‘Amen,’ as Heriot did, but we none of us heard this defiant murmur of assent from their lips.  Heriot pronounced it clearly and cheerfully, causing Julia’s figure to shrink as she knelt with her face in the chair hard by her father’s desk-pulpit.  I received the hearty congratulations of my comrades for singing out ‘Amen’ louder than Heriot, like a chorister, though not in so prolonged a note, on hearing to my stupefaction Mr. Rippenger implore that the heart of ‘him we know as Richmond Roy’ might be turned.  I did it spontaneously.  Mr. Rippenger gazed at me in descending from his desk; Julia, too, looking grieved.  For my part, I exulted in having done a thing that gave me a likeness to Heriot.

‘Little Richmond, you’re a little hero,’ he said, caressing me.  ’I saw old Rippenger whisper to that beast, Boddy.  Never mind; they won’t hurt you as long as I’m here.  Grow tough, that’s what you’ve got to do.  I’d like to see you horsed, only to see whether you’re game to take it without wincing—­if it didn’t hurt you much, little lad.’