He strangled the half-formed resolutions as they rose, and trusted to the time when, by leaving school, he should escape, as he idly supposed, the temptations to which he had yielded.
Meanwhile, the friends who would have rescued him had been alienated by his follies, and the principles which might have preserved him had been eradicated by his guilt.

He had long flung away the shield of prayer, and the helmet of holiness, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; and now, unarmed and helpless, Eric stood alone, a mark for the fiery arrows of his enemies, while, through the weakened inlet of every corrupted sense, temptation rushed in upon him perpetually and unawares.
As the class-room they had selected was in a remote part of the building, there was little immediate chance of detection.

So the laughter of the party grew louder and sillier; the talk more foolish and random; the merriment more noisy and meaningless.

But still most of them mingled some sense of caution with their enjoyment, and warned Eric and Wildney more than once that they must look out, and not take too much that night for fear of being caught.

But it was Wildney's birth-day, and Eric's boyish mirth, suppressed by his recent troubles, was blazing out unrestrained.