A boy could not sit down to any quiet work without constant danger of having some one creep up behind him and put the offensive fragment of smoking snuff on his head; and neither Barker nor any of his little gang of imitators seemed disposed to give up their low mischief.
One night, when the usual exclamation was made, Eric felt sure, from seeing several boys looking at him, that this time some one had been treating him in the same way.

He indignantly shook his head, and sure enough the bit of wick dropped off.

Eric was furious, and springing up, he shouted-- "By Jove! I _won't_ stand this any longer." "You'll have to sit it then," said Barker.
"O, it was _you_ who did it, was it?
Then take that;" and, seizing one of the tin candlesticks, Eric hurled it at Barker's head.

Barker dodged, but the edge of it cut open his eyebrow as it whizzed by, and the blood flowed fast.
"I'll kill you for that," said Barker, leaping at Eric, and seizing him by the hair.
"You'll get killed yourself then, you brute," said Upton, Russell's cousin, a fifth-form boy, who had just come into the room--and he boxed his ears as a premonitory admonition.

"But, I say, young un," continued he to Eric, "this kind of thing won't do, you snow.