Ah! not one of you boys will ever know the anxiety you have given him, or the care with which he has watched over every step in your school lives." Up to this time Tom had never given wholly in to or understood the Doctor.

At first he had thoroughly feared him.

For some years, as I have tried to show, he had learnt to regard him with love and respect, and to think him a very great and wise and good man.

But as regarded his own position in the School, of which he was no little proud, Tom had no idea of giving any one credit for it but himself, and, truth to tell, was a very self-conceited young gentleman on the subject.

He was wont to boast that he had fought his own way fairly up the School, and had never made up to or been taken up by any big fellow or master, and that it was now quite a different place from what it was when he first came.