"Oh, as for Thompson, I have no doubt at all. But I'm afraid Jack must be a bad lot too; he's so utterly callous. And if so, his influence over all the other boys makes him fearfully dangerous. You know, in every thing, it's he that leads them away, I scarcely know how to go and tell Mn Raymond what I suspect, after all the trouble he's taken about the school. I'm convinced of one thing: if we have a scandal in this place, and boys expelled, and the newspapers reporters down, and his nephew's in it, — it'll break the Vicar's heart. Who's that — Greggs?"

A slim, indefinite-looking boy, with timid eyes, too prominent and a little too near together, got up from behind a tussock of gorse, and pulled at his cap with a shame­faced grin. He was the village blacksmith's son, and a personal satellite of Jack Raymond, without whose nefarious influence he would probably never have had the courage to rob any man's orchard; A born huckster, he made a good deal of pocket-money by accompany­ing Mr. Hewitt's scholars on various mar­auding expeditions under Jack's leadership, and selling them birds, ferrets, and fishing­tackle by the way.

"Could you go a message for me this afternoon?" asked the curate.

"If Master Jack will let me, sir; he told me to wait for him here: he wants to go fishing."

"You see," sighed Mr. Hewitt, as he walked on with his friend. "Jack told him to wait; and he'll wait the whole afternoon sooner than disobey. A boy like that is putty in Jack's hands."

Indeed, Billy Greggs had waited for a long time when his commander appeared, moody and wrathful-eyed, and dismissed him with a curt: "Bill, it's no go."

"Why, Jack, aren't you coming?" "Can't; the beastly sneak is keeping me in to do a lot of piggish Latin — just because the weather's fine."