"Why do you dislike him, Duncan?"

"I don't know. Why do you?"

"I don't know either."

Neither Eric nor Duncan meant this answer to be false, and yet if they
had taken the trouble to consider, they would have found out in their
secret souls the reasons of their dislike.

Bull had been to school before, and of this school he often bragged as
the acmé of desirability and wickedness. He was always telling boys what
they did at "his old school," and he quite inflamed the minds of such as
fell under his influence by marvellous tales of the wild and wilful
things which he and his former school-fellows had done. Many and many a
scheme of sin and mischief, at Roslyn was suggested, planned, and
carried out on the model of Bull's reminiscences of his previous life.

He had tasted more largely of the tree of the knowledge of evil than any
other boy, and strange to say, this was the secret why the general odium
was never expressed. He claimed his guilty experience so often as a
ground of superiority, that at last the claim was silently allowed. He
spoke from the platform of more advanced iniquity, and the others
listened first curiously, then eagerly to his words.

"Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Such was the temptation
which assailed the other boys in dormitory No. 7; and Eric among the
number. Bull was the tempter. Secretly, gradually, he dropped into their
too willing ears the poison of his polluting acquirements.