instead by Nat Howard, a boy who, he told himself, he was without the
slightest vanity bound to see was distinctly second to him in every way.

He noticed that whatever Nat proposed was invariably done, so that he
was forced either to follow where he should have led, or be left out of
everything. Often when he joined the boys listening with interest to
Nat's heavy jokes and talk, a silence would fall upon the company, which
in a short while would break up--the boys going off in twos and threes,
leaving him to his own society or that of a small minority composed of
two or three boys for the most part younger than himself, who in spite
of the popular taste for Nat, preferred him and were captivated by his
clever accomplishments.

That there was some reason why he was thus shut out from personal
intimacy by school-mates who acknowledged and admired his powers he felt
sure, and he was determined to ferrit it out. In the meantime his heart,
always peculiarly responsive to affection, answered with warmth to the
devotion of the small coterie who were independent enough to swear
fealty to him. He helped them with their lessons, initiated them into
the mysteries of boxing and other manly exercises, went swimming and
gunning with them, and occasionally delighted them by showing them his
poems and the little sketches with which he sometimes illustrated his
manuscript, in the making.

It must be confessed that there was little in these compositions to set
the world afire. They would only be counted remarkable as the work of a
school-boy in his early teens, and were practice work--nothing more.
They served their purpose, then sank into the oblivion which was their
meet destiny. But to Jack Preston, Dick Ambler, Rob Stanard and Rob
Sully, and one or two others, they were master-pieces.