“But you seem to aim higher than I do, Power,” said Walter; “I certainly found lots of wickedness going on here, but I never hoped to change that. All I hoped to do was to save one or two fellows from being cruelly bullied and spoiled. We can’t alter the wrong tone which nearly all the fellows have on some matters.”
“Yet,” said Power, “there was once a man, a single man, in a great corrupted host, who stood between the living and the dead, and the plague was stayed.”
“Then rose up Phinees and prayed, and so the plague ceased,” whispered Walter to himself.
All farther conversation was broken by Kenrick, who at this moment awoke with a great yawn, and looking at his watch, declared that they ought to have been in bed long ago.
“Good-night, Ken; I hope we shall sleep as sound as you,” said Power.
“Walter here will dream of skeletons and moonlit precipices, I bet,” said Kenrick.
“Not I, Ken; I’m far too tired. Good-night, both.”
Sleepy as they were, two of those boys did not fall asleep that night till they had poured out with all the passion of full hearts, words of earnest supplication for the future, of trembling gratitude for the past. Two of them—for Kenrick, with all the fine points of his character, was entirely destitute of any sense of religion, and had in many points the standard of a schoolboy rather than that of a Christian.
When Walter reached his room, the rest were asleep, but not Eden. He sat up in his bed directly Walter entered, and his eyes were sparkling with animation and pleasure.
“O Walter,” he said, “I couldn’t go to sleep for joy; Every one’s praising you to the skies. I am so proud of you, and it is so very good of you to be friends with me.”