school-boy with trash, was, in their opinion, a man who was either silly or wicked, and very likely a little of both.
Besides, as Jim Hardcastle said, "If Steve Benson hed hed a bit o' human natur' in him, he'd hev given his mates an evening at t' public-house, and told 'em all as he'd gone through, and stood a quart apiece for 'em; for as iverybody knew both t' squire and t' master hed put their hands in their pockets for him."
So Steve was made to feel from the first hour of his return that he was not one of them. A score of times a day this knowledge was forced upon him. Some of the coarser men and women had a gibe ever ready; others shifted away from his presence in silence, or else made that presence so passively unpleasant that Steve quickly shifted away from it The trial was borne bravely for a few days, for he hoped to live it down. But petty injustices and mean slights are not of that class of evils; on the contrary, they have all the despicable persistence of a fly; and, however often pushed away, return again and again to the contemptible attack.
Steve was almost appalled by such an invincible dislike. He knew how impossible such per-
