There were more than ordinary temptations around him, and he felt less able to resist them; and this little rest from noise and hurry was to him very grateful.
When, at length, a little party found out his retreat and begged him to join in a game of "hocky," he complied with a light and merry heart, freer from that restless anxiety to which he had been lately so much subject.
In the afternoon, determining to let nothing interfere with the learning of his lessons, Louis sat down in the school-room to business.

There were but two persons besides himself in the room, one of whom was an usher, who was writing a letter, and the other, his school-fellow Ferrers.

The latter was sitting on the opposite side of the same range of desks Louis had chosen, very intently engaged in the same work which had brought Louis there.
Louis felt very happy in the consciousness that he was foregoing the pleasure of the merry playground for the stern business that his duty had imposed on him; and the noise of his companions' voices, and the soft breezes that came in through the open door leading into the playground, only spurred him on to finish his work as quickly as possible.
Ferrers and his younger _vis-a-vis_ pursued their work in silence, apparently unconscious of the presence of each other, until the former, raising his head, asked Louis to fetch him an atlas out of the study.
"With pleasure," said Louis, jumping up and running into the study; he returned almost immediately with a large atlas, and laid it down on Ferrers' books.

He had once more given his close attention to his difficult exercises, when a movement from his companion attracted his notice.
"Did you speak ?" he said.
"Will you--oh, never mind, I'll do it myself," muttered Ferrers, rising and going into the class-room himself.
Louis had become again so intent upon his study, that he was hardly aware of the return of his school-fellow, nor did he notice the precipitation with which he hurried into his place, and half hid the book he had brought with him, a book that he imagined to be a key to his exercises, but which, in fact, was a counterpart to that taken away from Harrison, though bound exactly like the one Ferrers had gone for, and so nearly the same size as easily to be mistaken for it in the confusion attendant on the abstraction of it.
Just at this moment, Hamilton, Trevannion, and Salisbury, with one or two more of the first class, entered from the playground, and walked directly across to Ferrers.
Alive to all the disgrace of being found by his class-fellows in possession of a key, and unable to return it unobserved, Ferrers, in the first moment of alarm, tried to push it into the desk at which he was writing, but finding it locked, he stood up with as much self-possession as he could assume, and pretending to be looking among his books and papers, managed, unobserved, to pass the obnoxious volume over to Louis' heap of books, laying it half under one of them.

Louis was wholly unconscious of the danger so near him, and did not raise his held from his absorbing occupation when the fresh comers approached the desk.
"Ferrers," said Salisbury, as they came up, "we want your advice on a small matter; come with us into the class-room." Accordingly Ferrers obeyed, glad to leave the dangerous spot, and Louis was left in undisturbed possession of the apartment for more than half an hour, at the end of which time the party returned from the inner room laughing, and all walked out of doors.