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“Que, and–” I repeated.

“And what, sir?” thundered the master, rising in his seat and leaning across his desk towards me. It was awful. I was never more miserable in my life.

“Caesar, Caesar,” I stammered. Here at least was a word I could translate, so I repeated it–“Que, and–Caesar, Caesar.”

A dead silence, scarcely broken by a titter from the back desks.

“Jam,” I chokingly articulated, and there stuck.

“Well, sir, and what does jam mean?” inquired the voice, in a tone of suppressed wrath.

“Jam”–again I stuck.

Another dead silence.

“Que, and–Caesar, Caesar; jam”–It was no use; the only jam I knew of I was certain would not do in this case, so I began again in despair; “Que, and–Caesar, Caesar; jam—jam—jam.”

The master shut his book, and I knew the storm had burst.

“Smith, have you prepared this lesson?”

“No, sir,” I replied, relieved to be able to answer any questions, however awful.

“Why not, sir?”

Ah! that I could not answer–not to myself, still less to him. So I was silent.

“Come to me after school,” he said. “The next boy come forward.”

After school I went to him, and he escorted me to the doctor. No criminal at the Old Bailey trembled as I did at that interview. I can’t remember what was said to me. I know I wildly confessed my sins–my “cribbing,” my wasting of time–and promised to abjure them one and all.

The doctor was solemn and grave, and said a great deal to me that I was too overawed to understand or remember; after which I was sent back to my class–a punished, disgraced, and marked boy.

Need I describe my penitence: what a humble letter I wrote home, making a clean breast of all my delinquencies, and even exaggerating them in my contrition? With what grim ceremony I burned my “crib” in my study fire, and resolved (a resolution, by the way, which I succeeded in keeping) that, come what might, I would do my lessons honestly, if I did them at all!

I gave Evans to understand his company at lesson times was not desirable, and was in a rage with him when he laughed. I took to rising early, to filling every spare moment with some occupation, and altogether started afresh, like a reformed character, as I felt myself to be, and determined this time, at any rate, my progress should know no backsliding. How soon I again fell a victim to dawdling the sequel will show.

I had a long and painful struggle to recover my lost ground at Welford.

When a boy has once lost his name at school, when his masters have put him on the black book, when his schoolfellows have got to consider him as a “fellow in a row,” when he himself has learnt to doubt his own honesty and steadiness–then, I say, it is uphill work for him to get back to the position from which he has fallen. He gets little sympathy, and still less encouragement. In addition to the natural difficulty of conquering bad habits, he has to contend against prejudices and obstacles raised by his own former conduct; no one gives him credit for his efforts, and no one recognises his reform till all of a sudden, perhaps long after its completion, it makes itself manifest.

And my reform, alas! consequently never arrived at completion at Welford.

For a few weeks all went well enough. My lessons were carefully prepared; my exercises were well written, and my master had no more attentive pupil than I. But, alas! I too soon again grew confident and self-satisfied. Little by little I relaxed; little by little I dawdled, till presently, almost without knowing it, I again began to slip down the hill. And this was in other matters besides my studies.

Instead of keeping up my practice at cricket and field sports, I took to hulking about the playground with my hands in my pockets. If I started on an expedition to find moths or hunt squirrels, I never got half a mile beyond the school boundaries, and never, of course, caught the ghost of anything. If I entered for a race in our school sports, I let the time go without training, and so was beaten easily by fellows whom I had always thought my inferiors. The books I read for my amusement out of school hours were all abandoned after a chapter or two; my very letters home became irregular and stupid, and often were altogether shelved.