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 r