tent only to be near
him. He would sit beside him for hours, looking patiently into his face;
and a word would brighten up his care-worn visage, and call into it a
passing gleam, even of happiness. He was an altered being; he had an
object now; and that object was, to show his attachment to the only
person--that person a stranger--who had treated him, not to say with
kindness, but like a human creature.

Upon this poor being, all the spleen and ill-humour that could not be
vented on Nicholas were unceasingly bestowed. Drudgery would have been
nothing--Smike was well used to that. Buffetings inflicted without
cause, would have been equally a matter of course; for to them also
he had served a long and weary apprenticeship; but it was no sooner
observed that he had become attached to Nicholas, than stripes and
blows, stripes and blows, morning, noon, and night, were his only
portion. Squeers was jealous of the influence which his man had so soon
acquired, and his family hated him, and Smike paid for both. Nicholas
saw it, and ground his teeth at every repetition of the savage and
cowardly attack.

He had arranged a few regular lessons for the boys; and one night, as
he paced up and down the dismal schoolroom, his swollen heart almost
bursting to think that his protection and countenance should have
increased the misery of the wretched being whose peculiar destitution
had awakened his pity, he paused mechanically in a dark corner where sat
the object of his thoughts.

The poor soul was poring hard over a tattered book, with the traces of
recent tears still upon his face; vainly endeavouring to master some
task which a child of nine years old, possessed of ordinary powers,
could have conquered with ease, but which, to the addled brain of the
crushed boy of nineteen, was a sealed and hopeless mystery. Yet there he
sat, patiently conning the page again and again, stimulated by no boyish
ambition, for he was the common jest and scoff even of the uncouth
objects that congregated about him, but inspired by the one eager desire
to please his solitary friend.

Nicholas laid his hand upon his shoulder.

'I can't do it,' said the dejected creature, looking up with bitter
disappointment in every feature. 'No, no.'

'Do not try,' replied Nicholas.

The boy shook his head, and closing the book with a sigh, looked
vacantly round, and laid his head upon his arm. He was weeping.

'Do not for God's sake,' said Nicholas, in an agit