ed me further
and further away from my darling, erecting a fresh obstacle between us;
still, some irresistible impulse appeared to hurry me on--although, I
could not but have known how vain it would be for me to recover my lost
footsteps: how hard a matter to change my direction, and look upwards to
light and happiness once more! Glancing back at this period--as I do
now with horror--I cannot understand myself, I say.

I went from bad to worse, plunging deeper and deeper into every
wickedness that Satan could suggest, or flesh hanker after--until I
seemed to lose all sense of shame and self-reproach.

My connection with officialdom was soon terminated.

I got later and later in my attendance; so that, old Smudge's prediction
was shortly fulfilled, for, I became no better than the rest, in respect
of early hours.

One day the chief spoke to me on the subject, and I answered him
unguardedly.

I was not thinking of him at the time, to tell the truth; and when he
said, "Mr Lorton, late again, late again! This won't do, you know,
won't do!" I quite forgot myself; and, in speaking to him, called him
by the nickname under which he was known to us, instead of by his proper
appellation.

"Very sorry, Smudge," said I, "very sorry; won't be so again, I promise
you, sir!"

He nearly got a fit, I assure you; while, all the other fellows were
splitting with laughter at my slip!

"Mr Lorton, I will report you, sir!" was all he said to me directly;
but, as he shuffled off to his desk, with the attendance book recording
my misdeeds under his arm and his face purple with passion, we all could
hear him muttering pretty loudly to himself. "Smudge! Smudge!"--he was
repeating;--"I'll Smudge him, the impudent rascal! I wonder what the
dooce he meant by it! What the dooce did he mean by it?--mean by it?"

I begged his pardon off-hand, immediately, of course, although I would
not give him the written apology he peremptorily demanded.

Do you know, I did not like to deprive him of the extreme pleasure it
would give him to submit his case against me--in clerkly, cut-and-dried
statement--to the chief commissioner, under-secretary, first lord, or
whoever else occupied the lofty pedestal of "the board," that controlled
the occasionally-peculiar proceedings of the Obstructor General's
Department.

I knew with what intense relish he would expatiate on the wrong which
"the service" had sustained in his person at my hands--the "frig