le school. Never before and never again while Tom was at
school did the Doctor strike a boy in lesson. The provocation must have
been great. However, the victim had saved his form for that occasion,
for the Doctor turned to the top bench, and put on the best boys for the
rest of the hour and though, at the end of the lesson, he gave them all
such a rating as they did not forget, this terrible field-day passed
over without any severe visitations in the shape of punishments or
floggings. Forty young scapegraces expressed their thanks to the
"sorrowful wolf" in their different ways before second lesson.

But a character for steadiness once gone is not easily recovered, as Tom
found; and for years afterwards he went up the school without it,
and the masters' hands were against him, and his against them. And he
regarded them, as a matter of course, as his natural enemies.

Matters were not so comfortable, either, in the house as they had
been; for old Brooke left at Christmas, and one or two others of the
sixth-form boys at the following Easter. Their rule had been rough, but
strong and just in the main, and a higher standard was beginning to be
set up; in fact, there had been a short foretaste of the good time which
followed some years later. Just now, however, all threatened to return
into darkness and chaos again. For the new prepostors were either small
young boys, whose cleverness had carried them up to the top of the
school, while in strength of body and character they were not yet
fit for a share in the government; or else big fellows of the wrong
sort--boys whose friendships and tastes had a downward tendency, who had
not caught the meaning of their position and work, and felt none of its
responsibilities. So under this no-government the School-house began to
see bad times. The big fifth-form boys, who were a sporting and drinking
set, soon began to usurp power, and to fag the little boys as if they
were prepostors, and to bully and oppress any who showed signs of
resistance. The bigger sort of sixth-form boys just described soon made
common cause with the fifth, while the smaller sort, hampered by their
colleagues' desertion to the enemy, could not make head against them.
So the fags were without their lawful masters and protectors, and ridden
over rough-shod by a set of boys whom they were not bound to obey, and
whose only right over them stood in their bodily powers; and, as old
Brooke had prophesied, the house by