receive no wages.

I had not been with him very long before I found that he did not suit
me as a master at all well. Things went on pretty smoothly for the
first month or so, that is, while the money for my apprenticeship
lasted; but after that he became rather difficult to please, and
besides took to allowancing me in food, which was a much more serious
matter both to my mind and palate.

However, I rubbed on for about nine months, until one Sunday, when I
had gone out to church in the morning and had happened to stay in the
village all day, on my return home at last after dark I found the
house locked up. I accordingly proceeded to Swanage, the nearest town,
and called on my master's sister, who lived there, who took me in and
was giving me some supper, when my master chanced to come in himself,
and was very angry with me and told me to come along with him,
declaring that he would pay me out in the morning. When we got home he
ordered me to see if the garden gate was closed, which I thought
rather strange, as it was a thing I had never had to do before; but
meanwhile he slipped upstairs with a horsewhip, which he produced
suddenly in the morning, and gave me a good thrashing before I had
well got my clothes on. I bundled downstairs pretty much as I was, and
out of the house as quick as I could, saying to myself, "This is the
last thrashing I will ever receive at your hands;" and sure enough it
was, for that same week I planned with another apprentice near the
same place, who was under very similar circumstances to myself, to
take our departure on the following Sunday; so that was the end of my
apprenticeship.

And I should like here to warn any master whose eye may fall on this
story not to treat any lad who is put under his care too harshly, as
it is very often the means of discouraging him in the occupation he is
intended to follow, and of driving him from his home, and even from
his country, and to his ruin. Thus even in my case it will be seen
that it was all my master's want of kindness that forced me into a
very different sort of life to that which my parents intended for me;
into one which, though it was not altogether so ruinous, was perhaps
more perilous than many others, and on which I can only now look back
in wonder that I have been spared to tell my story at all.

But I must go back to the day on which myself and my companion had
resolved to leave our homes, which as I have before stated was a
Sunday