out the open entrance drew him on irresistibly, and if, as so often,
he had to choose between a meal and a seat in the gallery, the meal was
sacrificed. Hunger, indeed, was his normal state; semi-starvation,
alternating with surfeits of cheap and unwholesome food, brought about
an unhealthy condition of body. Often he returned to Walcot Square from
his day-long drudgery, and threw himself upon the bed, too exhausted to
light a fire and make his tea,--for he was his own servant in all
things except the weekly cleaning-out of the room. Those were dark
hours, and they had to be struggled through in solitude.

Weary as he was he seldom went to bed before midnight, sometimes long
after, for he clung to those few hours of freedom with something like
savage obstinacy; during this small portion of each day at least, he
would possess his own soul, be free to think and read. Then came the
penalty of anguish unutterable when the morning had to be faced. These
dark, foggy February mornings crushed him with a recurring misery which
often drove him to the verge of mania. His head throbbing with the
torture of insufficient sleep, he lay in dull half-conscious misery
till there was no longer time to prepare breakfast, and he had to
hasten off to school after a mouthful of dry bread which choked him.
There had been moments when his strength failed, and he found his eyes
filling with tears of wretchedness. To face the hideous drudgery of the
day's teaching often cost him more than it had cost many men to face
the scaffold. The hours between nine and one, the hours between
half-past two and five, Waymark cursed them minute by minute, as their
awful length was measured by the crawling hands of the school-clock. He
tried sometimes, in mere self-defence, to force himself into an
interest in his work, that the time might go the quicker; but the
effort was miserably vain. His senses reeled amid the din and rattle of
classes where discipline was unknown and intelligence almost
indiscoverable. Not seldom his temper got the better even of sick
lassitude; his face at such times paled with passion, and in ungoverned
fury he raved at his tormentors. He awed them, too, but only for the
moment, and the waste of misery swallowed him up once more.

Was this to be his life?--he asked himself. Would this last for ever?

For some reason, the morning after the visit to the masters' room just
spoken of found him in rather better spirits than usual. Perhaps