air, or he would die. I think that first put it in
my head. I did it then. He was gone six weeks, and when he came back, I
told him--with every circumstance well planned and proved; nobody could
have suspected me--that the child was dead and buried. He might have
been disappointed in some intention he had formed, or he might have had
some natural affection, but he WAS grieved at THAT, and I was confirmed
in my design of opening up the secret one day, and making it a means of
getting money from him. I had heard, like most other men, of Yorkshire
schools. I took the child to one kept by a man named Squeers, and left
it there. I gave him the name of Smike. Year by year, I paid twenty
pounds a-year for him for six years; never breathing the secret all the
time; for I had left his father's service after more hard usage, and
quarrelled with him again. I was sent away from this country. I have
been away nearly eight years. Directly I came home again, I travelled
down into Yorkshire, and, skulking in the village of an evening-time,
made inquiries about the boys at the school, and found that this one,
whom I had placed there, had run away with a young man bearing the name
of his own father. I sought his father out in London, and hinting at
what I could tell him, tried for a little money to support life; but he
repulsed me with threats. I then found out his clerk, and, going on
from little to little, and showing him that there were good reasons for
communicating with me, learnt what was going on; and it was I who told
him that the boy was no son of the man who claimed to be his father. All
this time I had never seen the boy. At length, I heard from this same
source that he was very ill, and where he was. I travelled down there,
that I might recall myself, if possible, to his recollection and confirm
my story. I came upon him unexpectedly; but before I could speak he knew
me--he had good cause to remember me, poor lad!--and I would have sworn
to him if I had met him in the Indies. I knew the piteous face I had
seen in the little child. After a few days' indecision, I applied to the
young gentleman in whose care he was, and I found that he was dead. He
knows how quickly he recognised me again, how often he had described
me and my leaving him at the school, and how he told him of a garret
he recollected: which is the one I have spoken of, and in his father's
house to this day. This is my story. I demand to be brought face to face
with