The lower-fourth, and all the forms below it, were heard in the great school, and were not trusted to prepare their lessons before coming in, but were whipped into school three-quarters of an hour before the lesson began by their respective masters, and there, scattered about on the benches, with dictionary and grammar, hammered out their twenty lines of Virgil and Euripides in the midst of babel.  The masters of the lower school walked up and down the great school together during this three-quarters of an hour, or sat in their desks reading or looking over copies, and keeping such order as was possible.  But the lower-fourth was just now an overgrown form, too large for any one man to attend to properly, and consequently the elysium or ideal form of the young scapegraces who formed the staple of it.

Tom, as has been said, had come up from the third with a good character, but the temptations of the lower-fourth soon proved too strong for him, and he rapidly fell away, and became as unmanageable as the rest.  For some weeks, indeed, he succeeded in maintaining the appearance of steadiness, and was looked upon favourably by his new master, whose eyes were first opened by the following little incident.

Besides the desk which the master himself occupied, there was another large unoccupied desk in the corner of the great school, which was untenanted.  To rush and seize upon this desk, which was ascended by three steps and held four boys, was the great object of ambition of the lower-fourthers; and the contentions for the occupation of it bred such disorder that at last the master forbade its use altogether.  This, of course, was a challenge to the more adventurous spirits to occupy it; and as it was capacious enough for two boys to lie hid there completely, it was seldom that it remained empty, notwithstanding the veto.  Small holes were cut in the front, through which the occupants watched the masters as they walked up and down; and as lesson time approached, one boy at a time stole out and down the steps, as the masters’ backs were turned, and mingled with the general crowd on the forms below.  Tom and East had successfully occupied the desk some half-dozen times, and were grown so reckless that they were in the habit of playing small games with fives balls inside when the masters were at the other end of the big school.  One day, as ill-luck would have it, the game became more exciting than usual, and the ball slipped through East’s fingers, and rolled slowly down the steps and out into the middle of the school, just as the masters turned in their walk and faced round upon the desk.  The young delinquents watched their master, through the lookout holes, march slowly down the school straight upon their retreat, while all the boys in the neighbourhood, of course, stopped their work to look on; and not only were they ignominiously drawn out, and caned over the hand then and there, but their characters for steadiness were gone from that time.  However, as they only shared the fate of some three-fourths of the rest of the form, this did not weigh heavily upon them.