But you are frighted out of this stolen reading by a circumstance that stirs your young blood very strangely.  The master is looking very sourly on a certain morning, and has caught sight of the little weak-eyed boy over beyond you, reading “Roderick Random.”  He sends out for a long birch rod, and having trimmed off the leaves carefully,—­with a glance or two in your direction,—­he marches up behind the bench of the poor culprit,—­who turns deathly pale,—­grapples him by the collar, drags him out over the desks, his limbs dangling in a shocking way against the sharp angles, and having him fairly in the middle of the room, clinches his rod with a new, and, as it seems to you, a very sportive grip.

You shudder fearfully.

“Please don’t whip me,” says the boy, whimpering.

“Aha!” says the smirking pedagogue, bringing down the stick with a quick, sharp cut,—­“you don’t like it, eh?”

The poor fellow screams, and struggles to escape; but the blows come faster and thicker.  The blood tingles in your finger-ends with indignation.

“Please don’t strike me again,” says the boy, sobbing, and taking breath, as he writhes about the legs of the master; “I won’t read another time.”

“Ah, you won’t, sir,—­won’t you?  I don’t mean you shall, sir;” and the blows fall thick and fast, until the poor fellow crawls back, utterly crestfallen and heartsick, to sob over his books.

You grow into a sudden boldness; you wish you were only large enough to beat the master; you know such treatment would make you miserable; you shudder at the thought of it; you do not believe he would dare; you know the other boy has got no father.  This seems to throw a new light upon the matter, but it only intensifies your indignation.  You are sure that no father would suffer it; or, if you thought so, it would sadly weaken your love for him.  You pray Heaven, that it may never be brought to such proof.

——­Let a boy once distrust the love or the tenderness of his parents, and the last resort of his yearning affections—­so far as the world goes—­is utterly gone.  He is in the sure road to a bitter fate.  His heart will take on a hard, iron covering, that will flash out plenty of fire in his after contact with the world, but it will never—­never melt!

There are some tall trees, that overshadow an angle of the schoolhouse; and the larger scholars play some very surprising gymnastic tricks upon their lower limbs:  one boy, for instance, will hang for an incredible length of time by his feet with his head down; and when you tell Charlie of it at night, with such additions as your boyish imagination can contrive, the old nurse is shocked, and states very gravely that it is dangerous, and that the blood all runs to the head, and sometimes bursts out of the eyes and mouth.  You look at that particular boy with astonishment afterward, and expect to see him some day burst into bleeding from the nose and ears, and flood the schoolroom benches.