The essay was for him the chief labour of his week and every Tuesday, as he marched from home to the school, he read his fate in the incidents of the way, pitting himself against some figure ahead of him and quickening his pace to outstrip it before a certain goal was reached or planting his steps scrupulously in the spaces of the patchwork of the pathway and telling himself that he would be first and not first in the weekly essay.

On a certain Tuesday the course of his triumphs was rudely broken.  Mr Tate, the English master, pointed his finger at him and said bluntly: 

—­This fellow has heresy in his essay.

A hush fell on the class.  Mr Tate did not break it but dug with his hand between his thighs while his heavily starched linen creaked about his neck and wrists.  Stephen did not look up.  It was a raw spring morning and his eyes were still smarting and weak.  He was conscious of failure and of detection, of the squalor of his own mind and home, and felt against his neck the raw edge of his turned and jagged collar.

A short loud laugh from Mr Tate set the class more at ease.

—­Perhaps you didn’t know that, he said.

—­Where? asked Stephen.

Mr Tate withdrew his delving hand and spread out the essay.

—­Here.  It’s about the Creator and the soul.  Rrm...rrm...rrm...Ah!  Without A
possibility of ever approaching nearer.  That’s heresy.

Stephen murmured: 

—­I meant without A possibility of ever reaching.

It was a submission and Mr Tate, appeased, folded up the essay and passed it across to him, saying: 

—­O...Ah!  Ever reaching.  That’s another story.

But the class was not so soon appeased.  Though nobody spoke to him of the affair after class he could feel about him a vague general malignant joy.

A few nights after this public chiding he was walking with a letter along the Drumcondra Road when he heard a voice cry: 

—­Halt!

He turned and saw three boys of his own class coming towards him in the dusk.  It was Heron who had called out and, as he marched forward between his two attendants, he cleft the air before him with a thin cane in time to their steps.  Boland, his friend, marched beside him, a large grin on his face, while Nash came on a few steps behind, blowing from the pace and wagging his great red head.

As soon as the boys had turned into Clonliffe Road together they began to speak about books and writers, saying what books they were reading and how many books there were in their fathers’ bookcases at home.  Stephen listened to them in some wonderment for Boland was the dunce and Nash the idler of the class.  In fact, after some talk about their favourite writers, Nash declared for Captain Marryat who, he said, was the greatest writer.