fast along the road to Greece and Rome.

It was easy what he had to do. All he had to do was when the dinner was
over and he came out in his turn to go on walking but not out to the
corridor but up the staircase on the right that led to the castle. He
had nothing to do but that: to turn to the right and walk fast up the
staircase and in half a minute he would be in the low dark narrow
corridor that led through the castle to the rector's room. And every
fellow had said that it was unfair, even the fellow out of second of
grammar who had said that about the senate and the Roman people.

What would happen?

He heard the fellows of the higher line stand up at the top of the
refectory and heard their steps as they came down the matting: Paddy
Rath and Jimmy Magee and the Spaniard and the Portuguese and the fifth
was big Corrigan who was going to be flogged by Mr Gleeson. That was
why the prefect of studies had called him a schemer and pandied him for
nothing: and, straining his weak eyes, tired with the tears, he watched
big Corrigan's broad shoulders and big hanging black head passing in the
file. But he had done something and besides Mr Gleeson would not flog him
hard: and he remembered how big Corrigan looked in the bath. He had skin
the same colour as the turf-coloured bogwater in the shallow end of the
bath and when he walked along the side his feet slapped loudly on the wet
tiles and at every step his thighs shook a little because he was fat.

The refectory was half empty and the fellows were still passing out in
file. He could go up the staircase because there was never a priest or
a prefect outside the refectory door. But he could not go. The rector
would side with the prefect of studies and think it was a schoolboy