Weary as he was he seldom went to bed before midnight, sometimes
long after, for he clung to those few hours of freedom with
something like savage obstinacy; during this small portion of each
day at least, he would possess his own soul, be free to think and
read. Then came the penalty of anguish unutterable when the morning
had to be faced. These dark, foggy February mornings crushed him
with a recurring misery which often drove him to the verge of mania.
His head throbbing with the torture of insufficient sleep, he lay in
dull half-conscious misery till there was no longer time to prepare
breakfast, and he had to hasten off to school after a mouthful of
dry bread which choked him. There had been moments when his strength
failed, and he found his eyes filling with tears of wretchedness. To
face the hideous drudgery of the day's teaching often cost him more
than it had cost many men to face the scaffold. The hours between
nine and one, the hours between half-past two and five, Waymark
cursed them minute by minute, as their awful length was measured by
the crawling hands of the school-clock. He tried sometimes, in mere
self-defence, to force himself into an interest in his work, that
the time might go the quicker; but the effort was miserably vain.
His senses reeled amid the din and rattle of classes where
discipline was unknown and intelligence almost indiscoverable. Not
seldom his temper got the better even of sick lassitude; his face at
such times paled with passion, and in ungoverned fury he raved at
his tormentors. He awed them, too, but only for the moment, and the
waste of misery swallowed him up once more.

Was this to be his life?--he asked himself. Would this last for
ever?

For some reason, the morning after the visit to the masters' room