everything? And a worse thing came than the stoppage of the supplies
from the shopkeepers. Every boy had a shilling a week pocket-money,
which we called battels, and which was advanced to us out of the
pocket of the second master. On one awful day the second master
announced to me that my battels would be stopped. He told me the
reason,--the battels for the last half-year had not been repaid; and
he urged his own unwillingness to advance the money. The loss of a
shilling a week would not have been much,--even though pocket-money
from other sources never reached me,--but that the other boys all
knew it! Every now and again, perhaps three or four times in a
half-year, these weekly shillings were given to certain servants
of the college, in payment, it may be presumed, for some extra
services. And now, when it came to the turn of any servant, he
received sixty-nine shillings instead of seventy, and the cause
of the defalcation was explained to him. I never saw one of those
servants without feeling I had picked his pocket.

When I had been at Winchester something over three years, my father
returned to England and took me away. Whether this was done because
of the expense, or because my chance of New College was supposed
to have passed away, I do not know. As a fact, I should, I believe,
have gained the prize, as there occurred in my year an exceptional
number of vacancies. But it would have served me nothing, as there
would have been no funds for my maintenance at the University
till I should have entered in upon the fruition of the founder's
endowment, and my career at Oxford must have been unfortunate.

When I left Winchester, I had three more years of school before me,
having as yet endured nine. My father at this time having left my
mother and sisters with my younger brother in America, took himself