He was passing now through the Square, and he stopped for an instant and
looked up at the old weather-beaten Tower that guarded one side of it, and
looked so fine and stately now with the white snow at its foot and the
gleaming sheet of stars at its back. That old Tower had stood a good number
of beatings in its day--it knew well enough what courage was--and so Peter,
as he turned up the hill, squared his shoulders and set his teeth. But in
some way that he was too young to understand he felt that it was not the
beating itself that frightened him most, but rather all the circumstances
that attended it--it was even the dark house, the band of trees about it,
that first dreadful moment when he would hear his knock echo through the
passages, and then the patter of Mrs. Trussit's slippers as she came to
open the door for him--then Mrs. Trussit's fat arm and the candle raised
above her head, and "Oh, it's you, Mr. Peter," and then the opening of the
dining-room door and "It's Master Peter, sir," and then that vision of the
marble clock and his father's face behind the paper. These things were
unfair and more than any one deserved. He had had beatings on several
occasions when he had merited no punishment at all, but it did not make
things any better that on this occasion he did deserve it; it only made
that feeling inside his chest that everything was so hopeless that nothing
whatever mattered, and that it was always more fun to be beaten for a sheep
than a lamb, stronger than ever.

But the world--or at any rate the Scaw House portion of it--could not
move in this same round eternally. Something would happen, and the vague,
half-confessed intention that had been in his mind for some time now was
a little more defined. One day, like his three companions, Tom Jones,
Peregrine Pickle and David Copperfield, he would run into the world
and seek his fortune, and then, afterwards, he would write his book of
adventures as they had done. His heart beat at the thought, and he passed
the high gates and dark trees of The Man at Arms with quick step and head