his sleeve across his mouth, and muttered, 'Well! I don't know as
I see my way to hitting any of you quite in the right place
neither.' He said this with a dark smile, and then began to
bellow. What we were specially to be preserved from, according to
his solicitations, was, despoilment of the orphan, suppression of
testamentary intentions on the part of a father or (say)
grandfather, appropriation of the orphan's house-property, feigning
to give in charity to the wronged one from whom we withheld his
due; and that class of sins. He ended with the petition, 'Give us
peace!' which, speaking for myself, was very much needed after
twenty minutes of his bellowing.

Even though I had not seen him when he rose from his knees,
steaming with perspiration, glance at Brother Hawkyard, and even
though I had not heard Brother Hawkyard's tone of congratulating
him on the vigour with which he had roared, I should have detected
a malicious application in this prayer. Unformed suspicions to a
similar effect had sometimes passed through my mind in my earlier
school-days, and had always caused me great distress; for they were
worldly in their nature, and wide, very wide, of the spirit that
had drawn me from Sylvia. They were sordid suspicions, without a
shadow of proof. They were worthy to have originated in the
unwholesome cellar. They were not only without proof, but against
proof; for was I not myself a living proof of what Brother Hawkyard
had done? and without him, how should I ever have seen the sky look
sorrowfully down upon that wretched boy at Hoghton Towers?

Although the dread of a relapse into a stage of savage selfishness
was less strong upon me as I approached manhood, and could act in
an increased degree for myself, yet I was always on my guard