pursuit, and reached their home; and fortunately for them their parents
never suffered them to return. As for myself, he continued to flog, and I
continued to set him at defiance. One more act of his extreme injustice I
will relate, to shew how unfit he was to have the care of children; and as
a caution to parents not to place them in the power of such men,
particularly under the care of such clergymen, who, while they practise
every species of _tyranny, injustice,_ and _cruelty_, upon their pupils,
contrive to escape detection by covering their real character with the
garb of religion, and thus hide the most atrocious acts under the cloak of
their hypocritical sanctity.

Immediately before the holidays, there was a prize to be written for,
which prize was a handsome pen-knife. The Rev. Hugh Stevens, a gentleman
in every respect exactly the reverse of Mr. Griffith, was the principal
assistant and writing-master, who always decided which was the best
written piece; and he at once declared that I was the winner. Griffith,
who had never before interfered in a matter of this kind, was enraged that
I should be successful, in spite of his malignant exertions always to put
me back; and he insisted upon it, that a boy of the name of Butcher had
written his piece better than mine, and that he should have the prize. Mr.
Stevens felt indignant at this barefaced act of partiality and gross
injustice, and would not be come a party to it. After having expostulated
some time in vain, he handed me over the prize upon his own
responsibility, in the presence of the enraged parson; and desired
Griffith, if he wished to favour Butcher, to do it by giving him a knife
out of his own pocket, which he actually did, in order to sneak out of the
business. By these repeated acts of injustice and cruelty he, however,
soon lost his school. Another boy, Mrs. Griffith's own nephew, whose name
was Bradley, now ran away, for setting a hollow tree on fire in the public
parade, called the Acre.