Never before and never again while Tom was at school did the Doctor strike a boy in lesson.

The provocation must have been great.

However, the victim had saved his form for that occasion, for the Doctor turned to the top bench, and put on the best boys for the rest of the hour and though, at the end of the lesson, he gave them all such a rating as they did not forget, this terrible field-day passed over without any severe visitations in the shape of punishments or floggings.

Forty young scapegraces expressed their thanks to the "sorrowful wolf" in their different ways before second lesson.
But a character for steadiness once gone is not easily recovered, as Tom found; and for years afterwards he went up the school without it, and the masters' hands were against him, and his against them.

And he regarded them, as a matter of course, as his natural enemies.
Matters were not so comfortable, either, in the house as they had been; for old Brooke left at Christmas, and one or two others of the sixth-form boys at the following Easter.