CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
THE SCAPEGRACE.
The fellow's always in a row! No matter what it's about; no matter whose fault it is; no matter how he tried to keep out of it; it's always the same--he's in a row.
To fancy him not in a row would involve a flight of imagination of which we, at any rate, are utterly incapable.

He has lived in an atmosphere of rows--rows in the nursery, rows at the dinner table, rows in the schoolroom, rows in the playground.

His hands are like leather, so often have they been caned; his ears are past all feeling, so often have they been boxed; and solitary confinement, impositions, the corner, and the head master's study, have all lost their horrors for him, so often has he had to endure them.
Sam Scamp of our school was, without exception, the unluckiest fellow I ever came across.

It was the practice in the case of all ordinary offences for the masters of the lower forms to deal out their own retribution, but special cases were always reserved for a higher court-- the head master's study.

Hither the culprits were conducted in awful state and impeached; here they heard judgment pronounced, and felt sentence executed.