and sold himself for gold. It was no excuse
for him that he had sold himself for very little
gold—two pound ten a quarter, and his washing,
as was reported. It was decided by a
Parliament which sat about it, that Old
Cheeseman's mercenary motives could alone
be taken into account, and that he had
"coined our blood for drachmas." The
Parliament took the expression out of the quarrel
scene between Brutus and Cassius.

When it was settled in this strong way that
Old Cheeseman was a tremendous traitor,
who had wormed himself into our fellows
secrets on purpose to get himself into favour
by giving up everything he knew, all courageous
fellows were invited to come forward
and enrol themselves in a Society for making
a set against him. The President of the
Society was First boy, named Bob Tarter. His
father was in the West Indies, and he owned,
himself, that his father was worth Millions.
He had great power among our fellows, and
he wrote a parody, beginning,

"Who made believe to be so meek
That we could hardly hear him speak,
Yet turned out an Informing Sneak?
                                Old Cheeseman."

—and on in that way through more than a
dozen verses, which he used to go and sing,
every morning, close by the new master's
desk. He trained one of the low boys too, a
rosy cheeked little Brass who didn't care what
he did, to go up to him with his Latin Grammar
one morning, and say it so:—Nominativus
pronominum—Old Cheeseman, raro
exprimitur—was never suspected, nisi distinctionis
—of being an informer, aut emphasis
gratia—until he proved one. Ut—for
instance, Vos damnastis—when he sold the
boys, Quasi—as though, dicat—he should
say, Pretaerea nemo—I'm a Judas! All this
produced a great effect on Old Cheeseman.
He had never had much hair; but what he
had, began to get thinner and thinner every
day. He grew paler and more worn; and
sometimes of an evening he was seen sitting
at his desk with a precious long snuff to his
candle, and his hands before his face, crying.
But no member of the Society could pity him,
even if he felt inclined, because the President
said it was Old Cheeseman's conscience.

So Old Cheeseman went on, and didn't he
lead a miserable life! Of course the Reverend
turned up his nose at him, and of course
she did—because both of them always do at
all the masters, but he suffered from the
fellows most, and he suffered from them
constantly. He never told about it, that the
Society could find out; but he got no credit
for that, because the President said it was
Old Cheeseman's cowardice.

He had only one friend in the world, and
that one was almost as powerless as he was,
for it was only Jane. Jane was a sort of
wardrobe-woman to our fellows, and took care
of the boxes. She come at first, I believe, as
a kind of apprentice, some of our fellows say
from a Charity, but I don't know, and after
her time was out, had stopped at so much a
year. So little a year, perhaps I ought to
say, for it is far more likely. However, she
had put some pounds in the Savings' Bank,
and she was a very nice young woman. She
was not quite pretty; but she had a very frank,
honest, bright face, and all our fellows were
fond of her. She was uncommonly neat and
cheerful, and uncommonly comfortable and
kind. And if anything was the matter with
a fellow's mother, he always went and showed
the letter to Jane.

Jane was Old Cheeseman's friend. The
more the Society went against him the more
Jane stood by him. She used to give him a
good-humoured look out of her still-room
window, sometimes, that seemed to set him
up for the day. She used to pass out of the
orchard and the kitchen-garden (always kept
locked, I believe you!) through the
playground, when she might have gone the other
way, only to give a turn of her head, as much
as to say "Keep up your spirits!" to Old
Cheeseman. His slip of a room was so fresh
and orderly, that it was well known who
looked after it while he was at his desk; and
when our fellows, saw a smoking hot dumpling
on his plate at dinner, they knew with
indignation who had sent it up.

Under these circumstances, the Society
resolved, after a quantity of meeting and
debating, that Jane should be requested to cut
Old Cheeseman dead: and that if she refused,
she must be sent to Coventry herself. So a
deputation, headed by the President, was
appointed to wait on Jane, and inform her of
the vote the Society had been under the
painful necessity of passing. She was very
much respected for all her good qualities, and
there was a story of her having once waylaid
the Reverend in his own study and got a
fellow off from severe punishment, of her own
kind comfortable heart. So the deputation
didn't much like the job. However, they
went up, and the President told Jane all about
it. Upon which Jane turned very red, burst
into tears, informed the President and the
deputation, in a way not at all like her usual
way, that they were a parcel of malicious
young savages, and turned the whole respected
body out of the room. Consequently it was
entered in the Society's book (kept in
astronomical cypher for fear of detection), that all
communication with Jane was interdicted;
and the President addressed the members on
this convincing instance of Old Cheeseman's
undermining.

But Jane was as true to Old Cheeseman as
Old Cheeseman was false to our fellows—in
their opinion at all events—and steadily
continued to be his only friend. It was a great
exasperation to the Society, because Jane was
as much a loss to them as she was a gain to
him; and being more inveterate against him
than ever, they treated him worse than ever.