Then, again, he spoke so indistinctly with his deep, gruff voice, that Eric never could and never did syllable a word he said, and this kept him in a perpetual terror.

Once Mr.Lawley had told him to go out, and see what time it was by the church clock.

Only hearing that he was to do something, too frightened to ask what it was, and feeling sure that even if he did, he should not understand what the master said, Eric ran out, went straight to Mr.Lawley's house, and after having managed by strenuous jumps to touch the knocker, informed the servant "that Mr.
Lawley wanted his man." "What man ?" said the maid-servant, "the young man?
or the butler?
or is it the clerk ?" Here was a puzzler! all Eric knew was that he was in the habit of sending sometimes for one or the other of these functionaries; but he was in for it, so with a faltering voice he said "the young man" at hazard, and went back to the Latin school.
"Why have you been so long ?" roared Mr.Lawley, as he timidly entered.
Fear entirely prevented Eric from hearing what was said, so he answered at random, "He's coming, sir." The master, seeing by his scared look that something was wrong, waited to see what would turn up.
Soon after, in walked "the young man," and coming to the astonished Mr.
Lawley, bowed, scraped, and said, "Master Williams said you sent for me, sir." "A mistake," growled the schoolmaster, turning on Eric a look which nearly petrified him; he quite expected a book at his head, or at best a great whack of the cane; but Mr.Lawley had naturally a kind heart, soured as it was, and pitying perhaps the child's white face, he contented himself with the effects of his look.
The simple truth was, that poor Mr.Lawley was a little wrong in the head.

A scholar and a gentleman, early misfortunes and an imprudent marriage had driven him to the mastership of the little country grammar-school; and here the perpetual annoyance caused to his refined mind by the coarseness of clumsy or spiteful boys, had gradually unhinged his intellect.

Often did he tell the boys "that it was an easier life by far to break stones by the roadside than to teach them;" and at last his eccentricities became too obvious to be any longer overlooked.
The denouement of his history was a tragic one, and had come a few days before the time when, our narrative opens.