 to his book again, left the room with disturbed countenance.
    He had now been attending the day-school for about a year, and was
distinctly ahead of his coevals. A Christmas examination was on the point of
being held, and it happened that a singular test of the lad's moral character
coincided with the proof of his intellectual progress. In a neighbouring house
lived an old man named Rawmarsh, kindly but rather eccentric; he had once done a
good business as a printer, and now supported himself by such chance typographic
work of a small kind as friends might put in his way. He conceived an affection
for Godwin; often had the boy to talk with him of an evening. On one such
occasion, Mr. Rawmarsh opened a desk, took forth a packet of newly printed
leaves, and with a mysterious air silently spread them before the boy's eyes. In
an instant Godwin became aware that he was looking at the examination papers
which a day or two hence would be set before him at school; he saw and
recognised a passage from the book of Virgil which his class had been reading.
    »That is sub rosa, you know,« whispered the old printer, with half averted
face.
    Godwin shrank away, and could not resume the conversation thus interrupted.
On the following day he went about with a feeling of guilt. He avoided the sight
of Mr. Rawmarsh, for whom he had suddenly lost all respect, and suffered
torments in the thought that he enjoyed an unfair advantage over his
class-mates. The Latin passage happened to be one which he knew thoroughly well;
there was no need, even had he desired, to look it up; but in sitting down to
the examination, he experienced a sense of shame and self-rebuke. So strong were
the effects of this, that he voluntarily omitted the answer to a certain
important question which he could have done better than any of the other boys,
thus endeavouring to adjust in his conscience the terms of competition, though
in fact no such sacrifice was called for. He came out at the head of the class,
but the triumph had no savour for him, and for many a year he was subject to a
flush of mortification whenever this incident came back to his mind.
    Mr. Rawmarsh was not the only intelligent man who took an interest in
Godwin. In a house which the boy sometimes visited with a school-fellow, lodged
a notable couple named Gunnery - the husband about seventy, the wife five years
older; they lived on a pension from a railway company. Mr
