midnight
They carried brown canvas satchels full of crumpled books and papers , and though the names had mostly escaped him , he remembered every single face . There was Barlow -- big , bony chap who stammered , bringing his words out with a kind of whistling sneeze . Barlow had given him his first thrashing for copying his stammer . There was young Watson , who funked at football and sneaked to a master about a midnight supper . He stole pocket-money , too , and was expelled . Then he caught a glimpse of another fellow with sly face and laughing eyes ; the name had vanished , but he was the boy who put jalap in the music-master 's coffee , and received a penny from five or six others who thus escaped a lesson . All waved their hands to him as the train hurried away , and the last thing he saw was the station lamp where he had lit the cigar that made three of them , himself included , deadly sick .