Roald Dahl's school days - 1920s British schoolboy tries to survive bullying

The assembly hall empties into stone corridor shadow, and Roald slips toward the locker row. Miller stands there like a gate, one shoulder against the wood doors, eyes fixed on the younger boys' exit.

He does not raise the cane, he does not need to. Two older boys drift in behind him, quiet as backing soldiers, and the passage narrows at once.

Roald sees it plainly now, the corridor is not a way out, it is a sorting place. To reach the lockers, he must pass the prefects, and to pass them, he must submit to being counted.