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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tom Brown's Schooldays, by Thomas Hughes
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Tom Brown's Schooldays
+
+Author: Thomas Hughes
+
+Release Date: February 15, 2006 [EBook #1480]
+Last Updated: March 15, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Gil Jaysmith and David Widger
+
+
+This etext was prepared from the 1905 Thomas Nelson and Sons edition
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS
+
+By Thomas Hughes
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--THE BROWN FAMILY
+
+     “I'm the Poet of White Horse Vale, sir,
+     With liberal notions under my cap.”--Ballad
+
+The Browns have become illustrious by the pen of Thackeray and the
+pencil of Doyle, within the memory of the young gentlemen who are now
+matriculating at the universities. Notwithstanding the well-merited but
+late fame which has now fallen upon them, any one at all acquainted with
+the family must feel that much has yet to be written and said before the
+British nation will be properly sensible of how much of its greatness it
+owes to the Browns. For centuries, in their quiet, dogged, homespun way,
+they have been subduing the earth in most English counties, and leaving
+their mark in American forests and Australian uplands. Wherever the
+fleets and armies of England have won renown, there stalwart sons of the
+Browns have done yeomen's work. With the yew bow and cloth-yard shaft at
+Cressy and Agincourt--with the brown bill and pike under the brave
+Lord Willoughby--with culverin and demi-culverin against Spaniards and
+Dutchmen--with hand-grenade and sabre, and musket and bayonet, under
+Rodney and St. Vincent, Wolfe and Moore, Nelson and Wellington, they
+have carried their lives in their hands, getting hard knocks and hard
+work in plenty--which was on the whole what they looked for, and the
+best thing for them--and little praise or pudding, which indeed they,
+and most of us, are better without. Talbots and Stanleys, St. Maurs,
+and such-like folk, have led armies and made laws time out of mind; but
+those noble families would be somewhat astounded--if the accounts ever
+came to be fairly taken--to find how small their work for England has
+been by the side of that of the Browns.
+
+These latter, indeed, have, until the present generation, rarely been
+sung by poet, or chronicled by sage. They have wanted their sacer vates,
+having been too solid to rise to the top by themselves, and not having
+been largely gifted with the talent of catching hold of, and holding on
+tight to, whatever good things happened to be going--the foundation of
+the fortunes of so many noble families. But the world goes on its way,
+and the wheel turns, and the wrongs of the Browns, like other wrongs,
+seem in a fair way to get righted. And this present writer, having for
+many years of his life been a devout Brown-worshipper, and, moreover,
+having the honour of being nearly connected with an eminently
+respectable branch of the great Brown family, is anxious, so far as in
+him lies, to help the wheel over, and throw his stone on to the pile.
+
+However, gentle reader, or simple reader, whichever you may be, lest you
+should be led to waste your precious time upon these pages, I make so
+bold as at once to tell you the sort of folk you'll have to meet and put
+up with, if you and I are to jog on comfortably together. You shall hear
+at once what sort of folk the Browns are--at least my branch of them;
+and then, if you don't like the sort, why, cut the concern at once, and
+let you and I cry quits before either of us can grumble at the other.
+
+In the first place, the Browns are a fighting family. One may question
+their wisdom, or wit, or beauty, but about their fight there can be no
+question. Wherever hard knocks of any kind, visible or invisible, are
+going; there the Brown who is nearest must shove in his carcass.
+And these carcasses, for the most part, answer very well to the
+characteristic propensity: they are a squareheaded and snake-necked
+generation, broad in the shoulder, deep in the chest, and thin in
+the flank, carrying no lumber. Then for clanship, they are as bad as
+Highlanders; it is amazing the belief they have in one another.
+With them there is nothing like the Browns, to the third and fourth
+generation. “Blood is thicker than water,” is one of their pet sayings.
+They can't be happy unless they are always meeting one another. Never
+were such people for family gatherings; which, were you a stranger, or
+sensitive, you might think had better not have been gathered together.
+For during the whole time of their being together they luxuriate in
+telling one another their minds on whatever subject turns up; and their
+minds are wonderfully antagonistic, and all their opinions are downright
+beliefs. Till you've been among them some time and understand them, you
+can't think but that they are quarrelling. Not a bit of it. They love
+and respect one another ten times the more after a good set family
+arguing bout, and go back, one to his curacy, another to his chambers,
+and another to his regiment, freshened for work, and more than ever
+convinced that the Browns are the height of company.
+
+This family training, too, combined with their turn for combativeness,
+makes them eminently quixotic. They can't let anything alone which they
+think going wrong. They must speak their mind about it, annoying all
+easy-going folk, and spend their time and money in having a tinker at
+it, however hopeless the job. It is an impossibility to a Brown to leave
+the most disreputable lame dog on the other side of a stile. Most other
+folk get tired of such work. The old Browns, with red faces, white
+whiskers, and bald heads, go on believing and fighting to a green old
+age. They have always a crotchet going, till the old man with the scythe
+reaps and garners them away for troublesome old boys as they are.
+
+And the most provoking thing is, that no failures knock them up, or make
+them hold their hands, or think you, or me, or other sane people in
+the right. Failures slide off them like July rain off a duck's back
+feathers. Jem and his whole family turn out bad, and cheat them one
+week, and the next they are doing the same thing for Jack; and when he
+goes to the treadmill, and his wife and children to the workhouse, they
+will be on the lookout for Bill to take his place.
+
+However, it is time for us to get from the general to the particular;
+so, leaving the great army of Browns, who are scattered over the whole
+empire on which the sun never sets, and whose general diffusion I take
+to be the chief cause of that empire's stability; let us at once fix our
+attention upon the small nest of Browns in which our hero was hatched,
+and which dwelt in that portion of the royal county of Berks which is
+called the Vale of White Horse.
+
+Most of you have probably travelled down the Great Western Railway as
+far as Swindon. Those of you who did so with their eyes open have been
+aware, soon after leaving the Didcot station, of a fine range of chalk
+hills running parallel with the railway on the left-hand side as you go
+down, and distant some two or three miles, more or less, from the line.
+The highest point in the range is the White Horse Hill, which you come
+in front of just before you stop at the Shrivenham station. If you love
+English scenery, and have a few hours to spare, you can't do better,
+the next time you pass, than stop at the Farringdon Road or Shrivenham
+station, and make your way to that highest point. And those who care for
+the vague old stories that haunt country-sides all about England, will
+not, if they are wise, be content with only a few hours' stay; for,
+glorious as the view is, the neighbourhood is yet more interesting
+for its relics of bygone times. I only know two English neighbourhoods
+thoroughly, and in each, within a circle of five miles, there is enough
+of interest and beauty to last any reasonable man his life. I believe
+this to be the case almost throughout the country, but each has a
+special attraction, and none can be richer than the one I am speaking of
+and going to introduce you to very particularly, for on this subject I
+must be prosy; so those that don't care for England in detail may skip
+the chapter.
+
+O young England! young England! you who are born into these racing
+railroad times, when there's a Great Exhibition, or some monster sight,
+every year, and you can get over a couple of thousand miles of ground
+for three pound ten in a five-weeks' holiday, why don't you know more of
+your own birthplaces? You're all in the ends of the earth, it seems to
+me, as soon as you get your necks out of the educational collar, for
+midsummer holidays, long vacations, or what not--going round Ireland,
+with a return ticket, in a fortnight; dropping your copies of Tennyson
+on the tops of Swiss mountains; or pulling down the Danube in Oxford
+racing boats. And when you get home for a quiet fortnight, you turn the
+steam off, and lie on your backs in the paternal garden, surrounded by
+the last batch of books from Mudie's library, and half bored to death.
+Well, well! I know it has its good side. You all patter French more or
+less, and perhaps German; you have seen men and cities, no doubt, and
+have your opinions, such as they are, about schools of painting, high
+art, and all that; have seen the pictures of Dresden and the Louvre,
+and know the taste of sour krout. All I say is, you don't know your own
+lanes and woods and fields. Though you may be choke-full of science, not
+one in twenty of you knows where to find the wood-sorrel, or bee-orchis,
+which grow in the next wood, or on the down three miles off, or what the
+bog-bean and wood-sage are good for. And as for the country legends,
+the stories of the old gable-ended farmhouses, the place where the last
+skirmish was fought in the civil wars, where the parish butts stood,
+where the last highwayman turned to bay, where the last ghost was laid
+by the parson, they're gone out of date altogether.
+
+Now, in my time, when we got home by the old coach, which put us down at
+the cross-roads with our boxes, the first day of the holidays, and had
+been driven off by the family coachman, singing “Dulce Domum” at the top
+of our voices, there we were, fixtures, till black Monday came round. We
+had to cut out our own amusements within a walk or a ride of home. And
+so we got to know all the country folk and their ways and songs and
+stories by heart, and went over the fields and woods and hills, again
+and again, till we made friends of them all. We were Berkshire, or
+Gloucestershire, or Yorkshire boys; and you're young cosmopolites,
+belonging to all countries and no countries. No doubt it's all right; I
+dare say it is. This is the day of large views, and glorious humanity,
+and all that; but I wish back-sword play hadn't gone out in the Vale of
+White Horse, and that that confounded Great Western hadn't carried away
+Alfred's Hill to make an embankment.
+
+But to return to the said Vale of White Horse, the country in which the
+first scenes of this true and interesting story are laid. As I said, the
+Great Western now runs right through it, and it is a land of large, rich
+pastures bounded by ox-fences, and covered with fine hedgerow timber,
+with here and there a nice little gorse or spinney, where abideth poor
+Charley, having no other cover to which to betake himself for miles and
+miles, when pushed out some fine November morning by the old Berkshire.
+Those who have been there, and well mounted, only know how he and the
+stanch little pack who dash after him--heads high and sterns low, with
+a breast-high scent--can consume the ground at such times. There being
+little ploughland, and few woods, the Vale is only an average sporting
+country, except for hunting. The villages are straggling, queer,
+old-fashioned places, the houses being dropped down without the least
+regularity, in nooks and out-of-the-way corners, by the sides of shadowy
+lanes and footpaths, each with its patch of garden. They are built
+chiefly of good gray stone, and thatched; though I see that within the
+last year or two the red-brick cottages are multiplying, for the Vale is
+beginning to manufacture largely both bricks and tiles. There are lots
+of waste ground by the side of the roads in every village, amounting
+often to village greens, where feed the pigs and ganders of the people;
+and these roads are old-fashioned, homely roads, very dirty and badly
+made, and hardly endurable in winter, but still pleasant jog-trot roads
+running through the great pasture-lands, dotted here and there with
+little clumps of thorns, where the sleek kine are feeding, with no fence
+on either side of them, and a gate at the end of each field, which makes
+you get out of your gig (if you keep one), and gives you a chance of
+looking about you every quarter of a mile.
+
+One of the moralists whom we sat under in our youth--was it the great
+Richard Swiveller, or Mr. Stiggins--says, “We are born in a vale, and
+must take the consequences of being found in such a situation.” These
+consequences I, for one, am ready to encounter. I pity people who
+weren't born in a vale. I don't mean a flat country; but a vale--that
+is, a flat country bounded by hills. The having your hill always in view
+if you choose to turn towards him--that's the essence of a vale. There
+he is for ever in the distance, your friend and companion. You never
+lose him as you do in hilly districts.
+
+And then what a hill is the White Horse Hill! There it stands right up
+above all the rest, nine hundred feet above the sea, and the boldest,
+bravest shape for a chalk hill that you ever saw. Let us go up to the
+top of him, and see what is to be found there. Ay, you may well wonder
+and think it odd you never heard of this before; but wonder or not, as
+you please, there are hundreds of such things lying about England, which
+wiser folk than you know nothing of, and care nothing for. Yes, it's a
+magnificent Roman camp, and no mistake, with gates and ditch and mounds,
+all as complete as it was twenty years after the strong old rogues left
+it. Here, right up on the highest point, from which they say you can see
+eleven counties, they trenched round all the table-land, some twelve or
+fourteen acres, as was their custom, for they couldn't bear anybody to
+overlook them, and made their eyrie. The ground falls away rapidly on
+all sides. Was there ever such turf in the whole world? You sink up to
+your ankles at every step, and yet the spring of it is delicious. There
+is always a breeze in the “camp,” as it is called; and here it lies,
+just as the Romans left it, except that cairn on the east side, left by
+her Majesty's corps of sappers and miners the other day, when they and
+the engineer officer had finished their sojourn there, and their surveys
+for the ordnance map of Berkshire. It is altogether a place that you
+won't forget, a place to open a man's soul, and make him prophesy, as
+he looks down on that great Vale spread out as the garden of the Lord
+before him, and wave on wave of the mysterious downs behind, and to the
+right and left the chalk hills running away into the distance, along
+which he can trace for miles the old Roman road, “the Ridgeway” (“the
+Rudge,” as the country folk call it), keeping straight along the highest
+back of the hills--such a place as Balak brought Balaam to, and told him
+to prophesy against the people in the valley beneath. And he could not,
+neither shall you, for they are a people of the Lord who abide there.
+
+And now we leave the camp, and descend towards the west, and are on
+the Ashdown. We are treading on heroes. It is sacred ground for
+Englishmen--more sacred than all but one or two fields where their bones
+lie whitening. For this is the actual place where our Alfred won his
+great battle, the battle of Ashdown (“Aescendum” in the chroniclers),
+which broke the Danish power, and made England a Christian land. The
+Danes held the camp and the slope where we are standing--the whole crown
+of the hill, in fact. “The heathen had beforehand seized the higher
+ground,” as old Asser says, having wasted everything behind them from
+London, and being just ready to burst down on the fair Vale, Alfred's
+own birthplace and heritage. And up the heights came the Saxons, as
+they did at the Alma. “The Christians led up their line from the
+lower ground. There stood also on that same spot a single thorn-tree,
+marvellous stumpy (which we ourselves with our very own eyes have
+seen).” Bless the old chronicler! Does he think nobody ever saw the
+“single thorn-tree” but himself? Why, there it stands to this very day,
+just on the edge of the slope, and I saw it not three weeks since--an
+old single thorn-tree, “marvellous stumpy.” At least, if it isn't the
+same tree it ought to have been, for it's just in the place where the
+battle must have been won or lost--“around which, as I was saying, the
+two lines of foemen came together in battle with a huge shout. And in
+this place one of the two kings of the heathen and five of his earls
+fell down and died, and many thousands of the heathen side in the same
+place.” * After which crowning mercy, the pious king, that there might
+never be wanting a sign and a memorial to the country-side, carved out
+on the northern side of the chalk hill, under the camp, where it is
+almost precipitous, the great Saxon White Horse, which he who will may
+see from the railway, and which gives its name to the Vale, over which
+it has looked these thousand years and more.
+
+     * “Pagani editiorem Iocum praeoccupaverant.  Christiani ab
+     inferiori loco aciem dirigebant.  Erat quoque in eodem loco
+     unica spinosa arbor, brevis admodum (quam nos ipsi nostris
+     propriis oculis vidimus).  Circa quam ergo hostiles inter se
+     acies cum ingenti clamore hostiliter conveniunt.  Quo in
+     loco alter de duobus Paganorum regibus et quinque comites
+     occisi occubuerunt, et multa millia Paganae partis in eodem
+     loco. Cecidit illic ergo Boegsceg Rex, et Sidroc ille senex
+     comes, et Sidroc Junior comes, et Obsbern comes,” etc.--
+     Annales Rerum Gestarum AElfredi Magni, Auctore Asserio.
+     Recensuit Franciscus Wise. Oxford, 1722, p.23.
+
+Right down below the White Horse is a curious deep and broad gully
+called “the Manger,” into one side of which the hills fall with a series
+of the most lovely sweeping curves, known as “the Giant's Stairs.” They
+are not a bit like stairs, but I never saw anything like them anywhere
+else, with their short green turf, and tender bluebells, and gossamer
+and thistle-down gleaming in the sun and the sheep-paths running along
+their sides like ruled lines.
+
+The other side of the Manger is formed by the Dragon's Hill, a curious
+little round self-confident fellow, thrown forward from the range,
+utterly unlike everything round him. On this hill some deliverer of
+mankind--St. George, the country folk used to tell me--killed a dragon.
+Whether it were St. George, I cannot say; but surely a dragon was killed
+there, for you may see the marks yet where his blood ran down, and more
+by token the place where it ran down is the easiest way up the hillside.
+
+Passing along the Ridgeway to the west for about a mile, we come to a
+little clump of young beech and firs, with a growth of thorn and privet
+underwood. Here you may find nests of the strong down partridge and
+peewit, but take care that the keeper isn't down upon you; and in the
+middle of it is an old cromlech, a huge flat stone raised on seven or
+eight others, and led up to by a path, with large single stones set up
+on each side. This is Wayland Smith's cave, a place of classic fame now;
+but as Sir Walter has touched it, I may as well let it alone, and refer
+you to “Kenilworth” for the legend.
+
+The thick, deep wood which you see in the hollow, about a mile off,
+surrounds Ashdown Park, built by Inigo Jones. Four broad alleys are cut
+through the wood from circumference to centre, and each leads to one
+face of the house. The mystery of the downs hangs about house and wood,
+as they stand there alone, so unlike all around, with the green slopes
+studded with great stones just about this part, stretching away on all
+sides. It was a wise Lord Craven, I think, who pitched his tent there.
+
+Passing along the Ridgeway to the east, we soon come to cultivated land.
+The downs, strictly so called, are no more. Lincolnshire farmers have
+been imported, and the long, fresh slopes are sheep-walks no more, but
+grow famous turnips and barley. One of these improvers lives over there
+at the “Seven Barrows” farm, another mystery of the great downs. There
+are the barrows still, solemn and silent, like ships in the calm sea,
+the sepulchres of some sons of men. But of whom? It is three miles from
+the White Horse--too far for the slain of Ashdown to be buried there.
+Who shall say what heroes are waiting there? But we must get down into
+the Vale again, and so away by the Great Western Railway to town,
+for time and the printer's devil press, and it is a terrible long and
+slippery descent, and a shocking bad road. At the bottom, however, there
+is a pleasant public; whereat we must really take a modest quencher, for
+the down air is provocative of thirst. So we pull up under an old oak
+which stands before the door.
+
+“What is the name of your hill, landlord?”
+
+“Blawing STWUN Hill, sir, to be sure.”
+
+[READER. “Stuym?”
+
+AUTHOR: “Stone, stupid--the Blowing Stone.”]
+
+“And of your house? I can't make out the sign.”
+
+“Blawing Stwun, sir,” says the landlord, pouring out his old ale from a
+Toby Philpot jug, with a melodious crash, into the long-necked glass.
+
+“What queer names!” say we, sighing at the end of our draught, and
+holding out the glass to be replenished.
+
+“Bean't queer at all, as I can see, sir,” says mine host, handing back
+our glass, “seeing as this here is the Blawing Stwun, his self,” putting
+his hand on a square lump of stone, some three feet and a half high,
+perforated with two or three queer holes, like petrified antediluvian
+rat-holes, which lies there close under the oak, under our very nose. We
+are more than ever puzzled, and drink our second glass of ale, wondering
+what will come next. “Like to hear un, sir?” says mine host, setting
+down Toby Philpot on the tray, and resting both hands on the “Stwun.” We
+are ready for anything; and he, without waiting for a reply, applies his
+mouth to one of the ratholes. Something must come of it, if he doesn't
+burst. Good heavens! I hope he has no apoplectic tendencies. Yes, here
+it comes, sure enough, a gruesome sound between a moan and a roar, and
+spreads itself away over the valley, and up the hillside, and into the
+woods at the back of the house, a ghost-like, awful voice. “Um do say,
+sir,” says mine host, rising purple-faced, while the moan is still
+coming out of the Stwun, “as they used in old times to warn the
+country-side by blawing the Stwun when the enemy was a-comin', and as
+how folks could make un heered then for seven mile round; leastways, so
+I've heered Lawyer Smith say, and he knows a smart sight about them old
+times.” We can hardly swallow Lawyer Smith's seven miles; but could the
+blowing of the stone have been a summons, a sort of sending the fiery
+cross round the neighbourhood in the old times? What old times? Who
+knows? We pay for our beer, and are thankful.
+
+“And what's the name of the village just below, landlord?”
+
+“Kingstone Lisle, sir.”
+
+“Fine plantations you've got here?”
+
+“Yes, sir; the Squire's 'mazing fond of trees and such like.”
+
+“No wonder. He's got some real beauties to be fond of. Good-day,
+landlord.”
+
+“Good-day, sir, and a pleasant ride to 'ee.”
+
+And now, my boys, you whom I want to get for readers, have you had
+enough? Will you give in at once, and say you're convinced, and let me
+begin my story, or will you have more of it? Remember, I've only been
+over a little bit of the hillside yet--what you could ride round easily
+on your ponies in an hour. I'm only just come down into the Vale, by
+Blowing Stone Hill; and if I once begin about the Vale, what's to stop
+me? You'll have to hear all about Wantage, the birthplace of Alfred, and
+Farringdon, which held out so long for Charles the First (the Vale was
+near Oxford, and dreadfully malignant--full of Throgmortons, Puseys,
+and Pyes, and such like; and their brawny retainers). Did you ever read
+Thomas Ingoldsby's “Legend of Hamilton Tighe”? If you haven't, you ought
+to have. Well, Farringdon is where he lived, before he went to sea;
+his real name was Hamden Pye, and the Pyes were the great folk at
+Farringdon. Then there's Pusey. You've heard of the Pusey horn, which
+King Canute gave to the Puseys of that day, and which the gallant old
+squire, lately gone to his rest (whom Berkshire freeholders turned out
+of last Parliament, to their eternal disgrace, for voting according to
+his conscience), used to bring out on high days, holidays, and bonfire
+nights. And the splendid old cross church at Uffington, the Uffingas
+town. How the whole countryside teems with Saxon names and memories!
+And the old moated grange at Compton, nestled close under the hillside,
+where twenty Marianas may have lived, with its bright water-lilies
+in the moat, and its yew walk, “the cloister walk,” and its peerless
+terraced gardens. There they all are, and twenty things beside, for
+those who care about them, and have eyes. And these are the sort of
+things you may find, I believe, every one of you, in any common English
+country neighbourhood.
+
+Will you look for them under your own noses, or will you not? Well,
+well, I've done what I can to make you; and if you will go gadding over
+half Europe now, every holidays, I can't help it. I was born and bred
+a west-country man, thank God! a Wessex man, a citizen of the noblest
+Saxon kingdom of Wessex, a regular “Angular Saxon,” the very soul of me
+adscriptus glebae. There's nothing like the old country-side for me,
+and no music like the twang of the real old Saxon tongue, as one gets
+it fresh from the veritable chaw in the White Horse Vale; and I say with
+“Gaarge Ridler,” the old west-country yeoman,--
+
+     “Throo aall the waarld owld Gaarge would bwoast,
+     Commend me to merry owld England mwoast;
+     While vools gwoes prating vur and nigh,
+     We stwops at whum, my dog and I.”
+
+Here, at any rate, lived and stopped at home Squire Brown, J.P. for the
+county of Berks, in a village near the foot of the White Horse range.
+And here he dealt out justice and mercy in a rough way, and begat sons
+and daughters, and hunted the fox, and grumbled at the badness of
+the roads and the times. And his wife dealt out stockings, and calico
+shirts, and smock frocks, and comforting drinks to the old folks with
+the “rheumatiz,” and good counsel to all; and kept the coal and clothes'
+clubs going, for yule-tide, when the bands of mummers came round,
+dressed out in ribbons and coloured paper caps, and stamped round the
+Squire's kitchen, repeating in true sing-song vernacular the legend of
+St. George and his fight, and the ten-pound doctor, who plays his
+part at healing the Saint--a relic, I believe, of the old Middle-age
+mysteries. It was the first dramatic representation which greeted the
+eyes of little Tom, who was brought down into the kitchen by his nurse
+to witness it, at the mature age of three years. Tom was the eldest
+child of his parents, and from his earliest babyhood exhibited the
+family characteristics in great strength. He was a hearty, strong boy
+from the first, given to fighting with and escaping from his nurse, and
+fraternizing with all the village boys, with whom he made expeditions
+all round the neighbourhood. And here, in the quiet old-fashioned
+country village, under the shadow of the everlasting hills, Tom Brown
+was reared, and never left it till he went first to school, when nearly
+eight years of age, for in those days change of air twice a year was not
+thought absolutely necessary for the health of all her Majesty's lieges.
+
+I have been credibly informed, and am inclined to believe, that the
+various boards of directors of railway companies, those gigantic jobbers
+and bribers, while quarrelling about everything else, agreed together
+some ten years back to buy up the learned profession of medicine, body
+and soul. To this end they set apart several millions of money, which
+they continually distribute judiciously among the doctors, stipulating
+only this one thing, that they shall prescribe change of air to every
+patient who can pay, or borrow money to pay, a railway fare, and see
+their prescription carried out. If it be not for this, why is it that
+none of us can be well at home for a year together? It wasn't so twenty
+years ago, not a bit of it. The Browns didn't go out of the country once
+in five years. A visit to Reading or Abingdon twice a year, at assizes
+or quarter sessions, which the Squire made on his horse with a pair
+of saddle-bags containing his wardrobe, a stay of a day or two at some
+country neighbour's, or an expedition to a county ball or the yeomanry
+review, made up the sum of the Brown locomotion in most years. A stray
+Brown from some distant county dropped in every now and then; or from
+Oxford, on grave nag, an old don, contemporary of the Squire; and were
+looked upon by the Brown household and the villagers with the same sort
+of feeling with which we now regard a man who has crossed the Rocky
+Mountains, or launched a boat on the Great Lake in Central Africa. The
+White Horse Vale, remember, was traversed by no great road--nothing but
+country parish roads, and these very bad. Only one coach ran there, and
+this one only from Wantage to London, so that the western part of the
+Vale was without regular means of moving on, and certainly didn't
+seem to want them. There was the canal, by the way, which supplied the
+country-side with coal, and up and down which continually went the long
+barges, with the big black men lounging by the side of the horses along
+the towing-path, and the women in bright-coloured handkerchiefs standing
+in the sterns steering. Standing I say, but you could never see whether
+they were standing or sitting, all but their heads and shoulders being
+out of sight in the cozy little cabins which occupied some eight feet of
+the stern, and which Tom Brown pictured to himself as the most desirable
+of residences. His nurse told him that those good-natured-looking women
+were in the constant habit of enticing children into the barges, and
+taking them up to London and selling them, which Tom wouldn't
+believe, and which made him resolve as soon as possible to accept the
+oft-proffered invitation of these sirens to “young master” to come in
+and have a ride. But as yet the nurse was too much for Tom.
+
+Yet why should I, after all, abuse the gadabout propensities of my
+countrymen? We are a vagabond nation now, that's certain, for better
+for worse. I am a vagabond; I have been away from home no less than five
+distinct times in the last year. The Queen sets us the example: we are
+moving on from top to bottom. Little dirty Jack, who abides in Clement's
+Inn gateway, and blacks my boots for a penny, takes his month's
+hop-picking every year as a matter of course. Why shouldn't he? I'm
+delighted at it. I love vagabonds, only I prefer poor to rich ones.
+Couriers and ladies'-maids, imperials and travelling carriages, are an
+abomination unto me; I cannot away with them. But for dirty Jack, and
+every good fellow who, in the words of the capital French song, moves
+about,
+
+     “Comme le limacon,
+     Portant tout son bagage,
+     Ses meubles, sa maison,”
+
+on his own back, why, good luck to them, and many a merry roadside
+adventure, and steaming supper in the chimney corners of roadside inns,
+Swiss chalets, Hottentot kraals, or wherever else they like to go. So,
+having succeeded in contradicting myself in my first chapter (which
+gives me great hopes that you will all go on, and think me a good fellow
+notwithstanding my crotchets), I shall here shut up for the present,
+and consider my ways; having resolved to “sar' it out,” as we say in the
+Vale, “holus bolus” just as it comes, and then you'll probably get the
+truth out of me.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--THE “VEAST.”
+
+     “And the King commandeth and forbiddeth, that from
+     henceforth neither fairs nor markets be kept in Churchyards,
+     for the honour of the Church.”--STATUTES : 13 Edw. I. Stat.
+     II. cap. vi.
+
+As that venerable and learned poet (whose voluminous works we all think
+it the correct thing to admire and talk about, but don't read often)
+most truly says, “The child is father to the man;” a fortiori,
+therefore, he must be father to the boy. So as we are going at any rate
+to see Tom Brown through his boyhood, supposing we never get any farther
+(which, if you show a proper sense of the value of this history, there
+is no knowing but what we may), let us have a look at the life and
+environments of the child in the quiet country village to which we were
+introduced in the last chapter.
+
+Tom, as has been already said, was a robust and combative urchin, and at
+the age of four began to struggle against the yoke and authority of his
+nurse. That functionary was a good-hearted, tearful, scatter-brained
+girl, lately taken by Tom's mother, Madam Brown, as she was called, from
+the village school to be trained as nurserymaid. Madam Brown was a rare
+trainer of servants, and spent herself freely in the profession; for
+profession it was, and gave her more trouble by half than many people
+take to earn a good income. Her servants were known and sought after for
+miles round. Almost all the girls who attained a certain place in the
+village school were taken by her, one or two at a time, as housemaids,
+laundrymaids, nurserymaids, or kitchenmaids, and after a year or two's
+training were started in life amongst the neighbouring families, with
+good principles and wardrobes. One of the results of this system was the
+perpetual despair of Mrs. Brown's cook and own maid, who no sooner had
+a notable girl made to their hands than missus was sure to find a good
+place for her and send her off, taking in fresh importations from the
+school. Another was, that the house was always full of young girls, with
+clean, shining faces, who broke plates and scorched linen, but made an
+atmosphere of cheerful, homely life about the place, good for every one
+who came within its influence. Mrs. Brown loved young people, and in
+fact human creatures in general, above plates and linen. They were more
+like a lot of elder children than servants, and felt to her more as a
+mother or aunt than as a mistress.
+
+Tom's nurse was one who took in her instruction very slowly--she seemed
+to have two left hands and no head; and so Mrs. Brown kept her on longer
+than usual, that she might expend her awkwardness and forgetfulness upon
+those who would not judge and punish her too strictly for them.
+
+Charity Lamb was her name. It had been the immemorial habit of the
+village to christen children either by Bible names, or by those of the
+cardinal and other virtues; so that one was for ever hearing in the
+village street or on the green, shrill sounds of “Prudence! Prudence!
+thee cum' out o' the gutter;” or, “Mercy! drat the girl, what bist thee
+a-doin' wi' little Faith?” and there were Ruths, Rachels, Keziahs,
+in every corner. The same with the boys: they were Benjamins, Jacobs,
+Noahs, Enochs. I suppose the custom has come down from Puritan times.
+There it is, at any rate, very strong still in the Vale.
+
+Well, from early morning till dewy eve, when she had it out of him in
+the cold tub before putting him to bed, Charity and Tom were pitted
+against one another. Physical power was as yet on the side of Charity,
+but she hadn't a chance with him wherever headwork was wanted. This
+war of independence began every morning before breakfast, when Charity
+escorted her charge to a neighbouring farmhouse, which supplied the
+Browns, and where, by his mother's wish, Master Tom went to drink whey
+before breakfast. Tom had no sort of objection to whey, but he had a
+decided liking for curds, which were forbidden as unwholesome; and there
+was seldom a morning that he did not manage to secure a handful of hard
+curds, in defiance of Charity and of the farmer's wife. The latter good
+soul was a gaunt, angular woman, who, with an old black bonnet on the
+top of her head, the strings dangling about her shoulders, and her
+gown tucked through her pocket-holes, went clattering about the dairy,
+cheese-room, and yard, in high pattens. Charity was some sort of niece
+of the old lady's, and was consequently free of the farmhouse and
+garden, into which she could not resist going for the purposes of gossip
+and flirtation with the heir-apparent, who was a dawdling fellow, never
+out at work as he ought to have been. The moment Charity had found her
+cousin, or any other occupation, Tom would slip away; and in a minute
+shrill cries would be heard from the dairy, “Charity, Charity, thee lazy
+huzzy, where bist?” and Tom would break cover, hands and mouth full of
+curds, and take refuge on the shaky surface of the great muck reservoir
+in the middle of the yard, disturbing the repose of the great pigs. Here
+he was in safety, as no grown person could follow without getting over
+their knees; and the luckless Charity, while her aunt scolded her from
+the dairy door, for being “allus hankering about arter our Willum,
+instead of minding Master Tom,” would descend from threats to coaxing,
+to lure Tom out of the muck, which was rising over his shoes, and would
+soon tell a tale on his stockings, for which she would be sure to catch
+it from missus's maid.
+
+Tom had two abettors, in the shape of a couple of old boys, Noah and
+Benjamin by name, who defended him from Charity, and expended much time
+upon his education. They were both of them retired servants of former
+generations of the Browns. Noah Crooke was a keen, dry old man of almost
+ninety, but still able to totter about. He talked to Tom quite as if he
+were one of his own family, and indeed had long completely identified
+the Browns with himself. In some remote age he had been the attendant
+of a Miss Brown, and had conveyed her about the country on a pillion. He
+had a little round picture of the identical gray horse, caparisoned
+with the identical pillion, before which he used to do a sort of
+fetish worship, and abuse turnpike-roads and carriages. He wore an old
+full-bottomed wig, the gift of some dandy old Brown whom he had valeted
+in the middle of last century, which habiliment Master Tom looked upon
+with considerable respect, not to say fear; and indeed his whole feeling
+towards Noah was strongly tainted with awe. And when the old gentleman
+was gathered to his fathers, Tom's lamentation over him was not
+unaccompanied by a certain joy at having seen the last of the wig. “Poor
+old Noah, dead and gone,” said he; “Tom Brown so sorry. Put him in the
+coffin, wig and all.”
+
+But old Benjy was young master's real delight and refuge. He was a
+youth by the side of Noah, scarce seventy years old--a cheery, humorous,
+kind-hearted old man, full of sixty years of Vale gossip, and of all
+sorts of helpful ways for young and old, but above all for children.
+It was he who bent the first pin with which Tom extracted his first
+stickleback out of “Pebbly Brook,” the little stream which ran through
+the village. The first stickleback was a splendid fellow, with fabulous
+red and blue gills. Tom kept him in a small basin till the day of his
+death, and became a fisherman from that day. Within a month from the
+taking of the first stickleback, Benjy had carried off our hero to
+the canal, in defiance of Charity; and between them, after a whole
+afternoon's popjoying, they had caught three or four small, coarse fish
+and a perch, averaging perhaps two and a half ounces each, which Tom
+bore home in rapture to his mother as a precious gift, and which she
+received like a true mother with equal rapture, instructing the cook
+nevertheless, in a private interview, not to prepare the same for the
+Squire's dinner. Charity had appealed against old Benjy in the meantime,
+representing the dangers of the canal banks; but Mrs. Brown, seeing the
+boy's inaptitude for female guidance, had decided in Benjy's favour, and
+from thenceforth the old man was Tom's dry nurse. And as they sat by the
+canal watching their little green-and-white float, Benjy would instruct
+him in the doings of deceased Browns. How his grandfather, in the early
+days of the great war, when there was much distress and crime in the
+Vale, and the magistrates had been threatened by the mob, had ridden in
+with a big stick in his hand, and held the petty sessions by himself.
+How his great-uncle, the rector, had encountered and laid the last
+ghost, who had frightened the old women, male and female, of the
+parish out of their senses, and who turned out to be the blacksmith's
+apprentice disguised in drink and a white sheet. It was Benjy, too,
+who saddled Tom's first pony, and instructed him in the mysteries of
+horsemanship, teaching him to throw his weight back and keep his hand
+low, and who stood chuckling outside the door of the girls' school when
+Tom rode his little Shetland into the cottage and round the table, where
+the old dame and her pupils were seated at their work.
+
+Benjy himself was come of a family distinguished in the Vale for their
+prowess in all athletic games. Some half-dozen of his brothers and
+kinsmen had gone to the wars, of whom only one had survived to come
+home, with a small pension, and three bullets in different parts of his
+body; he had shared Benjy's cottage till his death, and had left him his
+old dragoon's sword and pistol, which hung over the mantelpiece, flanked
+by a pair of heavy single-sticks with which Benjy himself had won renown
+long ago as an old gamester, against the picked men of Wiltshire and
+Somersetshire, in many a good bout at the revels and pastimes of the
+country-side. For he had been a famous back-swordman in his young days,
+and a good wrestler at elbow and collar.
+
+Back-swording and wrestling were the most serious holiday pursuits of
+the Vale--those by which men attained fame--and each village had its
+champion. I suppose that, on the whole, people were less worked then
+than they are now; at any rate, they seemed to have more time and energy
+for the old pastimes. The great times for back-swording came round once
+a year in each village; at the feast. The Vale “veasts” were not
+the common statute feasts, but much more ancient business. They are
+literally, so far as one can ascertain, feasts of the dedication--that
+is, they were first established in the churchyard on the day on which
+the village church was opened for public worship, which was on the wake
+or festival of the patron saint, and have been held on the same day in
+every year since that time.
+
+There was no longer any remembrance of why the “veast” had been
+instituted, but nevertheless it had a pleasant and almost sacred
+character of its own; for it was then that all the children of the
+village, wherever they were scattered, tried to get home for a holiday
+to visit their fathers and mothers and friends, bringing with them their
+wages or some little gift from up the country for the old folk. Perhaps
+for a day or two before, but at any rate on “veast day” and the day
+after, in our village, you might see strapping, healthy young men and
+women from all parts of the country going round from house to house in
+their best clothes, and finishing up with a call on Madam Brown,
+whom they would consult as to putting out their earnings to the best
+advantage, or how best to expend the same for the benefit of the old
+folk. Every household, however poor, managed to raise a “feast-cake”
+ and a bottle of ginger or raisin wine, which stood on the cottage table
+ready for all comers, and not unlikely to make them remember feast-time,
+for feast-cake is very solid, and full of huge raisins. Moreover,
+feast-time was the day of reconciliation for the parish. If Job Higgins
+and Noah Freeman hadn't spoken for the last six months, their “old
+women” would be sure to get it patched up by that day. And though there
+was a good deal of drinking and low vice in the booths of an evening,
+it was pretty well confined to those who would have been doing the like,
+“veast or no veast;” and on the whole, the effect was humanising and
+Christian. In fact, the only reason why this is not the case still is
+that gentlefolk and farmers have taken to other amusements, and have, as
+usual, forgotten the poor. They don't attend the feasts themselves, and
+call them disreputable; whereupon the steadiest of the poor leave them
+also, and they become what they are called. Class amusements, be
+they for dukes or ploughboys, always become nuisances and curses to a
+country. The true charm of cricket and hunting is that they are still
+more or less sociable and universal; there's a place for every man who
+will come and take his part.
+
+No one in the village enjoyed the approach of “veast day” more than Tom,
+in the year in which he was taken under old Benjy's tutelage. The feast
+was held in a large green field at the lower end of the village. The
+road to Farringdon ran along one side of it, and the brook by the side
+of the road; and above the brook was another large, gentle, sloping
+pasture-land, with a footpath running down it from the churchyard; and
+the old church, the originator of all the mirth, towered up with its
+gray walls and lancet windows, overlooking and sanctioning the whole,
+though its own share therein had been forgotten. At the point where the
+footpath crossed the brook and road, and entered on the field where the
+feast was held, was a long, low roadside inn; and on the opposite side
+of the field was a large white thatched farmhouse, where dwelt an old
+sporting farmer, a great promoter of the revels.
+
+Past the old church, and down the footpath, pottered the old man and the
+child hand-in-hand early on the afternoon of the day before the feast,
+and wandered all round the ground, which was already being occupied
+by the “cheap Jacks,” with their green-covered carts and marvellous
+assortment of wares; and the booths of more legitimate small traders,
+with their tempting arrays of fairings and eatables; and penny
+peep-shows and other shows, containing pink-eyed ladies, and dwarfs, and
+boa-constrictors, and wild Indians. But the object of most interest to
+Benjy, and of course to his pupil also, was the stage of rough planks
+some four feet high, which was being put up by the village carpenter for
+the back-swording and wrestling. And after surveying the whole tenderly,
+old Benjy led his charge away to the roadside inn, where he ordered a
+glass of ale and a long pipe for himself, and discussed these unwonted
+luxuries on the bench outside in the soft autumn evening with mine
+host, another old servant of the Browns, and speculated with him on the
+likelihood of a good show of old gamesters to contend for the morrow's
+prizes, and told tales of the gallant bouts of forty years back, to
+which Tom listened with all his ears and eyes.
+
+But who shall tell the joy of the next morning, when the church bells
+were ringing a merry peal, and old Benjy appeared in the servants' hall,
+resplendent in a long blue coat and brass buttons, and a pair of old
+yellow buckskins and top-boots which he had cleaned for and inherited
+from Tom's grandfather, a stout thorn stick in his hand, and a nosegay
+of pinks and lavender in his buttonhole, and led away Tom in his best
+clothes, and two new shillings in his breeches-pockets? Those two, at
+any rate, look like enjoying the day's revel.
+
+They quicken their pace when they get into the churchyard, for already
+they see the field thronged with country folk; the men in clean, white
+smocks or velveteen or fustian coats, with rough plush waistcoats of
+many colours, and the women in the beautiful, long scarlet cloak--the
+usual out-door dress of west-country women in those days, and which
+often descended in families from mother to daughter--or in new-fashioned
+stuff shawls, which, if they would but believe it, don't become them
+half so well. The air resounds with the pipe and tabor, and the drums
+and trumpets of the showmen shouting at the doors of their caravans,
+over which tremendous pictures of the wonders to be seen within hang
+temptingly; while through all rises the shrill “root-too-too-too” of Mr.
+Punch, and the unceasing pan-pipe of his satellite.
+
+“Lawk a' massey, Mr. Benjamin,” cries a stout, motherly woman in a red
+cloak, as they enter the field, “be that you? Well, I never! You do look
+purely. And how's the Squire, and madam, and the family?”
+
+Benjy graciously shakes hands with the speaker, who has left our village
+for some years, but has come over for “veast” day on a visit to an old
+gossip, and gently indicates the heir-apparent of the Browns.
+
+“Bless his little heart! I must gi' un a kiss.--Here, Susannah,
+Susannah!” cries she, raising herself from the embrace, “come and see
+Mr. Benjamin and young Master Tom.--You minds our Sukey, Mr. Benjamin;
+she be growed a rare slip of a wench since you seen her, though her'll
+be sixteen come Martinmas. I do aim to take her to see madam to get her
+a place.”
+
+And Sukey comes bouncing away from a knot of old school-fellows, and
+drops a curtsey to Mr. Benjamin. And elders come up from all parts to
+salute Benjy, and girls who have been madam's pupils to kiss Master
+Tom. And they carry him off to load him with fairings; and he returns
+to Benjy, his hat and coat covered with ribbons, and his pockets crammed
+with wonderful boxes which open upon ever new boxes, and popguns, and
+trumpets, and apples, and gilt gingerbread from the stall of Angel
+Heavens, sole vender thereof, whose booth groans with kings and queens,
+and elephants and prancing steeds, all gleaming with gold. There
+was more gold on Angel's cakes than there is ginger in those of
+this degenerate age. Skilled diggers might yet make a fortune in the
+churchyards of the Vale, by carefully washing the dust of the consumers
+of Angel's gingerbread. Alas! he is with his namesakes, and his receipts
+have, I fear, died with him.
+
+And then they inspect the penny peep-show--at least Tom does--while old
+Benjy stands outside and gossips and walks up the steps, and enters the
+mysterious doors of the pink-eyed lady and the Irish giant, who do not
+by any means come up to their pictures; and the boa will not swallow his
+rabbit, but there the rabbit is waiting to be swallowed; and what can
+you expect for tuppence? We are easily pleased in the Vale. Now there
+is a rush of the crowd, and a tinkling bell is heard, and shouts of
+laughter; and Master Tom mounts on Benjy's shoulders, and beholds a
+jingling match in all its glory. The games are begun, and this is the
+opening of them. It is a quaint game, immensely amusing to look at;
+and as I don't know whether it is used in your counties, I had better
+describe it. A large roped ring is made, into which are introduced
+a dozen or so of big boys and young men who mean to play; these are
+carefully blinded and turned loose into the ring, and then a man is
+introduced not blindfolded; with a bell hung round his neck, and his two
+hands tied behind him. Of course every time he moves the bell must ring,
+as he has no hand to hold it; and so the dozen blindfolded men have to
+catch him. This they cannot always manage if he is a lively fellow, but
+half of them always rush into the arms of the other half, or drive their
+heads together, or tumble over; and then the crowd laughs vehemently,
+and invents nicknames for them on the spur of the moment; and they, if
+they be choleric, tear off the handkerchiefs which blind them, and not
+unfrequently pitch into one another, each thinking that the other must
+have run against him on purpose. It is great fun to look at a jingling
+match certainly, and Tom shouts and jumps on old Benjy's shoulders at
+the sight, until the old man feels weary, and shifts him to the strong
+young shoulders of the groom, who has just got down to the fun.
+
+And now, while they are climbing the pole in another part of the field,
+and muzzling in a flour-tub in another, the old farmer whose house, as
+has been said, overlooks the field, and who is master of the revels,
+gets up the steps on to the stage, and announces to all whom it may
+concern that a half-sovereign in money will be forthcoming to the old
+gamester who breaks most heads; to which the Squire and he have added a
+new hat.
+
+The amount of the prize is sufficient to stimulate the men of the
+immediate neighbourhood, but not enough to bring any very high talent
+from a distance; so, after a glance or two round, a tall fellow, who is
+a down shepherd, chucks his hat on to the stage and climbs up the steps,
+looking rather sheepish. The crowd, of course, first cheer, and then
+chaff as usual, as he picks up his hat and begins handling the sticks to
+see which will suit him.
+
+“Wooy, Willum Smith, thee canst plaay wi' he arra daay,” says his
+companion to the blacksmith's apprentice, a stout young fellow of
+nineteen or twenty. Willum's sweetheart is in the “veast” somewhere, and
+has strictly enjoined him not to get his head broke at back-swording, on
+pain of her highest displeasure; but as she is not to be seen (the women
+pretend not to like to see the backsword play, and keep away from the
+stage), and as his hat is decidedly getting old, he chucks it on to the
+stage, and follows himself, hoping that he will only have to break other
+people's heads, or that, after all, Rachel won't really mind.
+
+Then follows the greasy cap lined with fur of a half-gipsy, poaching,
+loafing fellow, who travels the Vale not for much good, I fancy:
+
+     “For twenty times was Peter feared
+     For once that Peter was respected,”
+
+in fact. And then three or four other hats, including the glossy
+castor of Joe Willis, the self-elected and would-be champion of
+the neighbourhood, a well-to-do young butcher of twenty-eight or
+thereabouts, and a great strapping fellow, with his full allowance of
+bluster. This is a capital show of gamesters, considering the amount
+of the prize; so, while they are picking their sticks and drawing their
+lots, I think I must tell you, as shortly as I can, how the noble old
+game of back-sword is played; for it is sadly gone out of late, even in
+the Vale, and maybe you have never seen it.
+
+The weapon is a good stout ash stick with a large basket handle, heavier
+and somewhat shorter than a common single-stick. The players are called
+“old gamesters”--why, I can't tell you--and their object is simply
+to break one another's heads; for the moment that blood runs an inch
+anywhere above the eyebrow, the old gamester to whom it belongs is
+beaten, and has to stop. A very slight blow with the sticks will fetch
+blood, so that it is by no means a punishing pastime, if the men don't
+play on purpose and savagely at the body and arms of their adversaries.
+The old gamester going into action only takes off his hat and coat, and
+arms himself with a stick; he then loops the fingers of his left hand in
+a handkerchief or strap, which he fastens round his left leg, measuring
+the length, so that when he draws it tight with his left elbow in the
+air, that elbow shall just reach as high as his crown. Thus you see, so
+long as he chooses to keep his left elbow up, regardless of cuts, he
+has a perfect guard for the left side of his head. Then he advances his
+right hand above and in front of his head, holding his stick across, so
+that its point projects an inch or two over his left elbow; and thus
+his whole head is completely guarded, and he faces his man armed in like
+manner; and they stand some three feet apart, often nearer, and feint,
+and strike, and return at one another's heads, until one cries “hold,”
+ or blood flows. In the first case they are allowed a minute's time; and
+go on again; in the latter another pair of gamesters are called on. If
+good men are playing, the quickness of the returns is marvellous: you
+hear the rattle like that a boy makes drawing his stick along palings,
+only heavier; and the closeness of the men in action to one another
+gives it a strange interest, and makes a spell at back-swording a very
+noble sight.
+
+They are all suited now with sticks, and Joe Willis and the gipsy man
+have drawn the first lot. So the rest lean against the rails of the
+stage, and Joe and the dark man meet in the middle, the boards having
+been strewed with sawdust, Joe's white shirt and spotless drab breeches
+and boots contrasting with the gipsy's coarse blue shirt and dirty green
+velveteen breeches and leather gaiters. Joe is evidently turning up his
+nose at the other, and half insulted at having to break his head.
+
+The gipsy is a tough, active fellow, but not very skilful with his
+weapon, so that Joe's weight and strength tell in a minute; he is too
+heavy metal for him. Whack, whack, whack, come his blows, breaking down
+the gipsy's guard, and threatening to reach his head every moment. There
+it is at last. “Blood, blood!” shout the spectators, as a thin stream
+oozes out slowly from the roots of his hair, and the umpire calls to
+them to stop. The gipsy scowls at Joe under his brows in no pleasant
+manner, while Master Joe swaggers about, and makes attitudes, and thinks
+himself, and shows that he thinks himself, the greatest man in the
+field.
+
+Then follow several stout sets-to between the other candidates for the
+new hat, and at last come the shepherd and Willum Smith. This is the
+crack set-to of the day. They are both in famous wind, and there is no
+crying “hold.” The shepherd is an old hand, and up to all the dodges. He
+tries them one after another, and very nearly gets at Willum's head
+by coming in near, and playing over his guard at the half-stick; but
+somehow Willum blunders through, catching the stick on his shoulders,
+neck, sides, every now and then, anywhere but on his head, and his
+returns are heavy and straight, and he is the youngest gamester and a
+favourite in the parish, and his gallant stand brings down shouts and
+cheers, and the knowing ones think he'll win if he keeps steady; and
+Tom, on the groom's shoulder, holds his hands together, and can hardly
+breathe for excitement.
+
+Alas for Willum! His sweetheart, getting tired of female companionship,
+has been hunting the booths to see where he can have got to, and now
+catches sight of him on the stage in full combat. She flushes and turns
+pale; her old aunt catches hold of her, saying, “Bless 'ee, child,
+doan't 'ee go a'nigst it;” but she breaks away and runs towards the
+stage calling his name. Willum keeps up his guard stoutly, but glances
+for a moment towards the voice. No guard will do it, Willum, without the
+eye. The shepherd steps round and strikes, and the point of his stick
+just grazes Willum's forehead, fetching off the skin, and the blood
+flows, and the umpire cries, “Hold!” and poor Willum's chance is up for
+the day. But he takes it very well, and puts on his old hat and coat,
+and goes down to be scolded by his sweetheart, and led away out of
+mischief. Tom hears him say coaxingly, as he walks off,--
+
+“Now doan't 'ee, Rachel! I wouldn't ha' done it, only I wanted summut
+to buy 'ee a fairing wi', and I be as vlush o' money as a twod o'
+feathers.”
+
+“Thee mind what I tells 'ee,” rejoins Rachel saucily, “and doan't 'ee
+kep blethering about fairings.”
+
+Tom resolves in his heart to give Willum the remainder of his two
+shillings after the back-swording.
+
+Joe Willis has all the luck to-day. His next bout ends in an easy
+victory, while the shepherd has a tough job to break his second head;
+and when Joe and the shepherd meet, and the whole circle expect and hope
+to see him get a broken crown, the shepherd slips in the first round and
+falls against the rails, hurting himself so that the old farmer will not
+let him go on, much as he wishes to try; and that impostor Joe (for he
+is certainly not the best man) struts and swaggers about the stage the
+conquering gamester, though he hasn't had five minutes' really trying
+play.
+
+Joe takes the new hat in his hand, and puts the money into it, and then,
+as if a thought strikes him, and he doesn't think his victory quite
+acknowledged down below, walks to each face of the stage, and looks
+down, shaking the money, and chaffing, as how he'll stake hat and money
+and another half-sovereign “agin any gamester as hasn't played already.”
+ Cunning Joe! he thus gets rid of Willum and the shepherd, who is quite
+fresh again.
+
+No one seems to like the offer, and the umpire is just coming down,
+when a queer old hat, something like a doctor of divinity's shovel, is
+chucked on to the stage and an elderly, quiet man steps out, who has
+been watching the play, saying he should like to cross a stick wi' the
+prodigalish young chap.
+
+The crowd cheer, and begin to chaff Joe, who turns up his nose and
+swaggers across to the sticks. “Imp'dent old wosbird!” says he; “I'll
+break the bald head on un to the truth.”
+
+The old boy is very bald, certainly, and the blood will show fast enough
+if you can touch him, Joe.
+
+He takes off his long-flapped coat, and stands up in a long-flapped
+waistcoat, which Sir Roger de Coverley might have worn when it was new,
+picks out a stick, and is ready for Master Joe, who loses no time, but
+begins his old game, whack, whack, whack, trying to break down the old
+man's guard by sheer strength. But it won't do; he catches every blow
+close by the basket, and though he is rather stiff in his returns,
+after a minute walks Joe about the stage, and is clearly a stanch old
+gamester. Joe now comes in, and making the most of his height, tries to
+get over the old man's guard at half-stick, by which he takes a smart
+blow in the ribs and another on the elbow, and nothing more. And now he
+loses wind and begins to puff, and the crowd laugh. “Cry 'hold,' Joe;
+thee'st met thy match!” Instead of taking good advice and getting his
+wind, Joe loses his temper, and strikes at the old man's body.
+
+“Blood, blood!” shout the crowd; “Joe's head's broke!”
+
+Who'd have thought it? How did it come? That body-blow left Joe's head
+unguarded for a moment; and with one turn of the wrist the old gentleman
+has picked a neat little bit of skin off the middle of his forehead; and
+though he won't believe it, and hammers on for three more blows despite
+of the shouts, is then convinced by the blood trickling into his eye.
+Poor Joe is sadly crestfallen, and fumbles in his pocket for the other
+half-sovereign, but the old gamester won't have it. “Keep thy money,
+man, and gi's thy hand,” says he; and they shake hands. But the old
+gamester gives the new hat to the shepherd, and, soon after, the
+half-sovereign to Willum, who thereout decorates his sweetheart with
+ribbons to his heart's content.
+
+“Who can a be?” “Wur do a cum from?” ask the crowd. And it soon flies
+about that the old west-country champion, who played a tie with Shaw the
+Lifeguardsman at “Vizes” twenty years before, has broken Joe Willis's
+crown for him.
+
+How my country fair is spinning out! I see I must skip the wrestling;
+and the boys jumping in sacks, and rolling wheelbarrows blindfolded;
+and the donkey-race, and the fight which arose thereout, marring the
+otherwise peaceful “veast;” and the frightened scurrying away of the
+female feast-goers, and descent of Squire Brown, summoned by the wife of
+one of the combatants to stop it; which he wouldn't start to do till he
+had got on his top-boots. Tom is carried away by old Benjy, dog-tired
+and surfeited with pleasure, as the evening comes on and the dancing
+begins in the booths; and though Willum, and Rachel in her new ribbons,
+and many another good lad and lass don't come away just yet, but have
+a good step out, and enjoy it, and get no harm thereby, yet we, being
+sober folk, will just stroll away up through the churchyard, and by the
+old yew-tree, and get a quiet dish of tea and a parley with our gossips,
+as the steady ones of our village do, and so to bed.
+
+That's the fair, true sketch, as far as it goes, of one of the larger
+village feasts in the Vale of Berks, when I was a little boy. They
+are much altered for the worse, I am told. I haven't been at one these
+twenty years, but I have been at the statute fairs in some west-country
+towns, where servants are hired, and greater abominations cannot be
+found. What village feasts have come to, I fear, in many cases, may
+be read in the pages of “Yeast” (though I never saw one so bad--thank
+God!).
+
+Do you want to know why? It is because, as I said before, gentlefolk and
+farmers have left off joining or taking an interest in them. They don't
+either subscribe to the prizes, or go down and enjoy the fun.
+
+Is this a good or a bad sign? I hardly know. Bad, sure enough, if it
+only arises from the further separation of classes consequent on twenty
+years of buying cheap and selling dear, and its accompanying overwork;
+or because our sons and daughters have their hearts in London club-life,
+or so-called “society,” instead of in the old English home-duties;
+because farmers' sons are apeing fine gentlemen, and farmers' daughters
+caring more to make bad foreign music than good English cheeses. Good,
+perhaps, if it be that the time for the old “veast” has gone by; that
+it is no longer the healthy, sound expression of English country
+holiday-making; that, in fact, we, as a nation, have got beyond it,
+and are in a transition state, feeling for and soon likely to find some
+better substitute.
+
+Only I have just got this to say before I quit the text. Don't let
+reformers of any sort think that they are going really to lay hold of
+the working boys and young men of England by any educational grapnel
+whatever, which isn't some bona fide equivalent for the games of the
+old country “veast” in it; something to put in the place of the
+back-swording and wrestling and racing; something to try the muscles
+of men's bodies, and the endurance of their hearts, and to make them
+rejoice in their strength. In all the new-fangled comprehensive plans
+which I see, this is all left out; and the consequence is, that your
+great mechanics' institutes end in intellectual priggism, and your
+Christian young men's societies in religious Pharisaism.
+
+Well, well, we must bide our time. Life isn't all beer and skittles;
+but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form
+a good part of every Englishman's education. If I could only drive this
+into the heads of you rising parliamentary lords, and young swells
+who “have your ways made for you,” as the saying is, you, who frequent
+palaver houses and West-end clubs, waiting always ready to strap
+yourselves on to the back of poor dear old John, as soon as the present
+used-up lot (your fathers and uncles), who sit there on the great
+parliamentary-majorities' pack-saddle, and make believe they're guiding
+him with their red-tape bridle, tumble, or have to be lifted off!
+
+I don't think much of you yet--I wish I could--though you do go talking
+and lecturing up and down the country to crowded audiences, and are
+busy with all sorts of philanthropic intellectualism, and circulating
+libraries and museums, and Heaven only knows what besides, and try to
+make us think, through newspaper reports, that you are, even as we, of
+the working classes. But bless your hearts, we “ain't so green,” though
+lots of us of all sorts toady you enough certainly, and try to make you
+think so.
+
+I'll tell you what to do now: instead of all this trumpeting and fuss,
+which is only the old parliamentary-majority dodge over again, just you
+go, each of you (you've plenty of time for it, if you'll only give
+up t'other line), and quietly make three or four friends--real
+friends--among us. You'll find a little trouble in getting at the right
+sort, because such birds don't come lightly to your lure; but found
+they may be. Take, say, two out of the professions, lawyer, parson,
+doctor--which you will; one out of trade; and three or four out of the
+working classes--tailors, engineers, carpenters, engravers. There's
+plenty of choice. Let them be men of your own ages, mind, and ask
+them to your homes; introduce them to your wives and sisters, and get
+introduced to theirs; give them good dinners, and talk to them about
+what is really at the bottom of your hearts; and box, and run, and row
+with them, when you have a chance. Do all this honestly as man to
+man, and by the time you come to ride old John, you'll be able to do
+something more than sit on his back, and may feel his mouth with some
+stronger bridle than a red-tape one.
+
+Ah, if you only would! But you have got too far out of the right rut, I
+fear. Too much over-civilization, and the deceitfulness of riches. It is
+easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. More's the pity. I
+never came across but two of you who could value a man wholly and solely
+for what was in him--who thought themselves verily and indeed of the
+same flesh and blood as John Jones the attorney's clerk, and Bill Smith
+the costermonger, and could act as if they thought so.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--SUNDRY WARS AND ALLIANCES.
+
+
+Poor old Benjy! The “rheumatiz” has much to answer for all through
+English country-sides, but it never played a scurvier trick than in
+laying thee by the heels, when thou wast yet in a green old age. The
+enemy, which had long been carrying on a sort of border warfare, and
+trying his strength against Benjy's on the battlefield of his hands and
+legs, now, mustering all his forces, began laying siege to the citadel,
+and overrunning the whole country. Benjy was seized in the back and
+loins; and though he made strong and brave fight, it was soon clear
+enough that all which could be beaten of poor old Benjy would have to
+give in before long.
+
+It was as much as he could do now, with the help of his big stick and
+frequent stops, to hobble down to the canal with Master Tom, and bait
+his hook for him, and sit and watch his angling, telling him quaint old
+country stories; and when Tom had no sport, and detecting a rat some
+hundred yards or so off along the bank, would rush off with Toby the
+turnspit terrier, his other faithful companion, in bootless pursuit, he
+might have tumbled in and been drowned twenty times over before Benjy
+could have got near him.
+
+Cheery and unmindful of himself, as Benjy was, this loss of locomotive
+power bothered him greatly. He had got a new object in his old age, and
+was just beginning to think himself useful again in the world. He feared
+much, too, lest Master Tom should fall back again into the hands of
+Charity and the women. So he tried everything he could think of to get
+set up. He even went an expedition to the dwelling of one of those queer
+mortals, who--say what we will, and reason how we will--do cure simple
+people of diseases of one kind or another without the aid of physic,
+and so get to themselves the reputation of using charms, and inspire for
+themselves and their dwellings great respect, not to say fear, amongst a
+simple folk such as the dwellers in the Vale of White Horse. Where this
+power, or whatever else it may be, descends upon the shoulders of a
+man whose ways are not straight, he becomes a nuisance to the
+neighbourhood--a receiver of stolen goods, giver of love-potions, and
+deceiver of silly women--the avowed enemy of law and order, of justices
+of the peace, head-boroughs, and gamekeepers,--such a man, in fact, as
+was recently caught tripping, and deservedly dealt with by the Leeds
+justices, for seducing a girl who had come to him to get back a
+faithless lover, and has been convicted of bigamy since then. Sometimes,
+however, they are of quite a different stamp--men who pretend to
+nothing, and are with difficulty persuaded to exercise their occult arts
+in the simplest cases.
+
+Of this latter sort was old Farmer Ives, as he was called, the “wise
+man” to whom Benjy resorted (taking Tom with him as usual), in the early
+spring of the year next after the feast described in the last chapter.
+Why he was called “farmer” I cannot say, unless it be that he was the
+owner of a cow, a pig or two, and some poultry, which he maintained
+on about an acre of land inclosed from the middle of a wild common, on
+which probably his father had squatted before lords of manors looked as
+keenly after their rights as they do now. Here he had lived no one knew
+how long, a solitary man. It was often rumoured that he was to be turned
+out and his cottage pulled down, but somehow it never came to pass; and
+his pigs and cow went grazing on the common, and his geese hissed at the
+passing children and at the heels of the horse of my lord's steward, who
+often rode by with a covetous eye on the inclosure still unmolested. His
+dwelling was some miles from our village; so Benjy, who was half ashamed
+of his errand, and wholly unable to walk there, had to exercise much
+ingenuity to get the means of transporting himself and Tom thither
+without exciting suspicion. However, one fine May morning he managed to
+borrow the old blind pony of our friend the publican, and Tom persuaded
+Madam Brown to give him a holiday to spend with old Benjy, and to lend
+them the Squire's light cart, stored with bread and cold meat and a
+bottle of ale. And so the two in high glee started behind old Dobbin,
+and jogged along the deep-rutted plashy roads, which had not been mended
+after their winter's wear, towards the dwelling of the wizard. About
+noon they passed the gate which opened on to the large common, and old
+Dobbin toiled slowly up the hill, while Benjy pointed out a little deep
+dingle on the left, out of which welled a tiny stream. As they crept
+up the hill the tops of a few birch-trees came in sight, and blue smoke
+curling up through their delicate light boughs; and then the little
+white thatched home and inclosed ground of Farmer Ives, lying cradled in
+the dingle, with the gay gorse common rising behind and on both sides;
+while in front, after traversing a gentle slope, the eye might travel
+for miles and miles over the rich vale. They now left the main road and
+struck into a green track over the common marked lightly with wheel and
+horse-shoe, which led down into the dingle and stopped at the rough gate
+of Farmer Ives. Here they found the farmer, an iron-gray old man, with a
+bushy eyebrow and strong aquiline nose, busied in one of his vocations.
+He was a horse and cow doctor, and was tending a sick beast which had
+been sent up to be cured. Benjy hailed him as an old friend, and he
+returned the greeting cordially enough, looking however hard for a
+moment both at Benjy and Tom, to see whether there was more in their
+visit than appeared at first sight. It was a work of some difficulty and
+danger for Benjy to reach the ground, which, however, he managed to do
+without mishap; and then he devoted himself to unharnessing Dobbin and
+turning him out for a graze (“a run” one could not say of that virtuous
+steed) on the common. This done, he extricated the cold provisions from
+the cart, and they entered the farmer's wicket; and he, shutting up the
+knife with which he was taking maggots out of the cow's back and sides,
+accompanied them towards the cottage. A big old lurcher got up slowly
+from the door-stone, stretching first one hind leg and then the other,
+and taking Tom's caresses and the presence of Toby, who kept, however,
+at a respectful distance, with equal indifference.
+
+“Us be cum to pay 'ee a visit. I've a been long minded to do't for old
+sake's sake, only I vinds I dwon't get about now as I'd used to't. I be
+so plaguy bad wi' th' rheumatiz in my back.” Benjy paused, in hopes
+of drawing the farmer at once on the subject of his ailments without
+further direct application.
+
+“Ah, I see as you bean't quite so lissom as you was,” replied the
+farmer, with a grim smile, as he lifted the latch of his door; “we
+bean't so young as we was, nother on us, wuss luck.”
+
+The farmer's cottage was very like those of the better class of
+peasantry in general. A snug chimney corner with two seats, and a small
+carpet on the hearth, an old flint gun and a pair of spurs over the
+fireplace, a dresser with shelves on which some bright pewter plates
+and crockeryware were arranged, an old walnut table, a few chairs and
+settles, some framed samplers, and an old print or two, and a bookcase
+with some dozen volumes on the walls, a rack with flitches of bacon, and
+other stores fastened to the ceiling, and you have the best part of the
+furniture. No sign of occult art is to be seen, unless the bundles of
+dried herbs hanging to the rack and in the ingle and the row of labelled
+phials on one of the shelves betoken it.
+
+Tom played about with some kittens who occupied the hearth, and with a
+goat who walked demurely in at the open door--while their host and Benjy
+spread the table for dinner--and was soon engaged in conflict with the
+cold meat, to which he did much honour. The two old men's talk was of
+old comrades and their deeds, mute inglorious Miltons of the Vale, and
+of the doings thirty years back, which didn't interest him much, except
+when they spoke of the making of the canal; and then indeed he began to
+listen with all his ears, and learned, to his no small wonder, that his
+dear and wonderful canal had not been there always--was not, in fact,
+so old as Benjy or Farmer Ives, which caused a strange commotion in his
+small brain.
+
+After dinner Benjy called attention to a wart which Tom had on the
+knuckles of his hand, and which the family doctor had been trying his
+skill on without success, and begged the farmer to charm it away. Farmer
+Ives looked at it, muttered something or another over it, and cut
+some notches in a short stick, which he handed to Benjy, giving him
+instructions for cutting it down on certain days, and cautioning Tom not
+to meddle with the wart for a fortnight. And then they strolled out and
+sat on a bench in the sun with their pipes, and the pigs came up and
+grunted sociably and let Tom scratch them; and the farmer, seeing how he
+liked animals, stood up and held his arms in the air, and gave a call,
+which brought a flock of pigeons wheeling and dashing through the
+birch-trees. They settled down in clusters on the farmer's arms and
+shoulders, making love to him and scrambling over one another's backs
+to get to his face; and then he threw them all off, and they fluttered
+about close by, and lighted on him again and again when he held up his
+arms. All the creatures about the place were clean and fearless, quite
+unlike their relations elsewhere; and Tom begged to be taught how to
+make all the pigs and cows and poultry in our village tame, at which the
+farmer only gave one of his grim chuckles.
+
+It wasn't till they were just ready to go, and old Dobbin was harnessed,
+that Benjy broached the subject of his rheumatism again, detailing his
+symptoms one by one. Poor old boy! He hoped the farmer could charm it
+away as easily as he could Tom's wart, and was ready with equal faith to
+put another notched stick into his other pocket, for the cure of his
+own ailments. The physician shook his head, but nevertheless produced a
+bottle, and handed it to Benjy, with instructions for use. “Not as 't'll
+do 'ee much good--leastways I be afeard not,” shading his eyes with his
+hand, and looking up at them in the cart. “There's only one thing as I
+knows on as'll cure old folks like you and I o' th' rheumatiz.”
+
+“Wot be that then, farmer?” inquired Benjy.
+
+“Churchyard mould,” said the old iron-gray man, with another chuckle.
+And so they said their good-byes and went their ways home. Tom's wart
+was gone in a fortnight, but not so Benjy's rheumatism, which laid him
+by the heels more and more. And though Tom still spent many an hour with
+him, as he sat on a bench in the sunshine, or by the chimney corner when
+it was cold, he soon had to seek elsewhere for his regular companions.
+
+Tom had been accustomed often to accompany his mother in her visits to
+the cottages, and had thereby made acquaintance with many of the village
+boys of his own age. There was Job Rudkin, son of widow Rudkin, the most
+bustling woman in the parish. How she could ever have had such a stolid
+boy as Job for a child must always remain a mystery. The first time
+Tom went to their cottage with his mother, Job was not indoors; but he
+entered soon after, and stood with both hands in his pockets, staring
+at Tom. Widow Rudkin, who would have had to cross madam to get at
+young Hopeful--a breach of good manners of which she was wholly
+incapable--began a series of pantomime signs, which only puzzled him;
+and at last, unable to contain herself longer, burst out with, “Job!
+Job! where's thy cap?”
+
+“What! bean't 'ee on ma head, mother?” replied Job, slowly extricating
+one hand from a pocket, and feeling for the article in question; which
+he found on his head sure enough, and left there, to his mother's horror
+and Tom's great delight.
+
+Then there was poor Jacob Dodson, the half-witted boy, who ambled about
+cheerfully, undertaking messages and little helpful odds and ends for
+every one, which, however, poor Jacob managed always hopelessly to
+imbrangle. Everything came to pieces in his hands, and nothing would
+stop in his head. They nicknamed him Jacob Doodle-calf.
+
+But above all there was Harry Winburn, the quickest and best boy in the
+parish. He might be a year older than Tom, but was very little bigger,
+and he was the Crichton of our village boys. He could wrestle and climb
+and run better than all the rest, and learned all that the schoolmaster
+could teach him faster than that worthy at all liked. He was a boy to
+be proud of, with his curly brown hair, keen gray eye, straight active
+figure, and little ears and hands and feet, “as fine as a lord's,” as
+Charity remarked to Tom one day, talking, as usual, great nonsense.
+Lords' hands and ears and feet are just as ugly as other folk's when
+they are children, as any one may convince himself if he likes to look.
+Tight boots and gloves, and doing nothing with them, I allow make a
+difference by the time they are twenty.
+
+Now that Benjy was laid on the shelf, and his young brothers were still
+under petticoat government, Tom, in search of companions, began to
+cultivate the village boys generally more and more. Squire Brown, be it
+said, was a true-blue Tory to the backbone, and believed honestly that
+the powers which be were ordained of God, and that loyalty and steadfast
+obedience were men's first duties. Whether it were in consequence or in
+spite of his political creed, I do not mean to give an opinion, though
+I have one; but certain it is that he held therewith divers social
+principles not generally supposed to be true blue in colour. Foremost of
+these, and the one which the Squire loved to propound above all others,
+was the belief that a man is to be valued wholly and solely for that
+which he is in himself, for that which stands up in the four fleshly
+walls of him, apart from clothes, rank, fortune, and all externals
+whatsoever. Which belief I take to be a wholesome corrective of all
+political opinions, and, if held sincerely, to make all opinions equally
+harmless, whether they be blue, red, or green. As a necessary corollary
+to this belief, Squire Brown held further that it didn't matter a
+straw whether his son associated with lords' sons or ploughmen's sons,
+provided they were brave and honest. He himself had played football
+and gone bird-nesting with the farmers whom he met at vestry and
+the labourers who tilled their fields, and so had his father and
+grandfather, with their progenitors. So he encouraged Tom in his
+intimacy with the boys of the village, and forwarded it by all means
+in his power, and gave them the run of a close for a playground, and
+provided bats and balls and a football for their sports.
+
+Our village was blessed amongst other things with a well-endowed school.
+The building stood by itself, apart from the master's house, on an angle
+of ground where three roads met--an old gray stone building with a steep
+roof and mullioned windows. On one of the opposite angles stood Squire
+Brown's stables and kennel, with their backs to the road, over which
+towered a great elm-tree; on the third stood the village carpenter and
+wheelwright's large open shop, and his house and the schoolmaster's,
+with long low eaves, under which the swallows built by scores.
+
+The moment Tom's lessons were over, he would now get him down to this
+corner by the stables, and watch till the boys came out of school. He
+prevailed on the groom to cut notches for him in the bark of the elm
+so that he could climb into the lower branches; and there he would sit
+watching the school door, and speculating on the possibility of turning
+the elm into a dwelling-place for himself and friends, after the manner
+of the Swiss Family Robinson. But the school hours were long and Tom's
+patience short, so that he soon began to descend into the street, and go
+and peep in at the school door and the wheelwright's shop, and look out
+for something to while away the time. Now the wheelwright was a choleric
+man, and one fine afternoon, returning from a short absence, found Tom
+occupied with one of his pet adzes, the edge of which was fast vanishing
+under our hero's care. A speedy flight saved Tom from all but one sound
+cuff on the ears; but he resented this unjustifiable interruption of his
+first essays at carpentering, and still more the further proceedings
+of the wheelwright, who cut a switch, and hung it over the door of his
+workshop, threatening to use it upon Tom if he came within twenty yards
+of his gate. So Tom, to retaliate, commenced a war upon the swallows who
+dwelt under the wheelwright's eaves, whom he harassed with sticks
+and stones; and being fleeter of foot than his enemy, escaped all
+punishment, and kept him in perpetual anger. Moreover, his presence
+about the school door began to incense the master, as the boys in that
+neighbourhood neglected their lessons in consequence; and more than once
+he issued into the porch, rod in hand, just as Tom beat a hasty retreat.
+And he and the wheelwright, laying their heads together, resolved to
+acquaint the Squire with Tom's afternoon occupations; but in order to
+do it with effect, determined to take him captive and lead him away to
+judgment fresh from his evil doings. This they would have found some
+difficulty in doing, had Tom continued the war single-handed, or rather
+single-footed, for he would have taken to the deepest part of Pebbly
+Brook to escape them; but, like other active powers, he was ruined by
+his alliances. Poor Jacob Doodle-calf could not go to the school with
+the other boys, and one fine afternoon, about three o'clock (the school
+broke up at four), Tom found him ambling about the street, and pressed
+him into a visit to the school-porch. Jacob, always ready to do what he
+was asked, consented, and the two stole down to the school together.
+Tom first reconnoitred the wheelwright's shop; and seeing no signs
+of activity, thought all safe in that quarter, and ordered at once an
+advance of all his troops upon the schoolporch. The door of the school
+was ajar, and the boys seated on the nearest bench at once recognized
+and opened a correspondence with the invaders. Tom, waxing bold, kept
+putting his head into the school and making faces at the master when
+his back was turned. Poor Jacob, not in the least comprehending the
+situation, and in high glee at finding himself so near the school, which
+he had never been allowed to enter, suddenly, in a fit of enthusiasm,
+pushed by Tom, and ambling three steps into the school, stood there,
+looking round him and nodding with a self-approving smile. The master,
+who was stooping over a boy's slate, with his back to the door, became
+aware of something unusual, and turned quickly round. Tom rushed at
+Jacob, and began dragging him back by his smock-frock, and the master
+made at them, scattering forms and boys in his career. Even now they
+might have escaped, but that in the porch, barring retreat, appeared the
+crafty wheelwright, who had been watching all their proceedings. So they
+were seized, the school dismissed, and Tom and Jacob led away to Squire
+Brown as lawful prize, the boys following to the gate in groups, and
+speculating on the result.
+
+The Squire was very angry at first, but the interview, by Tom's
+pleading, ended in a compromise. Tom was not to go near the school till
+three o'clock, and only then if he had done his own lessons well, in
+which case he was to be the bearer of a note to the master from Squire
+Brown; and the master agreed in such case to release ten or twelve of
+the best boys an hour before the time of breaking up, to go off and play
+in the close. The wheelwright's adzes and swallows were to be for ever
+respected; and that hero and the master withdrew to the servants' hall
+to drink the Squire's health, well satisfied with their day's work.
+
+The second act of Tom's life may now be said to have begun. The war of
+independence had been over for some time: none of the women now--not
+even his mother's maid--dared offer to help him in dressing or
+washing. Between ourselves, he had often at first to run to Benjy in an
+unfinished state of toilet. Charity and the rest of them seemed to take
+a delight in putting impossible buttons and ties in the middle of his
+back; but he would have gone without nether integuments altogether,
+sooner than have had recourse to female valeting. He had a room to
+himself, and his father gave him sixpence a week pocket-money. All
+this he had achieved by Benjy's advice and assistance. But now he had
+conquered another step in life--the step which all real boys so long
+to make: he had got amongst his equals in age and strength, and could
+measure himself with other boys; he lived with those whose pursuits and
+wishes and ways were the same in kind as his own.
+
+The little governess who had lately been installed in the house found
+her work grow wondrously easy, for Tom slaved at his lessons, in order
+to make sure of his note to the schoolmaster. So there were very few
+days in the week in which Tom and the village boys were not playing
+in their close by three o'clock. Prisoner's base, rounders,
+high-cock-a-lorum, cricket, football--he was soon initiated into the
+delights of them all; and though most of the boys were older than
+himself, he managed to hold his own very well. He was naturally active
+and strong, and quick of eye and hand, and had the advantage of light
+shoes and well-fitting dress, so that in a short time he could run and
+jump and climb with any of them.
+
+They generally finished their regular games half an hour or so before
+tea-time, and then began trials of skill and strength in many ways. Some
+of them would catch the Shetland pony who was turned out in the field,
+and get two or three together on his back, and the little rogue,
+enjoying the fun, would gallop off for fifty yards, and then turn round,
+or stop short and shoot them on to the turf, and then graze quietly on
+till he felt another load; others played at peg-top or marbles, while
+a few of the bigger ones stood up for a bout at wrestling. Tom at first
+only looked on at this pastime, but it had peculiar attractions for him,
+and he could not long keep out of it. Elbow and collar wrestling, as
+practised in the western counties, was, next to back-swording, the way
+to fame for the youth of the Vale; and all the boys knew the rules of
+it, and were more or less expert. But Job Rudkin and Harry Winburn were
+the stars--the former stiff and sturdy, with legs like small towers; the
+latter pliant as indiarubber and quick as lightning. Day after day they
+stood foot to foot, and offered first one hand and then the other, and
+grappled and closed, and swayed and strained, till a well-aimed crook of
+the heel or thrust of the loin took effect, and a fair back-fall ended
+the matter. And Tom watched with all his eyes, and first challenged one
+of the less scientific, and threw him; and so one by one wrestled his
+way up to the leaders.
+
+Then indeed for months he had a poor time of it; it was not long indeed
+before he could manage to keep his legs against Job, for that hero was
+slow of offence, and gained his victories chiefly by allowing others to
+throw themselves against his immovable legs and loins. But Harry Winburn
+was undeniably his master; from the first clutch of hands when they
+stood up, down to the last trip which sent him on to his back on the
+turf, he felt that Harry knew more and could do more than he. Luckily
+Harry's bright unconsciousness and Tom's natural good temper kept them
+from quarrelling; and so Tom worked on and on, and trod more and more
+nearly on Harry's heels, and at last mastered all the dodges and falls
+except one. This one was Harry's own particular invention and pet; he
+scarcely ever used it except when hard pressed, but then out it came,
+and as sure as it did, over went poor Tom. He thought about that fall
+at his meals, in his walks, when he lay awake in bed, in his dreams, but
+all to no purpose, until Harry one day in his open way suggested to him
+how he thought it should be met; and in a week from that time the boys
+were equal, save only the slight difference of strength in Harry's
+favour, which some extra ten months of age gave. Tom had often
+afterwards reason to be thankful for that early drilling, and above all,
+for having mastered Harry Winburn's fall.
+
+Besides their home games, on Saturdays the boys would wander all over
+the neighbourhood; sometimes to the downs, or up to the camp, where
+they cut their initials out in the springy turf, and watched the hawks
+soaring, and the “peert” bird, as Harry Winburn called the gray plover,
+gorgeous in his wedding feathers; and so home, racing down the Manger
+with many a roll among the thistles, or through Uffington Wood to watch
+the fox cubs playing in the green rides; sometimes to Rosy Brook, to cut
+long whispering reeds which grew there, to make pan-pipes of; sometimes
+to Moor Mills, where was a piece of old forest land, with short browsed
+turf and tufted brambly thickets stretching under the oaks, amongst
+which rumour declared that a raven, last of his race, still lingered;
+or to the sand-hills, in vain quest of rabbits; and bird-nesting in the
+season, anywhere and everywhere.
+
+The few neighbours of the Squire's own rank every now and then would
+shrug their shoulders as they drove or rode by a party of boys with Tom
+in the middle, carrying along bulrushes or whispering reeds, or great
+bundles of cowslip and meadow-sweet, or young starlings or magpies, or
+other spoil of wood, brook, or meadow; and Lawyer Red-tape might mutter
+to Squire Straight-back at the Board that no good would come of the
+young Browns, if they were let run wild with all the dirty village boys,
+whom the best farmers' sons even would not play with. And the squire
+might reply with a shake of his head that his sons only mixed with
+their equals, and never went into the village without the governess or
+a footman. But, luckily, Squire Brown was full as stiffbacked as
+his neighbours, and so went on his own way; and Tom and his younger
+brothers, as they grew up, went on playing with the village boys,
+without the idea of equality or inequality (except in wrestling,
+running, and climbing) ever entering their heads; as it doesn't till
+it's put there by Jack Nastys or fine ladies' maids.
+
+I don't mean to say it would be the case in all villages, but it
+certainly was so in this one: the village boys were full as manly and
+honest, and certainly purer, than those in a higher rank; and Tom got
+more harm from his equals in his first fortnight at a private school,
+where he went when he was nine years old, than he had from his village
+friends from the day he left Charity's apron-strings.
+
+Great was the grief amongst the village school-boys when Tom drove off
+with the Squire, one August morning, to meet the coach on his way to
+school. Each of them had given him some little present of the best that
+he had, and his small private box was full of peg-taps, white marbles
+(called “alley-taws” in the Vale), screws, birds' eggs, whip-cord,
+jews-harps, and other miscellaneous boys' wealth. Poor Jacob
+Doodle-calf, in floods of tears, had pressed upon him with spluttering
+earnestness his lame pet hedgehog (he had always some poor broken-down
+beast or bird by him); but this Tom had been obliged to refuse, by the
+Squire's order. He had given them all a great tea under the big elm in
+their playground, for which Madam Brown had supplied the biggest cake
+ever seen in our village; and Tom was really as sorry to leave them
+as they to lose him, but his sorrow was not unmixed with the pride and
+excitement of making a new step in life.
+
+And this feeling carried him through his first parting with his mother
+better than could have been expected. Their love was as fair and whole
+as human love can be--perfect self-sacrifice on the one side meeting
+a young and true heart on the other. It is not within the scope of my
+book, however, to speak of family relations, or I should have much to
+say on the subject of English mothers--ay, and of English fathers, and
+sisters, and brothers too. Neither have I room to speak of our private
+schools. What I have to say is about public schools--those much-abused
+and much-belauded institutions peculiar to England. So we must hurry
+through Master Tom's year at a private school as fast as we can.
+
+It was a fair average specimen, kept by a gentleman, with another
+gentleman as second master; but it was little enough of the real work
+they did--merely coming into school when lessons were prepared and all
+ready to be heard. The whole discipline of the school out of lesson
+hours was in the hands of the two ushers, one of whom was always with
+the boys in their playground, in the school, at meals--in fact, at all
+times and every where, till they were fairly in bed at night.
+
+Now the theory of private schools is (or was) constant supervision out
+of school--therein differing fundamentally from that of public schools.
+
+It may be right or wrong; but if right, this supervision surely ought
+to be the especial work of the head-master, the responsible person. The
+object of all schools is not to ram Latin and Greek into boys, but to
+make them good English boys, good future citizens; and by far the most
+important part of that work must be done, or not done, out of school
+hours. To leave it, therefore, in the hands of inferior men, is just
+giving up the highest and hardest part of the work of education. Were I
+a private school-master, I should say, Let who will hear the boys their
+lessons, but let me live with them when they are at play and rest.
+
+The two ushers at Tom's first school were not gentlemen, and very poorly
+educated, and were only driving their poor trade of usher to get such
+living as they could out of it. They were not bad men, but had little
+heart for their work, and of course were bent on making it as easy as
+possible. One of the methods by which they endeavoured to accomplish
+this was by encouraging tale-bearing, which had become a frightfully
+common vice in the school in consequence, and had sapped all the
+foundations of school morality. Another was, by favouring grossly the
+biggest boys, who alone could have given them much trouble; whereby
+those young gentlemen became most abominable tyrants, oppressing the
+little boys in all the small mean ways which prevail in private schools.
+
+Poor little Tom was made dreadfully unhappy in his first week by a
+catastrophe which happened to his first letter home. With huge labour he
+had, on the very evening of his arrival, managed to fill two sides of
+a sheet of letter-paper with assurances of his love for dear mamma, his
+happiness at school, and his resolves to do all she would wish. This
+missive, with the help of the boy who sat at the desk next him, also a
+new arrival, he managed to fold successfully; but this done, they were
+sadly put to it for means of sealing. Envelopes were then unknown;
+they had no wax, and dared not disturb the stillness of the evening
+school-room by getting up and going to ask the usher for some. At length
+Tom's friend, being of an ingenious turn of mind, suggested sealing with
+ink; and the letter was accordingly stuck down with a blob of ink, and
+duly handed by Tom, on his way to bed, to the housekeeper to be posted.
+It was not till four days afterwards that the good dame sent for him,
+and produced the precious letter and some wax, saying, “O Master Brown,
+I forgot to tell you before, but your letter isn't sealed.” Poor Tom
+took the wax in silence and sealed his letter, with a huge lump rising
+in his throat during the process, and then ran away to a quiet corner of
+the playground, and burst into an agony of tears. The idea of his mother
+waiting day after day for the letter he had promised her at once, and
+perhaps thinking him forgetful of her, when he had done all in his power
+to make good his promise, was as bitter a grief as any which he had
+to undergo for many a long year. His wrath, then, was proportionately
+violent when he was aware of two boys, who stopped close by him, and one
+of whom, a fat gaby of a fellow, pointed at him and called him “Young
+mammy-sick!” Whereupon Tom arose, and giving vent thus to his grief and
+shame and rage, smote his derider on the nose; and made it bleed;
+which sent that young worthy howling to the usher, who reported Tom for
+violent and unprovoked assault and battery. Hitting in the face was a
+felony punishable with flogging, other hitting only a misdemeanour--a
+distinction not altogether clear in principle. Tom, however, escaped the
+penalty by pleading primum tempus; and having written a second letter
+to his mother, inclosing some forget-me-nots, which he picked on their
+first half-holiday walk, felt quite happy again, and began to enjoy
+vastly a good deal of his new life.
+
+These half-holiday walks were the great events of the week. The whole
+fifty boys started after dinner with one of the ushers for Hazeldown,
+which was distant some mile or so from the school. Hazeldown measured
+some three miles round, and in the neighbourhood were several woods full
+of all manner of birds and butterflies. The usher walked slowly round
+the down with such boys as liked to accompany him; the rest scattered
+in all directions, being only bound to appear again when the usher
+had completed his round, and accompany him home. They were forbidden,
+however, to go anywhere except on the down and into the woods; the
+village had been especially prohibited, where huge bull's-eyes and
+unctuous toffy might be procured in exchange for coin of the realm.
+
+Various were the amusements to which the boys then betook themselves. At
+the entrance of the down there was a steep hillock, like the barrows of
+Tom's own downs. This mound was the weekly scene of terrific combats,
+at a game called by the queer name of “mud-patties.” The boys who played
+divided into sides under different leaders, and one side occupied the
+mound. Then, all parties having provided themselves with many sods of
+turf, cut with their bread-and-cheese knives, the side which remained
+at the bottom proceeded to assault the mound, advancing up on all sides
+under cover of a heavy fire of turfs, and then struggling for victory
+with the occupants, which was theirs as soon as they could, even for a
+moment, clear the summit, when they in turn became the besieged. It
+was a good, rough, dirty game, and of great use in counteracting the
+sneaking tendencies of the school. Then others of the boys spread over
+the downs, looking for the holes of humble-bees and mice, which they
+dug up without mercy, often (I regret to say) killing and skinning the
+unlucky mice, and (I do not regret to say) getting well stung by the
+bumble-bees. Others went after butterflies and birds' eggs in their
+seasons; and Tom found on Hazeldown, for the first time, the beautiful
+little blue butterfly with golden spots on his wings, which he had never
+seen on his own downs, and dug out his first sand-martin's nest. This
+latter achievement resulted in a flogging, for the sand-martins built in
+a high bank close to the village, consequently out of bounds; but one of
+the bolder spirits of the school, who never could be happy unless he
+was doing something to which risk was attached, easily persuaded Tom to
+break bounds and visit the martins' bank. From whence it being only a
+step to the toffy shop, what could be more simple than to go on there
+and fill their pockets; or what more certain than that on their return,
+a distribution of treasure having been made, the usher should shortly
+detect the forbidden smell of bull's-eyes, and, a search ensuing,
+discover the state of the breeches-pockets of Tom and his ally?
+
+This ally of Tom's was indeed a desperate hero in the sight of the boys,
+and feared as one who dealt in magic, or something approaching thereto.
+Which reputation came to him in this wise. The boys went to bed at
+eight, and, of course, consequently lay awake in the dark for an hour or
+two, telling ghost-stories by turns. One night when it came to his turn,
+and he had dried up their souls by his story, he suddenly declared that
+he would make a fiery hand appear on the door; and to the astonishment
+and terror of the boys in his room, a hand, or something like it, in
+pale light, did then and there appear. The fame of this exploit having
+spread to the other rooms, and being discredited there, the young
+necromancer declared that the same wonder would appear in all the rooms
+in turn, which it accordingly did; and the whole circumstances having
+been privately reported to one of the ushers as usual, that functionary,
+after listening about at the doors of the rooms, by a sudden descent
+caught the performer in his night-shirt, with a box of phosphorus in his
+guilty hand. Lucifer-matches and all the present facilities for getting
+acquainted with fire were then unknown--the very name of phosphorus had
+something diabolic in it to the boy-mind; so Tom's ally, at the cost
+of a sound flogging, earned what many older folk covet much--the very
+decided fear of most of his companions.
+
+He was a remarkable boy, and by no means a bad one. Tom stuck to him
+till he left, and got into many scrapes by so doing. But he was the
+great opponent of the tale-bearing habits of the school, and the open
+enemy of the ushers; and so worthy of all support.
+
+Tom imbibed a fair amount of Latin and Greek at the school, but somehow,
+on the whole, it didn't suit him, or he it, and in the holidays he was
+constantly working the Squire to send him at once to a public school.
+Great was his joy then, when in the middle of his third half-year, in
+October 183-, a fever broke out in the village, and the master having
+himself slightly sickened of it, the whole of the boys were sent off at
+a day's notice to their respective homes.
+
+The Squire was not quite so pleased as Master Tom to see that young
+gentleman's brown, merry face appear at home, some two months before the
+proper time, for the Christmas holidays; and so, after putting on his
+thinking cap, he retired to his study and wrote several letters, the
+result of which was that, one morning at the breakfast-table, about a
+fortnight after Tom's return, he addressed his wife with--“My dear, I
+have arranged that Tom shall go to Rugby at once, for the last six weeks
+of this half-year, instead of wasting them in riding and loitering about
+home. It is very kind of the doctor to allow it. Will you see that his
+things are all ready by Friday, when I shall take him up to town, and
+send him down the next day by himself.”
+
+Mrs. Brown was prepared for the announcement, and merely suggested a
+doubt whether Tom were yet old enough to travel by himself. However,
+finding both father and son against her on this point, she gave in, like
+a wise woman, and proceeded to prepare Tom's kit for his launch into a
+public school.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--THE STAGE COACH.
+
+
+     “Let the steam-pot hiss till it's hot;
+     Give me the speed of the Tantivy trot.”
+      Coaching Song, by R.E.E. Warburton, Esq.
+
+“Now, sir, time to get up, if you please. Tally-ho coach for
+Leicester'll be round in half an hour, and don't wait for nobody.” So
+spake the boots of the Peacock Inn Islington, at half-past two o'clock
+on the morning of a day in the early part of November 183-, giving
+Tom at the same time a shake by the shoulder, and then putting down a
+candle; and carrying off his shoes to clean.
+
+Tom and his father arrived in town from Berkshire the day before, and
+finding, on inquiry, that the Birmingham coaches which ran from the city
+did not pass through Rugby, but deposited their passengers at Dunchurch,
+a village three miles distant on the main road, where said passengers
+had to wait for the Oxford and Leicester coach in the evening, or to
+take a post-chaise, had resolved that Tom should travel down by the
+Tally-ho, which diverged from the main road and passed through Rugby
+itself. And as the Tally-ho was an early coach, they had driven out to
+the Peacock to be on the road.
+
+Tom had never been in London, and would have liked to have stopped at
+the Belle Savage, where they had been put down by the Star, just at
+dusk, that he might have gone roving about those endless, mysterious,
+gas-lit streets, which, with their glare and hum and moving crowds,
+excited him so that he couldn't talk even. But as soon as he found that
+the Peacock arrangement would get him to Rugby by twelve o'clock in the
+day, whereas otherwise he wouldn't be there till the evening, all
+other plans melted away, his one absorbing aim being to become a public
+school-boy as fast as possible, and six hours sooner or later seeming to
+him of the most alarming importance.
+
+Tom and his father had alighted at the Peacock at about seven in the
+evening; and having heard with unfeigned joy the paternal order, at the
+bar, of steaks and oyster-sauce for supper in half an hour, and seen
+his father seated cozily by the bright fire in the coffee-room with the
+paper in his hand, Tom had run out to see about him, had wondered at all
+the vehicles passing and repassing, and had fraternized with the boots
+and hostler, from whom he ascertained that the Tally-ho was a tip-top
+goer--ten miles an hour including stoppages--and so punctual that all
+the road set their clocks by her.
+
+Then being summoned to supper, he had regaled himself in one of the
+bright little boxes of the Peacock coffee-room, on the beef-steak
+and unlimited oyster-sauce and brown stout (tasted then for the first
+time--a day to be marked for ever by Tom with a white stone); had at
+first attended to the excellent advice which his father was bestowing
+on him from over his glass of steaming brandy-and-water, and then
+began nodding, from the united effects of the stout, the fire, and the
+lecture; till the Squire, observing Tom's state, and remembering that it
+was nearly nine o'clock, and that the Tally-ho left at three, sent the
+little fellow off to the chambermaid, with a shake of the hand (Tom
+having stipulated in the morning before starting that kissing should now
+cease between them), and a few parting words:
+
+“And now, Tom, my boy,” said the Squire, “remember you are going, at
+your own earnest request, to be chucked into this great school, like a
+young bear, with all your troubles before you--earlier than we should
+have sent you perhaps. If schools are what they were in my time, you'll
+see a great many cruel blackguard things done, and hear a deal of foul,
+bad talk. But never fear. You tell the truth, keep a brave and kind
+heart, and never listen to or say anything you wouldn't have your mother
+and sister hear, and you'll never feel ashamed to come home, or we to
+see you.”
+
+The allusion to his mother made Tom feel rather choky, and he would have
+liked to have hugged his father well, if it hadn't been for the recent
+stipulation.
+
+As it was, he only squeezed his father's hand, and looked bravely up and
+said, “I'll try, father.”
+
+“I know you will, my boy. Is your money all safe?
+
+“Yes,” said Tom, diving into one pocket to make sure.
+
+“And your keys?” said the Squire.
+
+“All right,” said Tom, diving into the other pocket.
+
+“Well, then, good-night. God bless you! I'll tell boots to call you, and
+be up to see you off.”
+
+Tom was carried off by the chambermaid in a brown study, from which he
+was roused in a clean little attic, by that buxom person calling him a
+little darling and kissing him as she left the room; which indignity
+he was too much surprised to resent. And still thinking of his father's
+last words, and the look with which they were spoken, he knelt down and
+prayed that, come what might, he might never bring shame or sorrow on
+the dear folk at home.
+
+Indeed, the Squire's last words deserved to have their effect, for they
+had been the result of much anxious thought. All the way up to London
+he had pondered what he should say to Tom by way of parting
+advice--something that the boy could keep in his head ready for use. By
+way of assisting meditation, he had even gone the length of taking out
+his flint and steel and tinder, and hammering away for a quarter of an
+hour till he had manufactured a light for a long Trichinopoli cheroot,
+which he silently puffed, to the no small wonder of coachee, who was an
+old friend, and an institution on the Bath road, and who always expected
+a talk on the prospects and doings, agricultural and social, of the
+whole country, when he carried the Squire.
+
+To condense the Squire's meditation, it was somewhat as follows: “I
+won't tell him to read his Bible, and love and serve God; if he don't do
+that for his mother's sake and teaching, he won't for mine. Shall I go
+into the sort of temptations he'll meet with? No, I can't do that.
+Never do for an old fellow to go into such things with a boy. He won't
+understand me. Do him more harm than good, ten to one. Shall I tell him
+to mind his work, and say he's sent to school to make himself a good
+scholar? Well, but he isn't sent to school for that--at any rate,
+not for that mainly. I don't care a straw for Greek particles, or the
+digamma; no more does his mother. What is he sent to school for? Well,
+partly because he wanted so to go. If he'll only turn out a brave,
+helpful, truth-telling Englishman, and a gentleman, and a Christian,
+that's all I want,” thought the Squire; and upon this view of the case
+he framed his last words of advice to Tom, which were well enough suited
+to his purpose.
+
+For they were Tom's first thoughts as he tumbled out of bed at the
+summons of boots, and proceeded rapidly to wash and dress himself. At
+ten minutes to three he was down in the coffee-room in his stockings,
+carrying his hat-box, coat, and comforter in his hand; and there he
+found his father nursing a bright fire, and a cup of hot coffee and a
+hard biscuit on the table.
+
+“Now, then, Tom, give us your things here, and drink this. There's
+nothing like starting warm, old fellow.”
+
+Tom addressed himself to the coffee, and prattled away while he worked
+himself into his shoes and his greatcoat, well warmed through--a
+Petersham coat with velvet collar, made tight after the abominable
+fashion of those days. And just as he is swallowing his last mouthful,
+winding his comforter round his throat, and tucking the ends into the
+breast of his coat, the horn sounds; boots looks in and says, “Tally-ho,
+sir;” and they hear the ring and the rattle of the four fast trotters
+and the town-made drag, as it dashes up to the Peacock.
+
+“Anything for us, Bob?” says the burly guard, dropping down from behind,
+and slapping himself across the chest.
+
+“Young gen'lm'n, Rugby; three parcels, Leicester; hamper o' game,
+Rugby,” answers hostler.
+
+“Tell young gent to look alive,” says guard, opening the hind-boot and
+shooting in the parcels after examining them by the lamps. “Here; shove
+the portmanteau up a-top. I'll fasten him presently.--Now then, sir,
+jump up behind.”
+
+“Good-bye, father--my love at home.” A last shake of the hand. Up goes
+Tom, the guard catching his hatbox and holding on with one hand, while
+with the other he claps the horn to his mouth. Toot, toot, toot! the
+hostlers let go their heads, the four bays plunge at the collar, and
+away goes the Tally-ho into the darkness, forty-five seconds from the
+time they pulled up. Hostler, boots, and the Squire stand looking after
+them under the Peacock lamp.
+
+“Sharp work!” says the Squire, and goes in again to his bed, the coach
+being well out of sight and hearing.
+
+Tom stands up on the coach and looks back at his father's figure as long
+as he can see it; and then the guard, having disposed of his luggage,
+comes to an anchor, and finishes his buttonings and other preparations
+for facing the three hours before dawn--no joke for those who minded
+cold, on a fast coach in November, in the reign of his late Majesty.
+
+I sometimes think that you boys of this generation are a deal tenderer
+fellows than we used to be. At any rate you're much more comfortable
+travellers, for I see every one of you with his rug or plaid, and other
+dodges for preserving the caloric, and most of you going in, those
+fuzzy, dusty, padded first-class carriages. It was another affair
+altogether, a dark ride on the top of the Tally-ho, I can tell you, in a
+tight Petersham coat, and your feet dangling six inches from the floor.
+Then you knew what cold was, and what it was to be without legs, for not
+a bit of feeling had you in them after the first half-hour. But it had
+its pleasures, the old dark ride. First there was the consciousness of
+silent endurance, so dear to every Englishman--of standing out against
+something, and not giving in. Then there was the music of the rattling
+harness, and the ring of the horses' feet on the hard road, and the
+glare of the two bright lamps through the steaming hoar frost, over the
+leaders' ears, into the darkness, and the cheery toot of the guard's
+horn, to warn some drowsy pikeman or the hostler at the next change; and
+the looking forward to daylight; and last, but not least, the delight of
+returning sensation in your toes.
+
+Then the break of dawn and the sunrise, where can they be ever seen in
+perfection but from a coach roof? You want motion and change and music
+to see them in their glory--not the music of singing men and singing
+women, but good, silent music, which sets itself in your own head, the
+accompaniment of work and getting over the ground.
+
+The Tally-ho is past St. Albans, and Tom is enjoying the ride, though
+half-frozen. The guard, who is alone with him on the back of the coach,
+is silent, but has muffled Tom's feet up in straw, and put the end of an
+oat-sack over his knees. The darkness has driven him inwards, and he
+has gone over his little past life, and thought of all his doings and
+promises, and of his mother and sister, and his father's last words; and
+has made fifty good resolutions, and means to bear himself like a brave
+Brown as he is, though a young one. Then he has been forward into the
+mysterious boy-future, speculating as to what sort of place Rugby is,
+and what they do there, and calling up all the stories of public schools
+which he has heard from big boys in the holidays. He is choke-full of
+hope and life, notwithstanding the cold, and kicks his heels against the
+back-board, and would like to sing, only he doesn't know how his friend
+the silent guard might take it.
+
+And now the dawn breaks at the end of the fourth stage, and the coach
+pulls up at a little roadside inn with huge stables behind. There is a
+bright fire gleaming through the red curtains of the bar window, and
+the door is open. The coachman catches his whip into a double thong, and
+throws it to the hostler; the steam of the horses rises straight up
+into the air. He has put them along over the last two miles, and is two
+minutes before his time. He rolls down from the box and into the inn.
+The guard rolls off behind. “Now, sir,” says he to Tom, “you just jump
+down, and I'll give you a drop of something to keep the cold out.”
+
+Tom finds a difficulty in jumping, or indeed in finding the top of the
+wheel with his feet, which may be in the next world for all he feels;
+so the guard picks him off the coach top, and sets him on his legs, and
+they stump off into the bar, and join the coachman and the other outside
+passengers.
+
+Here a fresh-looking barmaid serves them each with a glass of early purl
+as they stand before the fire, coachman and guard exchanging business
+remarks. The purl warms the cockles of Tom's heart, and makes him cough.
+
+“Rare tackle that, sir, of a cold morning,” says the coachman, smiling.
+“Time's up.” They are out again and up; coachee the last, gathering the
+reins into his hands and talking to Jem the hostler about the mare's
+shoulder, and then swinging himself up on to the box--the horses dashing
+off in a canter before he falls into his seat. Toot-toot-tootle-too goes
+the horn, and away they are again, five-and-thirty miles on their road
+(nearly half-way to Rugby, thinks Tom), and the prospect of breakfast at
+the end of the stage.
+
+And now they begin to see, and the early life of the country-side comes
+out--a market cart or two; men in smock-frocks going to their work, pipe
+in mouth, a whiff of which is no bad smell this bright morning. The sun
+gets up, and the mist shines like silver gauze. They pass the hounds
+jogging along to a distant meet, at the heels of the huntsman's back,
+whose face is about the colour of the tails of his old pink, as he
+exchanges greetings with coachman and guard. Now they pull up at a
+lodge, and take on board a well-muffled-up sportsman, with his gun-case
+and carpet-bag, An early up-coach meets them, and the coachmen gather
+up their horses, and pass one another with the accustomed lift of the
+elbow, each team doing eleven miles an hour, with a mile to spare behind
+if necessary. And here comes breakfast.
+
+“Twenty minutes here, gentlemen,” says the coachman, as they pull up at
+half-past seven at the inn-door.
+
+Have we not endured nobly this morning? and is not this a worthy reward
+for much endurance? There is the low, dark wainscoted room hung with
+sporting prints; the hat-stand (with a whip or two standing up in it
+belonging to bagmen who are still snug in bed) by the door; the blazing
+fire, with the quaint old glass over the mantelpiece, in which is stuck
+a large card with the list of the meets for the week of the county
+hounds; the table covered with the whitest of cloths and of china, and
+bearing a pigeon-pie, ham, round of cold boiled beef cut from a mammoth
+ox, and the great loaf of household bread on a wooden trencher. And
+here comes in the stout head waiter, puffing under a tray of hot
+viands--kidneys and a steak, transparent rashers and poached eggs,
+buttered toast and muffins, coffee and tea, all smoking hot. The table
+can never hold it all. The cold meats are removed to the sideboard--they
+were only put on for show and to give us an appetite. And now fall on,
+gentlemen all. It is a well-known sporting-house, and the breakfasts are
+famous. Two or three men in pink, on their way to the meet, drop in, and
+are very jovial and sharp-set, as indeed we all are.
+
+“Tea or coffee, sir?” says head waiter, coming round to Tom.
+
+“Coffee, please,” says Tom, with his mouth full of muffin and kidney.
+Coffee is a treat to him, tea is not.
+
+Our coachman, I perceive, who breakfasts with us, is a cold beef man.
+He also eschews hot potations, and addicts himself to a tankard of ale,
+which is brought him by the barmaid. Sportsman looks on approvingly, and
+orders a ditto for himself.
+
+Tom has eaten kidney and pigeon-pie, and imbibed coffee, till his little
+skin is as tight as a drum; and then has the further pleasure of paying
+head waiter out of his own purse, in a dignified manner, and walks out
+before the inn-door to see the horses put to. This is done leisurely and
+in a highly-finished manner by the hostlers, as if they enjoyed the not
+being hurried. Coachman comes out with his waybill, and puffing a fat
+cigar which the sportsman has given him. Guard emerges from the tap,
+where he prefers breakfasting, licking round a tough-looking doubtful
+cheroot, which you might tie round your finger, and three whiffs of
+which would knock any one else out of time.
+
+The pinks stand about the inn-door lighting cigars and waiting to see us
+start, while their hacks are led up and down the market-place, on which
+the inn looks. They all know our sportsman, and we feel a reflected
+credit when we see him chatting and laughing with them.
+
+“Now, sir, please,” says the coachman. All the rest of the passengers
+are up; the guard is locking up the hind-boot.
+
+“A good run to you!” says the sportsman to the pinks, and is by the
+coachman's side in no time.
+
+“Let 'em go, Dick!” The hostlers fly back, drawing off the cloths from
+their glossy loins, and away we go through the market-place and down the
+High Street, looking in at the first-floor windows, and seeing several
+worthy burgesses shaving thereat; while all the shopboys who are
+cleaning the windows, and housemaids who are doing the steps, stop and
+look pleased as we rattle past, as if we were a part of their legitimate
+morning's amusement. We clear the town, and are well out between the
+hedgerows again as the town clock strikes eight.
+
+The sun shines almost warmly, and breakfast has oiled all springs
+and loosened all tongues. Tom is encouraged by a remark or two of the
+guard's between the puffs of his oily cheroot, and besides is getting
+tired of not talking. He is too full of his destination to talk about
+anything else, and so asks the guard if he knows Rugby.
+
+“Goes through it every day of my life. Twenty minutes afore twelve
+down--ten o'clock up.”
+
+“What sort of place is it, please?” says Tom.
+
+Guard looks at him with a comical expression. “Werry out-o'-the-way
+place, sir; no paving to streets, nor no lighting. 'Mazin' big horse and
+cattle fair in autumn--lasts a week--just over now. Takes town a week to
+get clean after it. Fairish hunting country. But slow place, sir, slow
+place--off the main road, you see--only three coaches a day, and one on
+'em a two-oss wan, more like a hearse nor a coach--Regulator--comes from
+Oxford. Young genl'm'n at school calls her Pig and Whistle, and goes up
+to college by her (six miles an hour) when they goes to enter. Belong to
+school, sir?”
+
+“Yes,” says Tom, not unwilling for a moment that the guard should think
+him an old boy. But then, having some qualms as to the truth of the
+assertion, and seeing that if he were to assume the character of an old
+boy he couldn't go on asking the questions he wanted, added--“That is to
+say, I'm on my way there. I'm a new boy.”
+
+The guard looked as if he knew this quite as well as Tom.
+
+“You're werry late, sir,” says the guard; “only six weeks to-day to the
+end of the half.” Tom assented. “We takes up fine loads this day six
+weeks, and Monday and Tuesday arter. Hopes we shall have the pleasure of
+carrying you back.”
+
+Tom said he hoped they would; but he thought within himself that his
+fate would probably be the Pig and Whistle.
+
+“It pays uncommon cert'nly,” continues the guard. “Werry free with their
+cash is the young genl'm'n. But, Lor' bless you, we gets into such rows
+all 'long the road, what wi' their pea-shooters, and long whips, and
+hollering, and upsetting every one as comes by, I'd a sight sooner
+carry one or two on 'em, sir, as I may be a-carryin' of you now, than a
+coach-load.”
+
+“What do they do with the pea-shooters?” inquires Tom.
+
+“Do wi' 'em! Why, peppers every one's faces as we comes near, 'cept the
+young gals, and breaks windows wi' them too, some on 'em shoots so hard.
+Now 'twas just here last June, as we was a-driving up the first-day
+boys, they was mendin' a quarter-mile of road, and there was a lot of
+Irish chaps, reg'lar roughs, a-breaking stones. As we comes up, 'Now,
+boys,' says young gent on the box (smart young fellow and desper't
+reckless), 'here's fun! Let the Pats have it about the ears.' 'God's
+sake sir!' says Bob (that's my mate the coachman); 'don't go for to
+shoot at 'em. They'll knock us off the coach.' 'Damme, coachee,' says
+young my lord, 'you ain't afraid.--Hoora, boys! let 'em have it.'
+'Hoora!' sings out the others, and fill their mouths choke-full of peas
+to last the whole line. Bob, seeing as 'twas to come, knocks his hat
+over his eyes, hollers to his osses, and shakes 'em up; and away we goes
+up to the line on 'em, twenty miles an hour. The Pats begin to hoora
+too, thinking it was a runaway; and first lot on 'em stands grinnin'
+and wavin' their old hats as we comes abreast on 'em; and then you'd ha'
+laughed to see how took aback and choking savage they looked, when they
+gets the peas a-stinging all over 'em. But bless you, the laugh weren't
+all of our side, sir, by a long way. We was going so fast, and they was
+so took aback, that they didn't take what was up till we was half-way
+up the line. Then 'twas, 'Look out all!' surely. They howls all down the
+line fit to frighten you; some on 'em runs arter us and tries to clamber
+up behind, only we hits 'em over the fingers and pulls their hands off;
+one as had had it very sharp act'ly runs right at the leaders, as though
+he'd ketch 'em by the heads, only luck'ly for him he misses his tip and
+comes over a heap o' stones first. The rest picks up stones, and gives
+it us right away till we gets out of shot, the young gents holding out
+werry manful with the pea-shooters and such stones as lodged on us, and
+a pretty many there was too. Then Bob picks hisself up again, and looks
+at young gent on box werry solemn. Bob'd had a rum un in the ribs,
+which'd like to ha' knocked him off the box, or made him drop the reins.
+Young gent on box picks hisself up, and so does we all, and looks round
+to count damage. Box's head cut open and his hat gone; 'nother young
+gent's hat gone; mine knocked in at the side, and not one on us as
+wasn't black and blue somewheres or another, most on 'em all over. Two
+pound ten to pay for damage to paint, which they subscribed for there
+and then, and give Bob and me a extra half-sovereign each; but I
+wouldn't go down that line again not for twenty half-sovereigns.” And
+the guard shook his head slowly, and got up and blew a clear, brisk
+toot-toot.
+
+“What fun!” said Tom, who could scarcely contain his pride at this
+exploit of his future school-fellows. He longed already for the end of
+the half, that he might join them.
+
+“'Taint such good fun, though, sir, for the folk as meets the coach, nor
+for we who has to go back with it next day. Them Irishers last summer
+had all got stones ready for us, and was all but letting drive, and we'd
+got two reverend gents aboard too. We pulled up at the beginning of
+the line, and pacified them, and we're never going to carry no more
+pea-shooters, unless they promises not to fire where there's a line of
+Irish chaps a-stonebreaking.” The guard stopped and pulled away at his
+cheroot, regarding Tom benignantly the while.
+
+“Oh, don't stop! Tell us something more about the pea-shooting.”
+
+“Well, there'd like to have been a pretty piece of work over it at
+Bicester, a while back. We was six mile from the town, when we meets an
+old square-headed gray-haired yeoman chap, a-jogging along quite quiet.
+He looks up at the coach, and just then a pea hits him on the nose, and
+some catches his cob behind and makes him dance up on his hind legs. I
+see'd the old boy's face flush and look plaguy awkward, and I thought we
+was in for somethin' nasty.
+
+“He turns his cob's head and rides quietly after us just out of shot.
+How that 'ere cob did step! We never shook him off not a dozen yards
+in the six miles. At first the young gents was werry lively on him; but
+afore we got in, seeing how steady the old chap come on, they was quite
+quiet, and laid their heads together what they should do. Some was for
+fighting, some for axing his pardon. He rides into the town close after
+us, comes up when we stops, and says the two as shot at him must come
+before a magistrate; and a great crowd comes round, and we couldn't get
+the osses to. But the young uns they all stand by one another, and says
+all or none must go, and as how they'd fight it out, and have to be
+carried. Just as 'twas gettin' serious, and the old boy and the mob was
+going to pull 'em off the coach, one little fellow jumps up and says,
+'Here--I'll stay. I'm only going three miles farther. My father's name's
+Davis; he's known about here, and I'll go before the magistrate with
+this gentleman.' 'What! be thee parson Davis's son?' says the old boy.
+'Yes,' says the young un. 'Well, I be mortal sorry to meet thee in such
+company; but for thy father's sake and thine (for thee bist a brave
+young chap) I'll say no more about it.' Didn't the boys cheer him, and
+the mob cheered the young chap; and then one of the biggest gets down,
+and begs his pardon werry gentlemanly for all the rest, saying as they
+all had been plaguy vexed from the first, but didn't like to ax his
+pardon till then, 'cause they felt they hadn't ought to shirk the
+consequences of their joke. And then they all got down, and shook hands
+with the old boy, and asked him to all parts of the country, to their
+homes; and we drives off twenty minutes behind time, with cheering and
+hollering as if we was county 'members. But, Lor' bless you, sir,” says
+the guard, smacking his hand down on his knee and looking full into
+Tom's face, “ten minutes arter they was all as bad as ever.”
+
+Tom showed such undisguised and open-mouthed interest in his narrations
+that the old guard rubbed up his memory, and launched out into a graphic
+history of all the performances of the boys on the roads for the last
+twenty years. Off the road he couldn't go; the exploit must have been
+connected with horses or vehicles to hang in the old fellow's head. Tom
+tried him off his own ground once or twice, but found he knew nothing
+beyond, and so let him have his head, and the rest of the road bowled
+easily away; for old Blow-hard (as the boys called him) was a dry old
+file, with much kindness and humour, and a capital spinner of a yarn
+when he had broken the neck of his day's work, and got plenty of ale
+under his belt.
+
+What struck Tom's youthful imagination most was the desperate and
+lawless character of most of the stories. Was the guard hoaxing him? He
+couldn't help hoping that they were true. It's very odd how almost all
+English boys love danger. You can get ten to join a game, or climb a
+tree, or swim a stream, when there's a chance of breaking their limbs or
+getting drowned, for one who'll stay on level ground, or in his depth,
+or play quoits or bowls.
+
+The guard had just finished an account of a desperate fight which had
+happened at one of the fairs between the drovers and the farmers with
+their whips, and the boys with cricket-bats and wickets, which arose out
+of a playful but objectionable practice of the boys going round to the
+public-houses and taking the linch-pins out of the wheels of the gigs,
+and was moralizing upon the way in which the Doctor, “a terrible stern
+man he'd heard tell,” had come down upon several of the performers,
+“sending three on 'em off next morning in a po-shay with a parish
+constable,” when they turned a corner and neared the milestone, the
+third from Rugby. By the stone two boys stood, their jackets buttoned
+tight, waiting for the coach.
+
+“Look here, sir,” says the guard, after giving a sharp toot-toot;
+“there's two on 'em; out-and-out runners they be. They comes out about
+twice or three times a week, and spirts a mile alongside of us.”
+
+And as they came up, sure enough, away went two boys along the footpath,
+keeping up with the horses--the first a light, clean-made fellow going
+on springs; the other stout and round-shouldered, labouring in his pace,
+but going as dogged as a bull-terrier.
+
+Old Blow-hard looked on admiringly. “See how beautiful that there un
+holds hisself together, and goes from his hips, sir,” said he; “he's a
+'mazin' fine runner. Now many coachmen as drives a first-rate team'd
+put it on, and try and pass 'em. But Bob, sir, bless you, he's
+tender-hearted; he'd sooner pull in a bit if he see'd 'em a-gettin'
+beat. I do b'lieve, too, as that there un'd sooner break his heart than
+let us go by him afore next milestone.”
+
+At the second milestone the boys pulled up short, and waved their
+hats to the guard, who had his watch out and shouted “4.56,” thereby
+indicating that the mile had been done in four seconds under the five
+minutes. They passed several more parties of boys, all of them objects
+of the deepest interest to Tom, and came in sight of the town at ten
+minutes before twelve. Tom fetched a long breath, and thought he had
+never spent a pleasanter day. Before he went to bed he had quite settled
+that it must be the greatest day he should ever spend, and didn't alter
+his opinion for many a long year--if he has yet.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--RUGBY AND FOOTBALL.
+
+
+     “Foot and eye opposed
+     In dubious strife.”--Scott.
+
+“And so here's Rugby, sir, at last, and you'll be in plenty of time
+for dinner at the School-house, as I telled you,” said the old guard,
+pulling his horn out of its case and tootle-tooing away, while the
+coachman shook up his horses, and carried them along the side of the
+school close, round Dead-man's corner, past the school-gates, and down
+the High Street to the Spread Eagle, the wheelers in a spanking trot,
+and leaders cantering, in a style which would not have disgraced “Cherry
+Bob,” “ramping, stamping, tearing, swearing Billy Harwood,” or any other
+of the old coaching heroes.
+
+Tom's heart beat quick as he passed the great schoolfield or close, with
+its noble elms, in which several games at football were going on, and
+tried to take in at once the long line of gray buildings, beginning
+with the chapel, and ending with the School-house, the residence of the
+head-master, where the great flag was lazily waving from the highest
+round tower. And he began already to be proud of being a Rugby boy, as
+he passed the schoolgates, with the oriel window above, and saw the boys
+standing there, looking as if the town belonged to them, and nodding in
+a familiar manner to the coachman, as if any one of them would be quite
+equal to getting on the box, and working the team down street as well as
+he.
+
+One of the young heroes, however, ran out from the rest, and scrambled
+up behind; where, having righted himself, and nodded to the guard, with
+“How do, Jem?” he turned short round to Tom, and after looking him over
+for a minute, began,--
+
+“I say, you fellow, is your name Brown?”
+
+“Yes,” said Tom, in considerable astonishment, glad, however, to have
+lighted on some one already who seemed to know him.
+
+“Ah, I thought so. You know my old aunt, Miss East. She lives somewhere
+down your way in Berkshire. She wrote to me that you were coming to-day,
+and asked me to give you a lift.”
+
+Tom was somewhat inclined to resent the patronizing air of his new
+friend, a boy of just about his own height and age, but gifted with
+the most transcendent coolness and assurance, which Tom felt to be
+aggravating and hard to bear, but couldn't for the life of him help
+admiring and envying--especially when young my lord begins hectoring
+two or three long loafing fellows, half porter, half stableman, with
+a strong touch of the blackguard, and in the end arranges with one of
+them, nicknamed Cooey, to carry Tom's luggage up to the School-house for
+sixpence.
+
+“And hark 'ee, Cooey; it must be up in ten minutes, or no more jobs from
+me. Come along, Brown.” And away swaggers the young potentate, with his
+hands in his pockets, and Tom at his side.
+
+“All right, sir,” says Cooey, touching his hat, with a leer and a wink
+at his companions.
+
+“Hullo though,” says East, pulling up, and taking another look at Tom;
+“this'll never do. Haven't you got a hat? We never wear caps here. Only
+the louts wear caps. Bless you, if you were to go into the quadrangle
+with that thing on, I don't know what'd happen.” The very idea was quite
+beyond young Master East, and he looked unutterable things.
+
+Tom thought his cap a very knowing affair, but confessed that he had
+a hat in his hat-box; which was accordingly at once extracted from the
+hind-boot, and Tom equipped in his go-to-meeting roof, as his new friend
+called it. But this didn't quite suit his fastidious taste in another
+minute, being too shiny; so, as they walk up the town, they dive into
+Nixon's the hatter's, and Tom is arrayed, to his utter astonishment, and
+without paying for it, in a regulation cat-skin at seven-and-sixpence,
+Nixon undertaking to send the best hat up to the matron's room,
+School-house, in half an hour.
+
+“You can send in a note for a tile on Monday, and make it all right, you
+know,” said Mentor; “we're allowed two seven-and-sixers a half, besides
+what we bring from home.”
+
+Tom by this time began to be conscious of his new social position and
+dignities, and to luxuriate in the realized ambition of being a public
+school-boy at last, with a vested right of spoiling two seven-and-sixers
+in half a year.
+
+“You see,” said his friend, as they strolled up towards the
+school-gates, in explanation of his conduct, “a great deal depends on
+how a fellow cuts up at first. If he's got nothing odd about him, and
+answers straightforward, and holds his head up, he gets on. Now, you'll
+do very well as to rig, all but that cap. You see I'm doing the handsome
+thing by you, because my father knows yours; besides, I want to please
+the old lady. She gave me half a sov. this half, and perhaps'll double
+it next, if I keep in her good books.”
+
+There's nothing for candour like a lower-school boy, and East was a
+genuine specimen--frank, hearty, and good-natured, well-satisfied with
+himself and his position, and choke-full of life and spirits, and
+all the Rugby prejudices and traditions which he had been able to get
+together in the long course of one half-year during which he had been at
+the School-house.
+
+And Tom, notwithstanding his bumptiousness, felt friends with him at
+once, and began sucking in all his ways and prejudices, as fast as he
+could understand them.
+
+East was great in the character of cicerone. He carried Tom through
+the great gates, where were only two or three boys. These satisfied
+themselves with the stock questions, “You fellow, what's your name?
+Where do you come from? How old are you? Where do you board?” and, “What
+form are you in?” And so they passed on through the quadrangle and
+a small courtyard, upon which looked down a lot of little windows
+(belonging, as his guide informed him, to some of the School-house
+studies), into the matron's room, where East introduced Tom to that
+dignitary; made him give up the key of his trunk, that the matron might
+unpack his linen, and told the story of the hat and of his own presence
+of mind: upon the relation whereof the matron laughingly scolded him for
+the coolest new boy in the house; and East, indignant at the accusation
+of newness, marched Tom off into the quadrangle, and began showing
+him the schools, and examining him as to his literary attainments; the
+result of which was a prophecy that they would be in the same form, and
+could do their lessons together.
+
+“And now come in and see my study--we shall have just time before
+dinner; and afterwards, before calling over, we'll do the close.”
+
+Tom followed his guide through the School-house hall, which opens into
+the quadrangle. It is a great room, thirty feet long and eighteen high,
+or thereabouts, with two great tables running the whole length, and
+two large fireplaces at the side, with blazing fires in them, at one of
+which some dozen boys were standing and lounging, some of whom shouted
+to East to stop; but he shot through with his convoy, and landed him
+in the long, dark passages, with a large fire at the end of each, upon
+which the studies opened. Into one of these, in the bottom passage, East
+bolted with our hero, slamming and bolting the door behind them, in
+case of pursuit from the hall, and Tom was for the first time in a Rugby
+boy's citadel.
+
+He hadn't been prepared for separate studies, and was not a little
+astonished and delighted with the palace in question.
+
+It wasn't very large, certainly, being about six feet long by four
+broad. It couldn't be called light, as there were bars and a grating to
+the window; which little precautions were necessary in the studies on
+the ground-floor looking out into the close, to prevent the exit of
+small boys after locking up, and the entrance of contraband articles.
+But it was uncommonly comfortable to look at, Tom thought. The space
+under the window at the farther end was occupied by a square table
+covered with a reasonably clean and whole red and blue check tablecloth;
+a hard-seated sofa covered with red stuff occupied one side, running up
+to the end, and making a seat for one, or by sitting close, for two, at
+the table and a good stout wooden chair afforded a seat to another boy,
+so that three could sit and work together. The walls were wainscoted
+half-way up, the wainscot being covered with green baize, the remainder
+with a bright-patterned paper, on which hung three or four prints of
+dogs' heads; Grimaldi winning the Aylesbury steeple-chase; Amy Robsart,
+the reigning Waverley beauty of the day; and Tom Crib, in a posture
+of defence, which did no credit to the science of that hero, if truly
+represented. Over the door were a row of hat-pegs, and on each side
+bookcases with cupboards at the bottom, shelves and cupboards being
+filled indiscriminately with school-books, a cup or two, a
+mouse-trap and candlesticks, leather straps, a fustian bag, and some
+curious-looking articles which puzzled Tom not a little, until his
+friend explained that they were climbing-irons, and showed their use. A
+cricket-bat and small fishing-rod stood up in one corner.
+
+This was the residence of East and another boy in the same form, and had
+more interest for Tom than Windsor Castle, or any other residence in
+the British Isles. For was he not about to become the joint owner of a
+similar home, the first place he could call his own? One's own! What a
+charm there is in the words! How long it takes boy and man to find
+out their worth! How fast most of us hold on to them--faster and more
+jealously, the nearer we are to that general home into which we can
+take nothing, but must go naked as we came into the world! When shall we
+learn that he who multiplieth possessions multiplieth troubles, and that
+the one single use of things which we call our own is that they may be
+his who hath need of them?
+
+“And shall I have a study like this too?” said Tom.
+
+“Yes, of course; you'll be chummed with some fellow on Monday, and you
+can sit here till then.”
+
+“What nice places!”
+
+“They're well enough,” answered East, patronizingly, “only uncommon cold
+at nights sometimes. Gower--that's my chum--and I make a fire with paper
+on the floor after supper generally, only that makes it so smoky.”
+
+“But there's a big fire out in the passage,” said Tom.
+
+“Precious little we get out of that, though,” said East. “Jones the
+praepostor has the study at the fire end, and he has rigged up an iron
+rod and green baize curtain across the passage, which he draws at night,
+and sits there with his door open; so he gets all the fire, and hears if
+we come out of our studies after eight, or make a noise. However, he's
+taken to sitting in the fifth-form room lately, so we do get a bit of
+fire now sometimes; only to keep a sharp lookout that he don't catch you
+behind his curtain when he comes down--that's all.”
+
+A quarter past one now struck, and the bell began tolling for dinner; so
+they went into the hall and took their places, Tom at the very bottom
+of the second table, next to the praepostor (who sat at the end to keep
+order there), and East a few paces higher. And now Tom for the first
+time saw his future school-fellows in a body. In they came, some hot
+and ruddy from football or long walks, some pale and chilly from hard
+reading in their studies, some from loitering over the fire at
+the pastrycook's, dainty mortals, bringing with them pickles and
+saucebottles to help them with their dinners. And a great big-bearded
+man, whom Tom took for a master, began calling over the names, while the
+great joints were being rapidly carved on the third table in the
+corner by the old verger and the housekeeper. Tom's turn came last, and
+meanwhile he was all eyes, looking first with awe at the great man, who
+sat close to him, and was helped first, and who read a hard-looking book
+all the time he was eating; and when he got up and walked off to the
+fire, at the small boys round him, some of whom were reading, and the
+rest talking in whispers to one another, or stealing one another's
+bread, or shooting pellets, or digging their forks through the
+tablecloth. However, notwithstanding his curiosity, he managed to make
+a capital dinner by the time the big man called “Stand up!” and said
+grace.
+
+As soon as dinner was over, and Tom had been questioned by such of his
+neighbours as were curious as to his birth, parentage, education, and
+other like matters, East, who evidently enjoyed his new dignity of
+patron and mentor, proposed having a look at the close, which Tom,
+athirst for knowledge, gladly assented to; and they went out through the
+quadrangle and past the big fives court, into the great playground.
+
+“That's the chapel, you see,” said East; “and there, just behind it, is
+the place for fights. You see it's most out of the way of the masters,
+who all live on the other side, and don't come by here after first
+lesson or callings-over. That's when the fights come off. And all this
+part where we are is the little-side ground, right up to the trees; and
+on the other side of the trees is the big-side ground, where the great
+matches are played. And there's the island in the farthest corner;
+you'll know that well enough next half, when there's island fagging. I
+say, it's horrid cold; let's have a run across.” And away went East, Tom
+close behind him. East was evidently putting his best foot foremost; and
+Tom, who was mighty proud of his running, and not a little anxious
+to show his friend that, although a new boy, he was no milksop, laid
+himself down to work in his very best style. Right across the close they
+went, each doing all he knew, and there wasn't a yard between them when
+they pulled up at the island moat.
+
+“I say,” said East, as soon as he got his wind, looking with much
+increased respect at Tom, “you ain't a bad scud, not by no means. Well,
+I'm as warm as a toast now.”
+
+“But why do you wear white trousers in November?” said Tom. He had been
+struck by this peculiarity in the costume of almost all the School-house
+boys.
+
+“Why, bless us, don't you know? No; I forgot. Why, to-day's the
+School-house match. Our house plays the whole of the School at football.
+And we all wear white trousers, to show 'em we don't care for hacks.
+You're in luck to come to-day. You just will see a match; and Brooke's
+going to let me play in quarters. That's more than he'll do for any
+other lower-school boy, except James, and he's fourteen.”
+
+“Who's Brooke?”
+
+“Why, that big fellow who called over at dinner, to be sure. He's cock
+of the school, and head of the School-house side, and the best kick and
+charger in Rugby.”
+
+“Oh, but do show me where they play. And tell me about it. I love
+football so, and have played all my life. Won't Brooke let me play?”
+
+“Not he,” said East, with some indignation. “Why, you don't know the
+rules; you'll be a month learning them. And then it's no joke playing-up
+in a match, I can tell you--quite another thing from your private school
+games. Why, there's been two collar-bones broken this half, and a dozen
+fellows lamed. And last year a fellow had his leg broken.”
+
+Tom listened with the profoundest respect to this chapter of accidents,
+and followed East across the level ground till they came to a sort of
+gigantic gallows of two poles, eighteen feet high, fixed upright in the
+ground some fourteen feet apart, with a cross-bar running from one to
+the other at the height of ten feet or thereabouts.
+
+“This is one of the goals,” said East, “and you see the other, across
+there, right opposite, under the Doctor's wall. Well, the match is for
+the best of three goals; whichever side kicks two goals wins: and it
+won't do, you see, just to kick the ball through these posts--it must go
+over the cross-bar; any height'll do, so long as it's between the posts.
+You'll have to stay in goal to touch the ball when it rolls behind the
+posts, because if the other side touch it they have a try at goal. Then
+we fellows in quarters, we play just about in front of goal here, and
+have to turn the ball and kick it back before the big fellows on the
+other side can follow it up. And in front of us all the big fellows
+play, and that's where the scrummages are mostly.”
+
+Tom's respect increased as he struggled to make out his friend's
+technicalities, and the other set to work to explain the mysteries
+of “off your side,” “drop-kicks,” “punts,” “places,” and the other
+intricacies of the great science of football.
+
+“But how do you keep the ball between the goals?” said he; “I can't see
+why it mightn't go right down to the chapel.”
+
+“Why; that's out of play,” answered East. “You see this gravel-walk
+running down all along this side of the playing-ground, and the line
+of elms opposite on the other? Well, they're the bounds. As soon as the
+ball gets past them, it's in touch, and out of play. And then whoever
+first touches it has to knock it straight out amongst the players-up,
+who make two lines with a space between them, every fellow going on his
+own side. Ain't there just fine scrummages then! And the three trees you
+see there which come out into the play, that's a tremendous place when
+the ball hangs there, for you get thrown against the trees, and that's
+worse than any hack.”
+
+Tom wondered within himself, as they strolled back again towards the
+fives court, whether the matches were really such break-neck affairs as
+East represented, and whether, if they were, he should ever get to like
+them and play up well.
+
+He hadn't long to wonder, however, for next minute East cried out,
+“Hurrah! here's the punt-about; come along and try your hand at a kick.”
+ The punt-about is the practice-ball, which is just brought out and
+kicked about anyhow from one boy to another before callings-over and
+dinner, and at other odd times. They joined the boys who had brought it
+out, all small School-house fellows, friends of East; and Tom had the
+pleasure of trying his skill, and performed very creditably, after first
+driving his foot three inches into the ground, and then nearly kicking
+his leg into the air, in vigorous efforts to accomplish a drop-kick
+after the manner of East.
+
+Presently more boys and bigger came out, and boys from other houses
+on their way to calling-over, and more balls were sent for. The crowd
+thickened as three o'clock approached; and when the hour struck, one
+hundred and fifty boys were hard at work. Then the balls were held, the
+master of the week came down in cap and gown to calling-over, and the
+whole school of three hundred boys swept into the big school to answer
+to their names.
+
+“I may come in, mayn't I?” said Tom, catching East by the arm, and
+longing to feel one of them.
+
+“Yes, come along; nobody'll say anything. You won't be so eager to get
+into calling-over after a month,” replied his friend; and they marched
+into the big school together, and up to the farther end, where that
+illustrious form, the lower fourth, which had the honour of East's
+patronage for the time being, stood.
+
+The master mounted into the high desk by the door, and one of the
+praepostors of the week stood by him on the steps, the other three
+marching up and down the middle of the school with their canes, calling
+out, “Silence, silence!” The sixth form stood close by the door on the
+left, some thirty in number, mostly great big grown men, as Tom thought,
+surveying them from a distance with awe; the fifth form behind them,
+twice their number, and not quite so big. These on the left; and on the
+right the lower fifth, shell, and all the junior forms in order; while
+up the middle marched the three praepostors.
+
+Then the praepostor who stands by the master calls out the names,
+beginning with the sixth form; and as he calls each boy answers “here”
+ to his name, and walks out. Some of the sixth stop at the door to turn
+the whole string of boys into the close. It is a great match-day, and
+every boy in the school, will he, nill he, must be there. The rest of
+the sixth go forwards into the close, to see that no one escapes by any
+of the side gates.
+
+To-day, however, being the School-house match, none of the School-house
+praepostors stay by the door to watch for truants of their side; there
+is carte blanche to the School-house fags to go where they like. “They
+trust to our honour,” as East proudly informs Tom; “they know very well
+that no School-house boy would cut the match. If he did, we'd very soon
+cut him, I can tell you.”
+
+The master of the week being short-sighted, and the praepostors of the
+week small and not well up to their work, the lower-school boys employ
+the ten minutes which elapse before their names are called in pelting
+one another vigorously with acorns, which fly about in all directions.
+The small praepostors dash in every now and then, and generally chastise
+some quiet, timid boy who is equally afraid of acorns and canes,
+while the principal performers get dexterously out of the way. And so
+calling-over rolls on somehow, much like the big world, punishments
+lighting on wrong shoulders, and matters going generally in a queer,
+cross-grained way, but the end coming somehow, which is, after all, the
+great point. And now the master of the week has finished, and locked up
+the big school; and the praepostors of the week come out, sweeping the
+last remnant of the school fags, who had been loafing about the corners
+by the fives court, in hopes of a chance of bolting, before them into
+the close.
+
+“Hold the punt-about!” “To the goals!” are the cries; and all stray
+balls are impounded by the authorities, and the whole mass of boys moves
+up towards the two goals, dividing as they go into three bodies. That
+little band on the left, consisting of from fifteen to twenty boys, Tom
+amongst them, who are making for the goal under the School-house wall,
+are the School-house boys who are not to play up, and have to stay in
+goal. The larger body moving to the island goal are the School boys in a
+like predicament. The great mass in the middle are the players-up, both
+sides mingled together; they are hanging their jackets (and all who mean
+real work), their hats, waistcoats, neck-handkerchiefs, and braces, on
+the railings round the small trees; and there they go by twos and
+threes up to their respective grounds. There is none of the colour and
+tastiness of get-up, you will perceive, which lends such a life to
+the present game at Rugby, making the dullest and worst-fought match a
+pretty sight. Now each house has its own uniform of cap and jersey, of
+some lively colour; but at the time we are speaking of plush caps have
+not yet come in, or uniforms of any sort, except the School-house
+white trousers, which are abominably cold to-day. Let us get to work,
+bare-headed, and girded with our plain leather straps. But we mean
+business, gentlemen.
+
+And now that the two sides have fairly sundered, and each occupies its
+own ground, and we get a good look at them, what absurdity is this? You
+don't mean to say that those fifty or sixty boys in white trousers, many
+of them quite small, are going to play that huge mass opposite? Indeed I
+do, gentlemen. They're going to try, at any rate, and won't make such
+a bad fight of it either, mark my word; for hasn't old Brooke won the
+toss, with his lucky halfpenny, and got choice of goals and kick-off?
+The new ball you may see lie there quite by itself, in the middle,
+pointing towards the School or island goal; in another minute it will be
+well on its way there. Use that minute in remarking how the Schoolhouse
+side is drilled. You will see, in the first place, that the sixth-form
+boy, who has the charge of goal, has spread his force (the goalkeepers)
+so as to occupy the whole space behind the goal-posts, at distances of
+about five yards apart. A safe and well-kept goal is the foundation of
+all good play. Old Brooke is talking to the captain of quarters, and
+now he moves away. See how that youngster spreads his men (the light
+brigade) carefully over the ground, half-way between their own goal and
+the body of their own players-up (the heavy brigade). These again play
+in several bodies. There is young Brooke and the bull-dogs. Mark them
+well. They are the “fighting brigade,” the “die-hards,” larking about
+at leap-frog to keep themselves warm, and playing tricks on one another.
+And on each side of old Brooke, who is now standing in the middle of
+the ground and just going to kick off, you see a separate wing of
+players-up, each with a boy of acknowledged prowess to look to--here
+Warner, and there Hedge; but over all is old Brooke, absolute as he
+of Russia, but wisely and bravely ruling over willing and worshipping
+subjects, a true football king. His face is earnest and careful as he
+glances a last time over his array, but full of pluck and hope--the sort
+of look I hope to see in my general when I go out to fight.
+
+The School side is not organized in the same way. The goal-keepers
+are all in lumps, anyhow and nohow; you can't distinguish between the
+players-up and the boys in quarters, and there is divided leadership.
+But with such odds in strength and weight it must take more than that to
+hinder them from winning; and so their leaders seem to think, for they
+let the players-up manage themselves.
+
+But now look! there is a slight move forward of the School-house wings,
+a shout of “Are you ready?” and loud affirmative reply. Old Brooke takes
+half a dozen quick steps, and away goes the ball spinning towards the
+School goal, seventy yards before it touches ground, and at no
+point above twelve or fifteen feet high, a model kick-off; and the
+School-house cheer and rush on. The ball is returned, and they meet it
+and drive it back amongst the masses of the School already in motion.
+Then the two sides close, and you can see nothing for minutes but a
+swaying crowd of boys, at one point violently agitated. That is where
+the ball is, and there are the keen players to be met, and the glory and
+the hard knocks to be got. You hear the dull thud, thud of the ball, and
+the shouts of “Off your side,” “Down with him,” “Put him over,” “Bravo.”
+ This is what we call “a scrummage,” gentlemen, and the first scrummage
+in a School-house match was no joke in the consulship of Plancus.
+
+But see! it has broken; the ball is driven out on the School-house side,
+and a rush of the School carries it past the School-house players-up.
+“Look out in quarters,” Brooke's and twenty other voices ring out. No
+need to call, though: the School-house captain of quarters has caught it
+on the bound, dodges the foremost School boys, who are heading the rush,
+and sends it back with a good drop-kick well into the enemy's country.
+And then follows rush upon rush, and scrummage upon scrummage, the ball
+now driven through into the School-house quarters, and now into the
+School goal; for the School-house have not lost the advantage which the
+kick-off and a slight wind gave them at the outset, and are slightly
+“penning” their adversaries. You say you don't see much in it
+all--nothing but a struggling mass of boys, and a leather ball which
+seems to excite them all to great fury, as a red rag does a bull. My
+dear sir, a battle would look much the same to you, except that the
+boys would be men, and the balls iron; but a battle would be worth
+your looking at for all that, and so is a football match. You can't be
+expected to appreciate the delicate strokes of play, the turns by which
+a game is lost and won--it takes an old player to do that; but the broad
+philosophy of football you can understand if you will. Come along with
+me a little nearer, and let us consider it together.
+
+The ball has just fallen again where the two sides are thickest, and
+they close rapidly around it in a scrummage. It must be driven through
+now by force or skill, till it flies out on one side or the other.
+Look how differently the boys face it! Here come two of the bulldogs,
+bursting through the outsiders; in they go, straight to the heart of the
+scrummage, bent on driving that ball out on the opposite side. That is
+what they mean to do. My sons, my sons! you are too hot; you have gone
+past the ball, and must struggle now right through the scrummage, and
+get round and back again to your own side, before you can be of any
+further use. Here comes young Brooke; he goes in as straight as you, but
+keeps his head, and backs and bends, holding himself still behind the
+ball, and driving it furiously when he gets the chance. Take a leaf out
+of his book, you young chargers. Here comes Speedicut, and Flashman the
+School-house bully, with shouts and great action. Won't you two come up
+to young Brooke, after locking-up, by the School-house fire, with “Old
+fellow, wasn't that just a splendid scrummage by the three trees?” But
+he knows you, and so do we. You don't really want to drive that
+ball through that scrummage, chancing all hurt for the glory of the
+School-house, but to make us think that's what you want--a vastly
+different thing; and fellows of your kidney will never go through more
+than the skirts of a scrummage, where it's all push and no kicking. We
+respect boys who keep out of it, and don't sham going in; but you--we
+had rather not say what we think of you.
+
+Then the boys who are bending and watching on the outside, mark them:
+they are most useful players, the dodgers, who seize on the ball the
+moment it rolls out from amongst the chargers, and away with it across
+to the opposite goal. They seldom go into the scrummage, but must have
+more coolness than the chargers. As endless as are boys' characters, so
+are their ways of facing or not facing a scrummage at football.
+
+Three-quarters of an hour are gone; first winds are failing, and weight
+and numbers beginning to tell. Yard by yard the School-house have been
+driven back, contesting every inch of ground. The bull-dogs are the
+colour of mother earth from shoulder to ankle, except young Brooke, who
+has a marvellous knack of keeping his legs. The School-house are being
+penned in their turn, and now the ball is behind their goal, under the
+Doctor's wall. The Doctor and some of his family are there looking on,
+and seem as anxious as any boy for the success of the School-house. We
+get a minute's breathing-time before old Brooke kicks out, and he gives
+the word to play strongly for touch, by the three trees. Away goes the
+ball, and the bull-dogs after it, and in another minute there is shout
+of “In touch!” “Our ball!” Now's your time, old Brooke, while your men
+are still fresh. He stands with the ball in his hand, while the two
+sides form in deep lines opposite one another; he must strike it
+straight out between them. The lines are thickest close to him, but
+young Brooke and two or three of his men are shifting up farther,
+where the opposite line is weak. Old Brooke strikes it out straight and
+strong, and it falls opposite his brother. Hurrah! that rush has taken
+it right through the School line, and away past the three trees, far
+into their quarters, and young Brooke and the bull-dogs are close upon
+it. The School leaders rush back, shouting, “Look out in goal!” and
+strain every nerve to catch him, but they are after the fleetest foot
+in Rugby. There they go straight for the School goal-posts, quarters
+scattering before them. One after another the bull-dogs go down, but
+young Brooke holds on. “He is down.” No! a long stagger, but the danger
+is past. That was the shock of Crew, the most dangerous of dodgers. And
+now he is close to the School goal, the ball not three yards before
+him. There is a hurried rush of the School fags to the spot, but no
+one throws himself on the ball, the only chance, and young Brooke has
+touched it right under the School goal-posts.
+
+The School leaders come up furious, and administer toco to the wretched
+fags nearest at hand. They may well be angry, for it is all Lombard
+Street to a china orange that the School-house kick a goal with the ball
+touched in such a good place. Old Brooke, of course, will kick it
+out, but who shall catch and place it? Call Crab Jones. Here he comes,
+sauntering along with a straw in his mouth, the queerest, coolest fish
+in Rugby. If he were tumbled into the moon this minute, he would just
+pick himself up without taking his hands out of his pockets or turning
+a hair. But it is a moment when the boldest charger's heart beats quick.
+Old Brooke stands with the ball under his arm motioning the School back;
+he will not kick out till they are all in goal, behind the posts. They
+are all edging forwards, inch by inch, to get nearer for the rush at
+Crab Jones, who stands there in front of old Brooke to catch the ball.
+If they can reach and destroy him before he catches, the danger is over;
+and with one and the same rush they will carry it right away to the
+School-house goal. Fond hope! it is kicked out and caught beautifully.
+Crab strikes his heel into the ground, to mark the spot where the ball
+was caught, beyond which the school line may not advance; but there they
+stand, five deep, ready to rush the moment the ball touches the ground.
+Take plenty of room. Don't give the rush a chance of reaching you. Place
+it true and steady. Trust Crab Jones. He has made a small hole with his
+heel for the ball to lie on, by which he is resting on one knee, with
+his eye on old Brooke. “Now!” Crab places the ball at the word, old
+Brooke kicks, and it rises slowly and truly as the School rush forward.
+
+Then a moment's pause, while both sides look up at the spinning ball.
+There it flies, straight between the two posts, some five feet above the
+cross-bar, an unquestioned goal; and a shout of real, genuine joy rings
+out from the School-house players-up, and a faint echo of it comes over
+the close from the goal-keepers under the Doctor's wall. A goal in the
+first hour--such a thing hasn't been done in the School-house match
+these five years.
+
+“Over!” is the cry. The two sides change goals, and the School-house
+goal-keepers come threading their way across through the masses of
+the School, the most openly triumphant of them--amongst whom is Tom, a
+School-house boy of two hours' standing--getting their ears boxed in
+the transit. Tom indeed is excited beyond measure, and it is all the
+sixth-form boy, kindest and safest of goal-keepers, has been able to do,
+to keep him from rushing out whenever the ball has been near their
+goal. So he holds him by his side, and instructs him in the science of
+touching.
+
+At this moment Griffith, the itinerant vender of oranges from Hill
+Morton, enters the close with his heavy baskets. There is a rush of
+small boys upon the little pale-faced man, the two sides mingling
+together, subdued by the great goddess Thirst, like the English and
+French by the streams in the Pyrenees. The leaders are past oranges and
+apples, but some of them visit their coats, and apply innocent-looking
+ginger-beer bottles to their mouths. It is no ginger-beer though, I
+fear, and will do you no good. One short mad rush, and then a stitch in
+the side, and no more honest play. That's what comes of those bottles.
+
+But now Griffith's baskets are empty, the ball is placed again midway,
+and the School are going to kick off. Their leaders have sent their
+lumber into goal, and rated the rest soundly, and one hundred and twenty
+picked players-up are there, bent on retrieving the game. They are to
+keep the ball in front of the School-house goal, and then to drive it in
+by sheer strength and weight. They mean heavy play and no mistake, and
+so old Brooke sees, and places Crab Jones in quarters just before the
+goal, with four or five picked players who are to keep the ball away to
+the sides, where a try at goal, if obtained, will be less dangerous than
+in front. He himself, and Warner and Hedge, who have saved themselves
+till now, will lead the charges.
+
+“Are you ready?” “Yes.” And away comes the ball, kicked high in the air,
+to give the School time to rush on and catch it as it falls. And here
+they are amongst us. Meet them like Englishmen, you Schoolhouse boys,
+and charge them home. Now is the time to show what mettle is in you;
+and there shall be a warm seat by the hall fire, and honour, and lots of
+bottled beer to-night for him who does his duty in the next half-hour.
+And they are well met. Again and again the cloud of their players-up
+gathers before our goal, and comes threatening on, and Warner or Hedge,
+with young Brooke and the relics of the bull-dogs, break through
+and carry the ball back; and old Brooke ranges the field like Job's
+war-horse. The thickest scrummage parts asunder before his rush, like
+the waves before a clipper's bows; his cheery voice rings out over the
+field, and his eye is everywhere. And if these miss the ball, and it
+rolls dangerously in front of our goal, Crab Jones and his men
+have seized it and sent it away towards the sides with the unerring
+drop-kick. This is worth living for--the whole sum of school-boy
+existence gathered up into one straining, struggling half-hour, a
+half-hour worth a year of common life.
+
+The quarter to five has struck, and the play slackens for a minute
+before goal; but there is Crew, the artful dodger, driving the ball in
+behind our goal, on the island side, where our quarters are weakest. Is
+there no one to meet him? Yes; look at little East! The ball is just at
+equal distances between the two, and they rush together, the young man
+of seventeen and the boy of twelve, and kick it at the same moment. Crew
+passes on without a stagger; East is hurled forward by the shock, and
+plunges on his shoulder, as if he would bury himself in the ground;
+but the ball rises straight into the air, and falls behind Crew's back,
+while the “bravoes” of the School-house attest the pluckiest charge of
+all that hard-fought day. Warner picks East up lame and half stunned,
+and he hobbles back into goal, conscious of having played the man.
+
+And now the last minutes are come, and the School gather for their last
+rush, every boy of the hundred and twenty who has a run left in him.
+Reckless of the defence of their own goal, on they come across the level
+big-side ground, the ball well down amongst them, straight for our goal,
+like the column of the Old Guard up the slope at Waterloo. All former
+charges have been child's play to this. Warner and Hedge have met them,
+but still on they come. The bull-dogs rush in for the last time; they
+are hurled over or carried back, striving hand, foot, and eyelids. Old
+Brooke comes sweeping round the skirts of the play, and turning short
+round, picks out the very heart of the scrummage, and plunges in. It
+wavers for a moment; he has the ball. No, it has passed him, and his
+voice rings out clear over the advancing tide, “Look out in goal!” Crab
+Jones catches it for a moment; but before he can kick, the rush is upon
+him and passes over him; and he picks himself up behind them with his
+straw in his mouth, a little dirtier, but as cool as ever.
+
+The ball rolls slowly in behind the School-house goal, not three yards
+in front of a dozen of the biggest School players-up.
+
+There stands the School-house praepostor, safest of goal-keepers, and Tom
+Brown by his side, who has learned his trade by this time. Now is
+your time, Tom. The blood of all the Browns is up, and the two rush in
+together, and throw themselves on the ball, under the very feet of the
+advancing column--the praepostor on his hands and knees, arching his
+back, and Tom all along on his face. Over them topple the leaders of the
+rush, shooting over the back of the praepostor, but falling flat on Tom,
+and knocking all the wind out of his small carcass. “Our ball,” says the
+praepostor, rising with his prize; “but get up there; there's a little
+fellow under you.” They are hauled and roll off him, and Tom is
+discovered, a motionless body.
+
+Old Brooke picks him up. “Stand back, give him air,” he says; and then
+feeling his limbs, adds, “No bones broken.--How do you feel, young un?”
+
+“Hah-hah!” gasps Tom, as his wind comes back; “pretty well, thank
+you--all right.”
+
+“Who is he?” says Brooke.
+
+“Oh, it's Brown; he's a new boy; I know him,” says East, coming up.
+
+“Well, he is a plucky youngster, and will make a player,” says Brooke.
+
+And five o'clock strikes. “No side” is called, and the first day of the
+School-house match is over.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--AFTER THE MATCH.
+
+     “Some food we had.”--Shakespeare.
+     [Greek text]--Theocr. Id.
+
+As the boys scattered away from the ground, and East, leaning on Tom's
+arm, and limping along, was beginning to consider what luxury they
+should go and buy for tea to celebrate that glorious victory, the two
+Brookes came striding by. Old Brooke caught sight of East, and stopped;
+put his hand kindly on his shoulder, and said, “Bravo, youngster; you
+played famously. Not much the matter, I hope?”
+
+“No, nothing at all,” said East--“only a little twist from that
+charge.”
+
+“Well, mind and get all right for next Saturday.” And the leader passed
+on, leaving East better for those few words than all the opodeldoc in
+England would have made him, and Tom ready to give one of his ears for
+as much notice. Ah! light words of those whom we love and honour, what
+a power ye are, and how carelessly wielded by those who can use you!
+Surely for these things also God will ask an account.
+
+“Tea's directly after locking-up, you see,” said East, hobbling along as
+fast as he could, “so you come along down to Sally Harrowell's; that's
+our School-house tuck-shop. She bakes such stunning murphies, we'll have
+a penn'orth each for tea. Come along, or they'll all be gone.”
+
+Tom's new purse and money burnt in his pocket; he wondered, as they
+toddled through the quadrangle and along the street, whether East
+would be insulted if he suggested further extravagance, as he had not
+sufficient faith in a pennyworth of potatoes. At last he blurted out,--
+
+“I say, East, can't we get something else besides potatoes? I've got
+lots of money, you know.”
+
+“Bless us, yes; I forgot,” said East, “you've only just come. You see
+all my tin's been gone this twelve weeks--it hardly ever lasts beyond
+the first fortnight; and our allowances were all stopped this morning
+for broken windows, so I haven't got a penny. I've got a tick at
+Sally's, of course; but then I hate running it high, you see, towards
+the end of the half, 'cause one has to shell out for it all directly one
+comes back, and that's a bore.”
+
+Tom didn't understand much of this talk, but seized on the fact that
+East had no money, and was denying himself some little pet luxury in
+consequence. “Well, what shall I buy?” said he, “I'm uncommon hungry.”
+
+“I say,” said East, stopping to look at him and rest his leg, “you're a
+trump, Brown. I'll do the same by you next half. Let's have a pound of
+sausages then. That's the best grub for tea I know of.”
+
+“Very well,” said Tom, as pleased as possible; “where do they sell
+them?”
+
+“Oh, over here, just opposite.” And they crossed the street and walked
+into the cleanest little front room of a small house, half parlour,
+half shop, and bought a pound of most particular sausages, East talking
+pleasantly to Mrs. Porter while she put them in paper, and Tom doing the
+paying part.
+
+From Porter's they adjourned to Sally Harrowell's, where they found a
+lot of School-house boys waiting for the roast potatoes, and relating
+their own exploits in the day's match at the top of their voices. The
+street opened at once into Sally's kitchen, a low brick-floored room,
+with large recess for fire, and chimney-corner seats. Poor little Sally,
+the most good-natured and much-enduring of womankind, was bustling
+about, with a napkin in her hand, from her own oven to those of the
+neighbours' cottages up the yard at the back of the house. Stumps, her
+husband, a short, easy-going shoemaker, with a beery, humorous eye and
+ponderous calves, who lived mostly on his wife's earnings, stood in
+a corner of the room, exchanging shots of the roughest description of
+repartee with every boy in turn. “Stumps, you lout, you've had too
+much beer again to-day.” “'Twasn't of your paying for, then.” “Stumps's
+calves are running down into his ankles; they want to get to grass.”
+ “Better be doing that than gone altogether like yours,” etc. Very poor
+stuff it was, but it served to make time pass; and every now and then
+Sally arrived in the middle with a smoking tin of potatoes, which was
+cleared off in a few seconds, each boy as he seized his lot running
+off to the house with “Put me down two-penn'orth, Sally;” “Put down
+three-penn'orth between me and Davis,” etc. How she ever kept the
+accounts so straight as she did, in her head and on her slate, was a
+perfect wonder.
+
+East and Tom got served at last, and started back for the School-house,
+just as the locking-up bell began to ring, East on the way recounting
+the life and adventures of Stumps, who was a character. Amongst his
+other small avocations, he was the hind carrier of a sedan-chair, the
+last of its race, in which the Rugby ladies still went out to tea, and
+in which, when he was fairly harnessed and carrying a load, it was the
+delight of small and mischievous boys to follow him and whip his calves.
+This was too much for the temper even of Stumps, and he would pursue his
+tormentors in a vindictive and apoplectic manner when released, but was
+easily pacified by twopence to buy beer with.
+
+The lower-school boys of the School-house, some fifteen in number, had
+tea in the lower-fifth school, and were presided over by the old verger
+or head-porter. Each boy had a quarter of a loaf of bread and pat of
+butter, and as much tea as he pleased; and there was scarcely one
+who didn't add to this some further luxury, such as baked potatoes, a
+herring, sprats, or something of the sort. But few at this period of the
+half-year could live up to a pound of Porter's sausages, and East was
+in great magnificence upon the strength of theirs. He had produced a
+toasting-fork from his study, and set Tom to toast the sausages,
+while he mounted guard over their butter and potatoes. “'Cause,” as he
+explained, “you're a new boy, and they'll play you some trick and get
+our butter; but you can toast just as well as I.” So Tom, in the midst
+of three or four more urchins similarly employed, toasted his face and
+the sausages at the same time before the huge fire, till the latter
+cracked; when East from his watch-tower shouted that they were done, and
+then the feast proceeded, and the festive cups of tea were filled
+and emptied, and Tom imparted of the sausages in small bits to many
+neighbours, and thought he had never tasted such good potatoes or seen
+such jolly boys. They on their parts waived all ceremony, and pegged
+away at the sausages and potatoes, and remembering Tom's performance in
+goal, voted East's new crony a brick. After tea, and while the things
+were being cleared away, they gathered round the fire, and the talk on
+the match still went on; and those who had them to show pulled up their
+trousers and showed the hacks they had received in the good cause.
+
+They were soon, however, all turned out of the school; and East
+conducted Tom up to his bedroom, that he might get on clean things, and
+wash himself before singing.
+
+“What's singing?” said Tom, taking his head out of his basin, where he
+had been plunging it in cold water.
+
+“Well, you are jolly green,” answered his friend, from a neighbouring
+basin. “Why, the last six Saturdays of every half we sing of course; and
+this is the first of them. No first lesson to do, you know, and lie in
+bed to-morrow morning.”
+
+“But who sings?”
+
+“Why, everybody, of course; you'll see soon enough. We begin directly
+after supper, and sing till bed-time. It ain't such good fun now,
+though, as in the summer half; 'cause then we sing in the little fives
+court, under the library, you know. We take out tables, and the big boys
+sit round and drink beer--double allowance on Saturday nights; and we
+cut about the quadrangle between the songs, and it looks like a lot of
+robbers in a cave. And the louts come and pound at the great gates, and
+we pound back again, and shout at them. But this half we only sing in
+the hall. Come along down to my study.”
+
+Their principal employment in the study was to clear out East's table;
+removing the drawers and ornaments and tablecloth; for he lived in the
+bottom passage, and his table was in requisition for the singing.
+
+Supper came in due course at seven o'clock, consisting of bread and
+cheese and beer, which was all saved for the singing; and directly
+afterwards the fags went to work to prepare the hall. The School-house
+hall, as has been said, is a great long high room, with two large fires
+on one side, and two large iron-bound tables, one running down the
+middle, and the other along the wall opposite the fireplaces. Around the
+upper fire the fags placed the tables in the form of a horse-shoe, and
+upon them the jugs with the Saturday night's allowance of beer. Then
+the big boys used to drop in and take their seats, bringing with them
+bottled beer and song books; for although they all knew the songs by
+heart, it was the thing to have an old manuscript book descended from
+some departed hero, in which they were all carefully written out.
+
+The sixth-form boys had not yet appeared; so, to fill up the gap, an
+interesting and time-honoured ceremony was gone through. Each new boy
+was placed on the table in turn, and made to sing a solo, under the
+penalty of drinking a large mug of salt and water if he resisted or
+broke down. However, the new boys all sing like nightingales to-night,
+and the salt water is not in requisition--Tom, as his part, performing
+the old west-country song of “The Leather Bottel” with considerable
+applause. And at the half-hour down come the sixth and fifth form boys,
+and take their places at the tables, which are filled up by the next
+biggest boys, the rest, for whom there is no room at the table, standing
+round outside.
+
+The glasses and mugs are filled, and then the fugleman strikes up the
+old sea-song,
+
+     “A wet sheet and a flowing sea,
+     And a wind that follows fast,” etc.,
+
+which is the invariable first song in the School-house; and all the
+seventy voices join in, not mindful of harmony, but bent on noise, which
+they attain decidedly, but the general effect isn't bad. And then follow
+“The British Grenadiers,” “Billy Taylor,” “The Siege of Seringapatam,”
+ “Three Jolly Postboys,” and other vociferous songs in rapid succession,
+including “The Chesapeake and Shannon,” a song lately introduced in
+honour of old Brooke; and when they come to the words,
+
+     “Brave Broke he waved his sword, crying, Now, my lads, aboard,
+     And we'll stop their playing Yankee-doodle-dandy oh!”
+
+you expect the roof to come down. The sixth and fifth know that “brave
+Broke” of the Shannon was no sort of relation to our old Brooke. The
+fourth form are uncertain in their belief, but for the most part hold
+that old Brooke was a midshipman then on board his uncle's ship. And the
+lower school never doubt for a moment that it was our old Brooke who led
+the boarders, in what capacity they care not a straw. During the pauses
+the bottled-beer corks fly rapidly, and the talk is fast and merry, and
+the big boys--at least all of them who have a fellow-feeling for dry
+throats--hand their mugs over their shoulders to be emptied by the small
+ones who stand round behind.
+
+Then Warner, the head of the house, gets up and wants to speak; but he
+can't, for every boy knows what's coming. And the big boys who sit at
+the tables pound them and cheer; and the small boys who stand behind
+pound one another, and cheer, and rush about the hall cheering. Then
+silence being made, Warner reminds them of the old School-house custom
+of drinking the healths, on the first night of singing, of those who are
+going to leave at the end of the half. “He sees that they know what he
+is going to say already” (loud cheers), “and so won't keep them, but
+only ask them to treat the toast as it deserves. It is the head of the
+eleven, the head of big-side football, their leader on this glorious
+day--Pater Brooke!”
+
+And away goes the pounding and cheering again, becoming deafening when
+old Brooke gets on his legs; till, a table having broken down, and a
+gallon or so of beer been upset, and all throats getting dry, silence
+ensues, and the hero speaks, leaning his hands on the table, and bending
+a little forwards. No action, no tricks of oratory--plain, strong, and
+straight, like his play.
+
+“Gentlemen of the School-house! I am very proud of the way in which
+you have received my name, and I wish I could say all I should like in
+return. But I know I shan't. However, I'll do the best I can to say what
+seems to me ought to be said by a fellow who's just going to leave,
+and who has spent a good slice of his life here. Eight years it is, and
+eight such years as I can never hope to have again. So now I hope you'll
+all listen to me” (loud cheers of “That we will”), “for I'm going to
+talk seriously. You're bound to listen to me for what's the use of
+calling me 'pater,' and all that, if you don't mind what I say? And
+I'm going to talk seriously, because I feel so. It's a jolly time,
+too, getting to the end of the half, and a goal kicked by us first day”
+ (tremendous applause), “after one of the hardest and fiercest day's play
+I can remember in eight years.” (Frantic shoutings.) “The School played
+splendidly, too, I will say, and kept it up to the last. That last
+charge of theirs would have carried away a house. I never thought to see
+anything again of old Crab there, except little pieces, when I saw him
+tumbled over by it.” (Laughter and shouting, and great slapping on
+the back of Jones by the boys nearest him.) “Well, but we beat 'em.”
+ (Cheers.) “Ay, but why did we beat 'em? Answer me that.” (Shouts of
+“Your play.”) “Nonsense! 'Twasn't the wind and kick-off either--that
+wouldn't do it. 'Twasn't because we've half a dozen of the best players
+in the school, as we have. I wouldn't change Warner, and Hedge, and
+Crab, and the young un, for any six on their side.” (Violent cheers.)
+“But half a dozen fellows can't keep it up for two hours against two
+hundred. Why is it, then? I'll tell you what I think. It's because we've
+more reliance on one another, more of a house feeling, more fellowship
+than the School can have. Each of us knows and can depend on his
+next-hand man better. That's why we beat 'em to-day. We've union,
+they've division--there's the secret.” (Cheers.) “But how's this to be
+kept up? How's it to be improved? That's the question. For I take it
+we're all in earnest about beating the School, whatever else we care
+about. I know I'd sooner win two School-house matches running than get
+the Balliol scholarship any day.” (Frantic cheers.)
+
+“Now, I'm as proud of the house as any one. I believe it's the best
+house in the school, out and out.” (Cheers.) “But it's a long way from
+what I want to see it. First, there's a deal of bullying going on. I
+know it well. I don't pry about and interfere; that only makes it
+more underhand, and encourages the small boys to come to us with their
+fingers in their eyes telling tales, and so we should be worse off than
+ever. It's very little kindness for the sixth to meddle generally--you
+youngsters mind that. You'll be all the better football players for
+learning to stand it, and to take your own parts, and fight it through.
+But depend on it, there's nothing breaks up a house like bullying.
+Bullies are cowards, and one coward makes many; so good-bye to the
+School-house match if bullying gets ahead here.” (Loud applause from
+the small boys, who look meaningly at Flashman and other boys at the
+tables.) “Then there's fuddling about in the public-house, and drinking
+bad spirits, and punch, and such rot-gut stuff. That won't make good
+drop-kicks or chargers of you, take my word for it. You get plenty of
+good beer here, and that's enough for you; and drinking isn't fine or
+manly, whatever some of you may think of it.
+
+“One other thing I must have a word about. A lot of you think and say,
+for I've heard you, 'There's this new Doctor hasn't been here so long
+as some of us, and he's changing all the old customs. Rugby, and the
+Schoolhouse especially, are going to the dogs. Stand up for the good old
+ways, and down with the Doctor!' Now I'm as fond of old Rugby customs
+and ways as any of you, and I've been here longer than any of you, and
+I'll give you a word of advice in time, for I shouldn't like to see any
+of you getting sacked. 'Down with the Doctor's' easier said than done.
+You'll find him pretty tight on his perch, I take it, and an awkwardish
+customer to handle in that line. Besides now, what customs has he put
+down? There was the good old custom of taking the linchpins out of the
+farmers' and bagmen's gigs at the fairs, and a cowardly, blackguard
+custom it was. We all know what came of it, and no wonder the Doctor
+objected to it. But come now, any of you, name a custom that he has put
+down.”
+
+“The hounds,” calls out a fifth-form boy, clad in a green cutaway with
+brass buttons and cord trousers, the leader of the sporting interest,
+and reputed a great rider and keen hand generally.
+
+“Well, we had six or seven mangy harriers and beagles belonging to the
+house, I'll allow, and had had them for years, and that the Doctor
+put them down. But what good ever came of them? Only rows with all the
+keepers for ten miles round; and big-side hare-and-hounds is better fun
+ten times over. What else?”
+
+No answer.
+
+“Well, I won't go on. Think it over for yourselves. You'll find, I
+believe, that he don't meddle with any one that's worth keeping. And
+mind now, I say again, look out for squalls if you will go your own way,
+and that way ain't the Doctor's, for it'll lead to grief. You all know
+that I'm not the fellow to back a master through thick and thin. If I
+saw him stopping football, or cricket, or bathing, or sparring, I'd be
+as ready as any fellow to stand up about it. But he don't; he encourages
+them. Didn't you see him out to-day for half an hour watching us?” (loud
+cheers for the Doctor); “and he's a strong, true man, and a wise one
+too, and a public-school man too” (cheers), “and so let's stick to him,
+and talk no more rot, and drink his health as the head of the house.”
+ (Loud cheers.) “And now I've done blowing up, and very glad I am to have
+done. But it's a solemn thing to be thinking of leaving a place which
+one has lived in and loved for eight years; and if one can say a word
+for the good of the old house at such a time, why, it should be said,
+whether bitter or sweet. If I hadn't been proud of the house and
+you--ay, no one knows how proud--I shouldn't be blowing you up. And now
+let's get to singing. But before I sit down I must give you a toast to
+be drunk with three-times-three and all the honours. It's a toast which
+I hope every one of us, wherever he may go hereafter, will never fail
+to drink when he thinks of the brave, bright days of his boyhood. It's a
+toast which should bind us all together, and to those who've gone before
+and who'll come after us here. It is the dear old School-house--the best
+house of the best school in England!”
+
+My dear boys, old and young, you who have belonged, or do belong, to
+other schools and other houses, don't begin throwing my poor little book
+about the room, and abusing me and it, and vowing you'll read no more
+when you get to this point. I allow you've provocation for it. But come
+now--would you, any of you, give a fig for a fellow who didn't believe
+in and stand up for his own house and his own school? You know you
+wouldn't. Then don't object to me cracking up the old School house,
+Rugby. Haven't I a right to do it, when I'm taking all the trouble
+of writing this true history for all of your benefits? If you ain't
+satisfied, go and write the history of your own houses in your own
+times, and say all you know for your own schools and houses, provided
+it's true, and I'll read it without abusing you.
+
+The last few words hit the audience in their weakest place. They had
+been not altogether enthusiastic at several parts of old Brooke's
+speech; but “the best house of the best school in England” was too much
+for them all, and carried even the sporting and drinking interests off
+their legs into rapturous applause, and (it is to be hoped) resolutions
+to lead a new life and remember old Brooke's words--which, however, they
+didn't altogether do, as will appear hereafter.
+
+But it required all old Brooke's popularity to carry down parts of his
+speech--especially that relating to the Doctor. For there are no such
+bigoted holders by established forms and customs, be they never so
+foolish or meaningless, as English school-boys--at least, as the
+school-boys of our generation. We magnified into heroes every boy who
+had left, and looked upon him with awe and reverence when he revisited
+the place a year or so afterwards, on his way to or from Oxford or
+Cambridge; and happy was the boy who remembered him, and sure of an
+audience as he expounded what he used to do and say, though it were sad
+enough stuff to make angels, not to say head-masters, weep.
+
+We looked upon every trumpery little custom and habit which had obtained
+in the School as though it had been a law of the Medes and Persians, and
+regarded the infringement or variation of it as a sort of sacrilege. And
+the Doctor, than whom no man or boy had a stronger liking for old school
+customs which were good and sensible, had, as has already been hinted,
+come into most decided collision with several which were neither the one
+nor the other. And as old Brooke had said, when he came into collision
+with boys or customs, there was nothing for them but to give in or take
+themselves off; because what he said had to be done, and no mistake
+about it. And this was beginning to be pretty clearly understood. The
+boys felt that there was a strong man over them, who would have things
+his own way, and hadn't yet learnt that he was a wise and loving man
+also. His personal character and influence had not had time to make
+itself felt, except by a very few of the bigger boys with whom he came
+more directly into contact; and he was looked upon with great fear and
+dislike by the great majority even of his own house. For he had found
+School and School-house in a state of monstrous license and misrule,
+and was still employed in the necessary but unpopular work of setting up
+order with a strong hand.
+
+However, as has been said, old Brooke triumphed, and the boys cheered
+him and then the Doctor. And then more songs came, and the healths of
+the other boys about to leave, who each made a speech, one flowery,
+another maudlin, a third prosy, and so on, which are not necessary to be
+here recorded.
+
+Half-past nine struck in the middle of the performance of “Auld Lang
+Syne,” a most obstreperous proceeding, during which there was an immense
+amount of standing with one foot on the table, knocking mugs together
+and shaking hands, without which accompaniments it seems impossible
+for the youths of Britain to take part in that famous old song. The
+under-porter of the School-house entered during the performance, bearing
+five or six long wooden candlesticks with lighted dips in them, which he
+proceeded to stick into their holes in such part of the great tables
+as he could get at; and then stood outside the ring till the end of the
+song, when he was hailed with shouts.
+
+“Bill you old muff, the half-hour hasn't struck.” “Here, Bill, drink
+some cocktail.” “Sing us a song, old boy.” “Don't you wish you may
+get the table?” Bill drank the proffered cocktail not unwillingly, and
+putting down the empty glass, remonstrated. “Now gentlemen, there's only
+ten minutes to prayers, and we must get the hall straight.”
+
+Shouts of “No, no!” and a violent effort to strike up “Billy Taylor” for
+the third time. Bill looked appealingly to old Brooke, who got up and
+stopped the noise. “Now then, lend a hand, you youngsters, and get the
+tables back; clear away the jugs and glasses. Bill's right. Open
+the windows, Warner.” The boy addressed, who sat by the long ropes,
+proceeded to pull up the great windows, and let in a clear, fresh rush
+of night air, which made the candles flicker and gutter, and the fires
+roar. The circle broke up, each collaring his own jug, glass, and
+song-book; Bill pounced on the big table, and began to rattle it away to
+its place outside the buttery door. The lower-passage boys carried off
+their small tables, aided by their friends; while above all, standing
+on the great hall-table, a knot of untiring sons of harmony made night
+doleful by a prolonged performance of “God Save the King.” His Majesty
+King William the Fourth then reigned over us, a monarch deservedly
+popular amongst the boys addicted to melody, to whom he was chiefly
+known from the beginning of that excellent if slightly vulgar song in
+which they much delighted,--
+
+     “Come, neighbours all, both great and small,
+     Perform your duties here,
+     And loudly sing, 'Live Billy, our king,'
+     For bating the tax upon beer.”
+
+Others of the more learned in songs also celebrated his praises in
+a sort of ballad, which I take to have been written by some Irish
+loyalist. I have forgotten all but the chorus, which ran,--
+
+     “God save our good King William,
+     Be his name for ever blest;
+     He's the father of all his people,
+     And the guardian of all the rest.”
+
+In troth we were loyal subjects in those days, in a rough way. I trust
+that our successors make as much of her present Majesty, and, having
+regard to the greater refinement of the times, have adopted or written
+other songs equally hearty, but more civilized, in her honour.
+
+Then the quarter to ten struck, and the prayer-bell rang. The sixth and
+fifth form boys ranged themselves in their school order along the wall,
+on either side of the great fires, the middle-fifth and upper-school
+boys round the long table in the middle of the hall, and the
+lower-school boys round the upper part of the second long table, which
+ran down the side of the hall farthest from the fires. Here Tom found
+himself at the bottom of all, in a state of mind and body not at all fit
+for prayers, as he thought; and so tried hard to make himself serious,
+but couldn't, for the life of him, do anything but repeat in his head
+the choruses of some of the songs, and stare at all the boys opposite,
+wondering at the brilliancy of their waistcoats, and speculating what
+sort of fellows they were. The steps of the head-porter are heard on the
+stairs, and a light gleams at the door. “Hush!” from the fifth-form boys
+who stand there, and then in strides the Doctor, cap on head, book
+in one hand, and gathering up his gown in the other. He walks up the
+middle, and takes his post by Warner, who begins calling over the names.
+The Doctor takes no notice of anything, but quietly turns over his book
+and finds the place, and then stands, cap in hand and finger in book,
+looking straight before his nose. He knows better than any one when to
+look, and when to see nothing. To-night is singing night, and there's
+been lots of noise and no harm done--nothing but beer drunk, and nobody
+the worse for it, though some of them do look hot and excited. So the
+Doctor sees nothing, but fascinates Tom in a horrible manner as he
+stands there, and reads out the psalm, in that deep, ringing, searching
+voice of his. Prayers are over, and Tom still stares open-mouthed after
+the Doctor's retiring figure, when he feels a pull at his sleeve, and
+turning round, sees East.
+
+“I say, were you ever tossed in a blanket?”
+
+“No,” said Tom; “why?”
+
+“'Cause there'll be tossing to-night, most likely, before the sixth come
+up to bed. So if you funk, you just come along and hide, or else they'll
+catch you and toss you.”
+
+“Were you ever tossed? Does it hurt?” inquired Tom.
+
+“Oh yes, bless you, a dozen times,” said East, as he hobbled along by
+Tom's side upstairs. “It don't hurt unless you fall on the floor. But
+most fellows don't like it.”
+
+They stopped at the fireplace in the top passage, where were a crowd of
+small boys whispering together, and evidently unwilling to go up
+into the bedrooms. In a minute, however, a study door opened, and a
+sixth-form boy came out, and off they all scuttled up the stairs, and
+then noiselessly dispersed to their different rooms. Tom's heart beat
+rather quick as he and East reached their room, but he had made up his
+mind. “I shan't hide, East,” said he.
+
+“Very well, old fellow,” replied East, evidently pleased; “no more shall
+I. They'll be here for us directly.”
+
+The room was a great big one, with a dozen beds in it, but not a boy
+that Tom could see except East and himself. East pulled off his coat and
+waistcoat, and then sat on the bottom of his bed whistling and pulling
+off his boots. Tom followed his example.
+
+A noise and steps are heard in the passage, the door opens, and in rush
+four or five great fifth-form boys, headed by Flashman in his glory.
+
+Tom and East slept in the farther corner of the room, and were not seen
+at first.
+
+“Gone to ground, eh?” roared Flashman. “Push 'em out then, boys; look
+under the beds.” And he pulled up the little white curtain of the one
+nearest him. “Who-o-op!” he roared, pulling away at the leg of a small
+boy, who held on tight to the leg of the bed, and sang out lustily for
+mercy.
+
+“Here, lend a hand, one of you, and help me pull out this young howling
+brute.--Hold your tongue, sir, or I'll kill you.”
+
+“Oh, please, Flashman, please, Walker, don't toss me! I'll fag for
+you--I'll do anything--only don't toss me.”
+
+“You be hanged,” said Flashman, lugging the wretched boy along; “'twon't
+hurt you,--you!--Come along, boys; here he is.”
+
+“I say, Flashey,” sang out another of the big boys; “drop that; you
+heard what old Pater Brooke said to-night. I'll be hanged if we'll toss
+any one against their will. No more bullying. Let him go, I say.”
+
+Flashman, with an oath and a kick, released his prey, who rushed
+headlong under his bed again, for fear they should change their minds,
+and crept along underneath the other beds, till he got under that of the
+sixth-form boy, which he knew they daren't disturb.
+
+“There's plenty of youngsters don't care about it,” said Walker. “Here,
+here's Scud East--you'll be tossed, won't you, young un?” Scud was
+East's nickname, or Black, as we called it, gained by his fleetness of
+foot.
+
+“Yes,” said East, “if you like, only mind my foot.”
+
+“And here's another who didn't hide.--Hullo! new boy; what's your name,
+sir?”
+
+“Brown.”
+
+“Well, Whitey Brown, you don't mind being tossed?”
+
+“No,” said Tom, setting his teeth.
+
+“Come along then, boys,” sang out Walker; and away they all went,
+carrying along Tom and East, to the intense relief of four or five other
+small boys, who crept out from under the beds and behind them.
+
+“What a trump Scud is!” said one. “They won't come back here now.”
+
+“And that new boy, too; he must be a good-plucked one.”
+
+“Ah! wait till he has been tossed on to the floor; see how he'll like it
+then!”
+
+Meantime the procession went down the passage to Number 7, the largest
+room, and the scene of the tossing, in the middle of which was a great
+open space. Here they joined other parties of the bigger boys, each
+with a captive or two, some willing to be tossed, some sullen, and some
+frightened to death. At Walker's suggestion all who were afraid were let
+off, in honour of Pater Brooke's speech.
+
+Then a dozen big boys seized hold of a blanket, dragged from one of the
+beds. “In with Scud; quick! there's no time to lose.” East was chucked
+into the blanket. “Once, twice, thrice, and away!” Up he went like a
+shuttlecock, but not quite up to the ceiling.
+
+“Now, boys, with a will,” cried Walker; “once, twice, thrice, and away!”
+ This time he went clean up, and kept himself from touching the ceiling
+with his hand, and so again a third time, when he was turned out, and
+up went another boy. And then came Tom's turn. He lay quite still, by
+East's advice, and didn't dislike the “once, twice, thrice;” but the
+“away” wasn't so pleasant. They were in good wind now, and sent him
+slap up to the ceiling first time, against which his knees came rather
+sharply. But the moment's pause before descending was the rub--the
+feeling of utter helplessness and of leaving his whole inside behind him
+sticking to the ceiling. Tom was very near shouting to be set down when
+he found himself back in the blanket, but thought of East, and didn't;
+and so took his three tosses without a kick or a cry, and was called a
+young trump for his pains.
+
+He and East, having earned it, stood now looking on. No catastrophe
+happened, as all the captives were cool hands, and didn't struggle. This
+didn't suit Flashman. What your real bully likes in tossing is when the
+boys kick and struggle, or hold on to one side of the blanket, and so
+get pitched bodily on to the floor; it's no fun to him when no one is
+hurt or frightened.
+
+“Let's toss two of them together, Walker,” suggested he.
+
+“What a cursed bully you are, Flashey!” rejoined the other. “Up with
+another one.”
+
+And so now two boys were tossed together, the peculiar hardship of which
+is, that it's too much for human nature to lie still then and share
+troubles; and so the wretched pair of small boys struggle in the air
+which shall fall a-top in the descent, to the no small risk of both
+falling out of the blanket, and the huge delight of brutes like
+Flashman.
+
+But now there's a cry that the praepostor of the room is coming; so the
+tossing stops, and all scatter to their different rooms; and Tom is
+left to turn in, with the first day's experience of a public school to
+meditate upon.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--SETTLING TO THE COLLAR.
+
+     “Says Giles, ''Tis mortal hard to go,
+     But if so be's I must
+     I means to follow arter he
+     As goes hisself the fust.'”--Ballad.
+
+Everybody, I suppose, knows the dreamy, delicious state in which one
+lies, half asleep, half awake, while consciousness begins to return
+after a sound night's rest in a new place which we are glad to be in,
+following upon a day of unwonted excitement and exertion. There are
+few pleasanter pieces of life. The worst of it is that they last such
+a short time; for nurse them as you will, by lying perfectly passive
+in mind and body, you can't make more than five minutes or so of them.
+After which time the stupid, obtrusive, wakeful entity which we call
+“I”, as impatient as he is stiff-necked, spite of our teeth will force
+himself back again, and take possession of us down to our very toes.
+
+It was in this state that Master Tom lay at half-past seven on the
+morning following the day of his arrival, and from his clean little
+white bed watched the movements of Bogle (the generic name by which the
+successive shoeblacks of the School-house were known), as he marched
+round from bed to bed, collecting the dirty shoes and boots, and
+depositing clean ones in their places.
+
+There he lay, half doubtful as to where exactly in the universe he was,
+but conscious that he had made a step in life which he had been anxious
+to make. It was only just light as he looked lazily out of the wide
+windows, and saw the tops of the great elms, and the rooks circling
+about and cawing remonstrances to the lazy ones of their commonwealth
+before starting in a body for the neighbouring ploughed fields. The
+noise of the room-door closing behind Bogle, as he made his exit with
+the shoebasket under his arm, roused him thoroughly, and he sat up in
+bed and looked round the room. What in the world could be the matter
+with his shoulders and loins? He felt as if he had been severely beaten
+all down his back--the natural results of his performance at his first
+match. He drew up his knees and rested his chin on them, and went over
+all the events of yesterday, rejoicing in his new life, what he had seen
+of it, and all that was to come.
+
+Presently one or two of the other boys roused themselves, and began to
+sit up and talk to one another in low tones. Then East, after a roll
+or two, came to an anchor also, and nodding to Tom, began examining his
+ankle.
+
+“What a pull,” said he, “that it's lie-in-bed, for I shall be as lame as
+a tree, I think.”
+
+It was Sunday morning, and Sunday lectures had not yet been established;
+so that nothing but breakfast intervened between bed and eleven o'clock
+chapel--a gap by no means easy to fill up: in fact, though received with
+the correct amount of grumbling, the first lecture instituted by
+the Doctor shortly afterwards was a great boon to the School. It was
+lie-in-bed, and no one was in a hurry to get up, especially in rooms
+where the sixth-form boy was a good-tempered fellow, as was the case in
+Tom's room, and allowed the small boys to talk and laugh and do pretty
+much what they pleased, so long as they didn't disturb him. His bed was
+a bigger one than the rest, standing in the corner by the fireplace,
+with a washing-stand and large basin by the side, where he lay in state
+with his white curtains tucked in so as to form a retiring place--an
+awful subject of contemplation to Tom, who slept nearly opposite, and
+watched the great man rouse himself and take a book from under his
+pillow, and begin reading, leaning his head on his hand, and turning his
+back to the room. Soon, however, a noise of striving urchins arose, and
+muttered encouragements from the neighbouring boys of “Go it, Tadpole!”
+ “Now, young Green!” “Haul away his blanket!” “Slipper him on the hands!”
+ Young Green and little Hall, commonly called Tadpole, from his great
+black head and thin legs, slept side by side far away by the door, and
+were for ever playing one another tricks, which usually ended, as on
+this morning, in open and violent collision; and now, unmindful of all
+order and authority, there they were, each hauling away at the other's
+bedclothes with one hand, and with the other, armed with a slipper,
+belabouring whatever portion of the body of his adversary came within
+reach.
+
+“Hold that noise up in the corner,” called out the praepostor, sitting
+up and looking round his curtains; and the Tadpole and young Green sank
+down into their disordered beds; and then, looking at his watch, added,
+“Hullo! past eight. Whose turn for hot water?”
+
+(Where the praepostor was particular in his ablutions, the fags in his
+room had to descend in turn to the kitchen, and beg or steal hot water
+for him; and often the custom extended farther, and two boys went down
+every morning to get a supply for the whole room.)
+
+“East's and Tadpole's,” answered the senior fag, who kept the rota.
+
+“I can't go,” said East; “I'm dead lame.”
+
+“Well, be quick some of you, that's all,” said the great man, as he
+turned out of bed, and putting on his slippers, went out into the great
+passage, which runs the whole length of the bedrooms, to get his Sunday
+habiliments out of his portmanteau.
+
+“Let me go for you,” said Tom to East; “I should like it.”
+
+“Well, thank 'ee, that's a good fellow. Just pull on your trousers, and
+take your jug and mine. Tadpole will show you the way.”
+
+And so Tom and the Tadpole, in nightshirts and trousers, started off
+downstairs, and through “Thos's hole,” as the little buttery, where
+candles and beer and bread and cheese were served out at night, was
+called, across the School-house court, down a long passage, and into the
+kitchen; where, after some parley with the stalwart, handsome cook, who
+declared that she had filled a dozen jugs already, they got their hot
+water, and returned with all speed and great caution. As it was, they
+narrowly escaped capture by some privateers from the fifth-form rooms,
+who were on the lookout for the hot-water convoys, and pursued them up
+to the very door of their room, making them spill half their load in the
+passage.
+
+“Better than going down again though,” as Tadpole remarked, “as we
+should have had to do if those beggars had caught us.”
+
+By the time that the calling-over bell rang, Tom and his new
+comrades were all down, dressed in their best clothes, and he had the
+satisfaction of answering “here” to his name for the first time, the
+praepostor of the week having put it in at the bottom of his list. And
+then came breakfast and a saunter about the close and town with East,
+whose lameness only became severe when any fagging had to be done. And
+so they whiled away the time until morning chapel.
+
+It was a fine November morning, and the close soon became alive with
+boys of all ages, who sauntered about on the grass, or walked round the
+gravel walk, in parties of two or three. East, still doing the cicerone,
+pointed out all the remarkable characters to Tom as they passed: Osbert,
+who could throw a cricket-ball from the little-side ground over
+the rook-trees to the Doctor's wall; Gray, who had got the Balliol
+scholarship, and, what East evidently thought of much more importance,
+a half-holiday for the School by his success; Thorne, who had run ten
+miles in two minutes over the hour; Black, who had held his own against
+the cock of the town in the last row with the louts; and many more
+heroes, who then and there walked about and were worshipped, all trace
+of whom has long since vanished from the scene of their fame. And the
+fourth-form boy who reads their names rudely cut on the old hall tables,
+or painted upon the big-side cupboard (if hall tables and big-side
+cupboards still exist), wonders what manner of boys they were. It will
+be the same with you who wonder, my sons, whatever your prowess may be
+in cricket, or scholarship, or football. Two or three years, more or
+less, and then the steadily advancing, blessed wave will pass over your
+names as it has passed over ours. Nevertheless, play your games and do
+your work manfully--see only that that be done--and let the remembrance
+of it take care of itself.
+
+The chapel-bell began to ring at a quarter to eleven, and Tom got in
+early and took his place in the lowest row, and watched all the other
+boys come in and take their places, filling row after row; and tried
+to construe the Greek text which was inscribed over the door with the
+slightest possible success, and wondered which of the masters, who
+walked down the chapel and took their seats in the exalted boxes at the
+end, would be his lord. And then came the closing of the doors, and the
+Doctor in his robes, and the service, which, however, didn't impress him
+much, for his feeling of wonder and curiosity was too strong. And the
+boy on one side of him was scratching his name on the oak panelling
+in front, and he couldn't help watching to see what the name was, and
+whether it was well scratched; and the boy on the other side went to
+sleep, and kept falling against him; and on the whole, though many boys
+even in that part of the school were serious and attentive, the general
+atmosphere was by no means devotional; and when he got out into the
+close again, he didn't feel at all comfortable, or as if he had been to
+church.
+
+But at afternoon chapel it was quite another thing. He had spent the
+time after dinner in writing home to his mother, and so was in a better
+frame of mind; and his first curiosity was over, and he could attend
+more to the service. As the hymn after the prayers was being sung, and
+the chapel was getting a little dark, he was beginning to feel that he
+had been really worshipping. And then came that great event in his, as
+in every Rugby boy's life of that day--the first sermon from the Doctor.
+
+More worthy pens than mine have described that scene--the oak pulpit
+standing out by itself above the School seats; the tall, gallant form,
+the kindling eye, the voice, now soft as the low notes of a flute, now
+clear and stirring as the call of the light-infantry bugle, of him who
+stood there Sunday after Sunday, witnessing and pleading for his Lord,
+the King of righteousness and love and glory, with whose Spirit he was
+filled, and in whose power he spoke; the long lines of young faces,
+rising tier above tier down the whole length of the chapel, from the
+little boy's who had just left his mother to the young man's who was
+going out next week into the great world, rejoicing in his strength.
+It was a great and solemn sight, and never more so than at this time of
+year, when the only lights in the chapel were in the pulpit and at the
+seats of the praepostors of the week, and the soft twilight stole over
+the rest of the chapel, deepening into darkness in the high gallery
+behind the organ.
+
+But what was it, after all, which seized and held these three hundred
+boys, dragging them out of themselves, willing or unwilling, for twenty
+minutes, on Sunday afternoons? True, there always were boys scattered up
+and down the School, who in heart and head were worthy to hear and able
+to carry away the deepest and wisest words there spoken. But these were
+a minority always, generally a very small one, often so small a one as
+to be countable on the fingers of your hand. What was it that moved
+and held us, the rest of the three hundred reckless, childish boys, who
+feared the Doctor with all our hearts, and very little besides in heaven
+or earth; who thought more of our sets in the School than of the Church
+of Christ, and put the traditions of Rugby and the public opinion of
+boys in our daily life above the laws of God? We couldn't enter into
+half that we heard; we hadn't the knowledge of our own hearts or the
+knowledge of one another, and little enough of the faith, hope, and love
+needed to that end. But we listened, as all boys in their better moods
+will listen (ay, and men too for the matter of that), to a man whom we
+felt to be, with all his heart and soul and strength, striving against
+whatever was mean and unmanly and unrighteous in our little world. It
+was not the cold, clear voice of one giving advice and warning from
+serene heights to those who were struggling and sinning below, but the
+warm, living voice of one who was fighting for us and by our sides, and
+calling on us to help him and ourselves and one another. And so, wearily
+and little by little, but surely and steadily on the whole, was brought
+home to the young boy, for the first time, the meaning of his life--that
+it was no fool's or sluggard's paradise into which he had wandered
+by chance, but a battlefield ordained from of old, where there are no
+spectators, but the youngest must take his side, and the stakes are life
+and death. And he who roused this consciousness in them showed them at
+the same time, by every word he spoke in the pulpit, and by his whole
+daily life, how that battle was to be fought, and stood there before
+them their fellow-soldier and the captain of their band--the true sort
+of captain, too, for a boy's army--one who had no misgivings, and gave
+no uncertain word of command, and, let who would yield or make truce,
+would fight the fight out (so every boy felt) to the last gasp and the
+last drop of blood. Other sides of his character might take hold of
+and influence boys here and there; but it was this thoroughness and
+undaunted courage which, more than anything else, won his way to the
+hearts of the great mass of those on whom he left his mark, and made
+them believe first in him and then in his Master.
+
+It was this quality above all others which moved such boys as our
+hero, who had nothing whatever remarkable about him except excess of
+boyishness--by which I mean animal life in its fullest measure, good
+nature and honest impulses, hatred of injustice and meanness, and
+thoughtlessness enough to sink a three-decker. And so, during the next
+two years, in which it was more than doubtful whether he would get good
+or evil from the School, and before any steady purpose or principle grew
+up in him, whatever his week's sins and shortcomings might have been, he
+hardly ever left the chapel on Sunday evenings without a serious resolve
+to stand by and follow the Doctor, and a feeling that it was only
+cowardice (the incarnation of all other sins in such a boy's mind) which
+hindered him from doing so with all his heart.
+
+The next day Tom was duly placed in the third form, and began his
+lessons in a corner of the big School. He found the work very easy, as
+he had been well grounded, and knew his grammar by heart; and, as he had
+no intimate companions to make him idle (East and his other School-house
+friends being in the lower fourth, the form above him), soon gained
+golden opinions from his master, who said he was placed too low, and
+should be put out at the end of the half-year. So all went well with him
+in School, and he wrote the most flourishing letters home to his mother,
+full of his own success and the unspeakable delights of a public school.
+
+In the house, too, all went well. The end of the half-year was drawing
+near, which kept everybody in a good humour, and the house was ruled
+well and strongly by Warner and Brooke. True, the general system was
+rough and hard, and there was bullying in nooks and corners--bad signs
+for the future; but it never got farther, or dared show itself openly,
+stalking about the passages and hall and bedrooms, and making the life
+of the small boys a continual fear.
+
+Tom, as a new boy, was of right excused fagging for the first month, but
+in his enthusiasm for his new life this privilege hardly pleased him;
+and East and others of his young friends, discovering this, kindly
+allowed him to indulge his fancy, and take their turns at night fagging
+and cleaning studies. These were the principal duties of the fags in the
+house. From supper until nine o'clock three fags taken in order stood in
+the passages, and answered any praepostor who called “Fag,” racing to the
+door, the last comer having to do the work. This consisted generally of
+going to the buttery for beer and bread and cheese (for the great men
+did not sup with the rest, but had each his own allowance in his study
+or the fifth-form room), cleaning candlesticks and putting in new
+candles, toasting cheese, bottling beer, and carrying messages about the
+house; and Tom, in the first blush of his hero-worship, felt it a high
+privilege to receive orders from and be the bearer of the supper of old
+Brooke. And besides this night-work, each praepostor had three or four
+fags specially allotted to him, of whom he was supposed to be the guide,
+philosopher, and friend, and who in return for these good offices had to
+clean out his study every morning by turns, directly after first lesson
+and before he returned from breakfast. And the pleasure of seeing the
+great men's studies, and looking at their pictures, and peeping into
+their books, made Tom a ready substitute for any boy who was too lazy to
+do his own work. And so he soon gained the character of a good-natured,
+willing fellow, who was ready to do a turn for any one.
+
+In all the games, too, he joined with all his heart, and soon became
+well versed in all the mysteries of football, by continual practice at
+the School-house little-side, which played daily.
+
+The only incident worth recording here, however, was his first run at
+hare-and-hounds. On the last Tuesday but one of the half-year he was
+passing through the hall after dinner, when he was hailed with shouts
+from Tadpole and several other fags seated at one of the long tables,
+the chorus of which was, “Come and help us tear up scent.”
+
+Tom approached the table in obedience to the mysterious summons, always
+ready to help, and found the party engaged in tearing up old newspapers,
+copy-books, and magazines, into small pieces, with which they were
+filling four large canvas bags.
+
+“It's the turn of our house to find scent for big-side hare-and-hounds,”
+ exclaimed Tadpole. “Tear away; there's no time to lose before
+calling-over.”
+
+“I think it's a great shame,” said another small boy, “to have such a
+hard run for the last day.”
+
+“Which run is it?” said Tadpole.
+
+“Oh, the Barby run, I hear,” answered the other; “nine miles at least,
+and hard ground; no chance of getting in at the finish, unless you're a
+first-rate scud.”
+
+“Well, I'm going to have a try,” said Tadpole; “it's the last run of the
+half, and if a fellow gets in at the end big-side stands ale and bread
+and cheese and a bowl of punch; and the Cock's such a famous place for
+ale.”
+
+“I should like to try too,” said Tom.
+
+“Well, then, leave your waistcoat behind, and listen at the door, after
+calling-over, and you'll hear where the meet is.”
+
+After calling-over, sure enough there were two boys at the door, calling
+out, “Big-side hare-and-hounds meet at White Hall;” and Tom, having
+girded himself with leather strap, and left all superfluous clothing
+behind, set off for White Hall, an old gable-ended house some quarter
+of a mile from the town, with East, whom he had persuaded to join,
+notwithstanding his prophecy that they could never get in, as it was the
+hardest run of the year.
+
+At the meet they found some forty or fifty boys, and Tom felt sure, from
+having seen many of them run at football, that he and East were more
+likely to get in than they.
+
+After a few minutes' waiting, two well-known runners, chosen for the
+hares, buckled on the four bags filled with scent, compared their
+watches with those of young Brooke and Thorne, and started off at a
+long, slinging trot across the fields in the direction of Barby.
+
+Then the hounds clustered round Thorne, who explained shortly, “They're
+to have six minutes' law. We run into the Cock, and every one who comes
+in within a quarter of an hour of the hares'll be counted, if he has
+been round Barby church.” Then came a minute's pause or so, and then the
+watches are pocketed, and the pack is led through the gateway into the
+field which the hares had first crossed. Here they break into a trot,
+scattering over the field to find the first traces of the scent which
+the hares throw out as they go along. The old hounds make straight for
+the likely points, and in a minute a cry of “Forward” comes from one
+of them, and the whole pack, quickening their pace, make for the spot,
+while the boy who hit the scent first, and the two or three nearest to
+him, are over the first fence, and making play along the hedgerow in the
+long grass-field beyond. The rest of the pack rush at the gap already
+made, and scramble through, jostling one another. “Forward” again,
+before they are half through. The pace quickens into a sharp run, the
+tail hounds all straining to get up to the lucky leaders. They are
+gallant hares, and the scent lies thick right across another meadow and
+into a ploughed field, where the pace begins to tell; then over a good
+wattle with a ditch on the other side, and down a large pasture studded
+with old thorns, which slopes down to the first brook. The great
+Leicestershire sheep charge away across the field as the pack comes
+racing down the slope. The brook is a small one, and the scent lies
+right ahead up the opposite slope, and as thick as ever--not a turn or
+a check to favour the tail hounds, who strain on, now trailing in a long
+line, many a youngster beginning to drag his legs heavily, and feel his
+heart beat like a hammer, and the bad-plucked ones thinking that after
+all it isn't worth while to keep it up.
+
+Tom, East, and the Tadpole had a good start, and are well up for such
+young hands, and after rising the slope and crossing the next field,
+find themselves up with the leading hounds, who have overrun the scent,
+and are trying back. They have come a mile and a half in about eleven
+minutes, a pace which shows that it is the last day. About twenty-five
+of the original starters only show here, the rest having already given
+in; the leaders are busy making casts into the fields on the left and
+right, and the others get their second winds.
+
+Then comes the cry of “Forward” again from young Brooke, from the
+extreme left, and the pack settles down to work again steadily and
+doggedly, the whole keeping pretty well together. The scent, though
+still good, is not so thick; there is no need of that, for in this part
+of the run every one knows the line which must be taken, and so there
+are no casts to be made, but good downright running and fencing to be
+done. All who are now up mean coming in, and they come to the foot of
+Barby Hill without losing more than two or three more of the pack. This
+last straight two miles and a half is always a vantage ground for the
+hounds, and the hares know it well; they are generally viewed on the
+side of Barby Hill, and all eyes are on the lookout for them to-day. But
+not a sign of them appears, so now will be the hard work for the hounds,
+and there is nothing for it but to cast about for the scent, for it is
+now the hares' turn, and they may baffle the pack dreadfully in the next
+two miles.
+
+Ill fares it now with our youngsters, that they are School-house boys,
+and so follow young Brooke, for he takes the wide casts round to the
+left, conscious of his own powers, and loving the hard work. For if you
+would consider for a moment, you small boys, you would remember that the
+Cock, where the run ends and the good ale will be going, lies far out to
+the right on the Dunchurch road, so that every cast you take to the left
+is so much extra work. And at this stage of the run, when the evening is
+closing in already, no one remarks whether you run a little cunning or
+not; so you should stick to those crafty hounds who keep edging away to
+the right, and not follow a prodigal like young Brooke, whose legs are
+twice as long as yours and of cast-iron, wholly indifferent to one or
+two miles more or less. However, they struggle after him, sobbing and
+plunging along, Tom and East pretty close, and Tadpole, whose big head
+begins to pull him down, some thirty yards behind.
+
+Now comes a brook, with stiff clay banks, from which they can hardly
+drag their legs, and they hear faint cries for help from the wretched
+Tadpole, who has fairly stuck fast. But they have too little run left
+in themselves to pull up for their own brothers. Three fields more, and
+another check, and then “Forward” called away to the extreme right.
+
+The two boys' souls die within them; they can never do it. Young Brooke
+thinks so too, and says kindly, “You'll cross a lane after next field;
+keep down it, and you'll hit the Dunchurch road below the Cock,” and
+then steams away for the run in, in which he's sure to be first, as
+if he were just starting. They struggle on across the next field, the
+“forwards” getting fainter and fainter, and then ceasing. The whole hunt
+is out of ear-shot, and all hope of coming in is over.
+
+“Hang it all!” broke out East, as soon as he had got wind enough,
+pulling off his hat and mopping at his face, all spattered with dirt and
+lined with sweat, from which went up a thick steam into the still, cold
+air. “I told you how it would be. What a thick I was to come! Here we
+are, dead beat, and yet I know we're close to the run in, if we knew the
+country.”
+
+“Well,” said Tom, mopping away, and gulping down his disappointment,
+“it can't be helped. We did our best anyhow. Hadn't we better find this
+lane, and go down it, as young Brooke told us?”
+
+“I suppose so--nothing else for it,” grunted East. “If ever I go out
+last day again.” Growl, growl, growl.
+
+So they tried back slowly and sorrowfully, and found the lane, and went
+limping down it, plashing in the cold puddly ruts, and beginning to feel
+how the run had taken it out of them. The evening closed in fast, and
+clouded over, dark, cold, and dreary.
+
+“I say, it must be locking-up, I should think,” remarked East, breaking
+the silence--“it's so dark.”
+
+“What if we're late?” said Tom.
+
+“No tea, and sent up to the Doctor,” answered East.
+
+The thought didn't add to their cheerfulness. Presently a faint halloo
+was heard from an adjoining field. They answered it and stopped, hoping
+for some competent rustic to guide them, when over a gate some twenty
+yards ahead crawled the wretched Tadpole, in a state of collapse. He had
+lost a shoe in the brook, and had been groping after it up to his elbows
+in the stiff, wet clay, and a more miserable creature in the shape of
+boy seldom has been seen.
+
+The sight of him, notwithstanding, cheered them, for he was some degrees
+more wretched than they. They also cheered him, as he was no longer
+under the dread of passing his night alone in the fields. And so, in
+better heart, the three plashed painfully down the never-ending lane. At
+last it widened, just as utter darkness set in, and they came out on
+a turnpike road, and there paused, bewildered, for they had lost all
+bearings, and knew not whether to turn to the right or left.
+
+Luckily for them they had not to decide, for lumbering along the road,
+with one lamp lighted and two spavined horses in the shafts, came a
+heavy coach, which after a moment's suspense they recognized as the
+Oxford coach, the redoubtable Pig and Whistle.
+
+It lumbered slowly up, and the boys, mustering their last run, caught
+it as it passed, and began clambering up behind, in which exploit East
+missed his footing and fell flat on his nose along the road. Then the
+others hailed the old scarecrow of a coachman, who pulled up and agreed
+to take them in for a shilling; so there they sat on the back seat,
+drubbing with their heels, and their teeth chattering with cold, and
+jogged into Rugby some forty minutes after locking-up.
+
+Five minutes afterwards three small, limping, shivering figures steal
+along through the Doctor's garden, and into the house by the servants'
+entrance (all the other gates have been closed long since), where the
+first thing they light upon in the passage is old Thomas, ambling along,
+candle in one hand and keys in the other.
+
+He stops and examines their condition with a grim smile. “Ah! East,
+Hall, and Brown, late for locking-up. Must go up to the Doctor's study
+at once.”
+
+“Well but, Thomas, mayn't we go and wash first? You can put down the
+time, you know.”
+
+“Doctor's study d'rectly you come in--that's the orders,” replied old
+Thomas, motioning towards the stairs at the end of the passage which led
+up into the Doctor's house; and the boys turned ruefully down it, not
+cheered by the old verger's muttered remark, “What a pickle they boys be
+in!” Thomas referred to their faces and habiliments, but they construed
+it as indicating the Doctor's state of mind. Upon the short flight of
+stairs they paused to hold counsel.
+
+“Who'll go in first?” inquires Tadpole.
+
+“You--you're the senior,” answered East.
+
+“Catch me. Look at the state I'm in,” rejoined Hall, showing the arms of
+his jacket. “I must get behind you two.”
+
+“Well, but look at me,” said East, indicating the mass of clay behind
+which he was standing; “I'm worse than you, two to one. You might grow
+cabbages on my trousers.”
+
+“That's all down below, and you can keep your legs behind the sofa,”
+ said Hall.
+
+“Here, Brown; you're the show-figure. You must lead.”
+
+“But my face is all muddy,” argued Tom.
+
+“Oh, we're all in one boat for that matter; but come on; we're only
+making it worse, dawdling here.”
+
+“Well, just give us a brush then,” said Tom. And they began trying to
+rub off the superfluous dirt from each other's jackets; but it was not
+dry enough, and the rubbing made them worse; so in despair they pushed
+through the swing-door at the head of the stairs, and found themselves
+in the Doctor's hall.
+
+“That's the library door,” said East in a whisper, pushing Tom forwards.
+The sound of merry voices and laughter came from within, and his first
+hesitating knock was unanswered. But at the second, the Doctor's voice
+said, “Come in;” and Tom turned the handle, and he, with the others
+behind him, sidled into the room.
+
+The Doctor looked up from his task; he was working away with a great
+chisel at the bottom of a boy's sailing boat, the lines of which he was
+no doubt fashioning on the model of one of Nicias's galleys. Round him
+stood three or four children; the candles burnt brightly on a large
+table at the farther end, covered with books and papers, and a great
+fire threw a ruddy glow over the rest of the room. All looked so kindly,
+and homely, and comfortable that the boys took heart in a moment, and
+Tom advanced from behind the shelter of the great sofa. The Doctor
+nodded to the children, who went out, casting curious and amused glances
+at the three young scarecrows.
+
+“Well, my little fellows,” began the Doctor, drawing himself up with
+his back to the fire, the chisel in one hand and his coat-tails in the
+other, and his eyes twinkling as he looked them over; “what makes you so
+late?”
+
+“Please, sir, we've been out big-side hare-and-hounds, and lost our
+way.”
+
+“Hah! you couldn't keep up, I suppose?”
+
+“Well, sir,” said East, stepping out, and not liking that the Doctor
+should think lightly of his running powers, “we got round Barby all
+right; but then--”
+
+“Why, what a state you're in, my boy!” interrupted the Doctor, as the
+pitiful condition of East's garments was fully revealed to him.
+
+“That's the fall I got, sir, in the road,” said East, looking down at
+himself; “the Old Pig came by--”
+
+“The what?” said the Doctor.
+
+“The Oxford coach, sir,” explained Hall.
+
+“Hah! yes, the Regulator,” said the Doctor.
+
+“And I tumbled on my face, trying to get up behind,” went on East.
+
+“You're not hurt, I hope?” said the Doctor.
+
+“Oh no, sir.”
+
+“Well now, run upstairs, all three of you, and get clean things on, and
+then tell the housekeeper to give you some tea. You're too young to try
+such long runs. Let Warner know I've seen you. Good-night.”
+
+“Good-night, sir.” And away scuttled the three boys in high glee.
+
+“What a brick, not to give us even twenty lines to learn!” said the
+Tadpole, as they reached their bedroom; and in half an hour afterwards
+they were sitting by the fire in the housekeeper's room at a sumptuous
+tea, with cold meat--“Twice as good a grub as we should have got in the
+hall,” as the Tadpole remarked with a grin, his mouth full of buttered
+toast. All their grievances were forgotten, and they were resolving to
+go out the first big-side next half, and thinking hare-and-hounds the
+most delightful of games.
+
+A day or two afterwards the great passage outside the bedrooms was
+cleared of the boxes and portmanteaus, which went down to be packed by
+the matron, and great games of chariot-racing, and cock-fighting, and
+bolstering went on in the vacant space, the sure sign of a closing
+half-year.
+
+Then came the making up of parties for the journey home, and Tom joined
+a party who were to hire a coach, and post with four horses to Oxford.
+
+Then the last Saturday, on which the Doctor came round to each form to
+give out the prizes, and hear the master's last reports of how they
+and their charges had been conducting themselves; and Tom, to his huge
+delight, was praised, and got his remove into the lower fourth, in which
+all his School-house friends were.
+
+On the next Tuesday morning at four o'clock hot coffee was going on in
+the housekeeper's and matron's rooms; boys wrapped in great-coats and
+mufflers were swallowing hasty mouthfuls, rushing about, tumbling over
+luggage, and asking questions all at once of the matron; outside the
+School-gates were drawn up several chaises and the four-horse coach
+which Tom's party had chartered, the postboys in their best jackets and
+breeches, and a cornopean player, hired for the occasion, blowing away
+“A southerly wind and a cloudy sky,” waking all peaceful inhabitants
+half-way down the High Street.
+
+Every minute the bustle and hubbub increased: porters staggered about
+with boxes and bags, the cornopean played louder. Old Thomas sat in
+his den with a great yellow bag by his side, out of which he was paying
+journey-money to each boy, comparing by the light of a solitary dip the
+dirty, crabbed little list in his own handwriting with the Doctor's list
+and the amount of his cash; his head was on one side, his mouth screwed
+up, and his spectacles dim from early toil. He had prudently locked the
+door, and carried on his operations solely through the window, or he
+would have been driven wild and lost all his money.
+
+“Thomas, do be quick; we shall never catch the Highflyer at Dunchurch.”
+
+“That's your money all right, Green.”
+
+“Hullo, Thomas, the Doctor said I was to have two pound ten; you've only
+given me two pound.” (I fear that Master Green is not confining himself
+strictly to truth.) Thomas turns his head more on one side than ever,
+and spells away at the dirty list. Green is forced away from the window.
+
+“Here, Thomas--never mind him; mine's thirty shillings.” “And mine too,”
+ “And mine,” shouted others.
+
+One way or another, the party to which Tom belonged all got packed and
+paid, and sallied out to the gates, the cornopean playing frantically
+“Drops of Brandy,” in allusion, probably, to the slight potations in
+which the musician and postboys had been already indulging. All luggage
+was carefully stowed away inside the coach and in the front and hind
+boots, so that not a hat-box was visible outside. Five or six small
+boys, with pea-shooters, and the cornopean player, got up behind; in
+front the big boys, mostly smoking, not for pleasure, but because they
+are now gentlemen at large, and this is the most correct public method
+of notifying the fact.
+
+“Robinson's coach will be down the road in a minute; it has gone up to
+Bird's to pick up. We'll wait till they're close, and make a race of
+it,” says the leader. “Now, boys, half a sovereign apiece if you beat
+'em into Dunchurch by one hundred yards.”
+
+“All right, sir,” shouted the grinning postboys.
+
+Down comes Robinson's coach in a minute or two, with a rival cornopean,
+and away go the two vehicles, horses galloping, boys cheering, horns
+playing loud. There is a special providence over school-boys as well
+as sailors, or they must have upset twenty times in the first five
+miles--sometimes actually abreast of one another, and the boys on the
+roofs exchanging volleys of peas; now nearly running over a post-chaise
+which had started before them; now half-way up a bank; now with a wheel
+and a half over a yawning ditch: and all this in a dark morning, with
+nothing but their own lamps to guide them. However, it's all over at
+last, and they have run over nothing but an old pig in Southam Street.
+The last peas are distributed in the Corn Market at Oxford, where they
+arrive between eleven and twelve, and sit down to a sumptuous breakfast
+at the Angel, which they are made to pay for accordingly. Here the party
+breaks up, all going now different ways; and Tom orders out a chaise and
+pair as grand as a lord, though he has scarcely five shillings left in
+his pocket, and more than twenty miles to get home.
+
+“Where to, sir?”
+
+“Red Lion, Farringdon,” says Tom, giving hostler a shilling.
+
+“All right, sir.--Red Lion, Jem,” to the postboy; and Tom rattles away
+towards home. At Farringdon, being known to the innkeeper, he gets that
+worthy to pay for the Oxford horses, and forward him in another chaise
+at once; and so the gorgeous young gentleman arrives at the paternal
+mansion, and Squire Brown looks rather blue at having to pay two pound
+ten shillings for the posting expenses from Oxford. But the boy's
+intense joy at getting home, and the wonderful health he is in, and the
+good character he brings, and the brave stories he tells of Rugby, its
+doings and delights, soon mollify the Squire, and three happier people
+didn't sit down to dinner that day in England (it is the boy's first
+dinner at six o'clock at home--great promotion already) than the Squire
+and his wife and Tom Brown, at the end of his first half-year at Rugby.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.
+
+     “They are slaves who will not choose
+     Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
+     Rather than in silence shrink
+     From the truth they needs must think;
+     They are slaves who dare not be
+     In the right with two or three.”
+      --LOWELL, Stanzas on Freedom.
+
+The lower-fourth form, in which Tom found himself at the beginning
+of the next half-year, was the largest form in the lower school, and
+numbered upwards of forty boys. Young gentlemen of all ages from nine to
+fifteen were to be found there, who expended such part of their energies
+as was devoted to Latin and Greek upon a book of Livy, the “Bucolics”
+ of Virgil, and the “Hecuba” of Euripides, which were ground out in small
+daily portions. The driving of this unlucky lower-fourth must have been
+grievous work to the unfortunate master, for it was the most unhappily
+constituted of any in the school. Here stuck the great stupid boys,
+who, for the life of them, could never master the accidence--the objects
+alternately of mirth and terror to the youngsters, who were daily taking
+them up and laughing at them in lesson, and getting kicked by them for
+so doing in play-hours. There were no less than three unhappy fellows in
+tail coats, with incipient down on their chins, whom the Doctor and
+the master of the form were always endeavouring to hoist into the upper
+school, but whose parsing and construing resisted the most well-meant
+shoves. Then came the mass of the form, boys of eleven and twelve, the
+most mischievous and reckless age of British youth, of whom East and Tom
+Brown were fair specimens. As full of tricks as monkeys, and of excuses
+as Irishwomen, making fun of their master, one another, and their
+lessons, Argus himself would have been puzzled to keep an eye on them;
+and as for making them steady or serious for half an hour together,
+it was simply hopeless. The remainder of the form consisted of young
+prodigies of nine and ten, who were going up the school at the rate of
+a form a half-year, all boys' hands and wits being against them in their
+progress. It would have been one man's work to see that the precocious
+youngsters had fair play; and as the master had a good deal besides
+to do, they hadn't, and were for ever being shoved down three or four
+places, their verses stolen, their books inked, their jackets whitened,
+and their lives otherwise made a burden to them.
+
+The lower-fourth, and all the forms below it, were heard in the great
+school, and were not trusted to prepare their lessons before coming in,
+but were whipped into school three-quarters of an hour before the lesson
+began by their respective masters, and there, scattered about on the
+benches, with dictionary and grammar, hammered out their twenty lines
+of Virgil and Euripides in the midst of babel. The masters of the
+lower school walked up and down the great school together during this
+three-quarters of an hour, or sat in their desks reading or looking over
+copies, and keeping such order as was possible. But the lower-fourth
+was just now an overgrown form, too large for any one man to attend
+to properly, and consequently the elysium or ideal form of the young
+scapegraces who formed the staple of it.
+
+Tom, as has been said, had come up from the third with a good character,
+but the temptations of the lower-fourth soon proved too strong for him,
+and he rapidly fell away, and became as unmanageable as the rest.
+For some weeks, indeed, he succeeded in maintaining the appearance of
+steadiness, and was looked upon favourably by his new master, whose eyes
+were first opened by the following little incident.
+
+Besides the desk which the master himself occupied, there was another
+large unoccupied desk in the corner of the great school, which was
+untenanted. To rush and seize upon this desk, which was ascended by
+three steps and held four boys, was the great object of ambition of the
+lower-fourthers; and the contentions for the occupation of it bred such
+disorder that at last the master forbade its use altogether. This, of
+course, was a challenge to the more adventurous spirits to occupy it;
+and as it was capacious enough for two boys to lie hid there completely,
+it was seldom that it remained empty, notwithstanding the veto. Small
+holes were cut in the front, through which the occupants watched the
+masters as they walked up and down; and as lesson time approached, one
+boy at a time stole out and down the steps, as the masters' backs were
+turned, and mingled with the general crowd on the forms below. Tom and
+East had successfully occupied the desk some half-dozen times, and were
+grown so reckless that they were in the habit of playing small games
+with fives balls inside when the masters were at the other end of the
+big school. One day, as ill-luck would have it, the game became more
+exciting than usual, and the ball slipped through East's fingers, and
+rolled slowly down the steps and out into the middle of the school, just
+as the masters turned in their walk and faced round upon the desk. The
+young delinquents watched their master, through the lookout holes, march
+slowly down the school straight upon their retreat, while all the boys
+in the neighbourhood, of course, stopped their work to look on; and not
+only were they ignominiously drawn out, and caned over the hand then
+and there, but their characters for steadiness were gone from that time.
+However, as they only shared the fate of some three-fourths of the rest
+of the form, this did not weigh heavily upon them.
+
+In fact, the only occasions on which they cared about the matter were
+the monthly examinations, when the Doctor came round to examine their
+form, for one long, awful hour, in the work which they had done in the
+preceding month. The second monthly examination came round soon after
+Tom's fall, and it was with anything but lively anticipations that he
+and the other lower-fourth boys came in to prayers on the morning of the
+examination day.
+
+Prayers and calling-over seemed twice as short as usual, and before they
+could get construes of a tithe of the hard passages marked in the margin
+of their books, they were all seated round, and the Doctor was standing
+in the middle, talking in whispers to the master. Tom couldn't hear a
+word which passed, and never lifted his eyes from his book; but he knew
+by a sort of magnetic instinct that the Doctor's under-lip was coming
+out, and his eye beginning to burn, and his gown getting gathered up
+more and more tightly in his left hand. The suspense was agonizing, and
+Tom knew that he was sure on such occasions to make an example of the
+School-house boys. “If he would only begin,” thought Tom, “I shouldn't
+mind.”
+
+At last the whispering ceased, and the name which was called out was not
+Brown. He looked up for a moment, but the Doctor's face was too awful;
+Tom wouldn't have met his eye for all he was worth, and buried himself
+in his book again.
+
+The boy who was called up first was a clever, merry School-house boy,
+one of their set; he was some connection of the Doctor's, and a great
+favourite, and ran in and out of his house as he liked, and so was
+selected for the first victim.
+
+“Triste lupus stabulis,” began the luckless youngster, and stammered
+through some eight or ten lines.
+
+“There, that will do,” said the Doctor; “now construe.”
+
+On common occasions the boy could have construed the passage well enough
+probably, but now his head was gone.
+
+“Triste lupus, the sorrowful wolf,” he began.
+
+A shudder ran through the whole form, and the Doctor's wrath fairly
+boiled over. He made three steps up to the construer, and gave him a
+good box on the ear. The blow was not a hard one, but the boy was so
+taken by surprise that he started back; the form caught the back of his
+knees, and over he went on to the floor behind. There was a dead silence
+over the whole school. Never before and never again while Tom was at
+school did the Doctor strike a boy in lesson. The provocation must have
+been great. However, the victim had saved his form for that occasion,
+for the Doctor turned to the top bench, and put on the best boys for the
+rest of the hour and though, at the end of the lesson, he gave them all
+such a rating as they did not forget, this terrible field-day passed
+over without any severe visitations in the shape of punishments or
+floggings. Forty young scapegraces expressed their thanks to the
+“sorrowful wolf” in their different ways before second lesson.
+
+But a character for steadiness once gone is not easily recovered, as Tom
+found; and for years afterwards he went up the school without it,
+and the masters' hands were against him, and his against them. And he
+regarded them, as a matter of course, as his natural enemies.
+
+Matters were not so comfortable, either, in the house as they had
+been; for old Brooke left at Christmas, and one or two others of the
+sixth-form boys at the following Easter. Their rule had been rough, but
+strong and just in the main, and a higher standard was beginning to be
+set up; in fact, there had been a short foretaste of the good time which
+followed some years later. Just now, however, all threatened to return
+into darkness and chaos again. For the new praepostors were either small
+young boys, whose cleverness had carried them up to the top of the
+school, while in strength of body and character they were not yet
+fit for a share in the government; or else big fellows of the wrong
+sort--boys whose friendships and tastes had a downward tendency, who had
+not caught the meaning of their position and work, and felt none of its
+responsibilities. So under this no-government the School-house began to
+see bad times. The big fifth-form boys, who were a sporting and drinking
+set, soon began to usurp power, and to fag the little boys as if they
+were praepostors, and to bully and oppress any who showed signs of
+resistance. The bigger sort of sixth-form boys just described soon made
+common cause with the fifth, while the smaller sort, hampered by their
+colleagues' desertion to the enemy, could not make head against them.
+So the fags were without their lawful masters and protectors, and ridden
+over rough-shod by a set of boys whom they were not bound to obey, and
+whose only right over them stood in their bodily powers; and, as old
+Brooke had prophesied, the house by degrees broke up into small sets and
+parties, and lost the strong feeling of fellowship which he set so much
+store by, and with it much of the prowess in games and the lead in all
+school matters which he had done so much to keep up.
+
+In no place in the world has individual character more weight than at
+a public school. Remember this, I beseech you, all you boys who are
+getting into the upper forms. Now is the time in all your lives,
+probably, when you may have more wide influence for good or evil on the
+society you live in than you ever can have again. Quit yourselves like
+men, then; speak up, and strike out if necessary, for whatsoever
+is true, and manly, and lovely, and of good report; never try to be
+popular, but only to do your duty and help others to do theirs, and you
+may leave the tone of feeling in the school higher than you found it,
+and so be doing good which no living soul can measure to generations of
+your countrymen yet unborn. For boys follow one another in herds like
+sheep, for good or evil; they hate thinking, and have rarely any settled
+principles. Every school, indeed, has its own traditionary standard of
+right and wrong, which cannot be transgressed with impunity, marking
+certain things as low and blackguard, and certain others as lawful and
+right. This standard is ever varying, though it changes only slowly and
+little by little; and, subject only to such standard, it is the leading
+boys for the time being who give the tone to all the rest, and make
+the School either a noble institution for the training of Christian
+Englishmen, or a place where a young boy will get more evil than he
+would if he were turned out to make his way in London streets, or
+anything between these two extremes.
+
+The change for the worse in the School-house, however, didn't press very
+heavily on our youngsters for some time. They were in a good bedroom,
+where slept the only praepostor left who was able to keep thorough order,
+and their study was in his passage. So, though they were fagged more or
+less, and occasionally kicked or cuffed by the bullies, they were, on
+the whole, well off; and the fresh, brave school-life, so full of games,
+adventures, and good-fellowship, so ready at forgetting, so capacious
+at enjoying, so bright at forecasting, outweighed a thousand-fold their
+troubles with the master of their form, and the occasional ill-usage
+of the big boys in the house. It wasn't till some year or so after the
+events recorded above that the praepostor of their room and passage left.
+None of the other sixth-form boys would move into their passage, and, to
+the disgust and indignation of Tom and East, one morning after breakfast
+they were seized upon by Flashman, and made to carry down his books and
+furniture into the unoccupied study, which he had taken. From this
+time they began to feel the weight of the tyranny of Flashman and his
+friends, and, now that trouble had come home to their own doors, began
+to look out for sympathizers and partners amongst the rest of the fags;
+and meetings of the oppressed began to be held, and murmurs to arise,
+and plots to be laid as to how they should free themselves and be
+avenged on their enemies.
+
+While matters were in this state, East and Tom were one evening sitting
+in their study. They had done their work for first lesson, and Tom was
+in a brown study, brooding, like a young William Tell, upon the wrongs
+of fags in general, and his own in particular.
+
+“I say, Scud,” said he at last, rousing himself to snuff the candle,
+“what right have the fifth-form boys to fag us as they do?”
+
+“No more right than you have to fag them,” answered East, without
+looking up from an early number of “Pickwick,” which was just coming
+out, and which he was luxuriously devouring, stretched on his back on
+the sofa.
+
+Tom relapsed into his brown study, and East went on reading and
+chuckling. The contrast of the boys' faces would have given infinite
+amusement to a looker-on--the one so solemn and big with mighty purpose,
+the other radiant and bubbling over with fun.
+
+“Do you know, old fellow, I've been thinking it over a good deal,” began
+Tom again.
+
+“Oh yes, I know--fagging you are thinking of. Hang it all! But listen
+here, Tom--here's fun. Mr. Winkle's horse--”
+
+“And I've made up my mind,” broke in Tom, “that I won't fag except for
+the sixth.”
+
+“Quite right too, my boy,” cried East, putting his finger on the place
+and looking up; “but a pretty peck of troubles you'll get into, if
+you're going to play that game. However, I'm all for a strike myself, if
+we can get others to join. It's getting too bad.”
+
+“Can't we get some sixth-form fellow to take it up?” asked Tom.
+
+“Well, perhaps we might. Morgan would interfere, I think. Only,” added
+East, after a moment's pause, “you see, we should have to tell him about
+it, and that's against School principles. Don't you remember what old
+Brooke said about learning to take our own parts?”
+
+“Ah, I wish old Brooke were back again. It was all right in his time.”
+
+“Why, yes, you see, then the strongest and best fellows were in the
+sixth, and the fifth-form fellows were afraid of them, and they kept
+good order; but now our sixth-form fellows are too small, and the fifth
+don't care for them, and do what they like in the house.”
+
+“And so we get a double set of masters,” cried Tom indignantly--“the
+lawful ones, who are responsible to the Doctor at any rate, and the
+unlawful, the tyrants, who are responsible to nobody.”
+
+“Down with the tyrants!” cried East; “I'm all for law and order, and
+hurrah for a revolution.”
+
+“I shouldn't mind if it were only for young Brooke now,” said Tom; “he's
+such a good-hearted, gentlemanly fellow, and ought to be in the sixth.
+I'd do anything for him. But that blackguard Flashman, who never speaks
+to one without a kick or an oath--”
+
+“The cowardly brute,” broke in East--“how I hate him! And he knows it
+too; he knows that you and I think him a coward. What a bore that he's
+got a study in this passage! Don't you hear them now at supper in his
+den? Brandy-punch going, I'll bet. I wish the Doctor would come out and
+catch him. We must change our study as soon as we can.”
+
+“Change or no change, I'll never fag for him again,” said Tom, thumping
+the table.
+
+“Fa-a-a-ag!” sounded along the passage from Flashman's study. The
+two boys looked at one another in silence. It had struck nine, so the
+regular night-fags had left duty, and they were the nearest to the
+supper-party. East sat up, and began to look comical, as he always did
+under difficulties.
+
+“Fa-a-a-ag!” again. No answer.
+
+“Here, Brown! East! you cursed young skulks,” roared out Flashman,
+coming to his open door; “I know you're in; no shirking.”
+
+Tom stole to their door, and drew the bolts as noiselessly as he could;
+East blew out the candle.
+
+“Barricade the first,” whispered he. “Now, Tom, mind, no surrender.”
+
+“Trust me for that,” said Tom between his teeth.
+
+In another minute they heard the supper-party turn out and come down the
+passage to their door. They held their breaths, and heard whispering, of
+which they only made out Flashman's words, “I know the young brutes are
+in.”
+
+Then came summonses to open, which being unanswered, the assault
+commenced. Luckily the door was a good strong oak one, and resisted the
+united weight of Flashman's party. A pause followed, and they heard a
+besieger remark, “They're in safe enough. Don't you see how the door
+holds at top and bottom? So the bolts must be drawn. We should have
+forced the lock long ago.” East gave Tom a nudge, to call attention to
+this scientific remark.
+
+Then came attacks on particular panels, one of which at last gave way
+to the repeated kicks; but it broke inwards, and the broken pieces got
+jammed across (the door being lined with green baize), and couldn't
+easily be removed from outside: and the besieged, scorning further
+concealment, strengthened their defences by pressing the end of their
+sofa against the door. So, after one or two more ineffectual efforts,
+Flashman and Company retired, vowing vengeance in no mild terms.
+
+The first danger over, it only remained for the besieged to effect a
+safe retreat, as it was now near bed-time. They listened intently, and
+heard the supper-party resettle themselves, and then gently drew back
+first one bolt and then the other. Presently the convivial noises began
+again steadily. “Now then, stand by for a run,” said East, throwing the
+door wide open and rushing into the passage, closely followed by Tom.
+They were too quick to be caught; but Flashman was on the lookout, and
+sent an empty pickle-jar whizzing after them, which narrowly missed
+Tom's head, and broke into twenty pieces at the end of the passage.
+“He wouldn't mind killing one, if he wasn't caught,” said East, as they
+turned the corner.
+
+There was no pursuit, so the two turned into the hall, where they found
+a knot of small boys round the fire. Their story was told. The war of
+independence had broken out. Who would join the revolutionary forces?
+Several others present bound themselves not to fag for the fifth form
+at once. One or two only edged off, and left the rebels. What else could
+they do? “I've a good mind to go to the Doctor straight,” said Tom.
+
+“That'll never do. Don't you remember the levy of the school last half?”
+ put in another.
+
+In fact, the solemn assembly, a levy of the School, had been held, at
+which the captain of the School had got up, and after premising that
+several instances had occurred of matters having been reported to the
+masters; that this was against public morality and School tradition;
+that a levy of the sixth had been held on the subject, and they had
+resolved that the practice must be stopped at once; and given out that
+any boy, in whatever form, who should thenceforth appeal to a master,
+without having first gone to some praepostor and laid the case before
+him, should be thrashed publicly, and sent to Coventry.
+
+“Well, then, let's try the sixth. Try Morgan,” suggested another. “No
+use”--“Blabbing won't do,” was the general feeling.
+
+“I'll give you fellows a piece of advice,” said a voice from the end
+of the hall. They all turned round with a start, and the speaker got up
+from a bench on which he had been lying unobserved, and gave himself a
+shake. He was a big, loose-made fellow, with huge limbs which had grown
+too far through his jacket and trousers. “Don't you go to anybody at
+all--you just stand out; say you won't fag. They'll soon get tired of
+licking you. I've tried it on years ago with their forerunners.”
+
+“No! Did you? Tell us how it was?” cried a chorus of voices, as they
+clustered round him.
+
+“Well, just as it is with you. The fifth form would fag us, and I and
+some more struck, and we beat 'em. The good fellows left off directly,
+and the bullies who kept on soon got afraid.”
+
+“Was Flashman here then?”
+
+“Yes; and a dirty, little, snivelling, sneaking fellow he was too. He
+never dared join us, and used to toady the bullies by offering to fag
+for them, and peaching against the rest of us.”
+
+“Why wasn't he cut, then?” said East.
+
+“Oh, toadies never get cut; they're too useful. Besides, he has no end
+of great hampers from home, with wine and game in them; so he toadied
+and fed himself into favour.”
+
+The quarter-to-ten bell now rang, and the small boys went off upstairs,
+still consulting together, and praising their new counsellor, who
+stretched himself out on the bench before the hall fire again. There
+he lay, a very queer specimen of boyhood, by name Diggs, and familiarly
+called “the Mucker.” He was young for his size, and a very clever
+fellow, nearly at the top of the fifth. His friends at home, having
+regard, I suppose, to his age, and not to his size and place in the
+school, hadn't put him into tails; and even his jackets were always too
+small; and he had a talent for destroying clothes and making himself
+look shabby. He wasn't on terms with Flashman's set, who sneered at his
+dress and ways behind his back; which he knew, and revenged himself
+by asking Flashman the most disagreeable questions, and treating him
+familiarly whenever a crowd of boys were round him. Neither was he
+intimate with any of the other bigger boys, who were warned off by
+his oddnesses, for he was a very queer fellow; besides, amongst other
+failings, he had that of impecuniosity in a remarkable degree. He
+brought as much money as other boys to school, but got rid of it in no
+time, no one knew how; and then, being also reckless, borrowed from any
+one; and when his debts accumulated and creditors pressed, would have
+an auction in the hall of everything he possessed in the world, selling
+even his school-books, candlestick, and study table. For weeks after
+one of these auctions, having rendered his study uninhabitable, he would
+live about in the fifth-form room and hall, doing his verses on old
+letter-backs and odd scraps of paper, and learning his lessons no one
+knew how. He never meddled with any little boy, and was popular with
+them, though they all looked on him with a sort of compassion, and
+called him “Poor Diggs,” not being able to resist appearances, or to
+disregard wholly even the sneers of their enemy Flashman. However, he
+seemed equally indifferent to the sneers of big boys and the pity of
+small ones, and lived his own queer life with much apparent enjoyment to
+himself. It is necessary to introduce Diggs thus particularly, as he not
+only did Tom and East good service in their present warfare, as is about
+to be told, but soon afterwards, when he got into the sixth, chose them
+for his fags, and excused them from study-fagging, thereby earning unto
+himself eternal gratitude from them and all who are interested in their
+history.
+
+And seldom had small boys more need of a friend, for the morning after
+the siege the storm burst upon the rebels in all its violence. Flashman
+laid wait, and caught Tom before second lesson, and receiving a
+point-blank “No” when told to fetch his hat, seized him and twisted his
+arm, and went through the other methods of torture in use. “He couldn't
+make me cry, though,” as Tom said triumphantly to the rest of the
+rebels; “and I kicked his shins well, I know.” And soon it crept
+out that a lot of the fags were in league, and Flashman excited his
+associates to join him in bringing the young vagabonds to their senses;
+and the house was filled with constant chasings, and sieges, and
+lickings of all sorts; and in return, the bullies' beds were pulled to
+pieces and drenched with water, and their names written up on the walls
+with every insulting epithet which the fag invention could furnish. The
+war, in short, raged fiercely; but soon, as Diggs had told them, all
+the better fellows in the fifth gave up trying to fag them, and public
+feeling began to set against Flashman and his two or three intimates,
+and they were obliged to keep their doings more secret, but being
+thorough bad fellows, missed no opportunity of torturing in private.
+Flashman was an adept in all ways, but above all in the power of saying
+cutting and cruel things, and could often bring tears to the eyes of
+boys in this way, which all the thrashings in the world wouldn't have
+wrung from them.
+
+And as his operations were being cut short in other directions, he now
+devoted himself chiefly to Tom and East, who lived at his own door, and
+would force himself into their study whenever he found a chance, and sit
+there, sometimes alone, and sometimes with a companion, interrupting all
+their work, and exulting in the evident pain which every now and then he
+could see he was inflicting on one or the other.
+
+The storm had cleared the air for the rest of the house, and a better
+state of things now began than there had been since old Brooke had left;
+but an angry, dark spot of thunder-cloud still hung over the end of the
+passage where Flashman's study and that of East and Tom lay.
+
+He felt that they had been the first rebels, and that the rebellion had
+been to a great extent successful; but what above all stirred the
+hatred and bitterness of his heart against them was that in the frequent
+collisions which there had been of late they had openly called him
+coward and sneak. The taunts were too true to be forgiven. While he
+was in the act of thrashing them, they would roar out instances of his
+funking at football, or shirking some encounter with a lout of half his
+own size. These things were all well enough known in the house, but
+to have his own disgrace shouted out by small boys, to feel that they
+despised him, to be unable to silence them by any amount of torture, and
+to see the open laugh and sneer of his own associates (who were looking
+on, and took no trouble to hide their scorn from him, though they
+neither interfered with his bullying nor lived a bit the less intimately
+with him), made him beside himself. Come what might, he would make those
+boys' lives miserable. So the strife settled down into a personal affair
+between Flashman and our youngsters--a war to the knife, to be fought
+out in the little cockpit at the end of the bottom passage.
+
+Flashman, be it said, was about seventeen years old, and big and strong
+of his age. He played well at all games where pluck wasn't much wanted,
+and managed generally to keep up appearances where it was; and having
+a bluff, off-hand manner, which passed for heartiness, and considerable
+powers of being pleasant when he liked, went down with the school in
+general for a good fellow enough. Even in the School-house, by dint of
+his command of money, the constant supply of good things which he kept
+up, and his adroit toadyism, he had managed to make himself not only
+tolerated, but rather popular amongst his own contemporaries; although
+young Brooke scarcely spoke to him, and one or two others of the right
+sort showed their opinions of him whenever a chance offered. But the
+wrong sort happened to be in the ascendant just now, and so Flashman
+was a formidable enemy for small boys. This soon became plain enough.
+Flashman left no slander unspoken, and no deed undone, which could in
+any way hurt his victims, or isolate them from the rest of the
+house. One by one most of the other rebels fell away from them, while
+Flashman's cause prospered, and several other fifth-form boys began to
+look black at them and ill-treat them as they passed about the house. By
+keeping out of bounds, or at all events out of the house and quadrangle,
+all day, and carefully barring themselves in at night, East and Tom
+managed to hold on without feeling very miserable; but it was as much as
+they could do. Greatly were they drawn then towards old Diggs, who, in
+an uncouth way, began to take a good deal of notice of them, and once
+or twice came to their study when Flashman was there, who immediately
+decamped in consequence. The boys thought that Diggs must have been
+watching.
+
+When therefore, about this time, an auction was one night announced to
+take place in the hall, at which, amongst the superfluities of other
+boys, all Diggs's penates for the time being were going to the hammer,
+East and Tom laid their heads together, and resolved to devote their
+ready cash (some four shillings sterling) to redeem such articles as
+that sum would cover. Accordingly, they duly attended to bid, and
+Tom became the owner of two lots of Diggs's things:--Lot 1, price
+one-and-threepence, consisting (as the auctioneer remarked) of a
+“valuable assortment of old metals,” in the shape of a mouse-trap, a
+cheese-toaster without a handle, and a saucepan: Lot 2, of a
+villainous dirty table-cloth and green-baize curtain; while East, for
+one-and-sixpence, purchased a leather paper-case, with a lock but no
+key, once handsome, but now much the worse for wear. But they had still
+the point to settle of how to get Diggs to take the things without
+hurting his feelings. This they solved by leaving them in his study,
+which was never locked when he was out. Diggs, who had attended the
+auction, remembered who had bought the lots, and came to their study
+soon after, and sat silent for some time, cracking his great red
+finger-joints. Then he laid hold of their verses, and began looking over
+and altering them, and at last got up, and turning his back to them,
+said, “You're uncommon good-hearted little beggars, you two. I value
+that paper-case; my sister gave it to me last holidays. I won't
+forget.” And so he tumbled out into the passage, leaving them somewhat
+embarrassed, but not sorry that he knew what they had done.
+
+The next morning was Saturday, the day on which the allowances of one
+shilling a week were paid--an important event to spendthrift youngsters;
+and great was the disgust amongst the small fry to hear that all the
+allowances had been impounded for the Derby lottery. That great event
+in the English year, the Derby, was celebrated at Rugby in those days
+by many lotteries. It was not an improving custom, I own, gentle reader,
+and led to making books, and betting, and other objectionable results;
+but when our great Houses of Palaver think it right to stop the nation's
+business on that day and many of the members bet heavily themselves, can
+you blame us boys for following the example of our betters? At any rate
+we did follow it. First there was the great school lottery, where the
+first prize was six or seven pounds; then each house had one or more
+separate lotteries. These were all nominally voluntary, no boy being
+compelled to put in his shilling who didn't choose to do so. But besides
+Flashman, there were three or four other fast, sporting young gentlemen
+in the Schoolhouse, who considered subscription a matter of duty and
+necessity; and so, to make their duty come easy to the small
+boys, quietly secured the allowances in a lump when given out for
+distribution, and kept them. It was no use grumbling--so many fewer
+tartlets and apples were eaten and fives balls bought on that Saturday;
+and after locking-up, when the money would otherwise have been spent,
+consolation was carried to many a small boy by the sound of the
+night-fags shouting along the passages, “Gentlemen sportsmen of the
+School-house; the lottery's going to be drawn in the hall.” It was
+pleasant to be called a gentleman sportsman, also to have a chance of
+drawing a favourite horse.
+
+The hall was full of boys, and at the head of one of the long tables
+stood the sporting interest, with a hat before them, in which were the
+tickets folded up. One of them then began calling out the list of the
+house. Each boy as his name was called drew a ticket from the hat, and
+opened it; and most of the bigger boys, after drawing, left the hall
+directly to go back to their studies or the fifth-form room. The
+sporting interest had all drawn blanks, and they were sulky accordingly;
+neither of the favourites had yet been drawn, and it had come down to
+the upper-fourth. So now, as each small boy came up and drew his ticket,
+it was seized and opened by Flashman, or some other of the standers-by.
+But no great favourite is drawn until it comes to the Tadpole's turn,
+and he shuffles up and draws, and tries to make off, but is caught, and
+his ticket is opened like the rest.
+
+“Here you are! Wanderer--the third favourite!” shouts the opener.
+
+“I say, just give me my ticket, please,” remonstrates Tadpole.
+
+“Hullo! don't be in a hurry,” breaks in Flashman; “what'll you sell
+Wanderer for now?”
+
+“I don't want to sell,” rejoins Tadpole.
+
+“Oh, don't you! Now listen, you young fool: you don't know anything
+about it; the horse is no use to you. He won't win, but I want him as a
+hedge. Now, I'll give you half a crown for him.” Tadpole holds out, but
+between threats and cajoleries at length sells half for one shilling and
+sixpence--about a fifth of its fair market value; however, he is glad to
+realize anything, and, as he wisely remarks, “Wanderer mayn't win, and
+the tizzy is safe anyhow.”
+
+East presently comes up and draws a blank. Soon after comes Tom's turn.
+His ticket, like the others, is seized and opened. “Here you are then,”
+ shouts the opener, holding it up--“Harkaway!--By Jove, Flashey, your
+young friend's in luck.”
+
+“Give me the ticket,” says Flashman, with an oath, leaning across the
+table with open hand and his face black with rage.
+
+“Wouldn't you like it?” replies the opener, not a bad fellow at the
+bottom, and no admirer of Flashman. “Here, Brown, catch hold.” And he
+hands the ticket to Tom, who pockets it. Whereupon Flashman makes for
+the door at once, that Tom and the ticket may not escape, and there
+keeps watch until the drawing is over and all the boys are gone, except
+the sporting set of five or six, who stay to compare books, make bets,
+and so on; Tom, who doesn't choose to move while Flashman is at the
+door; and East, who stays by his friend, anticipating trouble. The
+sporting set now gathered round Tom. Public opinion wouldn't allow them
+actually to rob him of his ticket, but any humbug or intimidation by
+which he could be driven to sell the whole or part at an undervalue was
+lawful.
+
+“Now, young Brown, come, what'll you sell me Harkaway for? I hear he
+isn't going to start. I'll give you five shillings for him,” begins
+the boy who had opened the ticket. Tom, remembering his good deed, and
+moreover in his forlorn state wishing to make a friend, is about
+to accept the offer, when another cries out, “I'll give you seven
+shillings.” Tom hesitated and looked from one to the other.
+
+“No, no!” said Flashman, pushing in, “leave me to deal with him; we'll
+draw lots for it afterwards. Now sir, you know me: you'll sell Harkaway
+to us for five shillings, or you'll repent it.”
+
+“I won't sell a bit of him,” answered Tom shortly.
+
+“You hear that now!” said Flashman, turning to the others. “He's the
+coxiest young blackguard in the house. I always told you so. We're
+to have all the trouble and risk of getting up the lotteries for the
+benefit of such fellows as he.”
+
+Flashman forgets to explain what risk they ran, but he speaks to willing
+ears. Gambling makes boys selfish and cruel as well as men.
+
+“That's true. We always draw blanks,” cried one.--“Now, sir, you shall
+sell half, at any rate.”
+
+“I won't,” said Tom, flushing up to his hair, and lumping them all in
+his mind with his sworn enemy.
+
+“Very well then; let's roast him,” cried Flashman, and catches hold of
+Tom by the collar. One or two boys hesitate, but the rest join in. East
+seizes Tom's arm, and tries to pull him away, but is knocked back by
+one of the boys, and Tom is dragged along struggling. His shoulders are
+pushed against the mantelpiece, and he is held by main force before the
+fire, Flashman drawing his trousers tight by way of extra torture. Poor
+East, in more pain even than Tom, suddenly thinks of Diggs, and darts
+off to find him. “Will you sell now for ten shillings?” says one boy who
+is relenting.
+
+Tom only answers by groans and struggles.
+
+“I say, Flashey, he has had enough,” says the same boy, dropping the arm
+he holds.
+
+“No, no; another turn'll do it,” answers Flashman. But poor Tom is done
+already, turns deadly pale, and his head falls forward on his breast,
+just as Diggs, in frantic excitement, rushes into the hall with East at
+his heels.
+
+“You cowardly brutes!” is all he can say, as he catches Tom from them
+and supports him to the hall table. “Good God! he's dying. Here, get
+some cold water--run for the housekeeper.”
+
+Flashman and one or two others slink away; the rest, ashamed and
+sorry, bend over Tom or run for water, while East darts off for the
+housekeeper. Water comes, and they throw it on his hands and face, and
+he begins to come to. “Mother!”--the words came feebly and slowly--“it's
+very cold to-night.” Poor old Diggs is blubbering like a child. “Where
+am I?” goes on Tom, opening his eyes, “Ah! I remember now.” And he shut
+his eyes again and groaned.
+
+“I say,” is whispered, “we can't do any good, and the housekeeper will
+be here in a minute.” And all but one steal away. He stays with Diggs,
+silent and sorrowful, and fans Tom's face.
+
+The housekeeper comes in with strong salts, and Tom soon recovers enough
+to sit up. There is a smell of burning. She examines his clothes, and
+looks up inquiringly. The boys are silent.
+
+“How did he come so?” No answer. “There's been some bad work here,” she
+adds, looking very serious, “and I shall speak to the Doctor about it.”
+ Still no answer.
+
+“Hadn't we better carry him to the sick-room?” suggests Diggs.
+
+“Oh, I can walk now,” says Tom; and, supported by East and the
+housekeeper, goes to the sick-room. The boy who held his ground is soon
+amongst the rest, who are all in fear of their lives. “Did he peach?”
+ “Does she know about it?”
+
+“Not a word; he's a stanch little fellow.” And pausing a moment, he
+adds, “I'm sick of this work; what brutes we've been!”
+
+Meantime Tom is stretched on the sofa in the housekeeper's room, with
+East by his side, while she gets wine and water and other restoratives.
+
+“Are you much hurt, dear old boy?” whispers East.
+
+“Only the back of my legs,” answers Tom. They are indeed badly scorched,
+and part of his trousers burnt through. But soon he is in bed with
+cold bandages. At first he feels broken, and thinks of writing home and
+getting taken away; and the verse of a hymn he had learned years ago
+sings through his head, and he goes to sleep, murmuring,--
+
+
+“Where the wicked cease from troubling, And the weary are at rest.”
+
+
+But after a sound night's rest, the old boy-spirit comes back again.
+East comes in, reporting that the whole house is with him; and he
+forgets everything, except their old resolve never to be beaten by that
+bully Flashman.
+
+Not a word could the housekeeper extract from either of them, and though
+the Doctor knew all that she knew that morning, he never knew any more.
+
+I trust and believe that such scenes are not possible now at school,
+and that lotteries and betting-books have gone out; but I am writing of
+schools as they were in our time, and must give the evil with the good.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS.
+
+     “Wherein I [speak] of most disastrous chances,
+     Of moving accidents by flood and field,
+     Of hair-breadth 'scapes.”--SHAKESPEARE.
+
+When Tom came back into school after a couple of days in the sick-room,
+he found matters much changed for the better, as East had led him to
+expect. Flashman's brutality had disgusted most even of his intimate
+friends, and his cowardice had once more been made plain to the house;
+for Diggs had encountered him on the morning after the lottery, and
+after high words on both sides, had struck him, and the blow was not
+returned. However, Flashey was not unused to this sort of thing, and had
+lived through as awkward affairs before, and, as Diggs had said, fed and
+toadied himself back into favour again. Two or three of the boys who had
+helped to roast Tom came up and begged his pardon, and thanked him for
+not telling anything. Morgan sent for him, and was inclined to take the
+matter up warmly, but Tom begged him not to do it; to which he agreed,
+on Tom's promising to come to him at once in future--a promise which, I
+regret to say, he didn't keep. Tom kept Harkaway all to himself, and
+won the second prize in the lottery, some thirty shillings, which he and
+East contrived to spend in about three days in the purchase of pictures
+for their study, two new bats and a cricket-ball--all the best that
+could be got--and a supper of sausages, kidneys, and beef-steak pies
+to all the rebels. Light come, light go; they wouldn't have been
+comfortable with money in their pockets in the middle of the half.
+
+The embers of Flashman's wrath, however, were still smouldering, and
+burst out every now and then in sly blows and taunts, and they both
+felt that they hadn't quite done with him yet. It wasn't long, however,
+before the last act of that drama came, and with it the end of bullying
+for Tom and East at Rugby. They now often stole out into the hall at
+nights, incited thereto partly by the hope of finding Diggs there and
+having a talk with him, partly by the excitement of doing something
+which was against rules; for, sad to say, both of our youngsters, since
+their loss of character for steadiness in their form, had got into
+the habit of doing things which were forbidden, as a matter of
+adventure,--just in the same way, I should fancy, as men fall into
+smuggling, and for the same sort of reasons--thoughtlessness in the
+first place. It never occurred to them to consider why such and such
+rules were laid down: the reason was nothing to them, and they only
+looked upon rules as a sort of challenge from the rule-makers, which it
+would be rather bad pluck in them not to accept; and then again, in the
+lower parts of the school they hadn't enough to do. The work of the form
+they could manage to get through pretty easily, keeping a good enough
+place to get their regular yearly remove; and not having much ambition
+beyond this, their whole superfluous steam was available for games and
+scrapes. Now, one rule of the house which it was a daily pleasure of all
+such boys to break was that after supper all fags, except the three
+on duty in the passages, should remain in their own studies until nine
+o'clock; and if caught about the passages or hall, or in one another's
+studies, they were liable to punishments or caning. The rule was
+stricter than its observance; for most of the sixth spent their evenings
+in the fifth-form room, where the library was, and the lessons were
+learnt in common. Every now and then, however, a praepostor would be
+seized with a fit of district visiting, and would make a tour of
+the passages and hall and the fags' studies. Then, if the owner were
+entertaining a friend or two, the first kick at the door and ominous
+“Open here” had the effect of the shadow of a hawk over a chicken-yard:
+every one cut to cover--one small boy diving under the sofa, another
+under the table, while the owner would hastily pull down a book or
+two and open them, and cry out in a meek voice, “Hullo, who's there?”
+ casting an anxious eye round to see that no protruding leg or elbow
+could betray the hidden boys. “Open, sir, directly; it's Snooks.”
+ “Oh, I'm very sorry; I didn't know it was you, Snooks.” And then with
+well-feigned zeal the door would be opened, young hopeful praying that
+that beast Snooks mightn't have heard the scuffle caused by his coming.
+If a study was empty, Snooks proceeded to draw the passages and hall to
+find the truants.
+
+Well, one evening, in forbidden hours, Tom and East were in the hall.
+They occupied the seats before the fire nearest the door, while Diggs
+sprawled as usual before the farther fire. He was busy with a copy of
+verses, and East and Tom were chatting together in whispers by the light
+of the fire, and splicing a favourite old fives bat which had sprung.
+Presently a step came down the bottom passage. They listened a moment,
+assured themselves that it wasn't a praepostor, and then went on with
+their work, and the door swung open, and in walked Flashman. He didn't
+see Diggs, and thought it a good chance to keep his hand in; and as the
+boys didn't move for him, struck one of them, to make them get out of
+his way.
+
+“What's that for?” growled the assaulted one.
+
+“Because I choose. You've no business here. Go to your study.”
+
+“You can't send us.”
+
+“Can't I? Then I'll thrash you if you stay,” said Flashman savagely.
+
+“I say, you two,” said Diggs, from the end of the hall, rousing up and
+resting himself on his elbow--“you'll never get rid of that fellow till
+you lick him. Go in at him, both of you. I'll see fair play.”
+
+Flashman was taken aback, and retreated two steps. East looked at
+Tom. “Shall we try!” said he. “Yes,” said Tom desperately. So the two
+advanced on Flashman, with clenched fists and beating hearts. They were
+about up to his shoulder, but tough boys of their age, and in perfect
+training; while he, though strong and big, was in poor condition from
+his monstrous habit of stuffing and want of exercise. Coward as he was,
+however, Flashman couldn't swallow such an insult as this; besides, he
+was confident of having easy work, and so faced the boys, saying, “You
+impudent young blackguards!” Before he could finish his abuse, they
+rushed in on him, and began pummelling at all of him which they could
+reach. He hit out wildly and savagely; but the full force of his blows
+didn't tell--they were too near to him. It was long odds, though, in
+point of strength; and in another minute Tom went spinning backwards
+over a form, and Flashman turned to demolish East with a savage grin.
+But now Diggs jumped down from the table on which he had seated himself.
+“Stop there,” shouted he; “the round's over--half-minute time allowed.”
+
+“What the --- is it to you?” faltered Flashman, who began to lose heart.
+
+“I'm going to see fair, I tell you,” said Diggs, with a grin, and
+snapping his great red fingers; “'taint fair for you to be fighting one
+of them at a time.--Are you ready, Brown? Time's up.”
+
+The small boys rushed in again. Closing, they saw, was their best
+chance, and Flashman was wilder and more flurried than ever: he caught
+East by the throat, and tried to force him back on the iron-bound table.
+Tom grasped his waist, and remembering the old throw he had learned
+in the Vale from Harry Winburn, crooked his leg inside Flashman's, and
+threw his whole weight forward. The three tottered for a moment, and
+then over they went on to the floor, Flashman striking his head against
+a form in the hall.
+
+The two youngsters sprang to their legs, but he lay there still. They
+began to be frightened. Tom stooped down, and then cried out, scared
+out of his wits, “He's bleeding awfully. Come here, East! Diggs, he's
+dying!”
+
+“Not he,” said Diggs, getting leisurely off the table; “it's all sham;
+he's only afraid to fight it out.”
+
+East was as frightened as Tom. Diggs lifted Flashman's head, and he
+groaned.
+
+“What's the matter?” shouted Diggs.
+
+“My skull's fractured,” sobbed Flashman.
+
+“Oh, let me run for the housekeeper!” cried Tom. “What shall we do?”
+
+“Fiddlesticks! It's nothing but the skin broken,” said the relentless
+Diggs, feeling his head. “Cold water and a bit of rag's all he'll want.”
+
+“Let me go,” said Flashman surlily, sitting up; “I don't want your
+help.”
+
+“We're really very sorry--” began East.
+
+“Hang your sorrow!” answered Flashman, holding his handkerchief to the
+place; “you shall pay for this, I can tell you, both of you.” And he
+walked out of the hall.
+
+“He can't be very bad,” said Tom, with a deep sigh, much relieved to see
+his enemy march so well.
+
+“Not he,” said Diggs; “and you'll see you won't be troubled with him any
+more. But, I say, your head's broken too; your collar is covered with
+blood.”
+
+“Is it though?” said Tom, putting up his hand; “I didn't know it.”
+
+“Well, mop it up, or you'll have your jacket spoilt. And you have got a
+nasty eye, Scud. You'd better go and bathe it well in cold water.”
+
+“Cheap enough too, if we're done with our old friend Flashey,” said
+East, as they made off upstairs to bathe their wounds.
+
+They had done with Flashman in one sense, for he never laid finger on
+either of them again; but whatever harm a spiteful heart and venomous
+tongue could do them, he took care should be done. Only throw dirt
+enough, and some of it is sure to stick; and so it was with the fifth
+form and the bigger boys in general, with whom he associated more or
+less, and they not at all. Flashman managed to get Tom and East into
+disfavour, which did not wear off for some time after the author of it
+had disappeared from the School world. This event, much prayed for
+by the small fry in general, took place a few months after the above
+encounter. One fine summer evening Flashman had been regaling himself on
+gin-punch, at Brownsover; and, having exceeded his usual limits, started
+home uproarious. He fell in with a friend or two coming back from
+bathing, proposed a glass of beer, to which they assented, the weather
+being hot, and they thirsty souls, and unaware of the quantity of drink
+which Flashman had already on board. The short result was, that Flashey
+became beastly drunk. They tried to get him along, but couldn't; so they
+chartered a hurdle and two men to carry him. One of the masters came
+upon them, and they naturally enough fled. The flight of the rest raised
+the master's suspicions, and the good angel of the fags incited him
+to examine the freight, and, after examination, to convoy the hurdle
+himself up to the School-house; and the Doctor, who had long had his eye
+on Flashman, arranged for his withdrawal next morning.
+
+The evil that men and boys too do lives after them: Flashman was gone,
+but our boys, as hinted above, still felt the effects of his hate.
+Besides, they had been the movers of the strike against unlawful
+fagging. The cause was righteous--the result had been triumphant to a
+great extent; but the best of the fifth--even those who had never fagged
+the small boys, or had given up the practice cheerfully--couldn't help
+feeling a small grudge against the first rebels. After all, their form
+had been defied, on just grounds, no doubt--so just, indeed, that they
+had at once acknowledged the wrong, and remained passive in the strife.
+Had they sided with Flashman and his set, the rebels must have given way
+at once. They couldn't help, on the whole, being glad that they had so
+acted, and that the resistance had been successful against such of their
+own form as had shown fight; they felt that law and order had gained
+thereby, but the ringleaders they couldn't quite pardon at once.
+“Confoundedly coxy those young rascals will get, if we don't mind,” was
+the general feeling.
+
+So it is, and must be always, my dear boys. If the angel Gabriel were
+to come down from heaven, and head a successful rise against the most
+abominable and unrighteous vested interest which this poor old world
+groans under, he would most certainly lose his character for many years,
+probably for centuries, not only with the upholders of said vested
+interest, but with the respectable mass of the people whom he had
+delivered. They wouldn't ask him to dinner, or let their names appear
+with his in the papers; they would be very careful how they spoke of
+him in the Palaver, or at their clubs. What can we expect, then, when we
+have only poor gallant blundering men like Kossuth, Garibaldi, Mazzini,
+and righteous causes which do not triumph in their hands--men who
+have holes enough in their armour, God knows, easy to be hit by
+respectabilities sitting in their lounging chairs, and having large
+balances at their bankers'? But you are brave, gallant boys, who hate
+easy-chairs, and have no balances or bankers. You only want to have
+your heads set straight, to take the right side; so bear in mind that
+majorities, especially respectable ones, are nine times out of ten in
+the wrong; and that if you see a man or boy striving earnestly on the
+weak side, however wrong-headed or blundering he may be, you are not to
+go and join the cry against him. If you can't join him and help him, and
+make him wiser, at any rate remember that he has found something in the
+world which he will fight and suffer for, which is just what you have
+got to do for yourselves; and so think and speak of him tenderly.
+
+So East and Tom, the Tadpole, and one or two more, became a sort of
+young Ishmaelites, their hands against every one, and every one's hand
+against them. It has been already told how they got to war with the
+masters and the fifth form, and with the sixth it was much the same.
+They saw the praepostors cowed by or joining with the fifth and shirking
+their own duties; so they didn't respect them, and rendered no willing
+obedience. It had been one thing to clean out studies for sons of heroes
+like old Brooke, but was quite another to do the like for Snooks and
+Green, who had never faced a good scrummage at football, and couldn't
+keep the passages in order at night. So they only slurred through their
+fagging just well enough to escape a licking, and not always that, and
+got the character of sulky, unwilling fags. In the fifth-form room,
+after supper, when such matters were often discussed and arranged, their
+names were for ever coming up.
+
+“I say, Green,” Snooks began one night, “isn't that new boy, Harrison,
+your fag?”
+
+“Yes; why?”
+
+“Oh, I know something of him at home, and should like to excuse him.
+Will you swop?”
+
+“Who will you give me?”
+
+“Well, let's see. There's Willis, Johnson. No, that won't do. Yes, I
+have it. There's young East; I'll give you him.”
+
+“Don't you wish you may get it?” replied Green. “I'll give you two for
+Willis, if you like.”
+
+“Who, then?” asked Snooks. “Hall and Brown.”
+
+“Wouldn't have 'em at a gift.”
+
+“Better than East, though; for they ain't quite so sharp,” said Green,
+getting up and leaning his back against the mantelpiece. He wasn't a bad
+fellow, and couldn't help not being able to put down the unruly fifth
+form. His eye twinkled as he went on, “Did I ever tell you how the young
+vagabond sold me last half?”
+
+“No; how?”
+
+“Well, he never half cleaned my study out--only just stuck the
+candlesticks in the cupboard, and swept the crumbs on to the floor. So
+at last I was mortal angry, and had him up, and made him go through the
+whole performance under my eyes. The dust the young scamp made nearly
+choked me, and showed that he hadn't swept the carpet before. Well, when
+it was all finished, 'Now, young gentleman,' says I, 'mind, I expect
+this to be done every morning--floor swept, table-cloth taken off and
+shaken, and everything dusted.' 'Very well,' grunts he. Not a bit of
+it though. I was quite sure, in a day or two, that he never took the
+table-cloth off even. So I laid a trap for him. I tore up some paper,
+and put half a dozen bits on my table one night, and the cloth over them
+as usual. Next morning after breakfast up I came, pulled off the cloth,
+and, sure enough, there was the paper, which fluttered down on to the
+floor. I was in a towering rage. 'I've got you now,' thought I, and sent
+for him, while I got out my cane. Up he came as cool as you please, with
+his hands in his pockets. 'Didn't I tell you to shake my table-cloth
+every morning?' roared I. 'Yes,' says he. 'Did you do it this morning?'
+'Yes.' 'You young liar! I put these pieces of paper on the table last
+night, and if you'd taken the table-cloth off you'd have seen them, so
+I'm going to give you a good licking.' Then my youngster takes one hand
+out of his pocket, and just stoops down and picks up two of the bits
+of paper, and holds them out to me. There was written on each, in great
+round text, 'Harry East, his mark.' The young rogue had found my
+trap out, taken away my paper, and put some of his there, every bit
+ear-marked. I'd a great mind to lick him for his impudence; but, after
+all, one has no right to be laying traps, so I didn't. Of course I was
+at his mercy till the end of the half, and in his weeks my study was so
+frowzy I couldn't sit in it.”
+
+“They spoil one's things so, too,” chimed in a third boy. “Hall and
+Brown were night-fags last week. I called 'fag,' and gave them my
+candlesticks to clean. Away they went, and didn't appear again. When
+they'd had time enough to clean them three times over, I went out to
+look after them. They weren't in the passages so down I went into the
+hall, where I heard music; and there I found them sitting on the table,
+listening to Johnson, who was playing the flute, and my candlesticks
+stuck between the bars well into the fire, red-hot, clean spoiled.
+They've never stood straight since, and I must get some more. However, I
+gave them a good licking; that's one comfort.”
+
+Such were the sort of scrapes they were always getting into; and so,
+partly by their own faults, partly from circumstances, partly from the
+faults of others, they found themselves outlaws, ticket-of-leave men, or
+what you will in that line--in short, dangerous parties--and lived the
+sort of hand-to-mouth, wild, reckless life which such parties generally
+have to put up with. Nevertheless they never quite lost favour with
+young Brooke, who was now the cock of the house, and just getting into
+the sixth; and Diggs stuck to them like a man, and gave them store of
+good advice, by which they never in the least profited.
+
+And even after the house mended, and law and order had been restored,
+which soon happened after young Brooke and Diggs got into the sixth,
+they couldn't easily or at once return into the paths of steadiness, and
+many of the old, wild, out-of-bounds habits stuck to them as firmly as
+ever. While they had been quite little boys, the scrapes they got into
+in the School hadn't much mattered to any one; but now they were in the
+upper school, all wrong-doers from which were sent up straight to the
+Doctor at once. So they began to come under his notice; and as they were
+a sort of leaders in a small way amongst their own contemporaries, his
+eye, which was everywhere, was upon them.
+
+It was a toss-up whether they turned out well or ill, and so they were
+just the boys who caused most anxiety to such a master. You have been
+told of the first occasion on which they were sent up to the Doctor, and
+the remembrance of it was so pleasant that they had much less fear of
+him than most boys of their standing had. “It's all his look,” Tom used
+to say to East, “that frightens fellows. Don't you remember, he never
+said anything to us my first half-year for being an hour late for
+locking-up?”
+
+The next time that Tom came before him, however, the interview was of
+a very different kind. It happened just about the time at which we have
+now arrived, and was the first of a series of scrapes into which our
+hero managed now to tumble.
+
+The river Avon at Rugby is a slow and not very clear stream, in which
+chub, dace, roach, and other coarse fish are (or were) plentiful
+enough, together with a fair sprinkling of small jack, but no fish worth
+sixpence either for sport or food. It is, however, a capital river for
+bathing, as it has many nice small pools and several good reaches for
+swimming, all within about a mile of one another, and at an easy twenty
+minutes' walk from the school. This mile of water is rented, or used to
+be rented, for bathing purposes by the trustees of the School, for the
+boys. The footpath to Brownsover crosses the river by “the Planks,” a
+curious old single-plank bridge running for fifty or sixty yards into
+the flat meadows on each side of the river--for in the winter there
+are frequent floods. Above the Planks were the bathing-places for the
+smaller boys--Sleath's, the first bathing-place, where all new boys
+had to begin, until they had proved to the bathing men (three steady
+individuals, who were paid to attend daily through the summer to prevent
+accidents) that they could swim pretty decently, when they were allowed
+to go on to Anstey's, about one hundred and fifty yards below. Here
+there was a hole about six feet deep and twelve feet across, over which
+the puffing urchins struggled to the opposite side, and thought no small
+beer of themselves for having been out of their depths. Below the Planks
+came larger and deeper holes, the first of which was Wratislaw's, and
+the last Swift's, a famous hole, ten or twelve feet deep in parts, and
+thirty yards across, from which there was a fine swimming reach right
+down to the mill. Swift's was reserved for the sixth and fifth forms,
+and had a spring board and two sets of steps: the others had one set of
+steps each, and were used indifferently by all the lower boys, though
+each house addicted itself more to one hole than to another. The
+School-house at this time affected Wratislaw's hole, and Tom and East,
+who had learnt to swim like fishes, were to be found there as regular as
+the clock through the summer, always twice, and often three times a day.
+
+Now the boys either had, or fancied they had, a right also to fish at
+their pleasure over the whole of this part of the river, and would not
+understand that the right (if any) only extended to the Rugby side. As
+ill-luck would have it, the gentleman who owned the opposite bank, after
+allowing it for some time without interference, had ordered his keepers
+not to let the boys fish on his side--the consequence of which had been
+that there had been first wranglings and then fights between the keepers
+and boys; and so keen had the quarrel become that the landlord and his
+keepers, after a ducking had been inflicted on one of the latter, and
+a fierce fight ensued thereon, had been up to the great school at
+calling-over to identify the delinquents, and it was all the Doctor
+himself and five or six masters could do to keep the peace. Not even his
+authority could prevent the hissing; and so strong was the feeling that
+the four praepostors of the week walked up the school with their canes,
+shouting “S-s-s-s-i-lenc-c-c-c-e” at the top of their voices. However,
+the chief offenders for the time were flogged and kept in bounds; but
+the victorious party had brought a nice hornet's nest about their ears.
+The landlord was hissed at the School-gates as he rode past, and when he
+charged his horse at the mob of boys, and tried to thrash them with
+his whip, was driven back by cricket-bats and wickets, and pursued with
+pebbles and fives balls; while the wretched keepers' lives were a burden
+to them, from having to watch the waters so closely.
+
+The School-house boys of Tom's standing, one and all, as a protest
+against this tyranny and cutting short of their lawful amusements, took
+to fishing in all ways, and especially by means of night-lines. The
+little tacklemaker at the bottom of the town would soon have made his
+fortune had the rage lasted, and several of the barbers began to lay in
+fishing-tackle. The boys had this great advantage over their enemies,
+that they spent a large portion of the day in nature's garb by the
+river-side, and so, when tired of swimming, would get out on the other
+side and fish, or set night-lines, till the keepers hove in sight, and
+then plunge in and swim back and mix with the other bathers, and the
+keepers were too wise to follow across the stream.
+
+While things were in this state, one day Tom and three or four others
+were bathing at Wratislaw's, and had, as a matter of course, been taking
+up and re-setting night-lines. They had all left the water, and were
+sitting or standing about at their toilets, in all costumes, from
+a shirt upwards, when they were aware of a man in a velveteen
+shooting-coat approaching from the other side. He was a new keeper, so
+they didn't recognize or notice him, till he pulled up right opposite,
+and began:
+
+“I see'd some of you young gentlemen over this side a-fishing just now.”
+
+“Hullo! who are you? What business is that of yours, old Velveteens?”
+
+“I'm the new under-keeper, and master's told me to keep a sharp lookout
+on all o' you young chaps. And I tells 'ee I means business, and you'd
+better keep on your own side, or we shall fall out.”
+
+“Well, that's right, Velveteens; speak out, and let's know your mind at
+once.”
+
+“Look here, old boy,” cried East, holding up a miserable, coarse fish
+or two and a small jack; “would you like to smell 'em and see which bank
+they lived under?”
+
+“I'll give you a bit of advice, keeper,” shouted Tom, who was sitting
+in his shirt paddling with his feet in the river: “you'd better go down
+there to Swift's, where the big boys are; they're beggars at setting
+lines, and'll put you up to a wrinkle or two for catching the
+five-pounders.” Tom was nearest to the keeper, and that officer, who was
+getting angry at the chaff, fixed his eyes on our hero, as if to take a
+note of him for future use. Tom returned his gaze with a steady stare,
+and then broke into a laugh, and struck into the middle of a favourite
+School-house song,--
+
+     “As I and my companions
+     Were setting of a snare
+     The gamekeeper was watching us;
+     For him we did not care:
+     For we can wrestle and fight, my boys,
+     And jump out anywhere.
+     For it's my delight of a likely night,
+     In the season of the year.”
+
+The chorus was taken up by the other boys with shouts of laughter, and
+the keeper turned away with a grunt, but evidently bent on mischief. The
+boys thought no more of the matter.
+
+But now came on the May-fly season; the soft, hazy summer weather lay
+sleepily along the rich meadows by Avon side, and the green and gray
+flies flickered with their graceful, lazy up-and-down flight over
+the reeds and the water and the meadows, in myriads upon myriads.
+The May-flies must surely be the lotus-eaters of the ephemerae--the
+happiest, laziest, carelessest fly that dances and dreams out his few
+hours of sunshiny life by English rivers.
+
+Every little pitiful, coarse fish in the Avon was on the alert for
+the flies, and gorging his wretched carcass with hundreds daily, the
+gluttonous rogues! and every lover of the gentle craft was out to avenge
+the poor May-flies.
+
+So one fine Thursday afternoon, Tom, having borrowed East's new rod,
+started by himself to the river. He fished for some time with small
+success--not a fish would rise at him; but as he prowled along the bank,
+he was presently aware of mighty ones feeding in a pool on the opposite
+side, under the shade of a huge willow-tree. The stream was deep
+here, but some fifty yards below was a shallow, for which he made off
+hot-foot; and forgetting landlords, keepers, solemn prohibitions of the
+Doctor, and everything else, pulled up his trousers, plunged across, and
+in three minutes was creeping along on all fours towards the clump of
+willows.
+
+It isn't often that great chub, or any other coarse fish, are in earnest
+about anything; but just then they were thoroughly bent on feeding, and
+in half an hour Master Tom had deposited three thumping fellows at the
+foot of the giant willow. As he was baiting for a fourth pounder, and
+just going to throw in again, he became aware of a man coming up the
+bank not one hundred yards off. Another look told him that it was the
+under-keeper. Could he reach the shallow before him? No, not carrying
+his rod. Nothing for it but the tree. So Tom laid his bones to it,
+shinning up as fast as he could, and dragging up his rod after him. He
+had just time to reach and crouch along upon a huge branch some ten feet
+up, which stretched out over the river, when the keeper arrived at the
+clump. Tom's heart beat fast as he came under the tree; two steps more
+and he would have passed, when, as ill-luck would have it, the gleam on
+the scales of the dead fish caught his eye, and he made a dead point
+at the foot of the tree. He picked up the fish one by one; his eye and
+touch told him that they had been alive and feeding within the hour. Tom
+crouched lower along the branch, and heard the keeper beating the clump.
+“If I could only get the rod hidden,” thought he, and began gently
+shifting it to get it alongside of him; “willowtrees don't throw out
+straight hickory shoots twelve feet long, with no leaves, worse luck.”
+ Alas! the keeper catches the rustle, and then a sight of the rod, and
+then of Tom's hand and arm.
+
+“Oh, be up ther', be 'ee?” says he, running under the tree. “Now you
+come down this minute.”
+
+“Tree'd at last,” thinks Tom, making no answer, and keeping as close as
+possible, but working away at the rod, which he takes to pieces. “I'm
+in for it, unless I can starve him out.” And then he begins to meditate
+getting along the branch for a plunge, and scramble to the other side;
+but the small branches are so thick, and the opposite bank so difficult,
+that the keeper will have lots of time to get round by the ford before
+he can get out, so he gives that up. And now he hears the keeper
+beginning to scramble up the trunk. That will never do; so he scrambles
+himself back to where his branch joins the trunk; and stands with lifted
+rod.
+
+“Hullo, Velveteens; mind your fingers if you come any higher.”
+
+The keeper stops and looks up, and then with a grin says, “Oh! be you,
+be it, young measter? Well, here's luck. Now I tells 'ee to come down at
+once, and 't'll be best for 'ee.”
+
+“Thank 'ee, Velveteens; I'm very comfortable,” said Tom, shortening the
+rod in his hand, and preparing for battle.
+
+“Werry well; please yourself,” says the keeper, descending, however,
+to the ground again, and taking his seat on the bank. “I bean't in no
+hurry, so you may take your time. I'll l'arn 'ee to gee honest folk
+names afore I've done with 'ee.”
+
+“My luck as usual,” thinks Tom; “what a fool I was to give him a black!
+If I'd called him 'keeper,' now, I might get off. The return match is
+all his way.”
+
+The keeper quietly proceeded to take out his pipe, fill, and light it,
+keeping an eye on Tom, who now sat disconsolately across the branch,
+looking at keeper--a pitiful sight for men and fishes. The more he
+thought of it the less he liked it. “It must be getting near second
+calling-over,” thinks he. Keeper smokes on stolidly. “If he takes me up,
+I shall be flogged safe enough. I can't sit here all night. Wonder if
+he'll rise at silver.”
+
+“I say, keeper,” said he meekly, “let me go for two bob?”
+
+“Not for twenty neither,” grunts his persecutor.
+
+And so they sat on till long past second calling-over, and the sun came
+slanting in through the willow-branches, and telling of locking-up near
+at hand.
+
+“I'm coming down, keeper,” said Tom at last, with a sigh, fairly tired
+out. “Now what are you going to do?”
+
+“Walk 'ee up to School, and give 'ee over to the Doctor; them's my
+orders,” says Velveteens, knocking the ashes out of his fourth pipe, and
+standing up and shaking himself.
+
+“Very good,” said Tom; “but hands off, you know. I'll go with you
+quietly, so no collaring or that sort of thing.”
+
+Keeper looked at him a minute. “Werry good,” said he at last. And so Tom
+descended, and wended his way drearily by the side of the keeper, up to
+the Schoolhouse, where they arrived just at locking-up. As they passed
+the School-gates, the Tadpole and several others who were standing there
+caught the state of things, and rushed out, crying, “Rescue!” But Tom
+shook his head; so they only followed to the Doctor's gate, and went
+back sorely puzzled.
+
+How changed and stern the Doctor seemed from the last time that Tom was
+up there, as the keeper told the story, not omitting to state how Tom
+had called him blackguard names. “Indeed, sir,” broke in the culprit,
+“it was only Velveteens.” The Doctor only asked one question.
+
+“You know the rule about the banks, Brown?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Then wait for me to-morrow, after first lesson.”
+
+“I thought so,” muttered Tom.
+
+“And about the rod, sir?” went on the keeper. “Master's told we as we
+might have all the rods--”
+
+“Oh, please, sir,” broke in Tom, “the rod isn't mine.”
+
+The Doctor looked puzzled; but the keeper, who was a good-hearted
+fellow, and melted at Tom's evident distress, gave up his claim. Tom
+was flogged next morning, and a few days afterwards met Velveteens, and
+presented him with half a crown for giving up the rod claim, and they
+became sworn friends; and I regret to say that Tom had many more fish
+from under the willow that May-fly season, and was never caught again by
+Velveteens.
+
+It wasn't three weeks before Tom, and now East by his side, were
+again in the awful presence. This time, however, the Doctor was not so
+terrible. A few days before, they had been fagged at fives to fetch the
+balls that went off the court. While standing watching the game, they
+saw five or six nearly new balls hit on the top of the School. “I say,
+Tom,” said East, when they were dismissed, “couldn't we get those balls
+somehow?”
+
+“Let's try, anyhow.”
+
+So they reconnoitred the walls carefully, borrowed a coal-hammer from
+old Stumps, bought some big nails, and after one or two attempts, scaled
+the Schools, and possessed themselves of huge quantities of fives balls.
+The place pleased them so much that they spent all their spare time
+there, scratching and cutting their names on the top of every tower; and
+at last, having exhausted all other places, finished up with inscribing
+H.EAST, T.BROWN, on the minute-hand of the great clock; in the doing of
+which they held the minute-hand, and disturbed the clock's economy. So
+next morning, when masters and boys came trooping down to prayers, and
+entered the quadrangle, the injured minute-hand was indicating three
+minutes to the hour. They all pulled up, and took their time. When the
+hour struck, doors were closed, and half the school late. Thomas being
+set to make inquiry, discovers their names on the minute-hand, and
+reports accordingly; and they are sent for, a knot of their friends
+making derisive and pantomimic allusions to what their fate will be as
+they walk off.
+
+But the Doctor, after hearing their story, doesn't make much of it, and
+only gives them thirty lines of Homer to learn by heart, and a lecture
+on the likelihood of such exploits ending in broken bones.
+
+Alas! almost the next day was one of the great fairs in the town; and as
+several rows and other disagreeable accidents had of late taken place
+on these occasions, the Doctor gives out, after prayers in the morning,
+that no boy is to go down into the town. Wherefore East and Tom, for
+no earthly pleasure except that of doing what they are told not to do,
+start away, after second lesson, and making a short circuit through the
+fields, strike a back lane which leads into the town, go down it, and
+run plump upon one of the masters as they emerge into the High Street.
+The master in question, though a very clever, is not a righteous man.
+He has already caught several of his own pupils, and gives them lines
+to learn, while he sends East and Tom, who are not his pupils, up to the
+Doctor, who, on learning that they had been at prayers in the morning,
+flogs them soundly.
+
+The flogging did them no good at the time, for the injustice of their
+captor was rankling in their minds; but it was just the end of the half,
+and on the next evening but one Thomas knocks at their door, and says
+the Doctor wants to see them. They look at one another in silent dismay.
+What can it be now? Which of their countless wrong-doings can he have
+heard of officially? However, it's no use delaying, so up they go to the
+study. There they find the Doctor, not angry, but very graver. “He has
+sent for them to speak to very seriously before they go home. They have
+each been flogged several times in the half-year for direct and
+wilful breaches of rules. This cannot go on. They are doing no good to
+themselves or others, and now they are getting up in the School, and
+have influence. They seem to think that rules are made capriciously, and
+for the pleasure of the masters; but this is not so. They are made for
+the good of the whole School, and must and shall be obeyed. Those who
+thoughtlessly or wilfully break them will not be allowed to stay at the
+School. He should be sorry if they had to leave, as the School might
+do them both much good, and wishes them to think very seriously in the
+holidays over what he has said. Good-night.”
+
+And so the two hurry off horribly scared; the idea of having to leave
+has never crossed their minds, and is quite unbearable.
+
+As they go out, they meet at the door old Holmes, a sturdy, cheery
+praepostor of another house, who goes in to the Doctor; and they hear
+his genial, hearty greeting of the newcomer, so different to their own
+reception, as the door closes, and return to their study with heavy
+hearts, and tremendous resolves to break no more rules.
+
+Five minutes afterwards the master of their form--a late arrival and a
+model young master--knocks at the Doctor's study-door. “Come in!” And
+as he enters, the Doctor goes on, to Holmes--“You see, I do not know
+anything of the case officially, and if I take any notice of it at all,
+I must publicly expel the boy. I don't wish to do that, for I think
+there is some good in him. There's nothing for it but a good sound
+thrashing.” He paused to shake hands with the master, which Holmes does
+also, and then prepares to leave.
+
+“I understand. Good-night, sir.”
+
+“Good-night, Holmes. And remember,” added the Doctor, emphasizing the
+words, “a good sound thrashing before the whole house.”
+
+The door closed on Holmes; and the Doctor, in answer to the puzzled
+look of his lieutenant, explained shortly. “A gross case of bullying.
+Wharton, the head of the house, is a very good fellow, but slight and
+weak, and severe physical pain is the only way to deal with such a
+case; so I have asked Holmes to take it up. He is very careful and
+trustworthy, and has plenty of strength. I wish all the sixth had as
+much. We must have it here, if we are to keep order at all.”
+
+Now I don't want any wiseacres to read this book, but if they should, of
+course they will prick up their long ears, and howl, or rather bray, at
+the above story. Very good--I don't object; but what I have to add for
+you boys is this, that Holmes called a levy of his house after breakfast
+next morning, made them a speech on the case of bullying in question,
+and then gave the bully a “good sound thrashing;” and that years
+afterwards, that boy sought out Holmes, and thanked him, saying it
+had been the kindest act which had ever been done upon him, and the
+turning-point in his character; and a very good fellow he became, and a
+credit to his School.
+
+After some other talk between them, the Doctor said, “I want to speak
+to you about two boys in your form, East and Brown. I have just been
+speaking to them. What do you think of them?”
+
+“Well, they are not hard workers, and very thoughtless and full of
+spirits; but I can't help liking them. I think they are sound, good
+fellows at the bottom.”
+
+“I'm glad of it. I think so too: But they make me very uneasy. They are
+taking the lead a good deal amongst the fags in my house, for they are
+very active, bold fellows. I should be sorry to lose them, but I shan't
+let them stay if I don't see them gaining character and manliness. In
+another year they may do great harm to all the younger boys.”
+
+“Oh, I hope you won't send them away,” pleaded their master.
+
+“Not if I can help it. But now I never feel sure, after any
+half-holiday, that I shan't have to flog one of them next morning, for
+some foolish, thoughtless scrape. I quite dread seeing either of them.”
+
+They were both silent for a minute. Presently the Doctor began again:--
+
+“They don't feel that they have any duty or work to do in the school,
+and how is one to make them feel it?”
+
+“I think if either of them had some little boy to take care of, it would
+steady them. Brown is the most reckless of the two, I should say. East
+wouldn't get into so many scrapes without him.”
+
+“Well,” said the Doctor, with something like a sigh, “I'll think of it.”
+ And they went on to talk of other subjects.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+     “I [hold] it truth, with him who sings,
+     To one clear harp in divers tones,
+     That men may rise on stepping-stones
+     Of their dead selves to higher things.”
+      --TENNYSON.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--HOW THE TIDE TURNED.
+
+     “Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
+     In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.
+     . . . .
+     Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
+     Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified.”
+      --LOWELL.
+
+The turning-point in our hero's school career had now come, and the
+manner of it was as follows. On the evening of the first day of the next
+half-year, Tom, East, and another School-house boy, who had just been
+dropped at the Spread Eagle by the old Regulator, rushed into the
+matron's room in high spirits, such as all real boys are in when they
+first get back, however fond they may be of home.
+
+“Well, Mrs. Wixie,” shouted one, seizing on the methodical, active,
+little dark-eyed woman, who was busy stowing away the linen of the boys
+who had already arrived into their several pigeon-holes, “here we are
+again, you see, as jolly as ever. Let us help you put the things away.”
+
+“And, Mary,” cried another (she was called indifferently by either
+name), “who's come back? Has the Doctor made old Jones leave? How many
+new boys are there?”
+
+“Am I and East to have Gray's study? You know you promised to get it for
+us if you could,” shouted Tom.
+
+“And am I to sleep in Number 4?” roared East.
+
+“How's old Sam, and Bogle, and Sally?”
+
+“Bless the boys!” cries Mary, at last getting in a word; “why, you'll
+shake me to death. There, now, do go away up to the housekeeper's room
+and get your suppers; you know I haven't time to talk. You'll find
+plenty more in the house.--Now, Master East, do let those things alone.
+You're mixing up three new boys' things.” And she rushed at East, who
+escaped round the open trunks holding up a prize.
+
+“Hullo! look here, Tommy,” shouted he; “here's fun!” and he brandished
+above his head some pretty little night-caps, beautifully made and
+marked, the work of loving fingers in some distant country home. The
+kind mother and sisters who sewed that delicate stitching with aching
+hearts little thought of the trouble they might be bringing on the
+young head for which they were meant. The little matron was wiser, and
+snatched the caps from East before he could look at the name on them.
+
+“Now, Master East, I shall be very angry if you don't go,” said she;
+“there's some capital cold beef and pickles upstairs, and I won't have
+you old boys in my room first night.”
+
+“Hurrah for the pickles! Come along, Tommy--come along, Smith. We shall
+find out who the young count is, I'll be bound. I hope he'll sleep in my
+room. Mary's always vicious first week.”
+
+As the boys turned to leave the room, the matron touched Tom's arm, and
+said, “Master Brown, please stop a minute; I want to speak to you.”
+
+“Very well, Mary. I'll come in a minute, East. Don't finish the
+pickles.”
+
+“O Master Brown,” went on the little matron, when the rest had gone,
+“you're to have Gray's study, Mrs. Arnold says. And she wants you to
+take in this young gentleman. He's a new boy, and thirteen years old
+though he don't look it. He's very delicate, and has never been from
+home before. And I told Mrs. Arnold I thought you'd be kind to him, and
+see that they don't bully him at first. He's put into your form, and
+I've given him the bed next to yours in Number 4; so East can't sleep
+there this half.”
+
+Tom was rather put about by this speech. He had got the double study
+which he coveted, but here were conditions attached which greatly
+moderated his joy. He looked across the room, and in the far corner of
+the sofa was aware of a slight, pale boy, with large blue eyes and light
+fair hair, who seemed ready to shrink through the floor. He saw at a
+glance that the little stranger was just the boy whose first half-year
+at a public school would be misery to himself if he were left alone, or
+constant anxiety to any one who meant to see him through his troubles.
+Tom was too honest to take in the youngster, and then let him shift for
+himself; and if he took him as his chum instead of East, where were
+all his pet plans of having a bottled-beer cellar under his window, and
+making night-lines and slings, and plotting expeditions to Brownsover
+Mills and Caldecott's Spinney? East and he had made up their minds to
+get this study, and then every night from locking-up till ten they would
+be together to talk about fishing, drink bottled-beer, read Marryat's
+novels, and sort birds' eggs. And this new boy would most likely never
+go out of the close, and would be afraid of wet feet, and always getting
+laughed at, and called Molly, or Jenny, or some derogatory feminine
+nickname.
+
+The matron watched him for a moment, and saw what was passing in his
+mind, and so, like a wise negotiator, threw in an appeal to his warm
+heart. “Poor little fellow,” said she, in almost a whisper; “his
+father's dead, and he's got no brothers. And his mamma--such a kind,
+sweet lady--almost broke her heart at leaving him this morning; and she
+said one of his sisters was like to die of decline, and so--”
+
+“Well, well,” burst in Tom, with something like a sigh at the effort,
+“I suppose I must give up East.--Come along, young un. What's your name?
+We'll go and have some supper, and then I'll show you our study.”
+
+“His name's George Arthur,” said the matron, walking up to him with Tom,
+who grasped his little delicate hand as the proper preliminary to making
+a chum of him, and felt as if he could have blown him away. “I've had
+his books and things put into the study, which his mamma has had new
+papered, and the sofa covered, and new green-baize curtains over the
+door” (the diplomatic matron threw this in, to show that the new boy was
+contributing largely to the partnership comforts). “And Mrs. Arnold told
+me to say,” she added, “that she should like you both to come up to tea
+with her. You know the way, Master Brown, and the things are just gone
+up, I know.”
+
+Here was an announcement for Master Tom! He was to go up to tea the
+first night, just as if he were a sixth or fifth form boy, and of
+importance in the School world, instead of the most reckless young
+scapegrace amongst the fags. He felt himself lifted on to a higher
+social and moral platform at once. Nevertheless he couldn't give up
+without a sigh the idea of the jolly supper in the housekeeper's room
+with East and the rest, and a rush round to all the studies of his
+friends afterwards, to pour out the deeds and wonders of the holidays,
+to plot fifty plans for the coming half-year, and to gather news of who
+had left and what new boys had come, who had got who's study, and where
+the new praepostors slept. However, Tom consoled himself with thinking
+that he couldn't have done all this with the new boy at his heels, and
+so marched off along the passages to the Doctor's private house with his
+young charge in tow, in monstrous good-humour with himself and all the
+world.
+
+It is needless, and would be impertinent, to tell how the two young boys
+were received in that drawing-room. The lady who presided there is still
+living, and has carried with her to her peaceful home in the north the
+respect and love of all those who ever felt and shared that gentle and
+high-bred hospitality. Ay, many is the brave heart, now doing its work
+and bearing its load in country curacies, London chambers, under the
+Indian sun, and in Australian towns and clearings, which looks back with
+fond and grateful memory to that School-house drawing-room, and dates
+much of its highest and best training to the lessons learnt there.
+
+Besides Mrs. Arnold and one or two of the elder children, there were one
+of the younger masters, young Brooke (who was now in the sixth, and
+had succeeded to his brother's position and influence), and another
+sixth-form boy, talking together before the fire. The master and young
+Brooke, now a great strapping fellow six feet high, eighteen years old,
+and powerful as a coal-heaver, nodded kindly to Tom, to his intense
+glory, and then went on talking. The other did not notice them.
+The hostess, after a few kind words, which led the boys at once and
+insensibly to feel at their ease and to begin talking to one another,
+left them with her own children while she finished a letter. The young
+ones got on fast and well, Tom holding forth about a prodigious pony he
+had been riding out hunting, and hearing stories of the winter glories
+of the lakes, when tea came in, and immediately after the Doctor
+himself.
+
+How frank, and kind, and manly was his greeting to the party by the
+fire! It did Tom's heart good to see him and young Brooke shake hands,
+and look one another in the face; and he didn't fail to remark that
+Brooke was nearly as tall and quite as broad as the Doctor. And his cup
+was full when in another moment his master turned to him with another
+warm shake of the hand, and, seemingly oblivious of all the late scrapes
+which he had been getting into, said, “Ah, Brown, you here! I hope you
+left your father and all well at home?”
+
+“Yes, sir, quite well.”
+
+“And this is the little fellow who is to share your study. Well, he
+doesn't look as we should like to see him. He wants some Rugby air, and
+cricket. And you must take him some good long walks, to Bilton Grange,
+and Caldecott's Spinney, and show him what a little pretty country we
+have about here.”
+
+Tom wondered if the Doctor knew that his visits to Bilton Grange
+were for the purpose of taking rooks' nests (a proceeding strongly
+discountenanced by the owner thereof), and those to Caldecott's Spinney
+were prompted chiefly by the conveniences for setting night-lines. What
+didn't the Doctor know? And what a noble use he always made of it! He
+almost resolved to abjure rook-pies and night-lines for ever. The tea
+went merrily off, the Doctor now talking of holiday doings, and then of
+the prospects of the half-year--what chance there was for the Balliol
+scholarship, whether the eleven would be a good one. Everybody was at
+his ease, and everybody felt that he, young as he might be, was of some
+use in the little School world, and had a work to do there.
+
+Soon after tea the Doctor went off to his study, and the young boys a
+few minutes afterwards took their leave and went out of the private door
+which led from the Doctor's house into the middle passage.
+
+At the fire, at the farther end of the passage, was a crowd of boys in
+loud talk and laughter. There was a sudden pause when the door opened,
+and then a great shout of greeting, as Tom was recognized marching down
+the passage.
+
+“Hullo, Brown! where do you come from?”
+
+“Oh, I've been to tea with the Doctor,” says Tom, with great dignity.
+
+“My eye!” cried East, “Oh! so that's why Mary called you back, and you
+didn't come to supper. You lost something. That beef and pickles was no
+end good.”
+
+“I say, young fellow,” cried Hall, detecting Arthur and catching him by
+the collar, “what's your name? Where do you come from? How old are you?”
+
+Tom saw Arthur shrink back and look scared as all the group turned to
+him, but thought it best to let him answer, just standing by his side to
+support in case of need.
+
+“Arthur, sir. I come from Devonshire.”
+
+“Don't call me 'sir,' you young muff. How old are you?”
+
+“Thirteen.”
+
+“Can you sing?”
+
+The poor boy was trembling and hesitating. Tom struck in--“You be
+hanged, Tadpole. He'll have to sing, whether he can or not, Saturday
+twelve weeks, and that's long enough off yet.”
+
+“Do you know him at home, Brown?”
+
+“No; but he's my chum in Gray's old study, and it's near prayer-time,
+and I haven't had a look at it yet.--Come along, Arthur.”
+
+Away went the two, Tom longing to get his charge safe under cover, where
+he might advise him on his deportment.
+
+“What a queer chum for Tom Brown,” was the comment at the fire; and it
+must be confessed so thought Tom himself, as he lighted his candle, and
+surveyed the new green-baize curtains and the carpet and sofa with much
+satisfaction.
+
+“I say, Arthur, what a brick your mother is to make us so cozy! But look
+here now; you must answer straight up when the fellows speak to you, and
+don't be afraid. If you're afraid, you'll get bullied. And don't you
+say you can sing; and don't you ever talk about home, or your mother and
+sisters.”
+
+Poor little Arthur looked ready to cry.
+
+“But, please,” said he, “mayn't I talk about--about home to you?”
+
+“Oh yes; I like it. But don't talk to boys you don't know, or they'll
+call you home-sick, or mamma's darling, or some such stuff. What a jolly
+desk! Is that yours? And what stunning binding! Why, your school-books
+look like novels.”
+
+And Tom was soon deep in Arthur's goods and chattels, all new, and good
+enough for a fifth-form boy, and hardly thought of his friends outside
+till the prayer-bell rang.
+
+I have already described the School-house prayers. They were the same on
+the first night as on the other nights, save for the gaps caused by the
+absence of those boys who came late, and the line of new boys who stood
+all together at the farther table--of all sorts and sizes, like young
+bears with all their troubles to come, as Tom's father had said to him
+when he was in the same position. He thought of it as he looked at the
+line, and poor little slight Arthur standing with them, and as he was
+leading him upstairs to Number 4, directly after prayers, and showing
+him his bed. It was a huge, high, airy room, with two large windows
+looking on to the School close. There were twelve beds in the room. The
+one in the farthest corner by the fireplace, occupied by the sixth-form
+boy, who was responsible for the discipline of the room, and the rest
+by boys in the lower-fifth and other junior forms, all fags (for the
+fifth-form boys, as has been said, slept in rooms by themselves). Being
+fags, the eldest of them was not more than about sixteen years old, and
+were all bound to be up and in bed by ten. The sixth-form boys came to
+bed from ten to a quarter-past (at which time the old verger came round
+to put the candles out), except when they sat up to read.
+
+Within a few minutes therefore of their entry, all the other boys who
+slept in Number 4 had come up. The little fellows went quietly to their
+own beds, and began undressing, and talking to each other in whispers;
+while the elder, amongst whom was Tom, sat chatting about on one
+another's beds, with their jackets and waistcoats off. Poor little
+Arthur was overwhelmed with the novelty of his position. The idea of
+sleeping in the room with strange boys had clearly never crossed his
+mind before, and was as painful as it was strange to him. He could
+hardly bear to take his jacket off; however, presently, with an effort,
+off it came, and then he paused and looked at Tom, who was sitting at
+the bottom of his bed talking and laughing.
+
+“Please, Brown,” he whispered, “may I wash my face and hands?”
+
+“Of course, if you like,” said Tom, staring; “that's your
+washhand-stand, under the window, second from your bed. You'll have to
+go down for more water in the morning if you use it all.” And on he went
+with his talk, while Arthur stole timidly from between the beds out
+to his washhand-stand, and began his ablutions, thereby drawing for a
+moment on himself the attention of the room.
+
+On went the talk and laughter. Arthur finished his washing and
+undressing, and put on his night-gown. He then looked round more
+nervously than ever. Two or three of the little boys were already in
+bed, sitting up with their chins on their knees. The light burned clear,
+the noise went on. It was a trying moment for the poor little lonely
+boy; however, this time he didn't ask Tom what he might or might not do,
+but dropped on his knees by his bedside, as he had done every day from
+his childhood, to open his heart to Him who heareth the cry and beareth
+the sorrows of the tender child, and the strong man in agony.
+
+Tom was sitting at the bottom of his bed unlacing his boots, so that his
+back was towards Arthur, and he didn't see what had happened, and looked
+up in wonder at the sudden silence. Then two or three boys laughed and
+sneered, and a big, brutal fellow who was standing in the middle of the
+room picked up a slipper, and shied it at the kneeling boy, calling him
+a snivelling young shaver. Then Tom saw the whole, and the next moment
+the boot he had just pulled off flew straight at the head of the bully,
+who had just time to throw up his arm and catch it on his elbow.
+
+“Confound you, Brown! what's that for?” roared he, stamping with pain.
+
+“Never mind what I mean,” said Tom, stepping on to the floor, every drop
+of blood in his body tingling; “if any fellow wants the other boot, he
+knows how to get it.”
+
+What would have been the result is doubtful, for at this moment the
+sixth-form boy came in, and not another word could be said. Tom and
+the rest rushed into bed and finished their unrobing there, and the
+old verger, as punctual as the clock, had put out the candle in another
+minute, and toddled on to the next room, shutting their door with his
+usual “Good-night, gen'lm'n.”
+
+There were many boys in the room by whom that little scene was taken to
+heart before they slept. But sleep seemed to have deserted the pillow of
+poor Tom. For some time his excitement, and the flood of memories
+which chased one another through his brain, kept him from thinking or
+resolving. His head throbbed, his heart leapt, and he could hardly keep
+himself from springing out of bed and rushing about the room. Then the
+thought of his own mother came across him, and the promise he had made
+at her knee, years ago, never to forget to kneel by his bedside, and
+give himself up to his Father, before he laid his head on the pillow,
+from which it might never rise; and he lay down gently, and cried as if
+his heart would break. He was only fourteen years old.
+
+It was no light act of courage in those days, my dear boys, for a little
+fellow to say his prayers publicly, even at Rugby. A few years later,
+when Arnold's manly piety had begun to leaven the School, the tables
+turned; before he died, in the School-house at least, and I believe in
+the other house, the rule was the other way. But poor Tom had come to
+school in other times. The first few nights after he came he did not
+kneel down because of the noise, but sat up in bed till the candle was
+out, and then stole out and said his prayers, in fear lest some one
+should find him out. So did many another poor little fellow. Then he
+began to think that he might just as well say his prayers in bed, and
+then that it didn't matter whether he was kneeling, or sitting, or lying
+down. And so it had come to pass with Tom, as with all who will not
+confess their Lord before men; and for the last year he had probably not
+said his prayers in earnest a dozen times.
+
+Poor Tom! the first and bitterest feeling which was like to break his
+heart was the sense of his own cowardice. The vice of all others which
+he loathed was brought in and burnt in on his own soul. He had lied to
+his mother, to his conscience, to his God. How could he bear it? And
+then the poor little weak boy, whom he had pitied and almost scorned for
+his weakness, had done that which he, braggart as he was, dared not do.
+The first dawn of comfort came to him in swearing to himself that he
+would stand by that boy through thick and thin, and cheer him, and help
+him, and bear his burdens for the good deed done that night. Then he
+resolved to write home next day and tell his mother all, and what a
+coward her son had been. And then peace came to him as he resolved,
+lastly, to bear his testimony next morning. The morning would be harder
+than the night to begin with, but he felt that he could not afford to
+let one chance slip. Several times he faltered, for the devil showed him
+first all his old friends calling him “Saint” and “Square-toes,” and
+a dozen hard names, and whispered to him that his motives would be
+misunderstood, and he would only be left alone with the new boy; whereas
+it was his duty to keep all means of influence, that he might do good to
+the largest number. And then came the more subtle temptation, “Shall I
+not be showing myself braver than others by doing this? Have I any right
+to begin it now? Ought I not rather to pray in my own study, letting
+other boys know that I do so, and trying to lead them to it, while in
+public at least I should go on as I have done?” However, his good angel
+was too strong that night, and he turned on his side and slept, tired of
+trying to reason, but resolved to follow the impulse which had been so
+strong, and in which he had found peace.
+
+Next morning he was up and washed and dressed, all but his jacket and
+waistcoat, just as the ten minutes' bell began to ring, and then in
+the face of the whole room knelt down to pray. Not five words could
+he say--the bell mocked him; he was listening for every whisper in
+the room--what were they all thinking of him? He was ashamed to go on
+kneeling, ashamed to rise from his knees. At last, as it were from his
+inmost heart, a still, small voice seemed to breathe forth the words of
+the publican, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” He repeated them over
+and over, clinging to them as for his life, and rose from his knees
+comforted and humbled, and ready to face the whole world. It was not
+needed: two other boys besides Arthur had already followed his example,
+and he went down to the great School with a glimmering of another lesson
+in his heart--the lesson that he who has conquered his own coward spirit
+has conquered the whole outward world; and that other one which the old
+prophet learnt in the cave in Mount Horeb, when he hid his face, and the
+still, small voice asked, “What doest thou here, Elijah?” that however
+we may fancy ourselves alone on the side of good, the King and Lord
+of men is nowhere without His witnesses; for in every society, however
+seemingly corrupt and godless, there are those who have not bowed the
+knee to Baal.
+
+He found, too, how greatly he had exaggerated the effect to be produced
+by his act. For a few nights there was a sneer or a laugh when he knelt
+down, but this passed off soon, and one by one all the other boys but
+three or four followed the lead. I fear that this was in some measure
+owing to the fact that Tom could probably have thrashed any boy in the
+room except the praepostor; at any rate, every boy knew that he would
+try upon very slight provocation, and didn't choose to run the risk of a
+hard fight because Tom Brown had taken a fancy to say his prayers. Some
+of the small boys of Number 4 communicated the new state of things to
+their chums, and in several other rooms the poor little fellows tried
+it on--in one instance or so, where the praepostor heard of it and
+interfered very decidedly, with partial success; but in the rest, after
+a short struggle, the confessors were bullied or laughed down, and the
+old state of things went on for some time longer. Before either Tom
+Brown or Arthur left the School-house, there was no room in which it had
+not become the regular custom. I trust it is so still, and that the old
+heathen state of things has gone out for ever.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--THE NEW BOY.
+
+     “And Heaven's rich instincts in him grew
+     As effortless as woodland nooks
+     Send violets up and paint them blue.”--LOWELL.
+
+I do not mean to recount all the little troubles and annoyances which
+thronged upon Tom at the beginning of this half-year, in his new
+character of bear-leader to a gentle little boy straight from home. He
+seemed to himself to have become a new boy again, without any of the
+long-suffering and meekness indispensable for supporting that character
+with moderate success. From morning till night he had the feeling of
+responsibility on his mind, and even if he left Arthur in their study
+or in the close for an hour, was never at ease till he had him in sight
+again. He waited for him at the doors of the school after every lesson
+and every calling-over; watched that no tricks were played him, and none
+but the regulation questions asked; kept his eye on his plate at dinner
+and breakfast, to see that no unfair depredations were made upon his
+viands; in short, as East remarked, cackled after him like a hen with
+one chick.
+
+Arthur took a long time thawing, too, which made it all the harder work;
+was sadly timid; scarcely ever spoke unless Tom spoke to him first; and,
+worst of all, would agree with him in everything--the hardest thing in
+the world for a Brown to bear. He got quite angry sometimes, as they
+sat together of a night in their study, at this provoking habit of
+agreement, and was on the point of breaking out a dozen times with a
+lecture upon the propriety of a fellow having a will of his own and
+speaking out, but managed to restrain himself by the thought that he
+might only frighten Arthur, and the remembrance of the lesson he had
+learnt from him on his first night at Number 4. Then he would resolve to
+sit still and not say a word till Arthur began; but he was always beat
+at that game, and had presently to begin talking in despair, fearing
+lest Arthur might think he was vexed at something if he didn't, and
+dog-tired of sitting tongue-tied.
+
+It was hard work. But Tom had taken it up, and meant to stick to it, and
+go through with it so as to satisfy himself; in which resolution he
+was much assisted by the chafing of East and his other old friends, who
+began to call him “dry-nurse,” and otherwise to break their small wit
+on him. But when they took other ground, as they did every now and then,
+Tom was sorely puzzled.
+
+“Tell you what, Tommy,” East would say; “you'll spoil young Hopeful with
+too much coddling. Why can't you let him go about by himself and find
+his own level? He'll never be worth a button if you go on keeping him
+under your skirts.”
+
+“Well, but he ain't fit to fight his own way yet; I'm trying to get him
+to it every day, but he's very odd. Poor little beggar! I can't make him
+out a bit. He ain't a bit like anything I've ever seen or heard of--he
+seems all over nerves; anything you say seems to hurt him like a cut or
+a blow.”
+
+“That sort of boy's no use here,” said East; “he'll only spoil. Now I'll
+tell you what to do, Tommy. Go and get a nice large band-box made, and
+put him in with plenty of cotton-wool and a pap-bottle, labelled 'With
+care--this side up,' and send him back to mamma.”
+
+“I think I shall make a hand of him though,” said Tom, smiling, “say
+what you will. There's something about him, every now and then, which
+shows me he's got pluck somewhere in him. That's the only thing after
+all that'll wash, ain't it, old Scud? But how to get at it and bring it
+out?”
+
+Tom took one hand out of his breeches-pocket and stuck it in his back
+hair for a scratch, giving his hat a tilt over his nose, his one method
+of invoking wisdom. He stared at the ground with a ludicrously puzzled
+look, and presently looked up and met East's eyes. That young gentleman
+slapped him on the back, and then put his arm round his shoulder, as
+they strolled through the quadrangle together. “Tom,” said he, “blest if
+you ain't the best old fellow ever was. I do like to see you go into a
+thing. Hang it, I wish I could take things as you do; but I never
+can get higher than a joke. Everything's a joke. If I was going to be
+flogged next minute, I should be in a blue funk, but I couldn't help
+laughing at it for the life of me.”
+
+“Brown and East, you go and fag for Jones on the great fives court.”
+
+“Hullo, though, that's past a joke,” broke out East, springing at
+the young gentleman who addressed them, and catching him by the
+collar.--“Here, Tommy, catch hold of him t'other side before he can
+holla.”
+
+The youth was seized, and dragged, struggling, out of the quadrangle
+into the School-house hall. He was one of the miserable little pretty
+white-handed, curly-headed boys, petted and pampered by some of the big
+fellows, who wrote their verses for them, taught them to drink and use
+bad language, and did all they could to spoil them for everything *
+in this world and the next. One of the avocations in which these young
+gentlemen took particular delight was in going about and getting fags
+for their protectors, when those heroes were playing any game. They
+carried about pencil and paper with them, putting down the names of all
+the boys they sent, always sending five times as many as were wanted,
+and getting all those thrashed who didn't go. The present youth belonged
+to a house which was very jealous of the School-house, and always picked
+out School-house fags when he could find them. However, this time he'd
+got the wrong sow by the ear. His captors slammed the great door of the
+hall, and East put his back against it, while Tom gave the prisoner a
+shake up, took away his list, and stood him up on the floor, while he
+proceeded leisurely to examine that document.
+
+     * A kind and wise critic, an old Rugboean, notes here in the
+     margin: “The small friend system was not so utterly bad from
+     1841-1847.” Before that, too, there were many noble
+     friendships between big and little boys; but I can't strike
+     out the passage. Many boys will know why it is left in.
+
+“Let me out, let me go!” screamed the boy, in a furious passion. “I'll
+go and tell Jones this minute, and he'll give you both the --- thrashing
+you ever had.”
+
+“Pretty little dear,” said East, patting the top of his hat.--“Hark how
+he swears, Tom. Nicely brought up young man, ain't he, I don't think.”
+
+“Let me alone, --- you,” roared the boy, foaming with rage, and kicking
+at East, who quietly tripped him up, and deposited him on the floor in a
+place of safety.
+
+“Gently, young fellow,” said he; “'tain't improving for little
+whippersnappers like you to be indulging in blasphemy; so you stop that,
+or you'll get something you won't like.”
+
+“I'll have you both licked when I get out, that I will,” rejoined the
+boy, beginning to snivel.
+
+“Two can play at that game, mind you,” said Tom, who had finished his
+examination of the list. “Now you just listen here. We've just come
+across the fives court, and Jones has four fags there already--two
+more than he wants. If he'd wanted us to change, he'd have stopped us
+himself. And here, you little blackguard, you've got seven names down on
+your list besides ours, and five of them School-house.” Tom walked up to
+him, and jerked him on to his legs; he was by this time whining like a
+whipped puppy. “Now just listen to me. We ain't going to fag for
+Jones. If you tell him you've sent us, we'll each of us give you such
+a thrashing as you'll remember.” And Tom tore up the list and threw the
+pieces into the fire.
+
+“And mind you, too,” said East, “don't let me catch you again sneaking
+about the School-house, and picking up our fags. You haven't got the
+sort of hide to take a sound licking kindly.” And he opened the door and
+sent the young gentleman flying into the quadrangle with a parting kick.
+
+“Nice boy, Tommy,” said East, shoving his hands in his pockets, and
+strolling to the fire.
+
+“Worst sort we breed,” responded Tom, following his example. “Thank
+goodness, no big fellow ever took to petting me.”
+
+“You'd never have been like that,” said East. “I should like to have put
+him in a museum: Christian young gentleman, nineteenth century, highly
+educated. Stir him up with a long pole, Jack, and hear him swear like a
+drunken sailor. He'd make a respectable public open its eyes, I think.”
+
+“Think he'll tell Jones?” said Tom.
+
+“No,” said East. “Don't care if he does.”
+
+“Nor I,” said Tom. And they went back to talk about Arthur.
+
+The young gentleman had brains enough not to tell Jones, reasoning
+that East and Brown, who were noted as some of the toughest fags in
+the School, wouldn't care three straws for any licking Jones might give
+them, and would be likely to keep their words as to passing it on with
+interest.
+
+After the above conversation, East came a good deal to their study, and
+took notice of Arthur, and soon allowed to Tom that he was a thorough
+little gentleman, and would get over his shyness all in good time; which
+much comforted our hero. He felt every day, too, the value of having an
+object in his life--something that drew him out of himself; and it being
+the dull time of the year, and no games going about for which he much
+cared, was happier than he had ever yet been at school, which was saying
+a great deal.
+
+The time which Tom allowed himself away from his charge was from
+locking-up till supper-time. During this hour or hour and a half he used
+to take his fling, going round to the studies of all his acquaintance,
+sparring or gossiping in the hall, now jumping the old iron-bound
+tables, or carving a bit of his name on them, then joining in some
+chorus of merry voices--in fact, blowing off his steam, as we should now
+call it.
+
+This process was so congenial to his temper, and Arthur showed himself
+so pleased at the arrangement, that it was several weeks before Tom was
+ever in their study before supper. One evening, however, he rushed in to
+look for an old chisel, or some corks, or other article essential to his
+pursuit for the time being, and while rummaging about in the cupboards,
+looked up for a moment, and was caught at once by the figure of poor
+little Arthur. The boy was sitting with his elbows on the table, and
+his head leaning on his hands, and before him an open book, on which his
+tears were falling fast. Tom shut the door at once, and sat down on the
+sofa by Arthur, putting his arm round his neck.
+
+“Why, young un, what's the matter?” said he kindly; “you ain't unhappy,
+are you?”
+
+“Oh no, Brown,” said the little boy, looking up with the great tears in
+his eyes; “you are so kind to me, I'm very happy.”
+
+“Why don't you call me Tom? Lots of boys do that I don't like half so
+much as you. What are you reading, then? Hang it! you must come about
+with me, and not mope yourself.” And Tom cast down his eyes on the book,
+and saw it was the Bible. He was silent for a minute, and thought to
+himself, “Lesson Number 2, Tom Brown;” and then said gently, “I'm very
+glad to see this, Arthur, and ashamed that I don't read the Bible more
+myself. Do you read it every night before supper while I'm out?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, I wish you'd wait till afterwards, and then we'd read together.
+But, Arthur, why does it make you cry?”
+
+“Oh, it isn't that I'm unhappy. But at home, while my father was alive,
+we always read the lessons after tea; and I love to read them over now,
+and try to remember what he said about them. I can't remember all and I
+think I scarcely understand a great deal of what I do remember. But
+it all comes back to me so fresh that I can't help crying sometimes to
+think I shall never read them again with him.”
+
+Arthur had never spoken of his home before, and Tom hadn't encouraged
+him to do so, as his blundering schoolboy reasoning made him think that
+Arthur would be softened and less manly for thinking of home. But now
+he was fairly interested, and forgot all about chisels and bottled
+beer; while with very little encouragement Arthur launched into his home
+history, and the prayer-bell put them both out sadly when it rang to
+call them to the hall.
+
+From this time Arthur constantly spoke of his home, and above all, of
+his father, who had been dead about a year, and whose memory Tom soon
+got to love and reverence almost as much as his own son did.
+
+Arthur's father had been the clergyman of a parish in the Midland
+counties, which had risen into a large town during the war, and upon
+which the hard years which followed had fallen with fearful weight. The
+trade had been half ruined; and then came the old, sad story, of masters
+reducing their establishments, men turned off and wandering about,
+hungry and wan in body, and fierce in soul, from the thought of wives
+and children starving at home, and the last sticks of furniture going to
+the pawnshop; children taken from school, and lounging about the dirty
+streets and courts, too listless almost to play, and squalid in rags
+and misery; and then the fearful struggle between the employers and
+men--lowerings of wages, strikes, and the long course of oft-repeated
+crime, ending every now and then with a riot, a fire, and the county
+yeomanry. There is no need here to dwell upon such tales: the Englishman
+into whose soul they have not sunk deep is not worthy the name. You
+English boys, for whom this book is meant (God bless your bright faces
+and kind hearts!), will learn it all soon enough.
+
+Into such a parish and state of society Arthur's father had been thrown
+at the age of twenty-five--a young married parson, full of faith,
+hope, and love. He had battled with it like a man, and had lots of fine
+Utopian ideas about the perfectibility of mankind, glorious humanity,
+and such-like, knocked out of his head, and a real, wholesome Christian
+love for the poor, struggling, sinning men, of whom he felt himself one,
+and with and for whom he spent fortune, and strength, and life, driven
+into his heart. He had battled like a man, and gotten a man's reward--no
+silver tea-pots or salvers, with flowery inscriptions setting forth
+his virtues and the appreciation of a genteel parish; no fat living or
+stall, for which he never looked, and didn't care; no sighs and praises
+of comfortable dowagers and well-got-up young women, who worked him
+slippers, sugared his tea, and adored him as “a devoted man;” but a
+manly respect, wrung from the unwilling souls of men who fancied his
+order their natural enemies; the fear and hatred of every one who was
+false or unjust in the district, were he master or man; and the blessed
+sight of women and children daily becoming more human and more homely, a
+comfort to themselves and to their husbands and fathers.
+
+These things, of course, took time, and had to be fought for with toil
+and sweat of brain and heart, and with the life-blood poured out. All
+that, Arthur had laid his account to give, and took as a matter of
+course, neither pitying himself, nor looking on himself as a martyr,
+when he felt the wear and tear making him feel old before his time, and
+the stifling air of fever-dens telling on his health. His wife seconded
+him in everything. She had been rather fond of society, and much admired
+and run after before her marriage; and the London world to which she had
+belonged pitied poor Fanny Evelyn when she married the young clergyman,
+and went to settle in that smoky hole Turley; a very nest of Chartism
+and Atheism, in a part of the country which all the decent families had
+had to leave for years. However, somehow or other she didn't seem to
+care. If her husband's living had been amongst green fields and near
+pleasant neighbours she would have liked it better--that she never
+pretended to deny. But there they were. The air wasn't bad, after all;
+the people were very good sort of people--civil to you if you were civil
+to them, after the first brush; and they didn't expect to work miracles,
+and convert them all off-hand into model Christians. So he and she went
+quietly among the folk, talking to and treating them just as they would
+have done people of their own rank. They didn't feel that they were
+doing anything out of the common way, and so were perfectly natural,
+and had none of that condescension or consciousness of manner which so
+outrages the independent poor. And thus they gradually won respect and
+confidence; and after sixteen years he was looked up to by the whole
+neighbourhood as the just man, the man to whom masters and men could
+go in their strikes, and in all their quarrels and difficulties, and by
+whom the right and true word would be said without fear or favour. And
+the women had come round to take her advice, and go to her as a friend
+in all their troubles; while the children all worshipped the very ground
+she trod on.
+
+They had three children, two daughters and a son, little Arthur, who
+came between his sisters. He had been a very delicate boy from his
+childhood; they thought he had a tendency to consumption, and so he had
+been kept at home and taught by his father, who had made a companion of
+him, and from whom he had gained good scholarship, and a knowledge of
+and interest in many subjects which boys in general never come across
+till they are many years older.
+
+Just as he reached his thirteenth year, and his father had settled that
+he was strong enough to go to school, and, after much debating with
+himself, had resolved to send him there, a desperate typhus fever broke
+out in the town. Most of the other clergy, and almost all the doctors,
+ran away; the work fell with tenfold weight on those who stood to their
+work. Arthur and his wife both caught the fever, of which he died in a
+few days; and she recovered, having been able to nurse him to the end,
+and store up his last words. He was sensible to the last, and calm and
+happy, leaving his wife and children with fearless trust for a few years
+in the hands of the Lord and Friend who had lived and died for him, and
+for whom he, to the best of his power, had lived and died. His widow's
+mourning was deep and gentle. She was more affected by the request of
+the committee of a freethinking club, established in the town by some of
+the factory hands (which he had striven against with might and main, and
+nearly suppressed), that some of their number might be allowed to help
+bear the coffin, than by anything else. Two of them were chosen, who,
+with six other labouring men, his own fellow-workmen and friends, bore
+him to his grave--a man who had fought the Lord's fight even unto the
+death. The shops were closed and the factories shut that day in the
+parish, yet no master stopped the day's wages; but for many a year
+afterwards the townsfolk felt the want of that brave, hopeful, loving
+parson and his wife, who had lived to teach them mutual forbearance and
+helpfulness, and had almost at last given them a glimpse of what this
+old world would be if people would live for God and each other instead
+of for themselves.
+
+What has all this to do with our story? Well, my dear boys, let a fellow
+go on his own way, or you won't get anything out of him worth having.
+I must show you what sort of a man it was who had begotten and trained
+little Arthur, or else you won't believe in him, which I am resolved you
+shall do; and you won't see how he, the timid, weak boy, had points in
+him from which the bravest and strongest recoiled, and made his presence
+and example felt from the first on all sides, unconsciously to himself,
+and without the least attempt at proselytizing. The spirit of his father
+was in him, and the Friend to whom his father had left him did not
+neglect the trust.
+
+After supper that night, and almost nightly for years afterwards,
+Tom and Arthur, and by degrees East occasionally, and sometimes one,
+sometimes another, of their friends, read a chapter of the Bible
+together, and talked it over afterwards. Tom was at first utterly
+astonished, and almost shocked, at the sort of way in which Arthur read
+the book and talked about the men and women whose lives were there told.
+The first night they happened to fall on the chapters about the famine
+in Egypt, and Arthur began talking about Joseph as if he were a living
+statesman--just as he might have talked about Lord Grey and the Reform
+Bill, only that they were much more living realities to him. The book
+was to him, Tom saw, the most vivid and delightful history of real
+people, who might do right or wrong, just like any one who was walking
+about in Rugby--the Doctor, or the masters, or the sixth-form boys. But
+the astonishment soon passed off, the scales seemed to drop from his
+eyes, and the book became at once and for ever to him the great human
+and divine book, and the men and women, whom he had looked upon
+as something quite different from himself, became his friends and
+counsellors.
+
+For our purposes, however, the history of one night's reading will be
+sufficient, which must be told here, now we are on the subject, though
+it didn't happen till a year afterwards, and long after the events
+recorded in the next chapter of our story.
+
+Arthur, Tom, and East were together one night, and read the story of
+Naaman coming to Elisha to be cured of his leprosy. When the chapter was
+finished, Tom shut his Bible with a slap.
+
+“I can't stand that fellow Naaman,” said he, “after what he'd seen and
+felt, going back and bowing himself down in the house of Rimmon, because
+his effeminate scoundrel of a master did it. I wonder Elisha took the
+trouble to heal him. How he must have despised him!”
+
+“Yes; there you go off as usual, with a shell on your head,” struck
+in East, who always took the opposite side to Tom, half from love of
+argument, half from conviction. “How do you know he didn't think better
+of it? How do you know his master was a scoundrel? His letter don't look
+like it, and the book don't say so.”
+
+“I don't care,” rejoined Tom; “why did Naaman talk about bowing down,
+then, if he didn't mean to do it? He wasn't likely to get more in
+earnest when he got back to court, and away from the prophet.”
+
+“Well, but, Tom,” said Arthur, “look what Elisha says to him--'Go in
+peace.' He wouldn't have said that if Naaman had been in the wrong.”
+
+“I don't see that that means more than saying, 'You're not the man I
+took you for.'”
+
+“No, no; that won't do at all,” said East. “Read the words fairly, and
+take men as you find them. I like Naaman, and think he was a very fine
+fellow.”
+
+“I don't,” said Tom positively.
+
+“Well, I think East is right,” said Arthur; “I can't see but what it's
+right to do the best you can, though it mayn't be the best absolutely.
+Every man isn't born to be a martyr.”
+
+“Of course, of course,” said East; “but he's on one of his pet
+hobbies.--How often have I told you, Tom, that you must drive a nail
+where it'll go.”
+
+“And how often have I told you,” rejoined Tom, “that it'll always go
+where you want, if you only stick to it and hit hard enough. I hate
+half-measures and compromises.”
+
+“Yes, he's a whole-hog man, is Tom. Must have the whole animal-hair and
+teeth, claws and tail,” laughed East. “Sooner have no bread any day than
+half the loaf.”
+
+“I don't know;” said Arthur--“it's rather puzzling; but ain't most right
+things got by proper compromises--I mean where the principle isn't given
+up?”
+
+“That's just the point,” said Tom; “I don't object to a compromise,
+where you don't give up your principle.”
+
+“Not you,” said East laughingly.--“I know him of old, Arthur, and you'll
+find him out some day. There isn't such a reasonable fellow in the
+world, to hear him talk. He never wants anything but what's right
+and fair; only when you come to settle what's right and fair, it's
+everything that he wants, and nothing that you want. And that's his idea
+of a compromise. Give me the Brown compromise when I'm on his side.”
+
+“Now, Harry,” said Tom, “no more chaff. I'm serious. Look here. This is
+what makes my blood tingle.” And he turned over the pages of his Bible
+and read, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego answered and said to the
+king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this
+matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from
+the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O
+king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve
+thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.” He read
+the last verse twice, emphasizing the nots, and dwelling on them as if
+they gave him actual pleasure, and were hard to part with.
+
+They were silent a minute, and then Arthur said, “Yes, that's a glorious
+story, but it don't prove your point, Tom, I think. There are times when
+there is only one way, and that the highest, and then the men are found
+to stand in the breach.”
+
+“There's always a highest way, and it's always the right one,” said Tom.
+“How many times has the Doctor told us that in his sermons in the last
+year, I should like to know?”
+
+“Well, you ain't going to convince us--is he, Arthur? No Brown
+compromise to-night,” said East, looking at his watch. “But it's past
+eight, and we must go to first lesson. What a bore!”
+
+So they took down their books and fell to work; but Arthur didn't
+forget, and thought long and often over the conversation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--ARTHUR MAKES A FRIEND.
+
+     “Let Nature be your teacher:
+     Sweet is the lore which Nature brings.
+     Our meddling intellect
+     Misshapes the beauteous forms of things.
+     We murder to dissect.
+     Enough of Science and of Art:
+     Close up those barren leaves;
+     Come forth, and bring with you a heart
+     That watches and receives.”--WORDSWORTH.
+
+About six weeks after the beginning of the half, as Tom and Arthur were
+sitting one night before supper beginning their verses, Arthur suddenly
+stopped, and looked up, and said, “Tom, do you know anything of Martin?”
+
+“Yes,” said Tom, taking his hand out of his back hair, and delighted to
+throw his Gradus ad Parnassum on to the sofa; “I know him pretty well.
+He's a very good fellow, but as mad as a hatter. He's called Madman, you
+know. And never was such a fellow for getting all sorts of rum things
+about him. He tamed two snakes last half, and used to carry them about
+in his pocket; and I'll be bound he's got some hedgehogs and rats in his
+cupboard now, and no one knows what besides.”
+
+“I should like very much to know him,” said Arthur; “he was next to me
+in the form to-day, and he'd lost his book and looked over mine, and he
+seemed so kind and gentle that I liked him very much.”
+
+“Ah, poor old Madman, he's always losing his books,” said Tom, “and
+getting called up and floored because he hasn't got them.”
+
+“I like him all the better,” said Arthur.
+
+“Well, he's great fun, I can tell you,” said Tom, throwing himself back
+on the sofa, and chuckling at the remembrance. “We had such a game with
+him one day last half. He had been kicking up horrid stinks for some
+time in his study, till I suppose some fellow told Mary, and she told
+the Doctor. Anyhow, one day a little before dinner, when he came down
+from the library, the Doctor, instead of going home, came striding into
+the hall. East and I and five or six other fellows were at the fire, and
+preciously we stared, for he don't come in like that once a year, unless
+it is a wet day and there's a fight in the hall. 'East,' says he, 'just
+come and show me Martin's study.' 'Oh, here's a game,' whispered the
+rest of us; and we all cut upstairs after the Doctor, East leading. As
+we got into the New Row, which was hardly wide enough to hold the Doctor
+and his gown, click, click, click, we heard in the old Madman's den.
+Then that stopped all of a sudden, and the bolts went to like fun. The
+Madman knew East's step, and thought there was going to be a siege.
+
+“'It's the Doctor, Martin. He's here and wants to see you,' sings out
+East.
+
+“Then the bolts went back slowly, and the door opened, and there was
+the old Madman standing, looking precious scared--his jacket off, his
+shirt-sleeves up to his elbows, and his long skinny arms all covered
+with anchors and arrows and letters, tattooed in with gunpowder like a
+sailor-boy's, and a stink fit to knock you down coming out. 'Twas
+all the Doctor could do to stand his ground, and East and I, who were
+looking in under his arms, held our noses tight. The old magpie was
+standing on the window-sill, all his feathers drooping, and looking
+disgusted and half-poisoned.
+
+“'What can you be about, Martin?' says the Doctor. 'You really mustn't
+go on in this way; you're a nuisance to the whole passage.'
+
+“'Please, sir, I was only mixing up this powder; there isn't any harm
+in it. And the Madman seized nervously on his pestle and mortar, to
+show the Doctor the harmlessness of his pursuits, and went on
+pounding--click, click, click. He hadn't given six clicks before, puff!
+up went the whole into a great blaze, away went the pestle and mortar
+across the study, and back we tumbled into the passage. The magpie
+fluttered down into the court, swearing, and the Madman danced out,
+howling, with his fingers in his mouth. The Doctor caught hold of him,
+and called to us to fetch some water. 'There, you silly fellow,' said
+he, quite pleased, though, to find he wasn't much hurt, 'you see you
+don't know the least what you're doing with all these things; and now,
+mind, you must give up practising chemistry by yourself.' Then he took
+hold of his arm and looked at it, and I saw he had to bite his lip, and
+his eyes twinkled; but he said, quite grave, 'Here, you see, you've been
+making all these foolish marks on yourself, which you can never get out,
+and you'll be very sorry for it in a year or two. Now come down to the
+housekeeper's room, and let us see if you are hurt.' And away went
+the two, and we all stayed and had a regular turn-out of the den, till
+Martin came back with his hand bandaged and turned us out. However, I'll
+go and see what he's after, and tell him to come in after prayers to
+supper.” And away went Tom to find the boy in question, who dwelt in a
+little study by himself, in New Row.
+
+The aforesaid Martin, whom Arthur had taken such a fancy for, was one of
+those unfortunates who were at that time of day (and are, I fear, still)
+quite out of their places at a public school. If we knew how to use
+our boys, Martin would have been seized upon and educated as a natural
+philosopher. He had a passion for birds, beasts, and insects, and knew
+more of them and their habits than any one in Rugby--except perhaps the
+Doctor, who knew everything. He was also an experimental chemist on a
+small scale, and had made unto himself an electric machine, from which
+it was his greatest pleasure and glory to administer small shocks to any
+small boys who were rash enough to venture into his study. And this
+was by no means an adventure free from excitement; for besides the
+probability of a snake dropping on to your head or twining lovingly up
+your leg, or a rat getting into your breeches-pocket in search of food,
+there was the animal and chemical odour to be faced, which always hung
+about the den, and the chance of being blown up in some of the many
+experiments which Martin was always trying, with the most wondrous
+results in the shape of explosions and smells that mortal boy ever heard
+of. Of course, poor Martin, in consequence of his pursuits, had become
+an Ishmaelite in the house. In the first place, he half-poisoned all his
+neighbours, and they in turn were always on the lookout to pounce upon
+any of his numerous live-stock, and drive him frantic by enticing his
+pet old magpie out of his window into a neighbouring study, and making
+the disreputable old bird drunk on toast soaked in beer and sugar. Then
+Martin, for his sins, inhabited a study looking into a small court some
+ten feet across, the window of which was completely commanded by those
+of the studies opposite in the Sick-room Row, these latter being at
+a slightly higher elevation. East, and another boy of an equally
+tormenting and ingenious turn of mind, now lived exactly opposite, and
+had expended huge pains and time in the preparation of instruments of
+annoyance for the behoof of Martin and his live colony. One morning
+an old basket made its appearance, suspended by a short cord outside
+Martin's window, in which were deposited an amateur nest containing four
+young hungry jackdaws, the pride and glory of Martin's life, for the
+time being, and which he was currently asserted to have hatched upon
+his own person. Early in the morning and late at night he was to be
+seen half out of window, administering to the varied wants of his callow
+brood. After deep cogitation, East and his chum had spliced a knife on
+to the end of a fishing-rod; and having watched Martin out, had, after
+half an hour's severe sawing, cut the string by which the basket
+was suspended, and tumbled it on to the pavement below, with hideous
+remonstrance from the occupants. Poor Martin, returning from his short
+absence, collected the fragments and replaced his brood (except one
+whose neck had been broken in the descent) in their old location,
+suspending them this time by string and wire twisted together, defiant
+of any sharp instrument which his persecutors could command. But, like
+the Russian engineers at Sebastopol, East and his chum had an answer for
+every move of the adversary, and the next day had mounted a gun in the
+shape of a pea-shooter upon the ledge of their window, trained so as to
+bear exactly upon the spot which Martin had to occupy while tending his
+nurslings. The moment he began to feed they began to shoot. In vain did
+the enemy himself invest in a pea-shooter, and endeavour to answer the
+fire while he fed the young birds with his other hand; his attention was
+divided, and his shots flew wild, while every one of theirs told on his
+face and hands, and drove him into howlings and imprecations. He
+had been driven to ensconce the nest in a corner of his already
+too-well-filled den.
+
+His door was barricaded by a set of ingenious bolts of his own
+invention, for the sieges were frequent by the neighbours when any
+unusually ambrosial odour spread itself from the den to the neighbouring
+studies. The door panels were in a normal state of smash, but the frame
+of the door resisted all besiegers, and behind it the owner carried on
+his varied pursuits--much in the same state of mind, I should fancy,
+as a border-farmer lived in, in the days of the moss-troopers, when his
+hold might be summoned or his cattle carried off at any minute of night
+or day.
+
+“Open, Martin, old boy; it's only I, Tom Brown.”
+
+“Oh, very well; stop a moment.” One bolt went back. “You're sure East
+isn't there?”
+
+“No, no; hang it, open.” Tom gave a kick, the other bolt creaked, and he
+entered the den.
+
+Den indeed it was--about five feet six inches long by five wide, and
+seven feet high. About six tattered school-books, and a few chemical
+books, Taxidermy, Stanley on Birds, and an odd volume of Bewick, the
+latter in much better preservation, occupied the top shelves. The other
+shelves, where they had not been cut away and used by the owner for
+other purposes, were fitted up for the abiding-places of birds, beasts,
+and reptiles. There was no attempt at carpet or curtain. The table was
+entirely occupied by the great work of Martin, the electric machine,
+which was covered carefully with the remains of his table-cloth. The
+jackdaw cage occupied one wall; and the other was adorned by a small
+hatchet, a pair of climbing irons, and his tin candle-box, in which he
+was for the time being endeavouring to raise a hopeful young family of
+field-mice. As nothing should be let to lie useless, it was well that
+the candle-box was thus occupied, for candles Martin never had. A pound
+was issued to him weekly, as to the other boys; but as candles were
+available capital, and easily exchangeable for birds' eggs or young
+birds, Martin's pound invariably found its way in a few hours to
+Howlett's the bird-fancier's, in the Bilton road, who would give a
+hawk's or nightingale's egg or young linnet in exchange. Martin's
+ingenuity was therefore for ever on the rack to supply himself with
+a light. Just now he had hit upon a grand invention, and the den was
+lighted by a flaring cotton wick issuing from a ginger-beer bottle full
+of some doleful composition. When light altogether failed him, Martin
+would loaf about by the fires in the passages or hall, after the manner
+of Diggs, and try to do his verses or learn his lines by the firelight.
+
+“Well, old boy, you haven't got any sweeter in the den this half. How
+that stuff in the bottle stinks! Never mind; I ain't going to stop; but
+you come up after prayers to our study. You know young Arthur. We've got
+Gray's study. We'll have a good supper and talk about bird-nesting.”
+
+Martin was evidently highly pleased at the invitation, and promised to
+be up without fail.
+
+As soon as prayers were over, and the sixth and fifth form boys had
+withdrawn to the aristocratic seclusion of their own room, and the rest,
+or democracy, had sat down to their supper in the hall, Tom and Arthur,
+having secured their allowances of bread and cheese, started on their
+feet to catch the eye of the praepostor of the week, who remained in
+charge during supper, walking up and down the hall. He happened to be an
+easy-going fellow, so they got a pleasant nod to their “Please may I go
+out?” and away they scrambled to prepare for Martin a sumptuous banquet.
+This Tom had insisted on, for he was in great delight on the occasion,
+the reason of which delight must be expounded. The fact was that this
+was the first attempt at a friendship of his own which Arthur had made,
+and Tom hailed it as a grand step. The ease with which he himself became
+hail-fellow-well-met with anybody, and blundered into and out of twenty
+friendships a half-year, made him sometimes sorry and sometimes angry at
+Arthur's reserve and loneliness. True, Arthur was always pleasant, and
+even jolly, with any boys who came with Tom to their study; but Tom felt
+that it was only through him, as it were, that his chum associated
+with others, and that but for him Arthur would have been dwelling in
+a wilderness. This increased his consciousness of responsibility;
+and though he hadn't reasoned it out and made it clear to himself yet
+somehow he knew that this responsibility, this trust which he had taken
+on him without thinking about it, head over heels in fact, was the
+centre and turning-point of his school-life, that which was to make him
+or mar him, his appointed work and trial for the time being. And Tom
+was becoming a new boy, though with frequent tumbles in the dirt and
+perpetual hard battle with himself, and was daily growing in manfulness
+and thoughtfulness, as every high-couraged and well-principled boy must,
+when he finds himself for the first time consciously at grips with self
+and the devil. Already he could turn almost without a sigh from the
+School-gates, from which had just scampered off East and three or four
+others of his own particular set, bound for some jolly lark not quite
+according to law, and involving probably a row with louts, keepers,
+or farm-labourers, the skipping dinner or calling-over, some of Phoebe
+Jennings's beer, and a very possible flogging at the end of all as a
+relish. He had quite got over the stage in which he would grumble to
+himself--“Well, hang it, it's very hard of the Doctor to have saddled me
+with Arthur. Why couldn't he have chummed him with Fogey, or Thomkin, or
+any of the fellows who never do anything but walk round the close, and
+finish their copies the first day they're set?” But although all this
+was past, he longed, and felt that he was right in longing, for more
+time for the legitimate pastimes of cricket, fives, bathing, and
+fishing, within bounds, in which Arthur could not yet be his companion;
+and he felt that when the “young un” (as he now generally called him)
+had found a pursuit and some other friend for himself, he should be
+able to give more time to the education of his own body with a clear
+conscience.
+
+And now what he so wished for had come to pass; he almost hailed it as
+a special providence (as indeed it was, but not for the reasons he
+gave for it--what providences are?) that Arthur should have singled out
+Martin of all fellows for a friend. “The old Madman is the very fellow,”
+ thought he; “he will take him scrambling over half the country after
+birds' eggs and flowers, make him run and swim and climb like an Indian,
+and not teach him a word of anything bad, or keep him from his lessons.
+What luck!” And so, with more than his usual heartiness, he dived into
+his cupboard, and hauled out an old knuckle-bone of ham, and two or
+three bottles of beer, together with the solemn pewter only used on
+state occasions; while Arthur, equally elated at the easy accomplishment
+of his first act of volition in the joint establishment, produced from
+his side a bottle of pickles and a pot of jam, and cleared the table. In
+a minute or two the noise of the boys coming up from supper was heard,
+and Martin knocked and was admitted, bearing his bread and cheese; and
+the three fell to with hearty good-will upon the viands, talking faster
+than they ate, for all shyness disappeared in a moment before Tom's
+bottled-beer and hospitable ways. “Here's Arthur, a regular young
+town-mouse, with a natural taste for the woods, Martin, longing to break
+his neck climbing trees, and with a passion for young snakes.”
+
+“Well, I say,” sputtered out Martin eagerly, “will you come to-morrow,
+both of you, to Caldecott's Spinney then? for I know of a kestrel's
+nest, up a fir-tree. I can't get at it without help; and, Brown, you can
+climb against any one.”
+
+“Oh yes, do let us go,” said Arthur; “I never saw a hawk's nest nor a
+hawk's egg.”
+
+“You just come down to my study, then, and I'll show you five sorts,”
+ said Martin.
+
+“Ay, the old Madman has got the best collection in the house, out and
+out,” said Tom; and then Martin, warming with unaccustomed good cheer
+and the chance of a convert, launched out into a proposed bird-nesting
+campaign, betraying all manner of important secrets--a golden-crested
+wren's nest near Butlin's Mound, a moor-hen who was sitting on nine eggs
+in a pond down the Barby road, and a kingfisher's nest in a corner of
+the old canal above Brownsover Mill. He had heard, he said, that no
+one had ever got a kingfisher's nest out perfect, and that the British
+Museum, or the Government, or somebody, had offered 100 pounds to any
+one who could bring them a nest and eggs not damaged. In the middle of
+which astounding announcement, to which the others were listening with
+open ears, and already considering the application of the 100 pounds, a
+knock came to the door, and East's voice was heard craving admittance.
+
+“There's Harry,” said Tom; “we'll let him in. I'll keep him steady,
+Martin. I thought the old boy would smell out the supper.”
+
+The fact was, that Tom's heart had already smitten him for not asking
+his fidus Achates to the feast, although only an extempore affair; and
+though prudence and the desire to get Martin and Arthur together alone
+at first had overcome his scruples, he was now heartily glad to open the
+door, broach another bottle of beer, and hand over the old ham-knuckle
+to the searching of his old friend's pocket-knife.
+
+“Ah, you greedy vagabonds,” said East, with his mouth full, “I knew
+there was something going on when I saw you cut off out of hall so
+quick with your suppers. What a stunning tap, Tom! You are a wunner for
+bottling the swipes.”
+
+“I've had practice enough for the sixth in my time, and it's hard if I
+haven't picked up a wrinkle or two for my own benefit.”
+
+“Well, old Madman, and how goes the bird-nesting campaign? How's
+Howlett? I expect the young rooks'll be out in another fortnight, and
+then my turn comes.”
+
+“There'll be no young rooks fit for pies for a month yet; shows how much
+you know about it,” rejoined Martin, who, though very good friends with
+East, regarded him with considerable suspicion for his propensity to
+practical jokes.
+
+“Scud knows nothing and cares for nothing but grub and mischief,” said
+Tom; “but young rook pie, specially when you've had to climb for them,
+is very pretty eating.--However, I say, Scud, we're all going after a
+hawk's nest to-morrow, in Caldecott's Spinney; and if you'll come and
+behave yourself, we'll have a stunning climb.”
+
+“And a bathe in Aganippe. Hooray! I'm your man.”
+
+“No, no; no bathing in Aganippe; that's where our betters go.”
+
+“Well, well, never mind. I'm for the hawk's nest, and anything that
+turns up.”
+
+And the bottled-beer being finished, and his hunger appeased, East
+departed to his study, “that sneak Jones,” as he informed them, who had
+just got into the sixth, and occupied the next study, having instituted
+a nightly visitation upon East and his chum, to their no small
+discomfort.
+
+When he was gone Martin rose to follow, but Tom stopped him. “No one
+goes near New Row,” said he, “so you may just as well stop here and do
+your verses, and then we'll have some more talk. We'll be no end quiet.
+Besides, no praepostor comes here now. We haven't been visited once this
+half.”
+
+So the table was cleared, the cloth restored, and the three fell to work
+with Gradus and dictionary upon the morning's vulgus.
+
+They were three very fair examples of the way in which such tasks were
+done at Rugby, in the consulship of Plancus. And doubtless the method
+is little changed, for there is nothing new under the sun, especially at
+schools.
+
+Now be it known unto all you boys who are at schools which do not
+rejoice in the time-honoured institution of the vulgus (commonly
+supposed to have been established by William of Wykeham at Winchester,
+and imported to Rugby by Arnold more for the sake of the lines which
+were learnt by heart with it than for its own intrinsic value, as I've
+always understood), that it is a short exercise in Greek or Latin verse,
+on a given subject, the minimum number of lines being fixed for each
+form.
+
+The master of the form gave out at fourth lesson on the previous day the
+subject for next morning's vulgus, and at first lesson each boy had to
+bring his vulgus ready to be looked over; and with the vulgus, a
+certain number of lines from one of the Latin or Greek poets then being
+construed in the form had to be got by heart. The master at first lesson
+called up each boy in the form in order, and put him on in the lines.
+If he couldn't say them, or seem to say them, by reading them off the
+master's or some other boy's book who stood near, he was sent back,
+and went below all the boys who did so say or seem to say them; but
+in either case his vulgus was looked over by the master, who gave and
+entered in his book, to the credit or discredit of the boy, so many
+marks as the composition merited. At Rugby vulgus and lines were the
+first lesson every other day in the week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and
+Saturdays; and as there were thirty-eight weeks in the school year, it
+is obvious to the meanest capacity that the master of each form had
+to set one hundred and fourteen subjects every year, two hundred and
+twenty-eight every two years, and so on. Now, to persons of moderate
+invention this was a considerable task, and human nature being prone to
+repeat itself, it will not be wondered that the masters gave the same
+subjects sometimes over again after a certain lapse of time. To meet
+and rebuke this bad habit of the masters, the schoolboy mind, with its
+accustomed ingenuity, had invented an elaborate system of tradition.
+Almost every boy kept his own vulgus written out in a book, and these
+books were duly handed down from boy to boy, till (if the tradition has
+gone on till now) I suppose the popular boys, in whose hands bequeathed
+vulgus-books have accumulated, are prepared with three or four vulguses
+on any subject in heaven or earth, or in “more worlds than one,” which
+an unfortunate master can pitch upon. At any rate, such lucky fellows
+had generally one for themselves and one for a friend in my time. The
+only objection to the traditionary method of doing your vulguses was the
+risk that the successions might have become confused, and so that you
+and another follower of traditions should show up the same identical
+vulgus some fine morning; in which case, when it happened, considerable
+grief was the result. But when did such risk hinder boys or men from
+short cuts and pleasant paths?
+
+Now in the study that night Tom was the upholder of the traditionary
+method of vulgus doing. He carefully produced two large vulgus-books,
+and began diving into them, and picking out a line here, and an ending
+there (tags, as they were vulgarly called), till he had gotten all
+that he thought he could make fit. He then proceeded to patch his tags
+together with the help of his Gradus, producing an incongruous and
+feeble result of eight elegiac lines, the minimum quantity for his form,
+and finishing up with two highly moral lines extra, making ten in
+all, which he cribbed entire from one of his books, beginning “O genus
+humanum,” and which he himself must have used a dozen times before,
+whenever an unfortunate or wicked hero, of whatever nation or language
+under the sun, was the subject. Indeed he began to have great doubts
+whether the master wouldn't remember them, and so only throw them in as
+extra lines, because in any case they would call off attention from the
+other tags, and if detected, being extra lines, he wouldn't be sent back
+to do more in their place, while if they passed muster again he would
+get marks for them.
+
+The second method, pursued by Martin, may be called the dogged or
+prosaic method. He, no more than Tom, took any pleasure in the task,
+but having no old vulgus-books of his own, or any one's else, could
+not follow the traditionary method, for which too, as Tom remarked, he
+hadn't the genius. Martin then proceeded to write down eight lines in
+English, of the most matter-of-fact kind, the first that came into his
+head; and to convert these, line by line, by main force of Gradus and
+dictionary into Latin that would scan. This was all he cared for--to
+produce eight lines with no false quantities or concords: whether the
+words were apt, or what the sense was, mattered nothing; and as the
+article was all new, not a line beyond the minimum did the followers of
+the dogged method ever produce.
+
+The third, or artistic method, was Arthur's. He considered first what
+point in the character or event which was the subject could most neatly
+be brought out within the limits of a vulgus, trying always to get his
+idea into the eight lines, but not binding himself to ten or even twelve
+lines if he couldn't do this. He then set to work as much as possible
+without Gradus or other help, to clothe his idea in appropriate Latin or
+Greek, and would not be satisfied till he had polished it well up with
+the aptest and most poetic words and phrases he could get at.
+
+A fourth method, indeed, was used in the school, but of too simple
+a kind to require a comment. It may be called the vicarious method,
+obtained amongst big boys of lazy or bullying habits, and consisted
+simply in making clever boys whom they could thrash do their whole
+vulgus for them, and construe it to them afterwards; which latter is a
+method not to be encouraged, and which I strongly advise you all not
+to practise. Of the others, you will find the traditionary most
+troublesome, unless you can steal your vulguses whole (experto crede),
+and that the artistic method pays the best both in marks and other ways.
+
+The vulguses being finished by nine o'clock, and Martin having rejoiced
+above measure in the abundance of light, and of Gradus and dictionary,
+and other conveniences almost unknown to him for getting through the
+work, and having been pressed by Arthur to come and do his verses there
+whenever he liked, the three boys went down to Martin's den, and Arthur
+was initiated into the lore of birds' eggs, to his great delight.
+The exquisite colouring and forms astonished and charmed him, who had
+scarcely ever seen any but a hen's egg or an ostrich's, and by the time
+he was lugged away to bed he had learned the names of at least twenty
+sorts, and dreamed of the glorious perils of tree-climbing, and that he
+had found a roc's egg in the island as big as Sinbad's, and clouded like
+a tit-lark's, in blowing which Martin and he had nearly been drowned in
+the yolk.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--THE BIRD-FANCIERS.
+
+     “I have found out a gift for my fair--
+     I have found where the wood-pigeons breed;
+     But let me the plunder forbear,
+     She would say 'twas a barbarous deed.”--ROWE.
+
+     “And now, my lad, take them five shilling,
+     And on my advice in future think;
+     So Billy pouched them all so willing,
+     And got that night disguised in drink.”--MS. Ballad.
+
+The next morning, at first lesson, Tom was turned back in his lines,
+and so had to wait till the second round; while Martin and Arthur said
+theirs all right, and got out of school at once. When Tom got out and
+ran down to breakfast at Harrowell's they were missing, and Stumps
+informed him that they had swallowed down their breakfasts and gone off
+together--where, he couldn't say. Tom hurried over his own breakfast,
+and went first to Martin's study and then to his own; but no signs of
+the missing boys were to be found. He felt half angry and jealous of
+Martin. Where could they be gone?
+
+He learnt second lesson with East and the rest in no very good temper,
+and then went out into the quadrangle. About ten minutes before school
+Martin and Arthur arrived in the quadrangle breathless; and catching
+sight of him, Arthur rushed up, all excitement, and with a bright glow
+on his face.
+
+“O Tom, look here!” cried he, holding out three moor-hen's eggs; “we've
+been down the Barby road, to the pool Martin told us of last night, and
+just see what we've got.”
+
+Tom wouldn't be pleased, and only looked out for something to find fault
+with.
+
+“Why, young un,” said he, “what have you been after? You don't mean to
+say you've been wading?”
+
+The tone of reproach made poor little Arthur shrink up in a moment and
+look piteous; and Tom with a shrug of his shoulders turned his anger on
+Martin.
+
+“Well, I didn't think, Madman, that you'd have been such a muff as to
+let him be getting wet through at this time of day. You might have done
+the wading yourself.”
+
+“So I did, of course; only he would come in too, to see the nest. We
+left six eggs in. They'll be hatched in a day or two.”
+
+“Hang the eggs!” said Tom; “a fellow can't turn his back for a moment
+but all his work's undone. He'll be laid up for a week for this precious
+lark, I'll be bound.”
+
+“Indeed, Tom, now,” pleaded Arthur, “my feet ain't wet, for Martin made
+me take off my shoes and stockings and trousers.”
+
+“But they are wet, and dirty too; can't I see?” answered Tom; “and
+you'll be called up and floored when the master sees what a state you're
+in. You haven't looked at second lesson, you know.”
+
+O Tom, you old humbug! you to be upbraiding any one with not learning
+their lessons! If you hadn't been floored yourself now at first lesson,
+do you mean to say you wouldn't have been with them? And you've taken
+away all poor little Arthur's joy and pride in his first birds' eggs,
+and he goes and puts them down in the study, and takes down his books
+with a sigh, thinking he has done something horribly wrong, whereas he
+has learnt on in advance much more than will be done at second lesson.
+
+But the old Madman hasn't, and gets called up, and makes some frightful
+shots, losing about ten places, and all but getting floored. This
+somewhat appeases Tom's wrath, and by the end of the lesson he has
+regained his temper. And afterwards in their study he begins to get
+right again, as he watches Arthur's intense joy at seeing Martin blowing
+the eggs and gluing them carefully on to bits of cardboard, and notes
+the anxious, loving looks which the little fellow casts sidelong at him.
+And then he thinks, “What an ill-tempered beast I am! Here's just what I
+was wishing for last night come about, and I'm spoiling it all,” and in
+another five minutes has swallowed the last mouthful of his bile, and is
+repaid by seeing his little sensitive plant expand again and sun itself
+in his smiles.
+
+After dinner the Madman is busy with the preparations for their
+expedition, fitting new straps on to his climbing-irons, filling large
+pill-boxes with cotton-wool, and sharpening East's small axe. They carry
+all their munitions into calling-overs and directly afterwards, having
+dodged such praepostors as are on the lookout for fags at cricket, the
+four set off at a smart trot down the Lawford footpath, straight for
+Caldecott's Spinney and the hawk's nest.
+
+Martin leads the way in high feather; it is quite a new sensation to
+him, getting companions, and he finds it very pleasant, and means to
+show them all manner of proofs of his science and skill. Brown and East
+may be better at cricket and football and games, thinks he, but out in
+the fields and woods see if I can't teach them something. He has
+taken the leadership already, and strides away in front with his
+climbing-irons strapped under one arm, his pecking-bag under the other,
+and his pockets and hat full of pill-boxes, cotton-wool, and other
+etceteras. Each of the others carries a pecking-bag, and East his
+hatchet.
+
+When they had crossed three or four fields without a check, Arthur began
+to lag; and Tom seeing this shouted to Martin to pull up a bit. “We
+ain't out hare-and-hounds. What's the good of grinding on at this rate?”
+
+“There's the Spinney,” said Martin, pulling up on the brow of a slope
+at the bottom of which lay Lawford brook, and pointing to the top of the
+opposite slope; “the nest is in one of those high fir-trees at this end.
+And down by the brook there I know of a sedge-bird's nest. We'll go and
+look at it coming back.”
+
+“Oh, come on, don't let us stop,” said Arthur, who was getting excited
+at the sight of the wood. So they broke into a trot again, and were soon
+across the brook, up the slope, and into the Spinney. Here they advanced
+as noiselessly as possible, lest keepers or other enemies should be
+about, and stopped at the foot of a tall fir, at the top of which Martin
+pointed out with pride the kestrel's nest, the object of their quest.
+
+“Oh, where? which is it?” asks Arthur, gaping up in the air, and having
+the most vague idea of what it would be like.
+
+“There, don't you see?” said East, pointing to a lump of mistletoe in
+the next tree, which was a beech. He saw that Martin and Tom were busy
+with the climbing-irons, and couldn't resist the temptation of hoaxing.
+Arthur stared and wondered more than ever.
+
+“Well, how curious! It doesn't look a bit like what I expected,” said
+he.
+
+“Very odd birds, kestrels,” said East, looking waggishly at his victim,
+who was still star-gazing.
+
+“But I thought it was in a fir-tree?” objected Arthur.
+
+“Ah, don't you know? That's a new sort of fir which old Caldecott
+brought from the Himalayas.”
+
+“Really!” said Arthur; “I'm glad I know that. How unlike our firs they
+are! They do very well too here, don't they? The Spinney's full of
+them.”
+
+“What's that humbug he's telling you?” cried Tom, looking up, having
+caught the word Himalayas, and suspecting what East was after.
+
+“Only about this fir,” said Arthur, putting his hand on the stem of the
+beech.
+
+“Fir!” shouted Tom; “why, you don't mean to say, young un, you don't
+know a beech when you see one?”
+
+Poor little Arthur looked terribly ashamed, and East exploded in
+laughter which made the wood ring.
+
+“I've hardly ever seen any trees,” faltered Arthur.
+
+“What a shame to hoax him, Scud!” cried Martin.--“Never mind, Arthur;
+you shall know more about trees than he does in a week or two.”
+
+“And isn't that the kestrel's nest, then?” asked Arthur. “That! Why,
+that's a piece of mistletoe. There's the nest, that lump of sticks up
+this fir.”
+
+“Don't believe him, Arthur,” struck in the incorrigible East; “I just
+saw an old magpie go out of it.”
+
+Martin did not deign to reply to this sally, except by a grunt, as
+he buckled the last buckle of his climbing-irons, and Arthur looked
+reproachfully at East without speaking.
+
+But now came the tug of war. It was a very difficult tree to climb until
+the branches were reached, the first of which was some fourteen feet
+up, for the trunk was too large at the bottom to be swarmed; in fact,
+neither of the boys could reach more than half round it with their arms.
+Martin and Tom, both of whom had irons on, tried it without success at
+first; the fir bark broke away where they stuck the irons in as soon as
+they leant any weight on their feet, and the grip of their arms wasn't
+enough to keep them up; so, after getting up three or four feet, down
+they came slithering to the ground, barking their arms and faces. They
+were furious, and East sat by laughing and shouting at each failure,
+“Two to one on the old magpie!”
+
+“We must try a pyramid,” said Tom at last. “Now, Scud, you lazy rascal,
+stick yourself against the tree!”
+
+“I dare say! and have you standing on my shoulders with the irons on.
+What do you think my skin's made of?” However, up he got, and leant
+against the tree, putting his head down and clasping it with his arms as
+far as he could.
+
+“Now then, Madman,” said Tom, “you next.”
+
+“No, I'm lighter than you; you go next.” So Tom got on East's shoulders,
+and grasped the tree above, and then Martin scrambled up on to Tom's
+shoulders, amidst the totterings and groanings of the pyramid, and, with
+a spring which sent his supporters howling to the ground, clasped the
+stem some ten feet up, and remained clinging. For a moment or two they
+thought he couldn't get up; but then, holding on with arms and teeth, he
+worked first one iron then the other firmly into the bark, got another
+grip with his arms, and in another minute had hold of the lowest branch.
+
+“All up with the old magpie now,” said East; and after a minute's
+rest, up went Martin, hand over hand, watched by Arthur with fearful
+eagerness.
+
+“Isn't it very dangerous?” said he.
+
+“Not a bit,” answered Tom; “you can't hurt if you only get good
+hand-hold. Try every branch with a good pull before you trust it, and
+then up you go.”
+
+Martin was now amongst the small branches close to the nest, and
+away dashed the old bird, and soared up above the trees, watching the
+intruder.
+
+“All right--four eggs!” shouted he.
+
+“Take 'em all!” shouted East; “that'll be one a-piece.”
+
+“No, no; leave one, and then she won't care,” said Tom.
+
+We boys had an idea that birds couldn't count, and were quite content as
+long as you left one egg. I hope it is so.
+
+Martin carefully put one egg into each of his boxes and the third
+into his mouth, the only other place of safety, and came down like a
+lamplighter. All went well till he was within ten feet of the ground,
+when, as the trunk enlarged, his hold got less and less firm, and at
+last down he came with a run, tumbling on to his back on the turf,
+spluttering and spitting out the remains of the great egg, which had
+broken by the jar of his fall.
+
+“Ugh, ugh! something to drink--ugh! it was addled,” spluttered he, while
+the wood rang again with the merry laughter of East and Tom.
+
+Then they examined the prizes, gathered up their things, and went off to
+the brook, where Martin swallowed huge draughts of water to get rid
+of the taste; and they visited the sedge-bird's nest, and from thence
+struck across the country in high glee, beating the hedges and brakes as
+they went along; and Arthur at last, to his intense delight, was allowed
+to climb a small hedgerow oak for a magpie's nest with Tom, who kept all
+round him like a mother, and showed him where to hold and how to throw
+his weight; and though he was in a great fright, didn't show it, and was
+applauded by all for his lissomness.
+
+They crossed a road soon afterwards, and there, close to them, lay a
+great heap of charming pebbles.
+
+“Look here,” shouted East; “here's luck! I've been longing for some
+good, honest pecking this half-hour. Let's fill the bags, and have no
+more of this foozling bird-nesting.”
+
+No one objected, so each boy filled the fustian bag he carried full of
+stones. They crossed into the next field, Tom and East taking one side
+of the hedges, and the other two the other side. Noise enough they made
+certainly, but it was too early in the season for the young birds, and
+the old birds were too strong on the wing for our young marksmen,
+and flew out of shot after the first discharge. But it was great fun,
+rushing along the hedgerows, and discharging stone after stone at
+blackbirds and chaffinches, though no result in the shape of slaughtered
+birds was obtained; and Arthur soon entered into it, and rushed to head
+back the birds, and shouted, and threw, and tumbled into ditches, and
+over and through hedges, as wild as the Madman himself.
+
+Presently the party, in full cry after an old blackbird (who was
+evidently used to the thing and enjoyed the fun, for he would wait till
+they came close to him, and then fly on for forty yards or so, and, with
+an impudent flicker of his tail, dart into the depths of the quickset),
+came beating down a high double hedge, two on each side.
+
+“There he is again,” “Head him,” “Let drive,” “I had him there,” “Take
+care where you're throwing, Madman.” The shouts might have been heard a
+quarter of a mile off. They were heard some two hundred yards off by a
+farmer and two of his shepherds, who were doctoring sheep in a fold in
+the next field.
+
+Now, the farmer in question rented a house and yard situate at the end
+of the field in which the young bird-fanciers had arrived, which house
+and yard he didn't occupy or keep any one else in. Nevertheless, like
+a brainless and unreasoning Briton, he persisted in maintaining on the
+premises a large stock of cocks, hens, and other poultry. Of course,
+all sorts of depredators visited the place from time to time: foxes and
+gipsies wrought havoc in the night; while in the daytime, I regret
+to have to confess that visits from the Rugby boys, and consequent
+disappearances of ancient and respectable fowls were not unfrequent.
+Tom and East had during the period of their outlawry visited the farm in
+question for felonious purposes, and on one occasion had conquered and
+slain a duck there, and borne away the carcass triumphantly, hidden in
+their handkerchiefs. However, they were sickened of the practice by the
+trouble and anxiety which the wretched duck's body caused them. They
+carried it to Sally Harrowell's, in hopes of a good supper; but she,
+after examining it, made a long face, and refused to dress or have
+anything to do with it. Then they took it into their study, and began
+plucking it themselves; but what to do with the feathers, where to hide
+them?
+
+“Good gracious, Tom, what a lot of feathers a duck has!” groaned East,
+holding a bagful in his hand, and looking disconsolately at the carcass,
+not yet half plucked.
+
+“And I do think he's getting high, too, already,” said Tom, smelling at
+him cautiously, “so we must finish him up soon.”
+
+“Yes, all very well; but how are we to cook him? I'm sure I ain't going
+to try it on in the hall or passages; we can't afford to be roasting
+ducks about--our character's too bad.”
+
+“I wish we were rid of the brute,” said Tom, throwing him on the table
+in disgust. And after a day or two more it became clear that got rid of
+he must be; so they packed him and sealed him up in brown paper, and put
+him in the cupboard of an unoccupied study, where he was found in the
+holidays by the matron, a gruesome body.
+
+They had never been duck-hunting there since, but others had, and the
+bold yeoman was very sore on the subject, and bent on making an example
+of the first boys he could catch. So he and his shepherds crouched
+behind the hurdles, and watched the party, who were approaching all
+unconscious. Why should that old guinea-fowl be lying out in the
+hedge just at this particular moment of all the year? Who can say?
+Guinea-fowls always are; so are all other things, animals, and persons,
+requisite for getting one into scrapes--always ready when any mischief
+can come of them. At any rate, just under East's nose popped out the old
+guinea-hen, scuttling along and shrieking, “Come back, come back,”
+ at the top of her voice. Either of the other three might perhaps have
+withstood the temptation, but East first lets drive the stone he has in
+his hand at her, and then rushes to turn her into the hedge again. He
+succeeds, and then they are all at it for dear life, up and down the
+hedge in full cry, the “Come back, come back,” getting shriller and
+fainter every minute.
+
+Meantime, the farmer and his men steal over the hurdles and creep down
+the hedge towards the scene of action. They are almost within a stone's
+throw of Martin, who is pressing the unlucky chase hard, when Tom
+catches sight of them, and sings out, “Louts, 'ware louts, your side!
+Madman, look ahead!” and then catching hold of Arthur, hurries him away
+across the field towards Rugby as hard as they can tear. Had he been by
+himself, he would have stayed to see it out with the others, but now
+his heart sinks and all his pluck goes. The idea of being led up to the
+Doctor with Arthur for bagging fowls quite unmans and takes half the run
+out of him.
+
+However, no boys are more able to take care of themselves than East and
+Martin; they dodge the pursuers, slip through a gap, and come pelting
+after Tom and Arthur, whom they catch up in no time. The farmer and his
+men are making good running about a field behind. Tom wishes to himself
+that they had made off in any other direction, but now they are all in
+for it together, and must see it out.
+
+“You won't leave the young un, will you?” says he, as they haul poor
+little Arthur, already losing wind from the fright, through the next
+hedge. “Not we,” is the answer from both. The next hedge is a stiff
+one; the pursuers gain horribly on them, and they only just pull Arthur
+through, with two great rents in his trousers, as the foremost shepherd
+comes up on the other side. As they start into the next field, they are
+aware of two figures walking down the footpath in the middle of it, and
+recognize Holmes and Diggs taking a constitutional. Those good-natured
+fellows immediately shout, “On.” “Let's go to them and surrender,”
+ pants Tom. Agreed. And in another minute the four boys, to the great
+astonishment of those worthies, rush breathless up to Holmes and Diggs,
+who pull up to see what is the matter; and then the whole is explained
+by the appearance of the farmer and his men, who unite their forces and
+bear down on the knot of boys.
+
+There is no time to explain, and Tom's heart beats frightfully quick, as
+he ponders, “Will they stand by us?”
+
+The farmer makes a rush at East and collars him; and that young
+gentleman, with unusual discretion, instead of kicking his shins, looks
+appealingly at Holmes, and stands still.
+
+“Hullo there; not so fast,” says Holmes, who is bound to stand up for
+them till they are proved in the wrong. “Now what's all this about?”
+
+“I've got the young varmint at last, have I,” pants the farmer; “why,
+they've been a-skulking about my yard and stealing my fowls--that's
+where 'tis; and if I doan't have they flogged for it, every one on 'em,
+my name ain't Thompson.”
+
+Holmes looks grave and Diggs's face falls. They are quite ready to
+fight--no boys in the school more so; but they are praepostors, and
+understand their office, and can't uphold unrighteous causes.
+
+“I haven't been near his old barn this half,” cries East. “Nor I,” “Nor
+I,” chime in Tom and Martin.
+
+“Now, Willum, didn't you see 'em there last week?”
+
+“Ees, I seen 'em sure enough,” says Willum, grasping a prong he carried,
+and preparing for action.
+
+The boys deny stoutly, and Willum is driven to admit that “if it worn't
+they 'twas chaps as like 'em as two peas'n;” and “leastways he'll swear
+he see'd them two in the yard last Martinmas,” indicating East and Tom.
+
+Holmes has had time to meditate. “Now, sir,” says he to Willum, “you see
+you can't remember what you have seen, and I believe the boys.”
+
+“I doan't care,” blusters the farmer; “they was arter my fowls
+to-day--that's enough for I.--Willum, you catch hold o' t'other chap.
+They've been a-sneaking about this two hours, I tells 'ee,” shouted he,
+as Holmes stands between Martin and Willum, “and have druv a matter of a
+dozen young pullets pretty nigh to death.”
+
+“Oh, there's a whacker!” cried East; “we haven't been within a hundred
+yards of his barn; we haven't been up here above ten minutes, and we've
+seen nothing but a tough old guinea-hen, who ran like a greyhound.”
+
+“Indeed, that's all true, Holmes, upon my honour,” added Tom; “we
+weren't after his fowls; guinea-hen ran out of the hedge under our feet,
+and we've seen nothing else.”
+
+“Drat their talk. Thee catch hold o' t'other, Willum, and come along wi'
+un.”
+
+“Farmer Thompson,” said Holmes, warning off Willum and the prong with
+his stick, while Diggs faced the other shepherd, cracking his fingers
+like pistol-shots, “now listen to reason. The boys haven't been after
+your fowls, that's plain.”
+
+“Tells 'ee I see'd'em. Who be you, I should like to know?”
+
+“Never you mind, farmer,” answered Holmes. “And now I'll just tell you
+what it is: you ought to be ashamed of yourself for leaving all that
+poultry about, with no one to watch it, so near the School. You deserve
+to have it all stolen. So if you choose to come up to the Doctor with
+them, I shall go with you, and tell him what I think of it.”
+
+The farmer began to take Holmes for a master; besides, he wanted to get
+back to his flock. Corporal punishment was out of the question, the odds
+were too great; so he began to hint at paying for the damage. Arthur
+jumped at this, offering to pay anything, and the farmer immediately
+valued the guinea-hen at half a sovereign.
+
+“Half a sovereign!” cried East, now released from the farmer's grip;
+“well, that is a good one! The old hen ain't hurt a bit, and she's seven
+years old, I know, and as tough as whipcord; she couldn't lay another
+egg to save her life.”
+
+It was at last settled that they should pay the farmer two shillings,
+and his man one shilling; and so the matter ended, to the unspeakable
+relief of Tom, who hadn't been able to say a word, being sick at heart
+at the idea of what the Doctor would think of him; and now the whole
+party of boys marched off down the footpath towards Rugby. Holmes, who
+was one of the best boys in the School, began to improve the occasion.
+“Now, you youngsters,” said he, as he marched along in the middle of
+them, “mind this; you're very well out of this scrape. Don't you go near
+Thompson's barn again; do you hear?”
+
+Profuse promises from all, especially East.
+
+“Mind, I don't ask questions,” went on Mentor, “but I rather think some
+of you have been there before this after his chickens. Now, knocking
+over other people's chickens, and running off with them, is stealing.
+It's a nasty word, but that's the plain English of it. If the chickens
+were dead and lying in a shop, you wouldn't take them, I know that, any
+more than you would apples out of Griffith's basket; but there's no real
+difference between chickens running about and apples on a tree, and the
+same articles in a shop. I wish our morals were sounder in such matters.
+There's nothing so mischievous as these school distinctions, which
+jumble up right and wrong, and justify things in us for which poor boys
+would be sent to prison.” And good old Holmes delivered his soul on the
+walk home of many wise sayings, and, as the song says,
+
+     “Gee'd 'em a sight of good advice;”
+
+which same sermon sank into them all, more or less, and very penitent
+they were for several hours. But truth compels me to admit that East, at
+any rate, forgot it all in a week, but remembered the insult which had
+been put upon him by Farmer Thompson, and with the Tadpole and other
+hair-brained youngsters committed a raid on the barn soon afterwards,
+in which they were caught by the shepherds and severely handled, besides
+having to pay eight shillings--all the money they had in the world--to
+escape being taken up to the Doctor.
+
+Martin became a constant inmate in the joint study from this time, and
+Arthur took to him so kindly that Tom couldn't resist slight fits of
+jealousy, which, however, he managed to keep to himself. The kestrel's
+eggs had not been broken, strange to say, and formed the nucleus
+of Arthur's collection, at which Martin worked heart and soul, and
+introduced Arthur to Howlett the bird-fancier, and instructed him in
+the rudiments of the art of stuffing. In token of his gratitude, Arthur
+allowed Martin to tattoo a small anchor on one of his wrists; which
+decoration, however, he carefully concealed from Tom. Before the end of
+the half-year he had trained into a bold climber and good runner, and,
+as Martin had foretold, knew twice as much about trees, birds, flowers,
+and many other things, as our good-hearted and facetious young friend
+Harry East.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--THE FIGHT:
+
+     “Surgebat Macnevisius
+     Et mox jactabat ultro,
+     Pugnabo tua gratia
+     Feroci hoc Mactwoltro.”--Etonian.
+
+There is a certain sort of fellow--we who are used to studying boys all
+know him well enough--of whom you can predicate with almost positive
+certainty, after he has been a month at school, that he is sure to have
+a fight, and with almost equal certainty that he will have but one. Tom
+Brown was one of these; and as it is our well-weighed intention to give
+a full, true, and correct account of Tom's only single combat with a
+school-fellow in the manner of our old friend Bell's Life, let those
+young persons whose stomachs are not strong, or who think a good set-to
+with the weapons which God has given us all an uncivilized, unchristian,
+or ungentlemanly affair, just skip this chapter at once, for it won't be
+to their taste.
+
+It was not at all usual in those days for two School-house boys to
+have a fight. Of course there were exceptions, when some cross-grained,
+hard-headed fellow came up who would never be happy unless he was
+quarrelling with his nearest neighbours, or when there was some
+class-dispute, between the fifth form and the fags, for instance, which
+required blood-letting; and a champion was picked out on each side
+tacitly, who settled the matter by a good hearty mill. But, for the
+most part, the constant use of those surest keepers of the peace, the
+boxing-gloves, kept the School-house boys from fighting one another. Two
+or three nights in every week the gloves were brought out, either in the
+hall or fifth-form room; and every boy who was ever likely to fight at
+all knew all his neighbours' prowess perfectly well, and could tell to a
+nicety what chance he would have in a stand-up fight with any other
+boy in the house. But, of course, no such experience could be gotten as
+regarded boys in other houses; and as most of the other houses were more
+or less jealous of the School-house, collisions were frequent.
+
+After all, what would life be without fighting, I should like to know?
+From the cradle to the grave, fighting, rightly understood, is the
+business, the real highest, honestest business of every son of man.
+Every one who is worth his salt has his enemies, who must be beaten, be
+they evil thoughts and habits in himself, or spiritual wickednesses in
+high places, or Russians, or Border-ruffians, or Bill, Tom, or Harry,
+who will not let him live his life in quiet till he has thrashed them.
+
+It is no good for quakers, or any other body of men, to uplift their
+voices against fighting. Human nature is too strong for them, and they
+don't follow their own precepts. Every soul of them is doing his own
+piece of fighting, somehow and somewhere. The world might be a better
+world without fighting, for anything I know, but it wouldn't be our
+world; and therefore I am dead against crying peace when there is no
+peace, and isn't meant to be. I am as sorry as any man to see folk
+fighting the wrong people and the wrong things, but I'd a deal sooner
+see them doing that than that they should have no fight in them. So
+having recorded, and being about to record, my hero's fights of all
+sorts, with all sorts of enemies, I shall now proceed to give an account
+of his passage-at-arms with the only one of his school-fellows whom he
+ever had to encounter in this manner.
+
+It was drawing towards the close of Arthur's first half-year, and
+the May evenings were lengthening out. Locking-up was not till eight
+o'clock, and everybody was beginning to talk about what he would do in
+the holidays. The shell, in which form all our dramatis personae now
+are, were reading, amongst other things, the last book of Homer's
+“Iliad,” and had worked through it as far as the speeches of the women
+over Hector's body. It is a whole school-day, and four or five of the
+School-house boys (amongst whom are Arthur, Tom, and East) are preparing
+third lesson together. They have finished the regulation forty lines,
+and are for the most part getting very tired, notwithstanding
+the exquisite pathos of Helen's lamentation. And now several long
+four-syllabled words come together, and the boy with the dictionary
+strikes work.
+
+“I am not going to look out any more words,” says he; “we've done the
+quantity. Ten to one we shan't get so far. Let's go out into the close.”
+
+“Come along, boys,” cries East, always ready to leave “the grind,” as he
+called it; “our old coach is laid up, you know, and we shall have one of
+the new masters, who's sure to go slow and let us down easy.”
+
+So an adjournment to the close was carried nem. con., little Arthur not
+daring to uplift his voice; but, being deeply interested in what they
+were reading, stayed quietly behind, and learnt on for his own pleasure.
+
+As East had said, the regular master of the form was unwell, and they
+were to be heard by one of the new masters--quite a young man, who had
+only just left the university. Certainly it would be hard lines if,
+by dawdling as much as possible in coming in and taking their places,
+entering into long-winded explanations of what was the usual course of
+the regular master of the form, and others of the stock contrivances of
+boys for wasting time in school, they could not spin out the lesson so
+that he should not work them through more than the forty lines. As to
+which quantity there was a perpetual fight going on between the master
+and his form--the latter insisting, and enforcing by passive resistance,
+that it was the prescribed quantity of Homer for a shell lesson; the
+former, that there was no fixed quantity, but that they must always be
+ready to go on to fifty or sixty lines if there were time within the
+hour. However, notwithstanding all their efforts, the new master got on
+horribly quick. He seemed to have the bad taste to be really interested
+in the lesson, and to be trying to work them up into something like
+appreciation of it, giving them good, spirited English words, instead
+of the wretched bald stuff into which they rendered poor old Homer, and
+construing over each piece himself to them, after each boy, to show them
+how it should be done.
+
+Now the clock strikes the three-quarters; there is only a quarter of an
+hour more, but the forty lines are all but done. So the boys, one after
+another, who are called up, stick more and more, and make balder and
+ever more bald work of it. The poor young master is pretty near beat by
+this time, and feels ready to knock his head against the wall, or his
+fingers against somebody else's head. So he gives up altogether the
+lower and middle parts of the form, and looks round in despair at the
+boys on the top bench, to see if there is one out of whom he can strike
+a spark or two, and who will be too chivalrous to murder the most
+beautiful utterances of the most beautiful woman of the old world. His
+eye rests on Arthur, and he calls him up to finish construing Helen's
+speech. Whereupon all the other boys draw long breaths, and begin to
+stare about and take it easy. They are all safe: Arthur is the head of
+the form, and sure to be able to construe, and that will tide on safely
+till the hour strikes.
+
+Arthur proceeds to read out the passage in Greek before construing it,
+as the custom is. Tom, who isn't paying much attention, is suddenly
+caught by the falter in his voice as he reads the two lines--
+
+[greek text deleted]
+
+He looks up at Arthur. “Why, bless us,” thinks he, “what can be the
+matter with the young un? He's never going to get floored. He's sure
+to have learnt to the end.” Next moment he is reassured by the spirited
+tone in which Arthur begins construing, and betakes himself to drawing
+dogs' heads in his notebook, while the master, evidently enjoying the
+change, turns his back on the middle bench and stands before Arthur,
+beating a sort of time with his hand and foot, and saying; “Yes, yes,”
+ “Very well,” as Arthur goes on.
+
+But as he nears the fatal two lines, Tom catches that falter, and again
+looks up. He sees that there is something the matter; Arthur can hardly
+get on at all. What can it be?
+
+Suddenly at this point Arthur breaks down altogether, and fairly bursts
+out crying, and dashes the cuff of his jacket across his eyes, blushing
+up to the roots of his hair, and feeling as if he should like to go down
+suddenly through the floor. The whole form are taken aback; most of them
+stare stupidly at him, while those who are gifted with presence of mind
+find their places and look steadily at their books, in hopes of not
+catching the master's eye and getting called up in Arthur's place.
+
+The master looks puzzled for a moment, and then seeing, as the fact is,
+that the boy is really affected to tears by the most touching thing in
+Homer, perhaps in all profane poetry put together, steps up to him and
+lays his hand kindly on his shoulder, saying, “Never mind, my little
+man, you've construed very well. Stop a minute; there's no hurry.”
+
+Now, as luck would have it, there sat next above Tom on that day, in
+the middle bench of the form, a big boy, by name Williams, generally
+supposed to be the cock of the shell, therefore of all the school below
+the fifths. The small boys, who are great speculators on the prowess of
+their elders, used to hold forth to one another about Williams's great
+strength, and to discuss whether East or Brown would take a licking from
+him. He was called Slogger Williams, from the force with which it was
+supposed he could hit. In the main, he was a rough, goodnatured fellow
+enough, but very much alive to his own dignity. He reckoned himself
+the king of the form, and kept up his position with the strong hand,
+especially in the matter of forcing boys not to construe more than the
+legitimate forty lines. He had already grunted and grumbled to himself
+when Arthur went on reading beyond the forty lines; but now that he
+had broken down just in the middle of all the long words, the Slogger's
+wrath was fairly roused.
+
+“Sneaking little brute,” muttered he, regardless of prudence--“clapping
+on the water-works just in the hardest place; see if I don't punch his
+head after fourth lesson.”
+
+“Whose?” said Tom, to whom the remark seemed to be addressed.
+
+“Why, that little sneak, Arthur's,” replied Williams.
+
+“No, you shan't,” said Tom.
+
+“Hullo!” exclaimed Williams, looking at Tom with great surprise for a
+moment, and then giving him a sudden dig in the ribs with his elbow,
+which sent Tom's books flying on to the floor, and called the attention
+of the master, who turned suddenly round, and seeing the state of
+things, said,--
+
+“Williams, go down three places, and then go on.”
+
+The Slogger found his legs very slowly, and proceeded to go below Tom
+and two other boys with great disgust; and then, turning round and
+facing the master, said, “I haven't learnt any more, sir; our lesson is
+only forty lines.”
+
+“Is that so?” said the master, appealing generally to the top bench. No
+answer.
+
+“Who is the head boy of the form?” said he, waxing wroth.
+
+“Arthur, sir,” answered three or four boys, indicating our friend.
+
+“Oh, your name's Arthur. Well, now, what is the length of your regular
+lesson?”
+
+Arthur hesitated a moment, and then said, “We call it only forty lines,
+sir.”
+
+“How do you mean--you call it?”
+
+“Well, sir, Mr. Graham says we ain't to stop there when there's time to
+construe more.”
+
+“I understand,” said the master.--“Williams, go down three more places,
+and write me out the lesson in Greek and English. And now, Arthur,
+finish construing.”
+
+“Oh! would I be in Arthur's shoes after fourth lesson?” said the little
+boys to one another; but Arthur finished Helen's speech without any
+further catastrophe, and the clock struck four, which ended third
+lesson.
+
+Another hour was occupied in preparing and saying fourth lesson, during
+which Williams was bottling up his wrath; and when five struck, and the
+lessons for the day were over, he prepared to take summary vengeance on
+the innocent cause of his misfortune.
+
+Tom was detained in school a few minutes after the rest, and on coming
+out into the quadrangle, the first thing he saw was a small ring of
+boys, applauding Williams, who was holding Arthur by the collar.
+
+“There, you young sneak,” said he, giving Arthur a cuff on the head with
+his other hand; “what made you say that--”
+
+“Hullo!” said Tom, shouldering into the crowd; “you drop that, Williams;
+you shan't touch him.”
+
+“Who'll stop me?” said the Slogger, raising his hand again.
+
+“I,” said Tom; and suiting the action to the word he struck the arm
+which held Arthur's arm so sharply that the Slogger dropped it with a
+start, and turned the full current of his wrath on Tom.
+
+“Will you fight?”
+
+“Yes, of course.”
+
+“Huzza! There's going to be a fight between Slogger Williams and Tom
+Brown!”
+
+The news ran like wildfire about, and many boys who were on their way
+to tea at their several houses turned back, and sought the back of the
+chapel, where the fights come off.
+
+“Just run and tell East to come and back me,” said Tom to a small
+School-house boy, who was off like a rocket to Harrowell's, just
+stopping for a moment to poke his head into the School-house hall, where
+the lower boys were already at tea, and sing out, “Fight! Tom Brown and
+Slogger Williams.”
+
+Up start half the boys at once, leaving bread, eggs, butter, sprats,
+and all the rest to take care of themselves. The greater part of the
+remainder follow in a minute, after swallowing their tea, carrying their
+food in their hands to consume as they go. Three or four only remain,
+who steal the butter of the more impetuous, and make to themselves an
+unctuous feast.
+
+In another minute East and Martin tear through the quadrangle, carrying
+a sponge, and arrive at the scene of action just as the combatants are
+beginning to strip.
+
+Tom felt he had got his work cut out for him, as he stripped off his
+jacket, waistcoat, and braces. East tied his handkerchief round his
+waist, and rolled up his shirtsleeves for him. “Now, old boy, don't you
+open your mouth to say a word, or try to help yourself a bit--we'll do
+all that; you keep all your breath and strength for the Slogger.” Martin
+meanwhile folded the clothes, and put them under the chapel rails; and
+now Tom, with East to handle him, and Martin to give him a knee, steps
+out on the turf, and is ready for all that may come; and here is the
+Slogger too, all stripped, and thirsting for the fray.
+
+It doesn't look a fair match at first glance: Williams is nearly two
+inches taller, and probably a long year older than his opponent, and he
+is very strongly made about the arms and shoulders--“peels well,” as the
+little knot of big fifth-form boys, the amateurs, say, who stand outside
+the ring of little boys, looking complacently on, but taking no active
+part in the proceedings. But down below he is not so good by any
+means--no spring from the loins, and feeblish, not to say shipwrecky,
+about the knees. Tom, on the contrary, though not half so strong in the
+arms, is good all over, straight, hard, and springy, from neck to ankle,
+better perhaps in his legs than anywhere. Besides, you can see by the
+clear white of his eye, and fresh, bright look of his skin, that he is
+in tip-top training, able to do all he knows; while the Slogger looks
+rather sodden, as if he didn't take much exercise and ate too much
+tuck. The time-keeper is chosen, a large ring made, and the two stand
+up opposite one another for a moment, giving us time just to make our
+little observations.
+
+“If Tom'll only condescend to fight with his head and heels,” as East
+mutters to Martin, “we shall do.”
+
+But seemingly he won't, for there he goes in, making play with both
+hands. Hard all is the word; the two stand to one another like men;
+rally follows rally in quick succession, each fighting as if he thought
+to finish the whole thing out of hand. “Can't last at this rate,” say
+the knowing ones, while the partisans of each make the air ring
+with their shouts and counter-shouts of encouragement, approval, and
+defiance.
+
+“Take it easy, take it easy; keep away; let him come after you,”
+ implores East, as he wipes Tom's face after the first round with a wet
+sponge, while he sits back on Martin's knee, supported by the Madman's
+long arms which tremble a little from excitement.
+
+“Time's up,” calls the time-keeper.
+
+“There he goes again, hang it all!” growls East, as his man is at it
+again, as hard as ever. A very severe round follows, in which Tom gets
+out and out the worst of it, and is at last hit clean off his legs, and
+deposited on the grass by a right-hander from the Slogger.
+
+Loud shouts rise from the boys of Slogger's house, and the School-house
+are silent and vicious, ready to pick quarrels anywhere.
+
+“Two to one in half-crowns on the big un,” says Rattle, one of the
+amateurs, a tall fellow, in thunder-and-lightning waistcoat, and puffy,
+good-natured face.
+
+“Done!” says Groove, another amateur of quieter look, taking out his
+notebook to enter it, for our friend Rattle sometimes forgets these
+little things.
+
+Meantime East is freshening up Tom with the sponges for next round, and
+has set two other boys to rub his hands.
+
+“Tom, old boy,” whispers he, “this may be fun for you, but it's death to
+me. He'll hit all the fight out of you in another five minutes, and then
+I shall go and drown myself in the island ditch. Feint him; use your
+legs; draw him about. He'll lose his wind then in no time, and you can
+go into him. Hit at his body too; we'll take care of his frontispiece
+by-and-by.”
+
+Tom felt the wisdom of the counsel, and saw already that he couldn't go
+in and finish the Slogger off at mere hammer and tongs, so changed his
+tactics completely in the third round. He now fights cautiously, getting
+away from and parrying the Slogger's lunging hits, instead of trying
+to counter, and leading his enemy a dance all round the ring after
+him. “He's funking; go in, Williams,” “Catch him up,” “Finish him off,”
+ scream the small boys of the Slogger party.
+
+“Just what we want,” thinks East, chuckling to himself, as he sees
+Williams, excited by these shouts, and thinking the game in his own
+hands, blowing himself in his exertions to get to close quarters again,
+while Tom is keeping away with perfect ease.
+
+They quarter over the ground again and again, Tom always on the
+defensive.
+
+The Slogger pulls up at last for a moment, fairly blown.
+
+“Now, then, Tom,” sings out East, dancing with delight. Tom goes in in a
+twinkling, and hits two heavy body blows, and gets away again before the
+Slogger can catch his wind, which when he does he rushes with blind fury
+at Tom, and being skilfully parried and avoided, overreaches himself and
+falls on his face, amidst terrific cheers from the School-house boys.
+
+“Double your two to one?” says Groove to Rattle, notebook in hand.
+
+“Stop a bit,” says that hero, looking uncomfortably at Williams, who is
+puffing away on his second's knee, winded enough, but little the worse
+in any other way.
+
+After another round the Slogger too seems to see that he can't go in and
+win right off, and has met his match or thereabouts. So he too begins
+to use his head, and tries to make Tom lose his patience, and come in
+before his time. And so the fight sways on, now one and now the other
+getting a trifling pull.
+
+Tom's face begins to look very one-sided--there are little queer bumps
+on his forehead, and his mouth is bleeding; but East keeps the wet
+sponge going so scientifically that he comes up looking as fresh and
+bright as ever. Williams is only slightly marked in the face, but by
+the nervous movement of his elbows you can see that Tom's body blows are
+telling. In fact, half the vice of the Slogger's hitting is neutralized,
+for he daren't lunge out freely for fear of exposing his sides. It is
+too interesting by this time for much shouting, and the whole ring is
+very quiet.
+
+“All right, Tommy,” whispers East; “hold on's the horse that's to win.
+We've got the last. Keep your head, old boy.”
+
+But where is Arthur all this time? Words cannot paint the poor little
+fellow's distress. He couldn't muster courage to come up to the ring,
+but wandered up and down from the great fives court to the corner of the
+chapel rails, now trying to make up his mind to throw himself between
+them, and try to stop them; then thinking of running in and telling his
+friend Mary, who, he knew, would instantly report to the Doctor.
+The stories he had heard of men being killed in prize-fights rose up
+horribly before him.
+
+Once only, when the shouts of “Well done, Brown!” “Huzza for the
+School-house!” rose higher than ever, he ventured up to the ring,
+thinking the victory was won. Catching sight of Tom's face in the state
+I have described, all fear of consequences vanishing out of his mind;
+he rushed straight off to the matron's room, beseeching her to get the
+fight stopped, or he should die.
+
+But it's time for us to get back to the close. What is this fierce
+tumult and confusion? The ring is broken, and high and angry words are
+being bandied about. “It's all fair”--“It isn't”--“No hugging!” The
+fight is stopped. The combatants, however, sit there quietly, tended by
+their seconds, while their adherents wrangle in the middle. East can't
+help shouting challenges to two or three of the other side, though he
+never leaves Tom for a moment, and plies the sponges as fast as ever.
+
+The fact is, that at the end of the last round, Tom, seeing a good
+opening, had closed with his opponent, and after a moment's struggle,
+had thrown him heavily, by help of the fall he had learnt from his
+village rival in the Vale of White Horse. Williams hadn't the ghost of
+a chance with Tom at wrestling; and the conviction broke at once on
+the Slogger faction that if this were allowed their man must be licked.
+There was a strong feeling in the School against catching hold and
+throwing, though it was generally ruled all fair within limits; so the
+ring was broken and the fight stopped.
+
+The School-house are overruled--the fight is on again, but there is to
+be no throwing; and East, in high wrath, threatens to take his man away
+after next round (which he don't mean to do, by the way), when suddenly
+young Brooke comes through the small gate at the end of the chapel. The
+School-house faction rush to him. “Oh, hurrah! now we shall get fair
+play.”
+
+“Please, Brooke, come up. They won't let Tom Brown throw him.”
+
+“Throw whom?” says Brooke, coming up to the ring. “Oh! Williams, I see.
+Nonsense! Of course he may throw him, if he catches him fairly above the
+waist.”
+
+Now, young Brooke, you're in the sixth, you know, and you ought to stop
+all fights. He looks hard at both boys. “Anything wrong?” says he to
+East, nodding at Tom.
+
+“Not a bit.”
+
+“Not beat at all?”
+
+“Bless you, no! Heaps of fight in him.--Ain't there, Tom?”
+
+Tom looks at Brooke and grins.
+
+“How's he?” nodding at Williams.
+
+“So so; rather done, I think, since his last fall. He won't stand above
+two more.”
+
+“Time's up!” The boys rise again and face one another. Brooke can't find
+it in his heart to stop them just yet, so the round goes on, the Slogger
+waiting for Tom, and reserving all his strength to hit him out should
+he come in for the wrestling dodge again, for he feels that that must be
+stopped, or his sponge will soon go up in the air.
+
+And now another newcomer appears on the field, to wit, the under-porter,
+with his long brush and great wooden receptacle for dust under his arm.
+He has been sweeping out the schools.
+
+“You'd better stop, gentlemen,” he says; “the Doctor knows that Brown's
+fighting--he'll be out in a minute.”
+
+“You go to Bath, Bill,” is all that that excellent servitor gets by
+his advice; and being a man of his hands, and a stanch upholder of the
+School-house, can't help stopping to look on for a bit, and see Tom
+Brown, their pet craftsman, fight a round.
+
+It is grim earnest now, and no mistake. Both boys feel this, and summon
+every power of head, hand, and eye to their aid. A piece of luck on
+either side, a foot slipping, a blow getting well home, or another fall,
+may decide it. Tom works slowly round for an opening; he has all the
+legs, and can choose his own time. The Slogger waits for the attack,
+and hopes to finish it by some heavy right-handed blow. As they quarter
+slowly over the ground, the evening sun comes out from behind a cloud
+and falls full on Williams's face. Tom darts in; the heavy right hand
+is delivered, but only grazes his head. A short rally at close quarters,
+and they close; in another moment the Slogger is thrown again heavily
+for the third time.
+
+“I'll give you three or two on the little one in half-crowns,” said
+Groove to Rattle.
+
+“No, thank 'ee,” answers the other, diving his hands farther into his
+coat-tails.
+
+Just at this stage of the proceedings, the door of the turret which
+leads to the Doctor's library suddenly opens, and he steps into the
+close, and makes straight for the ring, in which Brown and the Slogger
+are both seated on their seconds' knees for the last time.
+
+“The Doctor! the Doctor!” shouts some small boy who catches sight of
+him, and the ring melts away in a few seconds, the small boys tearing
+off, Tom collaring his jacket and waistcoat, and slipping through the
+little gate by the chapel, and round the corner to Harrowell's with his
+backers, as lively as need be; Williams and his backers making off not
+quite so fast across the close; Groove, Rattle, and the other bigger
+fellows trying to combine dignity and prudence in a comical manner, and
+walking off fast enough, they hope, not to be recognized, and not fast
+enough to look like running away.
+
+Young Brooke alone remains on the ground by the time the Doctor gets
+there, and touches his hat, not without a slight inward qualm.
+
+“Hah! Brooke. I am surprised to see you here. Don't you know that I
+expect the sixth to stop fighting?”
+
+Brooke felt much more uncomfortable than he had expected, but he was
+rather a favourite with the Doctor for his openness and plainness of
+speech, so blurted out, as he walked by the Doctor's side, who had
+already turned back,--
+
+“Yes, sir, generally. But I thought you wished us to exercise a
+discretion in the matter too--not to interfere too soon.”
+
+“But they have been fighting this half-hour and more,” said the Doctor.
+
+“Yes, sir; but neither was hurt. And they're the sort of boys who'll be
+all the better friends now, which they wouldn't have been if they had
+been stopped, any earlier--before it was so equal.”
+
+“Who was fighting with Brown?” said the Doctor.
+
+“Williams, sir, of Thompson's. He is bigger than Brown, and had the best
+of it at first, but not when you came up, sir. There's a good deal of
+jealousy between our house and Thompson's, and there would have been
+more fights if this hadn't been let go on, or if either of them had had
+much the worst of it.”
+
+“Well but, Brooke,” said the Doctor, “doesn't this look a little as
+if you exercised your discretion by only stopping a fight when the
+School-house boy is getting the worst of it?”
+
+Brooke, it must be confessed, felt rather gravelled.
+
+“Now remember,” added the Doctor, as he stopped at the turret-door,
+“this fight is not to go on; you'll see to that. And I expect you to
+stop all fights in future at once.”
+
+“Very well, sir,” said young Brooke, touching his hat, and not sorry to
+see the turret-door close behind the Doctor's back.
+
+Meantime Tom and the stanchest of his adherents had reached Harrowell's,
+and Sally was bustling about to get them a late tea, while Stumps had
+been sent off to Tew, the butcher, to get a piece of raw beef for Tom's
+eye, which was to be healed off-hand, so that he might show well in the
+morning. He was not a bit the worse, except a slight difficulty in his
+vision, a singing in his ears, and a sprained thumb, which he kept in
+a cold-water bandage, while he drank lots of tea, and listened to the
+babel of voices talking and speculating of nothing but the fight, and
+how Williams would have given in after another fall (which he didn't in
+the least believe), and how on earth the Doctor could have got to know
+of it--such bad luck! He couldn't help thinking to himself that he was
+glad he hadn't won; he liked it better as it was, and felt very friendly
+to the Slogger. And then poor little Arthur crept in and sat down
+quietly near him, and kept looking at him and the raw beef with such
+plaintive looks that Tom at last burst out laughing.
+
+“Don't make such eyes, young un,” said he; “there's nothing the matter.”
+
+“Oh, but, Tom, are you much hurt? I can't bear thinking it was all for
+me.”
+
+“Not a bit of it; don't flatter yourself. We were sure to have had it
+out sooner or later.”
+
+“Well, but you won't go on, will you? You'll promise me you won't go
+on?”
+
+“Can't tell about that--all depends on the houses. We're in the hands
+of our countrymen, you know. Must fight for the School-house flag, if so
+be.”
+
+However, the lovers of the science were doomed to disappointment this
+time. Directly after locking-up, one of the night-fags knocked at Tom's
+door.
+
+“Brown, young Brooke wants you in the sixth-form room.”
+
+Up went Tom to the summons, and found the magnates sitting at their
+supper.
+
+“Well, Brown,” said young Brooke, nodding to him, “how do you feel?”
+
+“Oh, very well, thank you, only I've sprained my thumb, I think.”
+
+“Sure to do that in a fight. Well, you hadn't the worst of it, I could
+see. Where did you learn that throw?”
+
+“Down in the country when I was a boy.”
+
+“Hullo! why, what are you now? Well, never mind, you're a plucky fellow.
+Sit down and have some supper.”
+
+Tom obeyed, by no means loath. And the fifth-form boy next filled him a
+tumbler of bottled beer, and he ate and drank, listening to the pleasant
+talk, and wondering how soon he should be in the fifth, and one of that
+much-envied society.
+
+As he got up to leave, Brooke said, “You must shake hands to-morrow
+morning; I shall come and see that done after first lesson.”
+
+And so he did. And Tom and the Slogger shook hands with great
+satisfaction and mutual respect. And for the next year or two, whenever
+fights were being talked of, the small boys who had been present shook
+their heads wisely, saying, “Ah! but you should just have seen the fight
+between Slogger Williams and Tom Brown!”
+
+And now, boys all, three words before we quit the subject. I have put
+in this chapter on fighting of malice prepense, partly because I want to
+give you a true picture of what everyday school life was in my time, and
+not a kid-glove and go-to-meeting-coat picture, and partly because of
+the cant and twaddle that's talked of boxing and fighting with fists
+nowadays. Even Thackeray has given in to it; and only a few weeks ago
+there was some rampant stuff in the Times on the subject, in an article
+on field sports.
+
+Boys will quarrel, and when they quarrel will sometimes fight. Fighting
+with fists is the natural and English way for English boys to settle
+their quarrels. What substitute for it is there, or ever was there,
+amongst any nation under the sun? What would you like to see take its
+place?
+
+Learn to box, then, as you learn to play cricket and football. Not one
+of you will be the worse, but very much the better, for learning to box
+well. Should you never have to use it in earnest, there's no exercise
+in the world so good for the temper and for the muscles of the back and
+legs.
+
+As to fighting, keep out of it if you can, by all means. When the
+time comes, if it ever should, that you have to say “Yes” or “No” to
+a challenge to fight, say “No” if you can--only take care you make
+it clear to yourselves why you say “No.” It's a proof of the highest
+courage, if done from true Christian motives. It's quite right and
+justifiable, if done from a simple aversion to physical pain and danger.
+But don't say “No” because you fear a licking, and say or think it's
+because you fear God, for that's neither Christian nor honest. And if
+you do fight, fight it out; and don't give in while you can stand and
+see.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--FEVER IN THE SCHOOL.
+
+     “This our hope for all that's mortal
+     And we too shall burst the bond;
+     Death keeps watch beside the portal,
+     But 'tis life that dwells beyond.”
+      --JOHN STERLING.
+
+Two years have passed since the events recorded in the last chapter, and
+the end of the summer half-year is again drawing on. Martin has left and
+gone on a cruise in the South Pacific, in one of his uncle's ships; the
+old magpie, as disreputable as ever, his last bequest to Arthur, lives
+in the joint study. Arthur is nearly sixteen, and at the head of the
+twenty, having gone up the school at the rate of a form a half-year.
+East and Tom have been much more deliberate in their progress, and are
+only a little way up the fifth form. Great strapping boys they are,
+but still thorough boys, filling about the same place in the house that
+young Brooke filled when they were new boys, and much the same sort
+of fellows. Constant intercourse with Arthur has done much for both of
+them, especially for Tom; but much remains yet to be done, if they
+are to get all the good out of Rugby which is to be got there in these
+times. Arthur is still frail and delicate, with more spirit than body;
+but, thanks to his intimacy with them and Martin, has learned to swim,
+and run, and play cricket, and has never hurt himself by too much
+reading.
+
+One evening, as they were all sitting down to supper in the fifth-form
+room, some one started a report that a fever had broken out at one of
+the boarding-houses. “They say,” he added, “that Thompson is very ill,
+and that Dr. Robertson has been sent for from Northampton.”
+
+“Then we shall all be sent home,” cried another. “Hurrah! five weeks'
+extra holidays, and no fifth-form examination!”
+
+“I hope not,” said Tom; “there'll be no Marylebone match then at the end
+of the half.”
+
+Some thought one thing, some another, many didn't believe the report;
+but the next day, Tuesday, Dr. Robertson arrived, and stayed all day,
+and had long conferences with the Doctor.
+
+On Wednesday morning, after prayers, the Doctor addressed the whole
+school. There were several cases of fever in different houses, he said;
+but Dr. Robertson, after the most careful examination, had assured him
+that it was not infectious, and that if proper care were taken,
+there could be no reason for stopping the school-work at present. The
+examinations were just coming on, and it would be very unadvisable to
+break up now. However, any boys who chose to do so were at liberty to
+write home, and, if their parents wished it, to leave at once. He should
+send the whole school home if the fever spread.
+
+The next day Arthur sickened, but there was no other case. Before the
+end of the week thirty or forty boys had gone, but the rest stayed on.
+There was a general wish to please the Doctor, and a feeling that it was
+cowardly to run away.
+
+On the Saturday Thompson died, in the bright afternoon, while the
+cricket-match was going on as usual on the big-side ground. The Doctor,
+coming from his deathbed, passed along the gravel-walk at the side
+of the close, but no one knew what had happened till the next day. At
+morning lecture it began to be rumoured, and by afternoon chapel was
+known generally; and a feeling of seriousness and awe at the actual
+presence of death among them came over the whole school. In all the long
+years of his ministry the Doctor perhaps never spoke words which sank
+deeper than some of those in that day's sermon.
+
+“When I came yesterday from visiting all but the very death-bed of him
+who has been taken from us, and looked around upon all the familiar
+objects and scenes within our own ground, where your common amusements
+were going on with your common cheerfulness and activity, I felt there
+was nothing painful in witnessing that; it did not seem in any way
+shocking or out of tune with those feelings which the sight of a dying
+Christian must be supposed to awaken. The unsuitableness in point of
+natural feeling between scenes of mourning and scenes of liveliness did
+not at all present itself. But I did feel that if at that moment any of
+those faults had been brought before me which sometimes occur amongst
+us; had I heard that any of you had been guilty of falsehood, or of
+drunkenness, or of any other such sin; had I heard from any quarter the
+language of profaneness, or of unkindness, or of indecency; had I heard
+or seen any signs of that wretched folly which courts the laugh of
+fools by affecting not to dread evil and not to care for good, then the
+unsuitableness of any of these things with the scene I had just quitted
+would indeed have been most intensely painful. And why? Not because such
+things would really have been worse than at any other time, but because
+at such a moment the eyes are opened really to know good and evil,
+because we then feel what it is so to live as that death becomes an
+infinite blessing, and what it is so to live also that it were good for
+us if we had never been born.”
+
+Tom had gone into chapel in sickening anxiety about Arthur, but he came
+out cheered and strengthened by those grand words, and walked up alone
+to their study. And when he sat down and looked round, and saw Arthur's
+straw hat and cricket-jacket hanging on their pegs, and marked all his
+little neat arrangements, not one of which had been disturbed, the tears
+indeed rolled down his cheeks; but they were calm and blessed tears, and
+he repeated to himself, “Yes, Geordie's eyes are opened; he knows what
+it is so to live as that death becomes an infinite blessing. But do I? O
+God, can I bear to lose him?”
+
+The week passed mournfully away. No more boys sickened, but Arthur was
+reported worse each day, and his mother arrived early in the week. Tom
+made many appeals to be allowed to see him, and several times tried to
+get up to the sick-room; but the housekeeper was always in the way, and
+at last spoke to the Doctor, who kindly but peremptorily forbade him.
+
+Thompson was buried on the Tuesday, and the burial service, so soothing
+and grand always, but beyond all words solemn when read over a boy's
+grave to his companions, brought him much comfort, and many strange
+new thoughts and longings. He went back to his regular life, and played
+cricket and bathed as usual. It seemed to him that this was the right
+thing to do, and the new thoughts and longings became more brave and
+healthy for the effort. The crisis came on Saturday; the day week that
+Thompson had died; and during that long afternoon Tom sat in his study
+reading his Bible, and going every half-hour to the housekeeper's room,
+expecting each time to hear that the gentle and brave little spirit
+had gone home. But God had work for Arthur to do. The crisis passed:
+on Sunday evening he was declared out of danger; on Monday he sent a
+message to Tom that he was almost well, had changed his room, and was to
+be allowed to see him the next day.
+
+It was evening when the housekeeper summoned him to the sick-room.
+Arthur was lying on the sofa by the open window, through which the rays
+of the western sun stole gently, lighting up his white face and golden
+hair. Tom remembered a German picture of an angel which he knew; often
+had he thought how transparent and golden and spirit-like it was; and
+he shuddered, to think how like it Arthur looked, and felt a shock as if
+his blood had all stopped short, as he realized how near the other world
+his friend must have been to look like that. Never till that moment had
+he felt how his little chum had twined himself round his heart-strings,
+and as he stole gently across the room and knelt down, and put his arm
+round Arthur's head on the pillow, felt ashamed and half-angry at his
+own red and brown face, and the bounding sense of health and power which
+filled every fibre of his body, and made every movement of mere living a
+joy to him. He needn't have troubled himself: it was this very strength
+and power so different from his own which drew Arthur so to him.
+
+Arthur laid his thin, white hand, on which the blue veins stood out so
+plainly, on Tom's great brown fist, and smiled at him; and then looked
+out of the window again, as if he couldn't bear to lose a moment of the
+sunset, into the tops of the great feathery elms, round which the rooks
+were circling and clanging, returning in flocks from their evening's
+foraging parties. The elms rustled, the sparrows in the ivy just outside
+the window chirped and fluttered about, quarrelling, and making it up
+again; the rooks, young and old, talked in chorus, and the merry shouts
+of the boys and the sweet click of the cricket-bats came up cheerily
+from below.
+
+“Dear George,” said Tom, “I am so glad to be let up to see you at last.
+I've tried hard to come so often, but they wouldn't let me before.”
+
+“Oh, I know, Tom; Mary has told me every day about you, and how she was
+obliged to make the Doctor speak to you to keep you away. I'm very glad
+you didn't get up, for you might have caught it; and you couldn't stand
+being ill, with all the matches going on. And you're in the eleven, too,
+I hear. I'm so glad.”
+
+“Yes; ain't it jolly?” said Tom proudly. “I'm ninth too. I made forty at
+the last pie-match, and caught three fellows out. So I was put in
+above Jones and Tucker. Tucker's so savage, for he was head of the
+twenty-two.”
+
+“Well, I think you ought to be higher yet,” said Arthur, who was as
+jealous for the renown of Tom in games as Tom was for his as a scholar.
+
+“Never mind. I don't care about cricket or anything now you're getting
+well, Geordie; and I shouldn't have hurt, I know, if they'd have let me
+come up. Nothing hurts me. But you'll get about now directly, won't you?
+You won't believe how clean I've kept the study. All your things are
+just as you left them; and I feed the old magpie just when you used,
+though I have to come in from big-side for him, the old rip. He won't
+look pleased all I can do, and sticks his head first on one side and
+then on the other, and blinks at me before he'll begin to eat, till I'm
+half inclined to box his ears. And whenever East comes in, you should
+see him hop off to the window, dot and go one, though Harry wouldn't
+touch a feather of him now.”
+
+Arthur laughed. “Old Gravey has a good memory; he can't forget the
+sieges of poor Martin's den in old times.” He paused a moment, and then
+went on: “You can't think how often I've been thinking of old Martin
+since I've been ill. I suppose one's mind gets restless, and likes to
+wander off to strange, unknown places. I wonder what queer new pets the
+old boy has got. How he must be revelling in the thousand new birds,
+beasts, and fishes!”
+
+Tom felt a pang of jealousy, but kicked it out in a moment. “Fancy him
+on a South Sea island, with the Cherokees, or Patagonians, or some
+such wild niggers!” (Tom's ethnology and geography were faulty,
+but sufficient for his needs.) “They'll make the old Madman cock
+medicine-man, and tattoo him all over. Perhaps he's cutting about now
+all blue, and has a squaw and a wigwam. He'll improve their boomerangs,
+and be able to throw them too, without having old Thomas sent after him
+by the Doctor to take them away.”
+
+Arthur laughed at the remembrance of the boomerang story, but then
+looked grave again, and said, “He'll convert all the island, I know.”
+
+“Yes, if he don't blow it up first.”
+
+“Do you remember, Tom, how you and East used to laugh at him and chaff
+him, because he said he was sure the rooks all had calling-over or
+prayers, or something of the sort, when the locking-up bell rang? Well,
+I declare,” said Arthur, looking up seriously into Tom's laughing eyes,
+“I do think he was right. Since I've been lying here, I've watched them
+every night; and, do you know, they really do come and perch, all of
+them, just about locking-up time; and then first there's a regular
+chorus of caws; and then they stop a bit, and one old fellow, or perhaps
+two or three in different trees, caw solos; and then off they all go
+again, fluttering about and cawing anyhow till they roost.”
+
+“I wonder if the old blackies do talk,” said Tom, looking up at them.
+“How they must abuse me and East, and pray for the Doctor for stopping
+the slinging!”
+
+“There! look, look!” cried Arthur; “don't you see the old fellow without
+a tail coming up? Martin used to call him the 'clerk.' He can't steer
+himself. You never saw such fun as he is in a high wind, when he can't
+steer himself home, and gets carried right past the trees, and has to
+bear up again and again before he can perch.”
+
+The locking-up bell began to toll, and the two boys were silent, and
+listened to it. The sound soon carried Tom off to the river and the
+woods, and he began to go over in his mind the many occasions on which
+he had heard that toll coming faintly down the breeze, and had to pack
+his rod in a hurry and make a run for it, to get in before the gates
+were shut. He was roused with a start from his memories by Arthur's
+voice, gentle and weak from his late illness.
+
+“Tom, will you be angry if I talk to you very seriously?”
+
+“No, dear old boy, not I. But ain't you faint, Arthur, or ill? What can
+I get you? Don't say anything to hurt yourself now--you are very weak;
+let me come up again.”
+
+“No, no; I shan't hurt myself. I'd sooner speak to you now, if you don't
+mind. I've asked Mary to tell the Doctor that you are with me, so you
+needn't go down to calling-over; and I mayn't have another chance, for
+I shall most likely have to go home for change of air to get well, and
+mayn't come back this half.”
+
+“Oh, do you think you must go away before the end of the half? I'm
+so sorry. It's more than five weeks yet to the holidays, and all the
+fifth-form examination and half the cricket-matches to come yet. And
+what shall I do all that time alone in our study? Why, Arthur, it will
+be more than twelve weeks before I see you again. Oh, hang it, I can't
+stand that! Besides who's to keep me up to working at the examination
+books? I shall come out bottom of the form, as sure as eggs is eggs.”
+
+Tom was rattling on, half in joke, half in earnest, for he wanted to
+get Arthur out of his serious vein, thinking it would do him harm; but
+Arthur broke in,--
+
+“Oh, please, Tom, stop, or you'll drive all I had to say out of my head.
+And I'm already horribly afraid I'm going to make you angry.”
+
+“Don't gammon, young un,” rejoined Tom (the use of the old name, dear to
+him from old recollections, made Arthur start and smile and feel quite
+happy); “you know you ain't afraid, and you've never made me angry since
+the first month we chummed together. Now I'm going to be quite sober for
+a quarter of an hour, which is more than I am once in a year; so make
+the most of it; heave ahead, and pitch into me right and left.”
+
+“Dear Tom, I ain't going to pitch into you,” said Arthur piteously; “and
+it seems so cocky in me to be advising you, who've been my backbone ever
+since I've been at Rugby, and have made the school a paradise to me. Ah,
+I see I shall never do it, unless I go head over heels at once, as
+you said when you taught me to swim. Tom, I want you to give up using
+vulgus-books and cribs.”
+
+Arthur sank back on to his pillow with a sigh, as if the effort had been
+great; but the worst was now over, and he looked straight at Tom, who
+was evidently taken aback. He leant his elbows on his knees, and stuck
+his hands into his hair, whistled a verse of “Billy Taylor,” and then
+was quite silent for another minute. Not a shade crossed his face,
+but he was clearly puzzled. At last he looked up, and caught Arthur's
+anxious look, took his hand, and said simply,--
+
+“Why, young un?”
+
+“Because you're the honestest boy in Rugby, and that ain't honest.”
+
+“I don't see that.”
+
+“What were you sent to Rugby for?”
+
+“Well, I don't know exactly--nobody ever told me. I suppose because all
+boys are sent to a public school in England.”
+
+“But what do you think yourself? What do you want to do here, and to
+carry away?”
+
+Tom thought a minute. “I want to be A1 at cricket and football, and all
+the other games, and to make my hands keep my head against any fellow,
+lout or gentleman. I want to get into the sixth before I leave, and to
+please the Doctor; and I want to carry away just as much Latin and Greek
+as will take me through Oxford respectably. There, now, young un; I
+never thought of it before, but that's pretty much about my figure.
+Ain't it all on the square? What have you got to say to that?”
+
+“Why, that you are pretty sure to do all that you want, then.”
+
+“Well, I hope so. But you've forgot one thing--what I want to leave
+behind me. I want to leave behind me,” said Tom, speaking slow, and
+looking much moved, “the name of a fellow who never bullied a little
+boy, or turned his back on a big one.”
+
+Arthur pressed his hand, and after a moment's silence went on, “You say,
+Tom, you want to please the Doctor. Now, do you want to please him by
+what he thinks you do, or by what you really do?”
+
+“By what I really do, of course.”
+
+“Does he think you use cribs and vulgus-books?”
+
+Tom felt at once that his flank was turned, but he couldn't give in. “He
+was at Winchester himself,” said he; “he knows all about it.”
+
+“Yes; but does he think you use them? Do you think he approves of it?”
+
+“You young villain!” said Tom, shaking his fist at Arthur, half vexed
+and half pleased, “I never think about it. Hang it! there, perhaps he
+don't. Well, I suppose he don't.”
+
+Arthur saw that he had got his point; he knew his friend well, and was
+wise in silence as in speech. He only said, “I would sooner have the
+doctor's good opinion of me as I really am than any man's in the world.”
+
+After another minute, Tom began again, “Look here, young un. How on
+earth am I to get time to play the matches this half if I give up cribs?
+We're in the middle of that long crabbed chorus in the Agamemnon. I can
+only just make head or tail of it with the crib. Then there's Pericles's
+speech coming on in Thucydides, and 'The Birds' to get up for the
+examination, besides the Tacitus.” Tom groaned at the thought of his
+accumulated labours. “I say, young un, there's only five weeks or so
+left to holidays. Mayn't I go on as usual for this half? I'll tell the
+Doctor about it some day, or you may.”
+
+Arthur looked out of the window. The twilight had come on, and all was
+silent. He repeated in a low voice: “In this thing the Lord pardon thy
+servant, that when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship
+there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow down myself in the house of
+Rimmon, when I bow down myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon
+thy servant in this thing.”
+
+Not a word more was said on the subject, and the boys were again
+silent--one of those blessed, short silences in which the resolves which
+colour a life are so often taken.
+
+Tom was the first to break it. “You've been very ill indeed, haven't
+you, Geordie?” said he, with a mixture of awe and curiosity, feeling as
+if his friend had been in some strange place or scene, of which he could
+form no idea, and full of the memory of his own thoughts during the last
+week.
+
+“Yes, very. I'm sure the Doctor thought I was going to die. He gave me
+the Sacrament last Sunday, and you can't think what he is when one is
+ill. He said such brave, and tender, and gentle things to me, I felt
+quite light and strong after it, and never had any more fear. My mother
+brought our old medical man, who attended me when I was a poor sickly
+child. He said my constitution was quite changed, and that I'm fit for
+anything now. If it hadn't, I couldn't have stood three days of this
+illness. That's all thanks to you, and the games you've made me fond
+of.”
+
+“More thanks to old Martin,” said Tom; “he's been your real friend.”
+
+“Nonsense, Tom; he never could have done for me what you have.”
+
+“Well, I don't know; I did little enough. Did they tell you--you won't
+mind hearing it now, I know--that poor Thompson died last week? The
+other three boys are getting quite round, like you.”
+
+“Oh yes, I heard of it.”
+
+Then Tom, who was quite full of it, told Arthur of the burial-service
+in the chapel, and how it had impressed him, and, he believed, all the
+other boys. “And though the Doctor never said a word about it,” said he,
+“and it was a half-holiday and match-day, there wasn't a game played in
+the close all the afternoon, and the boys all went about as if it were
+Sunday.”
+
+“I'm very glad of it,” said Arthur. “But, Tom, I've had such strange
+thoughts about death lately. I've never told a soul of them, not even my
+mother. Sometimes I think they're wrong, but, do you know, I don't think
+in my heart I could be sorry at the death of any of my friends.”
+
+Tom was taken quite aback. “What in the world is the young un after
+now?” thought he; “I've swallowed a good many of his crotchets, but this
+altogether beats me. He can't be quite right in his head.” He didn't
+want to say a word, and shifted about uneasily in the dark; however,
+Arthur seemed to be waiting for an answer, so at last he said, “I don't
+think I quite see what you mean, Geordie. One's told so often to think
+about death that I've tried it on sometimes, especially this last week.
+But we won't talk of it now. I'd better go. You're getting tired, and I
+shall do you harm.”
+
+“No, no; indeed I ain't, Tom. You must stop till nine; there's only
+twenty minutes. I've settled you shall stop till nine. And oh! do let me
+talk to you--I must talk to you. I see it's just as I feared. You think
+I'm half mad. Don't you, now?”
+
+“Well, I did think it odd what you said, Geordie, as you ask me.”
+
+Arthur paused a moment, and then said quickly, “I'll tell you how it all
+happened. At first, when I was sent to the sick-room, and found I had
+really got the fever, I was terribly frightened. I thought I should
+die, and I could not face it for a moment. I don't think it was sheer
+cowardice at first, but I thought how hard it was to be taken away from
+my mother and sisters and you all, just as I was beginning to see my way
+to many things, and to feel that I might be a man and do a man's work.
+To die without having fought, and worked, and given one's life away,
+was too hard to bear. I got terribly impatient, and accused God of
+injustice, and strove to justify myself. And the harder I strove the
+deeper I sank. Then the image of my dear father often came across me,
+but I turned from it. Whenever it came, a heavy, numbing throb seemed to
+take hold of my heart, and say, 'Dead-dead-dead.' And I cried out, 'The
+living, the living shall praise Thee, O God; the dead cannot praise
+thee. There is no work in the grave; in the night no man can work. But
+I can work. I can do great things. I will do great things. Why wilt thou
+slay me?' And so I struggled and plunged, deeper and deeper, and went
+down into a living black tomb. I was alone there, with no power to stir
+or think; alone with myself; beyond the reach of all human fellowship;
+beyond Christ's reach, I thought, in my nightmare. You, who are brave
+and bright and strong, can have no idea of that agony. Pray to God you
+never may. Pray as for your life.”
+
+Arthur stopped--from exhaustion, Tom thought; but what between his fear
+lest Arthur should hurt himself, his awe, and his longing for him to go
+on, he couldn't ask, or stir to help him.
+
+Presently he went on, but quite calm and slow. “I don't know how long
+I was in that state--for more than a day, I know; for I was quite
+conscious, and lived my outer life all the time, and took my medicines,
+and spoke to my mother, and heard what they said. But I didn't take much
+note of time. I thought time was over for me, and that that tomb was
+what was beyond. Well, on last Sunday morning, as I seemed to lie in
+that tomb, alone, as I thought, for ever and ever, the black, dead wall
+was cleft in two, and I was caught up and borne through into the light
+by some great power, some living, mighty spirit. Tom, do you remember
+the living creatures and the wheels in Ezekiel? It was just like that.
+'When they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of
+great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the
+noise of an host; when they stood, they let down their wings.' 'And
+they went every one straight forward: whither the spirit was to go, they
+went; and they turned not when they went.' And we rushed through the
+bright air, which was full of myriads of living creatures, and paused
+on the brink of a great river. And the power held me up, and I knew that
+that great river was the grave, and death dwelt there, but not the death
+I had met in the black tomb. That, I felt, was gone for ever. For on the
+other bank of the great river I saw men and women and children rising up
+pure and bright, and the tears were wiped from their eyes, and they put
+on glory and strength, and all weariness and pain fell away. And beyond
+were a multitude which no man could number, and they worked at some
+great work; and they who rose from the river went on and joined in the
+work. They all worked, and each worked in a different way, but all at
+the same work. And I saw there my father, and the men in the old town
+whom I knew when I was a child--many a hard, stern man, who never came
+to church, and whom they called atheist and infidel. There they were,
+side by side with my father, whom I had seen toil and die for them, and
+women and little children, and the seal was on the foreheads of all. And
+I longed to see what the work was, and could not; so I tried to plunge
+in the river, for I thought I would join them, but I could not. Then I
+looked about to see how they got into the river. And this I could not
+see, but I saw myriads on this side, and they too worked, and I knew
+that it was the same work, and the same seal was on their foreheads. And
+though I saw that there was toil and anguish in the work of these, and
+that most that were working were blind and feeble, yet I longed no more
+to plunge into the river, but more and more to know what the work was.
+And as I looked I saw my mother and my sisters, and I saw the Doctor,
+and you, Tom, and hundreds more whom I knew; and at last I saw myself
+too, and I was toiling and doing ever so little a piece of the great
+work. Then it all melted away, and the power left me, and as it left
+me I thought I heard a voice say, 'The vision is for an appointed time;
+though it tarry, wait for it, for in the end it shall speak and not lie,
+it shall surely come, it shall not tarry.' It was early morning I know,
+then--it was so quiet and cool, and my mother was fast asleep in the
+chair by my bedside; but it wasn't only a dream of mine. I know it
+wasn't a dream. Then I fell into a deep sleep, and only woke after
+afternoon chapel; and the Doctor came and gave me the Sacrament, as I
+told you. I told him and my mother I should get well--I knew I should;
+but I couldn't tell them why. Tom,” said Arthur gently, after another
+minute, “do you see why I could not grieve now to see my dearest friend
+die? It can't be--it isn't--all fever or illness. God would never have
+let me see it so clear if it wasn't true. I don't understand it all yet;
+it will take me my life and longer to do that--to find out what the work
+is.”
+
+When Arthur stopped there was a long pause. Tom could not speak; he was
+almost afraid to breathe, lest he should break the train of Arthur's
+thoughts. He longed to hear more, and to ask questions. In another
+minute nine o'clock struck, and a gentle tap at the door called them
+both back into the world again. They did not answer, however, for a
+moment; and so the door opened, and a lady came in carrying a candle.
+
+She went straight to the sofa, and took hold of Arthur's hand, and then
+stooped down and kissed him.
+
+“My dearest boy, you feel a little feverish again. Why didn't you have
+lights? You've talked too much, and excited yourself in the dark.”
+
+“Oh no, mother; you can't think how well I feel. I shall start with
+you to-morrow for Devonshire. But, mother, here's my friend--here's Tom
+Brown. You know him?”
+
+“Yes, indeed; I've known him for years,” she said, and held out her
+hand to Tom, who was now standing up behind the sofa. This was Arthur's
+mother: tall and slight and fair, with masses of golden hair drawn back
+from the broad, white forehead, and the calm blue eye meeting his so
+deep and open--the eye that he knew so well, for it was his friend's
+over again, and the lovely, tender mouth that trembled while he
+looked--she stood there, a woman of thirty-eight, old enough to be his
+mother, and one whose face showed the lines which must be written on the
+faces of good men's wives and widows, but he thought he had never seen
+anything so beautiful. He couldn't help wondering if Arthur's sisters
+were like her.
+
+Tom held her hand, and looked on straight in her face; he could neither
+let it go nor speak.
+
+“Now, Tom,” said Arthur, laughing, “where are your manners? You'll stare
+my mother out of countenance.” Tom dropped the little hand with a sigh.
+“There, sit down, both of you.--Here, dearest mother; there's room
+here.” And he made a place on the sofa for her.--“Tom, you needn't go;
+I'm sure you won't be called up at first lesson.” Tom felt that he
+would risk being floored at every lesson for the rest of his natural
+school-life sooner than go, so sat down. “And now,” said Arthur, “I have
+realized one of the dearest wishes of my life--to see you two together.”
+
+And then he led away the talk to their home in Devonshire, and the
+red, bright earth, and the deep green combes, and the peat streams like
+cairngorm pebbles, and the wild moor with its high, cloudy tors for a
+giant background to the picture, till Tom got jealous, and stood up for
+the clear chalk streams, and the emerald water meadows and great elms
+and willows of the dear old royal county, as he gloried to call it. And
+the mother sat on quiet and loving, rejoicing in their life. The quarter
+to ten struck, and the bell rang for bed, before they had well begun
+their talk, as it seemed.
+
+Then Tom rose with a sigh to go.
+
+“Shall I see you in the morning, Geordie?” said he, as he shook his
+friend's hand. “Never mind, though; you'll be back next half. And I
+shan't forget the house of Rimmon.”
+
+Arthur's mother got up and walked with him to the door, and there gave
+him her hand again; and again his eyes met that deep, loving look, which
+was like a spell upon him. Her voice trembled slightly as she said,
+“Good-night. You are one who knows what our Father has promised to the
+friend of the widow and the fatherless. May He deal with you as you have
+dealt with me and mine!”
+
+Tom was quite upset; he mumbled something about owing everything good in
+him to Geordie, looked in her face again, pressed her hand to his lips,
+and rushed downstairs to his study, where he sat till old Thomas came
+kicking at the door, to tell him his allowance would be stopped if he
+didn't go off to bed. (It would have been stopped anyhow, but that he
+was a great favourite with the old gentleman, who loved to come out in
+the afternoons into the close to Tom's wicket, and bowl slow twisters to
+him, and talk of the glories of bygone Surrey heroes, with whom he
+had played former generations.) So Tom roused himself, and took up
+his candle to go to bed; and then for the first time was aware of
+a beautiful new fishing-rod, with old Eton's mark on it, and a
+splendidly-bound Bible, which lay on his table, on the title-page
+of which was written--“TOM BROWN, from his affectionate and grateful
+friends, Frances Jane Arthur; George Arthur.”
+
+I leave you all to guess how he slept, and what he dreamt of.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--HARRY EAST'S DILEMMAS AND DELIVERANCES.
+
+     “The Holy Supper is kept indeed,
+     In whatso we share with another's need
+     Not that which we give, but what we share,
+     For the gift without the giver is bare.
+     Who bestows himself with his alms feeds three,
+     Himself, his hungering neighbour and Me.”
+      --LOWELL, The Vision of Sir Launfal.
+
+The next morning, after breakfast, Tom, East, and Gower met as usual
+to learn their second lesson together. Tom had been considering how to
+break his proposal of giving up the crib to the others, and having found
+no better way (as indeed none better can ever be found by man or boy),
+told them simply what had happened; how he had been to see Arthur, who
+had talked to him upon the subject, and what he had said, and for his
+part he had made up his mind, and wasn't going to use cribs any more;
+and not being quite sure of his ground, took the high and pathetic tone,
+and was proceeding to say “how that, having learnt his lessons with
+them for so many years, it would grieve him much to put an end to the
+arrangement, and he hoped, at any rate, that if they wouldn't go on
+with him, they should still be just as good friends, and respect one
+another's motives; but--”
+
+Here the other boys, who had been listening with open eyes and ears,
+burst in,--
+
+“Stuff and nonsense!” cried Gower. “Here, East, get down the crib and
+find the place.”
+
+“O Tommy, Tommy!” said East, proceeding to do as he was bidden, “that it
+should ever have come to this! I knew Arthur'd be the ruin of you some
+day, and you of me. And now the time's come.” And he made a doleful
+face.
+
+“I don't know about ruin,” answered Tom; “I know that you and I would
+have had the sack long ago if it hadn't been for him. And you know it as
+well as I.”
+
+“Well, we were in a baddish way before he came, I own; but this new
+crotchet of his is past a joke.”
+
+“Let's give it a trial, Harry; come. You know how often he has been
+right and we wrong.”
+
+“Now, don't you two be jawing away about young Square-toes,” struck in
+Gower. “He's no end of a sucking wiseacre, I dare say; but we've no time
+to lose, and I've got the fives court at half-past nine.”
+
+“I say, Gower,” said Tom appealingly, “be a good fellow, and let's try
+if we can't get on without the crib.”
+
+“What! in this chorus? Why, we shan't get through ten lines.”
+
+“I say, Tom,” cried East, having hit on a new idea, “don't you remember,
+when we were in the upper fourth, and old Momus caught me construing
+off the leaf of a crib which I'd torn out and put in my book, and which
+would float out on to the floor, he sent me up to be flogged for it?”
+
+“Yes, I remember it very well.”
+
+“Well, the Doctor, after he'd flogged me, told me himself that he didn't
+flog me for using a translation, but for taking it in to lesson, and
+using it there when I hadn't learnt a word before I came in. He said
+there was no harm in using a translation to get a clue to hard passages,
+if you tried all you could first to make them out without.”
+
+“Did he, though?” said Tom; “then Arthur must be wrong.”
+
+“Of course he is,” said Gower--“the little prig. We'll only use the crib
+when we can't construe without it.--Go ahead, East.”
+
+And on this agreement they started--Tom, satisfied with having made his
+confession, and not sorry to have a locus penitentiae, and not to be
+deprived altogether of the use of his old and faithful friend.
+
+The boys went on as usual, each taking a sentence in turn, and the crib
+being handed to the one whose turn it was to construe. Of course
+Tom couldn't object to this, as, was it not simply lying there to be
+appealed to in case the sentence should prove too hard altogether for
+the construer? But it must be owned that Gower and East did not make
+very tremendous exertions to conquer their sentences before having
+recourse to its help. Tom, however, with the most heroic virtue and
+gallantry, rushed into his sentence, searching in a high-minded manner
+for nominative and verb, and turning over his dictionary frantically for
+the first hard word that stopped him. But in the meantime Gower, who
+was bent on getting to fives, would peep quietly into the crib, and then
+suggest, “Don't you think this is the meaning?” “I think you must take
+it this way, Brown.” And as Tom didn't see his way to not profiting by
+these suggestions, the lesson went on about as quickly as usual, and
+Gower was able to start for the fives court within five minutes of the
+half-hour.
+
+When Tom and East were left face to face, they looked at one another for
+a minute, Tom puzzled, and East chokefull of fun, and then burst into a
+roar of laughter.
+
+“Well, Tom,” said East, recovering himself, “I don t see any objection
+to the new way. It's about as good as the old one, I think, besides the
+advantage it gives one of feeling virtuous, and looking down on one's
+neighbours.”
+
+Tom shoved his hand into his back hair. “I ain't so sure,” said he; “you
+two fellows carried me off my legs. I don't think we really tried one
+sentence fairly. Are you sure you remember what the Doctor said to you?”
+
+“Yes. And I'll swear I couldn't make out one of my sentences to-day--no,
+nor ever could. I really don't remember,” said East, speaking slowly and
+impressively, “to have come across one Latin or Greek sentence this half
+that I could go and construe by the light of nature. Whereby I am sure
+Providence intended cribs to be used.”
+
+“The thing to find out,” said Tom meditatively, “is how long one ought
+to grind at a sentence without looking at the crib. Now I think if one
+fairly looks out all the words one don't know, and then can't hit it,
+that's enough.”
+
+“To be sure, Tommy,” said East demurely, but with a merry twinkle in his
+eye. “Your new doctrine too, old fellow,” added he, “when one comes to
+think of it, is a cutting at the root of all school morality. You'll
+take away mutual help, brotherly love, or, in the vulgar tongue, giving
+construes, which I hold to be one of our highest virtues. For how can
+you distinguish between getting a construe from another boy and using a
+crib? Hang it, Tom, if you're going to deprive all our school-fellows
+of the chance of exercising Christian benevolence and being good
+Samaritans, I shall cut the concern.”
+
+“I wish you wouldn't joke about it, Harry; it's hard enough to see one's
+way--a precious sight harder than I thought last night. But I suppose
+there's a use and an abuse of both, and one'll get straight enough
+somehow. But you can't make out, anyhow, that one has a right to use old
+vulgus-books and copy-books.”
+
+“Hullo, more heresy! How fast a fellow goes downhill when he once gets
+his head before his legs. Listen to me, Tom. Not use old vulgus-books!
+Why, you Goth, ain't we to take the benefit of the wisdom and admire and
+use the work of past generations? Not use old copy-books! Why, you
+might as well say we ought to pull down Westminster Abbey, and put up a
+go-to-meeting shop with churchwarden windows; or never read Shakespeare,
+but only Sheridan Knowles. Think of all the work and labour that our
+predecessors have bestowed on these very books; and are we to make their
+work of no value?”
+
+“I say, Harry, please don't chaff; I'm really serious.”
+
+“And then, is it not our duty to consult the pleasure of others rather
+than our own, and above all, that of our masters? Fancy, then, the
+difference to them in looking over a vulgus which has been carefully
+touched and retouched by themselves and others, and which must bring
+them a sort of dreamy pleasure, as if they'd met the thought
+or expression of it somewhere or another--before they were born
+perhaps--and that of cutting up, and making picture-frames round all
+your and my false quantities, and other monstrosities. Why, Tom, you
+wouldn't be so cruel as never to let old Momus hum over the 'O genus
+humanum' again, and then look up doubtingly through his spectacles, and
+end by smiling and giving three extra marks for it--just for old sake's
+sake, I suppose.”
+
+“Well,” said Tom, getting up in something as like a huff as he was
+capable of, “it's deuced hard that when a fellow's really trying to do
+what he ought, his best friends'll do nothing but chaff him and try to
+put him down.” And he stuck his books under his arm and his hat on his
+head, preparatory to rushing out into the quadrangle, to testify with
+his own soul of the faithlessness of friendships.
+
+“Now don't be an ass, Tom,” said East, catching hold of him; “you know
+me well enough by this time; my bark's worse than my bite. You can't
+expect to ride your new crotchet without anybody's trying to stick a
+nettle under his tail and make him kick you off--especially as we shall
+all have to go on foot still. But now sit down, and let's go over it
+again. I'll be as serious as a judge.”
+
+Then Tom sat himself down on the table, and waxed eloquent about all the
+righteousnesses and advantages of the new plan, as was his wont whenever
+he took up anything, going into it as if his life depended upon it, and
+sparing no abuse which he could think of, of the opposite method, which
+he denounced as ungentlemanly, cowardly, mean, lying, and no one knows
+what besides. “Very cool of Tom,” as East thought, but didn't say,
+“seeing as how he only came out of Egypt himself last night at bedtime.”
+
+“Well, Tom,” said he at last, “you see, when you and I came to school
+there were none of these sort of notions. You may be right--I dare say
+you are. Only what one has always felt about the masters is, that it's
+a fair trial of skill and last between us and them--like a match at
+football or a battle. We're natural enemies in school--that's the fact.
+We've got to learn so much Latin and Greek, and do so many verses, and
+they've got to see that we do it. If we can slip the collar and do so
+much less without getting caught, that's one to us. If they can get more
+out of us, or catch us shirking, that's one to them. All's fair in war
+but lying. If I run my luck against theirs, and go into school without
+looking at my lessons, and don't get called up, why am I a snob or a
+sneak? I don't tell the master I've learnt it. He's got to find out
+whether I have or not. What's he paid for? If he calls me up and I get
+floored, he makes me write it out in Greek and English. Very good. He's
+caught me, and I don't grumble. I grant you, if I go and snivel to him,
+and tell him I've really tried to learn it, but found it so hard without
+a translation, or say I've had a toothache, or any humbug of that kind,
+I'm a snob. That's my school morality; it's served me, and you too, Tom,
+for the matter of that, these five years. And it's all clear and fair,
+no mistake about it. We understand it, and they understand it, and I
+don't know what we're to come to with any other.”
+
+Tom looked at him pleased and a little puzzled. He had never heard
+East speak his mind seriously before, and couldn't help feeling how
+completely he had hit his own theory and practice up to that time.
+
+“Thank you, old fellow,” said he. “You're a good old brick to be
+serious, and not put out with me. I said more than I meant, I dare say,
+only you see I know I'm right. Whatever you and Gower and the rest do, I
+shall hold on. I must. And as it's all new and an uphill game, you see,
+one must hit hard and hold on tight at first.”
+
+“Very good,” said East; “hold on and hit away, only don't hit under the
+line.”
+
+“But I must bring you over, Harry, or I shan't be comfortable. Now, I'll
+allow all you've said. We've always been honourable enemies with the
+masters. We found a state of war when we came, and went into it of
+course. Only don't you think things are altered a good deal? I don't
+feel as I used to the masters. They seem to me to treat one quite
+differently.”
+
+“Yes, perhaps they do,” said East; “there's a new set you see, mostly,
+who don't feel sure of themselves yet. They don't want to fight till
+they know the ground.”
+
+“I don't think it's only that,” said Tom. “And then the Doctor, he does
+treat one so openly, and like a gentleman, and as if one was working
+with him.”
+
+“Well, so he does,” said East; “he's a splendid fellow, and when I get
+into the sixth I shall act accordingly. Only you know he has nothing to
+do with our lessons now, except examining us. I say, though,” looking at
+his watch, “it's just the quarter. Come along.”
+
+As they walked out they got a message, to say that Arthur was just
+starting, and would like to say goodbye. So they went down to the
+private entrance of the School-house, and found an open carriage,
+with Arthur propped up with pillows in it, looking already better, Tom
+thought.
+
+They jumped up on to the steps to shake hands with him, and Tom mumbled
+thanks for the presents he had found in his study, and looked round
+anxiously for Arthur's mother.
+
+East, who had fallen back into his usual humour, looked quaintly at
+Arthur, and said,--
+
+“So you've been at it again, through that hot-headed convert of yours
+there. He's been making our lives a burden to us all the morning about
+using cribs. I shall get floored to a certainty at second lesson, if I'm
+called up.”
+
+Arthur blushed and looked down. Tom struck in,--
+
+“Oh, it's all right. He's converted already; he always comes through the
+mud after us, grumbling and sputtering.”
+
+The clock struck, and they had to go off to school, wishing Arthur a
+pleasant holiday, Tom, lingering behind a moment to send his thanks and
+love to Arthur's mother.
+
+Tom renewed the discussion after second lesson, and succeeded so far as
+to get East to promise to give the new plan a fair trial.
+
+Encouraged by his success, in the evening, when they were sitting alone
+in the large study, where East lived now almost, “vice Arthur on leave,”
+ after examining the new fishing-rod, which both pronounced to be the
+genuine article (“play enough to throw a midge tied on a single
+hair against the wind, and strength enough to hold a grampus”), they
+naturally began talking about Arthur. Tom, who was still bubbling over
+with last night's scene and all the thoughts of the last week, and
+wanting to clinch and fix the whole in his own mind, which he could
+never do without first going through the process of belabouring somebody
+else with it all, suddenly rushed into the subject of Arthur's illness,
+and what he had said about death.
+
+East had given him the desired opening. After a serio-comic grumble,
+“that life wasn't worth having, now they were tied to a young beggar
+who was always 'raising his standard;' and that he, East, was like a
+prophet's donkey, who was obliged to struggle on after the donkey-man
+who went after the prophet; that he had none of the pleasure of starting
+the new crotchets, and didn't half understand them, but had to take the
+kicks and carry the luggage as if he had all the fun,” he threw his legs
+up on to the sofa, and put his hands behind his head, and said,--
+
+“Well, after all, he's the most wonderful little fellow I ever came
+across. There ain't such a meek, humble boy in the school. Hanged if
+I don't think now, really, Tom, that he believes himself a much worse
+fellow than you or I, and that he don't think he has more influence in
+the house than Dot Bowles, who came last quarter, and isn't ten yet. But
+he turns you and me round his little finger, old boy--there's no mistake
+about that.” And East nodded at Tom sagaciously.
+
+“Now or never!” thought Tom; so, shutting his eyes and hardening his
+heart, he went straight at it, repeating all that Arthur had said, as
+near as he could remember it, in the very words, and all he had himself
+thought. The life seemed to ooze out of it as he went on, and several
+times he felt inclined to stop, give it all up, and change the subject.
+But somehow he was borne on; he had a necessity upon him to speak it all
+out, and did so. At the end he looked at East with some anxiety, and was
+delighted to see that that young gentleman was thoughtful and attentive.
+The fact is, that in the stage of his inner life at which Tom had lately
+arrived, his intimacy with and friendship for East could not have lasted
+if he had not made him aware of, and a sharer in, the thoughts that were
+beginning to exercise him. Nor indeed could the friendship have lasted
+if East had shown no sympathy with these thoughts; so that it was a
+great relief to have unbosomed himself, and to have found that his
+friend could listen.
+
+Tom had always had a sort of instinct that East's levity was only
+skin-deep, and this instinct was a true one. East had no want of
+reverence for anything he felt to be real; but his was one of those
+natures that burst into what is generally called recklessness and
+impiety the moment they feel that anything is being poured upon them for
+their good which does not come home to their inborn sense of right, or
+which appeals to anything like self-interest in them. Daring and
+honest by nature, and outspoken to an extent which alarmed all
+respectabilities, with a constant fund of animal health and spirits
+which he did not feel bound to curb in any way, he had gained for
+himself with the steady part of the school (including as well those who
+wished to appear steady as those who really were so) the character of a
+boy with whom it would be dangerous to be intimate; while his own hatred
+of everything cruel, or underhand, or false, and his hearty respect for
+what he would see to be good and true, kept off the rest.
+
+Tom, besides being very like East in many points of character, had
+largely developed in his composition the capacity for taking the weakest
+side. This is not putting it strongly enough: it was a necessity with
+him; he couldn't help it any more than he could eating or drinking. He
+could never play on the strongest side with any heart at football or
+cricket, and was sure to make friends with any boy who was unpopular, or
+down on his luck.
+
+Now, though East was not what is generally called unpopular, Tom felt
+more and more every day, as their characters developed, that he
+stood alone, and did not make friends among their contemporaries, and
+therefore sought him out. Tom was himself much more popular, for his
+power of detecting humbug was much less acute, and his instincts were
+much more sociable. He was at this period of his life, too, largely
+given to taking people for what they gave themselves out to be; but
+his singleness of heart, fearlessness, and honesty were just what East
+appreciated, and thus the two had been drawn into great intimacy.
+
+This intimacy had not been interrupted by Tom's guardianship of Arthur.
+
+East had often, as has been said, joined them in reading the Bible; but
+their discussions had almost always turned upon the characters of the
+men and women of whom they read, and not become personal to themselves.
+In fact, the two had shrunk from personal religious discussion, not
+knowing how it might end, and fearful of risking a friendship very dear
+to both, and which they felt somehow, without quite knowing why,
+would never be the same, but either tenfold stronger or sapped at its
+foundation, after such a communing together.
+
+What a bother all this explaining is! I wish we could get on without
+it. But we can't. However, you'll all find, if you haven't found it out
+already, that a time comes in every human friendship when you must go
+down into the depths of yourself, and lay bare what is there to your
+friend, and wait in fear for his answer. A few moments may do it; and
+it may be (most likely will be, as you are English boys) that you will
+never do it but once. But done it must be, if the friendship is to be
+worth the name. You must find what is there, at the very root and bottom
+of one another's hearts; and if you are at one there, nothing on earth
+can or at least ought to sunder you.
+
+East had remained lying down until Tom finished speaking, as if fearing
+to interrupt him; he now sat up at the table, and leant his head on one
+hand, taking up a pencil with the other, and working little holes with
+it in the table-cover. After a bit he looked up, stopped the pencil,
+and said, “Thank you very much, old fellow. There's no other boy in
+the house would have done it for me but you or Arthur. I can see well
+enough,” he went on, after a pause, “all the best big fellows look on me
+with suspicion; they think I'm a devil-may-care, reckless young scamp.
+So I am--eleven hours out of twelve, but not the twelfth. Then all of
+our contemporaries worth knowing follow suit, of course: we're very good
+friends at games and all that, but not a soul of them but you and
+Arthur ever tried to break through the crust, and see whether there was
+anything at the bottom of me; and then the bad ones I won't stand and
+they know that.”
+
+“Don't you think that's half fancy, Harry?”
+
+“Not a bit of it,” said East bitterly, pegging away with his pencil.
+“I see it all plain enough. Bless you, you think everybody's as
+straightforward and kindhearted as you are.”
+
+“Well, but what's the reason of it? There must be a reason. You can play
+all the games as well as any one and sing the best song, and are the
+best company in the house. You fancy you're not liked, Harry. It's all
+fancy.”
+
+“I only wish it was, Tom. I know I could be popular enough with all the
+bad ones, but that I won't have, and the good ones won't have me.”
+
+“Why not?” persisted Tom; “you don't drink or swear, or get out at
+night; you never bully, or cheat at lessons. If you only showed you
+liked it, you'd have all the best fellows in the house running after
+you.”
+
+“Not I,” said East. Then with an effort he went on, “I'll tell you what
+it is. I never stop the Sacrament. I can see, from the Doctor downwards,
+how that tells against me.”
+
+“Yes, I've seen that,” said Tom, “and I've been very sorry for it, and
+Arthur and I have talked about it. I've often thought of speaking to
+you, but it's so hard to begin on such subjects. I'm very glad you've
+opened it. Now, why don't you?”
+
+“I've never been confirmed,” said East.
+
+“Not been confirmed!” said Tom, in astonishment. “I never thought of
+that. Why weren't you confirmed with the rest of us nearly three years
+ago? I always thought you'd been confirmed at home.”
+
+“No,” answered East sorrowfully; “you see this was how it happened. Last
+Confirmation was soon after Arthur came, and you were so taken up with
+him I hardly saw either of you. Well, when the Doctor sent round for us
+about it, I was living mostly with Green's set. You know the sort. They
+all went in. I dare say it was all right, and they got good by it; I
+don't want to judge them. Only all I could see of their reasons drove me
+just the other way. 'Twas 'because the Doctor liked it;' 'no boy got
+on who didn't stay the Sacrament;' it was the 'correct thing,' in fact,
+like having a good hat to wear on Sundays. I couldn't stand it. I didn't
+feel that I wanted to lead a different life. I was very well content
+as I was, and I wasn't going to sham religious to curry favour with the
+Doctor, or any one else.”
+
+East stopped speaking, and pegged away more diligently than ever with
+his pencil. Tom was ready to cry. He felt half sorry at first that he
+had been confirmed himself. He seemed to have deserted his earliest
+friend--to have left him by himself at his worst need for those long
+years. He got up and went and sat by East, and put his arm over his
+shoulder.
+
+“Dear old boy,” he said, “how careless and selfish I've been. But why
+didn't you come and talk to Arthur and me?”
+
+“I wish to Heaven I had,” said East, “but I was a fool. It's too late
+talking of it now.”
+
+“Why too late? You want to be confirmed now, don't you?”
+
+“I think so,” said East. “I've thought about it a good deal; only, often
+I fancy I must be changing, because I see it's to do me good here--just
+what stopped me last time. And then I go back again.”
+
+“I'll tell you now how 'twas with me,” said Tom warmly. “If it hadn't
+been for Arthur, I should have done just as you did. I hope I should. I
+honour you for it. But then he made it out just as if it was taking the
+weak side before all the world--going in once for all against everything
+that's strong and rich, and proud and respectable, a little band of
+brothers against the whole world. And the Doctor seemed to say so too,
+only he said a great deal more.”
+
+“Ah!” groaned East, “but there again, that's just another of my
+difficulties whenever I think about the matter. I don't want to be one
+of your saints, one of your elect, whatever the right phrase is. My
+sympathies are all the other way--with the many, the poor devils who run
+about the streets and don't go to church. Don't stare, Tom; mind, I'm
+telling you all that's in my heart--as far as I know it--but it's all a
+muddle. You must be gentle with me if you want to land me. Now I've seen
+a deal of this sort of religion; I was bred up in it, and I can't stand
+it. If nineteen-twentieths of the world are to be left to uncovenanted
+mercies, and that sort of thing, which means in plain English to go to
+hell, and the other twentieth are to rejoice at it all, why--”
+
+“Oh! but, Harry, they ain't, they don't,” broke in Tom, really shocked.
+“Oh, how I wish Arthur hadn't gone! I'm such a fool about these things.
+But it's all you want too, East; it is indeed. It cuts both ways
+somehow, being confirmed and taking the Sacrament. It makes you feel on
+the side of all the good and all the bad too, of everybody in the world.
+Only there's some great dark strong power, which is crushing you and
+everybody else. That's what Christ conquered, and we've got to fight.
+What a fool I am! I can't explain. If Arthur were only here!”
+
+“I begin to get a glimmering of what you mean,” said East.
+
+“I say, now,” said Tom eagerly, “do you remember how we both hated
+Flashman?”
+
+“Of course I do,” said East; “I hate him still. What then?”
+
+“Well, when I came to take the Sacrament, I had a great struggle about
+that. I tried to put him out of my head; and when I couldn't do that, I
+tried to think of him as evil--as something that the Lord who was loving
+me hated, and which I might hate too. But it wouldn't do. I broke down;
+I believe Christ Himself broke me down. And when the Doctor gave me the
+bread and wine, and leant over me praying, I prayed for poor Flashman,
+as if it had been you or Arthur.”
+
+East buried his face in his hands on the table. Tom could feel the table
+tremble. At last he looked up. “Thank you again, Tom,” said he; “you
+don't know what you may have done for me to-night. I think I see now how
+the right sort of sympathy with poor devils is got at.”
+
+“And you'll stop the Sacrament next time, won't you?” said Tom.
+
+“Can I, before I'm confirmed?”
+
+“Go and ask the Doctor.”
+
+“I will.”
+
+That very night, after prayers, East followed the Doctor, and the old
+verger bearing the candle, upstairs. Tom watched, and saw the Doctor
+turn round when he heard footsteps following him closer than usual, and
+say, “Hah, East! Do you want to speak to me, my man?”
+
+“If you please, sir.” And the private door closed, and Tom went to his
+study in a state of great trouble of mind.
+
+It was almost an hour before East came back. Then he rushed in
+breathless.
+
+“Well, it's all right,” he shouted, seizing Tom by the hand. “I feel as
+if a ton weight were off my mind.”
+
+“Hurrah,” said Tom. “I knew it would be; but tell us all about it.”
+
+“Well, I just told him all about it. You can't think how kind and gentle
+he was, the great grim man, whom I've feared more than anybody on earth.
+When I stuck, he lifted me just as if I'd been a little child. And he
+seemed to know all I'd felt, and to have gone through it all. And I
+burst out crying--more than I've done this five years; and he sat down
+by me, and stroked my head; and I went blundering on, and told him
+all--much worse things than I've told you. And he wasn't shocked a bit,
+and didn't snub me, or tell me I was a fool, and it was all nothing but
+pride or wickedness, though I dare say it was. And he didn't tell me
+not to follow out my thoughts, and he didn't give me any cut-and-dried
+explanation. But when I'd done he just talked a bit. I can hardly
+remember what he said yet; but it seemed to spread round me like
+healing, and strength, and light, and to bear me up, and plant me on a
+rock, where I could hold my footing and fight for myself. I don't know
+what to do, I feel so happy. And it's all owing to you, dear old boy!”
+ And he seized Tom's hand again.
+
+“And you're to come to the Communion?” said Tom.
+
+“Yes, and to be confirmed in the holidays.”
+
+Tom's delight was as great as his friend's. But he hadn't yet had
+out all his own talk, and was bent on improving the occasion: so he
+proceeded to propound Arthur's theory about not being sorry for his
+friends' deaths, which he had hitherto kept in the background, and by
+which he was much exercised; for he didn't feel it honest to take what
+pleased him, and throw over the rest, and was trying vigorously to
+persuade himself that he should like all his best friends to die
+off-hand.
+
+But East's powers of remaining serious were exhausted, and in five
+minutes he was saying the most ridiculous things he could think of, till
+Tom was almost getting angry again.
+
+Despite of himself, however, he couldn't help laughing and giving it up,
+when East appealed to him with, “Well, Tom, you ain't going to punch my
+head, I hope, because I insist upon being sorry when you got to earth?”
+
+And so their talk finished for that time, and they tried to learn first
+lesson, with very poor success, as appeared next morning, when they were
+called up and narrowly escaped being floored, which ill-luck, however,
+did not sit heavily on either of their souls.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--TOM BROWN'S LAST MATCH.
+
+     “Heaven grant the manlier heart, that timely ere
+     Youth fly, with life's real tempest would be coping;
+     The fruit of dreamy hoping
+     Is, waking, blank despair.”--CLOUGH, Ambarvalia.
+
+The curtain now rises upon the last act of our little drama, for
+hard-hearted publishers warn me that a single volume must of necessity
+have an end. Well, well! the pleasantest things must come to an end.
+I little thought last long vacation, when I began these pages to help
+while away some spare time at a watering-place, how vividly many an old
+scene which had lain hid away for years in some dusty old corner of my
+brain, would come back again, and stand before me as clear and bright as
+if it had happened yesterday. The book has been a most grateful task
+to me, and I only hope that all you, my dear young friends, who read it
+(friends assuredly you must be, if you get as far as this), will be half
+as sorry to come to the last stage as I am.
+
+Not but what there has been a solemn and a sad side to it. As the old
+scenes became living, and the actors in them became living too, many
+a grave in the Crimea and distant India, as well as in the quiet
+churchyards of our dear old country, seemed to open and send forth their
+dead, and their voices and looks and ways were again in one's ears and
+eyes, as in the old School-days. But this was not sad. How should it be,
+if we believe as our Lord has taught us? How should it be, when one more
+turn of the wheel, and we shall be by their sides again, learning from
+them again, perhaps, as we did when we were new boys.
+
+Then there were others of the old faces so dear to us once who had
+somehow or another just gone clean out of sight. Are they dead or
+living? We know not, but the thought of them brings no sadness with it.
+Wherever they are, we can well believe they are doing God's work and
+getting His wages.
+
+But are there not some, whom we still see sometimes in the streets,
+whose haunts and homes we know, whom we could probably find almost any
+day in the week if we were set to do it, yet from whom we are really
+farther than we are from the dead, and from those who have gone out of
+our ken? Yes, there are and must be such; and therein lies the sadness
+of old School memories. Yet of these our old comrades, from whom more
+than time and space separate us, there are some by whose sides we can
+feel sure that we shall stand again when time shall be no more. We may
+think of one another now as dangerous fanatics or narrow bigots, with
+whom no truce is possible, from whom we shall only sever more and more
+to the end of our lives, whom it would be our respective duties to
+imprison or hang, if we had the power. We must go our way, and they
+theirs, as long as flesh and spirit hold together; but let our own Rugby
+poet speak words of healing for this trial:--
+
+     “To veer how vain! on, onward strain,
+     Brave barks, in light, in darkness too;
+     Through winds and tides one compass guides,--
+     To that, and your own selves, be true.
+
+     “But, O blithe breeze, and O great seas,
+     Though ne'er that earliest parting past,
+     On your wide plain they join again;
+     Together lead them home at last.
+
+     “One port, methought, alike they sought,
+     One purpose hold where'er they fare.
+     O bounding breeze, O rushing seas,
+     At last, at last, unite them there!” *
+
+
+     * Clough, Ambarvalia.
+
+This is not mere longing; it is prophecy. So over these too, our old
+friends, who are friends no more, we sorrow not as men without hope. It
+is only for those who seem to us to have lost compass and purpose, and
+to be driven helplessly on rocks and quicksands, whose lives are spent
+in the service of the world, the flesh, and the devil, for self alone,
+and not for their fellow-men, their country, or their God, that we must
+mourn and pray without sure hope and without light, trusting only that
+He, in whose hands they as well as we are, who has died for them as well
+as for us, who sees all His creatures
+
+     “With larger other eyes than ours,
+     To make allowance for us all,”
+
+will, in His own way and at His own time, lead them also home.
+
+Another two years have passed, and it is again the end of the summer
+half-year at Rugby; in fact, the School has broken up. The fifth-form
+examinations were over last week, and upon them have followed the
+speeches, and the sixth-form examinations for exhibitions; and they too
+are over now. The boys have gone to all the winds of heaven, except the
+town boys and the eleven, and the few enthusiasts besides who have asked
+leave to stay in their houses to see the result of the cricket matches.
+For this year the Wellesburn return match and the Marylebone match are
+played at Rugby, to the great delight of the town and neighbourhood, and
+the sorrow of those aspiring young cricketers who have been reckoning
+for the last three months on showing off at Lord's ground.
+
+The Doctor started for the Lakes yesterday morning, after an interview
+with the captain of the eleven, in the presence of Thomas, at which he
+arranged in what school the cricket dinners were to be, and all other
+matters necessary for the satisfactory carrying out of the festivities,
+and warned them as to keeping all spirituous liquors out of the close,
+and having the gates closed by nine o'clock.
+
+The Wellesburn match was played out with great success yesterday, the
+School winning by three wickets; and to-day the great event of the
+cricketing year, the Marylebone match, is being played. What a match it
+has been! The London eleven came down by an afternoon train yesterday,
+in time to see the end of the Wellesburn match; and as soon as it was
+over, their leading men and umpire inspected the ground, criticising it
+rather unmercifully. The captain of the School eleven, and one or
+two others, who had played the Lord's match before, and knew old Mr.
+Aislabie and several of the Lord's men, accompanied them; while the rest
+of the eleven looked on from under the Three Trees with admiring eyes,
+and asked one another the names of the illustrious strangers, and
+recounted how many runs each of them had made in the late matches in
+Bell's Life. They looked such hard-bitten, wiry, whiskered fellows that
+their young adversaries felt rather desponding as to the result of the
+morrow's match. The ground was at last chosen, and two men set to work
+upon it to water and roll; and then, there being yet some half-hour of
+daylight, some one had suggested a dance on the turf. The close was
+half full of citizens and their families, and the idea was hailed
+with enthusiasm. The cornopean player was still on the ground. In five
+minutes the eleven and half a dozen of the Wellesburn and Marylebone men
+got partners somehow or another, and a merry country-dance was going on,
+to which every one flocked, and new couples joined in every minute, till
+there were a hundred of them going down the middle and up again; and the
+long line of school buildings looked gravely down on them, every window
+glowing with the last rays of the western sun; and the rooks clanged
+about in the tops of the old elms, greatly excited, and resolved on
+having their country-dance too; and the great flag flapped lazily in the
+gentle western breeze. Altogether it was a sight which would have made
+glad the heart of our brave old founder, Lawrence Sheriff, if he were
+half as good a fellow as I take him to have been. It was a cheerful
+sight to see. But what made it so valuable in the sight of the captain
+of the School eleven was that he there saw his young hands shaking
+off their shyness and awe of the Lord's men, as they crossed hands and
+capered about on the grass together; for the strangers entered into
+it all, and threw away their cigars, and danced and shouted like boys;
+while old Mr. Aislabie stood by looking on in his white hat, leaning on
+a bat, in benevolent enjoyment. “This hop will be worth thirty runs to
+us to-morrow, and will be the making of Raggles and Johnson,” thinks the
+young leader, as he revolves many things in his mind, standing by the
+side of Mr. Aislabie, whom he will not leave for a minute, for he
+feels that the character of the School for courtesy is resting on his
+shoulders.
+
+But when a quarter to nine struck, and he saw old Thomas beginning
+to fidget about with the keys in his hand, he thought of the Doctor's
+parting monition, and stopped the cornopean at once, notwithstanding the
+loud-voiced remonstrances from all sides; and the crowd scattered away
+from the close, the eleven all going into the School-house, where supper
+and beds were provided for them by the Doctor's orders.
+
+Deep had been the consultations at supper as to the order of going in,
+who should bowl the first over, whether it would be best to play steady
+or freely; and the youngest hands declared that they shouldn't be a
+bit nervous, and praised their opponents as the jolliest fellows in the
+world, except perhaps their old friends the Wellesburn men. How far
+a little good-nature from their elders will go with the right sort of
+boys!
+
+The morning had dawned bright and warm, to the intense relief of many
+an anxious youngster, up betimes to mark the signs of the weather. The
+eleven went down in a body before breakfast, for a plunge in the cold
+bath in a corner of the close. The ground was in splendid order, and
+soon after ten o'clock, before spectators had arrived, all was ready,
+and two of the Lord's men took their places at the wickets--the School,
+with the usual liberality of young hands, having put their adversaries
+in first. Old Bailey stepped up to the wicket, and called play, and the
+match has begun.
+
+“Oh, well bowled! well bowled, Johnson!” cries the captain, catching
+up the ball and sending it high above the rook trees, while the third
+Marylebone man walks away from the wicket, and old Bailey gravely sets
+up the middle stump again and puts the bails on.
+
+“How many runs?” Away scamper three boys to the scoring table, and are
+back again in a minute amongst the rest of the eleven, who are collected
+together in a knot between wicket. “Only eighteen runs, and three
+wickets down!” “Huzza for old Rugby!” sings out Jack Raggles, the
+long-stop, toughest and burliest of boys, commonly called “Swiper Jack,”
+ and forthwith stands on his head, and brandishes his legs in the air
+in triumph, till the next boy catches hold of his heels, and throws him
+over on to his back.
+
+“Steady there; don't be such an ass, Jack,” says the captain; “we
+haven't got the best wicket yet. Ah, look out now at cover-point,” adds
+he, as he sees a long-armed bare-headed, slashing-looking player coming
+to the wicket. “And, Jack, mind your hits. He steals more runs than any
+man in England.”
+
+And they all find that they have got their work to do now. The
+newcomer's off-hitting is tremendous, and his running like a flash of
+lightning. He is never in his ground except when his wicket is down.
+Nothing in the whole game so trying to boys. He has stolen three byes in
+the first ten minutes, and Jack Raggles is furious, and begins throwing
+over savagely to the farther wicket, until he is sternly stopped by the
+captain. It is all that young gentlemen can do to keep his team steady,
+but he knows that everything depends on it, and faces his work bravely.
+The score creeps up to fifty; the boys begin to look blank; and the
+spectators, who are now mustering strong, are very silent. The ball
+flies off his bat to all parts of the field, and he gives no rest and
+no catches to any one. But cricket is full of glorious chances, and
+the goddess who presides over it loves to bring down the most skilful
+players. Johnson, the young bowler, is getting wild, and bowls a ball
+almost wide to the off; the batter steps out and cuts it beautifully to
+where cover-point is standing very deep--in fact almost off the ground.
+The ball comes skimming and twisting along about three feet from the
+ground; he rushes at it, and it sticks somehow or other in the fingers
+of his left hand, to the utter astonishment of himself and the whole
+field. Such a catch hasn't been made in the close for years, and the
+cheering is maddening. “Pretty cricket,” says the captain, throwing
+himself on the ground by the deserted wicket with a long breath. He
+feels that a crisis has passed.
+
+I wish I had space to describe the match--how the captain stumped the
+next man off a leg-shooter, and bowled small cobs to old Mr. Aislabie,
+who came in for the last wicket; how the Lord's men were out by
+half-past twelve o'clock for ninety-eight runs; how the captain of
+the School eleven went in first to give his men pluck, and scored
+twenty-five in beautiful style; how Rugby was only four behind in
+the first innings; what a glorious dinner they had in the fourth-form
+school; and how the cover-point hitter sang the most topping comic
+songs, and old Mr. Aislabie made the best speeches that ever were heard,
+afterwards. But I haven't space--that's the fact; and so you must fancy
+it all, and carry yourselves on to half-past seven o'clock, when the
+School are again in, with five wickets down, and only thirty-two runs
+to make to win. The Marylebone men played carelessly in their second
+innings, but they are working like horses now to save the match.
+
+There is much healthy, hearty, happy life scattered up and down the
+close; but the group to which I beg to call your especial attention
+is there, on the slope of the island, which looks towards the
+cricket-ground. It consists of three figures; two are seated on a bench,
+and one on the ground at their feet. The first, a tall, slight and
+rather gaunt man, with a bushy eyebrow and a dry, humorous smile, is
+evidently a clergyman. He is carelessly dressed, and looks rather used
+up, which isn't much to be wondered at, seeing that he has just finished
+six weeks of examination work; but there he basks, and spreads himself
+out in the evening sun, bent on enjoying life, though he doesn't quite
+know what to do with his arms and legs. Surely it is our friend the
+young master, whom we have had glimpses of before, but his face has
+gained a great deal since we last came across him.
+
+And by his side, in white flannel shirt and trousers, straw hat, the
+captain's belt, and the untanned yellow cricket shoes which all the
+eleven wear, sits a strapping figure, near six feet high, with ruddy,
+tanned face and whiskers, curly brown hair, and a laughing, dancing eye.
+He is leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees, and dandling
+his favourite bat, with which he has made thirty or forty runs to-day,
+in his strong brown hands. It is Tom Brown, grown into a young man
+nineteen years old, a praepostor and captain of the eleven, spending
+his last day as a Rugby boy, and, let us hope, as much wiser as he is
+bigger, since we last had the pleasure of coming across him.
+
+And at their feet on the warm, dry ground, similarly dressed, sits
+Arthur, Turkish fashion, with his bat across his knees. He too is no
+longer a boy--less of a boy, in fact, than Tom, if one may judge from
+the thoughtfulness of his face, which is somewhat paler, too, than one
+could wish; but his figure, though slight, is well knit and active, and
+all his old timidity has disappeared, and is replaced by silent, quaint
+fun, with which his face twinkles all over, as he listens to the broken
+talk between the other two, in which he joins every now and then.
+
+All three are watching the game eagerly, and joining in the cheering
+which follows every good hit. It is pleasing to see the easy, friendly
+footing which the pupils are on with their master, perfectly respectful,
+yet with no reserve and nothing forced in their intercourse. Tom has
+clearly abandoned the old theory of “natural enemies” in this case at
+any rate.
+
+But it is time to listen to what they are saying, and see what we can
+gather out of it.
+
+“I don't object to your theory,” says the master, “and I allow you have
+made a fair case for yourself. But now, in such books as Aristophanes,
+for instance, you've been reading a play this half with the Doctor,
+haven't you?”
+
+“Yes, the Knights,” answered Tom.
+
+“Well, I'm sure you would have enjoyed the wonderful humour of it twice
+as much if you had taken more pains with your scholarship.”
+
+“Well, sir, I don't believe any boy in the form enjoyed the sets-to
+between Cleon and the Sausage-seller more than I did--eh, Arthur?” said
+Tom, giving him a stir with his foot.
+
+“Yes, I must say he did,” said Arthur. “I think, sir, you've hit upon
+the wrong book there.”
+
+“Not a bit of it,” said the master. “Why, in those very passages of
+arms, how can you thoroughly appreciate them unless you are master of
+the weapons? and the weapons are the language, which you, Brown, have
+never half worked at; and so, as I say, you must have lost all the
+delicate shades of meaning which make the best part of the fun.”
+
+“Oh, well played! bravo, Johnson!” shouted Arthur, dropping his bat and
+clapping furiously, and Tom joined in with a “Bravo, Johnson!” which
+might have been heard at the chapel.
+
+“Eh! what was it? I didn't see,” inquired the master. “They only got one
+run, I thought?”
+
+“No, but such a ball, three-quarters length, and coming straight for his
+leg bail. Nothing but that turn of the wrist could have saved him, and
+he drew it away to leg for a safe one.--Bravo, Johnson!”
+
+“How well they are bowling, though,” said Arthur; “they don't mean to be
+beat, I can see.”
+
+“There now,” struck in the master; “you see that's just what I have been
+preaching this half-hour. The delicate play is the true thing. I don't
+understand cricket, so I don't enjoy those fine draws which you tell me
+are the best play, though when you or Raggles hit a ball hard away for
+six I am as delighted as any one. Don't you see the analogy?”
+
+“Yes, sir,” answered Tom, looking up roguishly, “I see; only the
+question remains whether I should have got most good by understanding
+Greek particles or cricket thoroughly. I'm such a thick, I never should
+have had time for both.”
+
+“I see you are an incorrigible,” said the master, with a chuckle; “but
+I refute you by an example. Arthur there has taken in Greek and cricket
+too.”
+
+“Yes, but no thanks to him; Greek came natural to him. Why, when he
+first came I remember he used to read Herodotus for pleasure as I did
+Don Quixote, and couldn't have made a false concord if he'd tried ever
+so hard; and then I looked after his cricket.”
+
+“Out! Bailey has given him out. Do you see, Tom?” cries Arthur. “How
+foolish of them to run so hard.”
+
+“Well, it can't be helped; he has played very well. Whose turn is it to
+go in?”
+
+“I don't know; they've got your list in the tent.”
+
+“Let's go and see,” said Tom, rising; but at this moment Jack Raggles
+and two or three more came running to the island moat.
+
+“O Brown, mayn't I go in next?” shouts the Swiper.
+
+“Whose name is next on the list?” says the captain.
+
+“Winter's, and then Arthur's,” answers the boy who carries it; “but
+there are only twenty-six runs to get, and no time to lose. I heard
+Mr. Aislabie say that the stumps must be drawn at a quarter past eight
+exactly.”
+
+“Oh, do let the Swiper go in,” chorus the boys; so Tom yields against
+his better judgment.
+
+“I dare say now I've lost the match by this nonsense,” he says, as he
+sits down again; “they'll be sure to get Jack's wicket in three or four
+minutes; however, you'll have the chance, sir, of seeing a hard hit or
+two,” adds he, smiling, and turning to the master.
+
+“Come, none of your irony, Brown,” answers the master. “I'm beginning to
+understand the game scientifically. What a noble game it is, too!”
+
+“Isn't it? But it's more than a game. It's an institution,” said Tom.
+
+“Yes,” said Arthur--“the birthright of British boys old and young, as
+habeas corpus and trial by jury are of British men.”
+
+“The discipline and reliance on one another which it teaches is
+so valuable, I think,” went on the master, “it ought to be such an
+unselfish game. It merges the individual in the eleven; he doesn't play
+that he may win, but that his side may.”
+
+“That's very true,” said Tom, “and that's why football and cricket,
+now one comes to think of it, are such much better games than fives or
+hare-and-hounds, or any others where the object is to come in first or
+to win for oneself, and not that one's side may win.”
+
+“And then the captain of the eleven!” said the master; “what a post is
+his in our School-world! almost as hard as the Doctor's--requiring skill
+and gentleness and firmness, and I know not what other rare qualities.”
+
+“Which don't he may wish he may get!” said Tom, laughing; “at any rate
+he hasn't got them yet, or he wouldn't have been such a flat to-night as
+to let Jack Raggles go in out of his turn.”
+
+“Ah, the Doctor never would have done that,” said Arthur demurely. “Tom,
+you've a great deal to learn yet in the art of ruling.”
+
+“Well, I wish you'd tell the Doctor so then, and get him to let me stop
+till I'm twenty. I don't want to leave, I'm sure.”
+
+“What a sight it is,” broke in the master, “the Doctor as a ruler!
+Perhaps ours is the only little corner of the British Empire which
+is thoroughly, wisely, and strongly ruled just now. I'm more and more
+thankful every day of my life that I came here to be under him.”
+
+“So am I, I'm sure,” said Tom, “and more and more sorry that I've got to
+leave.”
+
+“Every place and thing one sees here reminds one of some wise act of
+his,” went on the master. “This island now--you remember the time,
+Brown, when it was laid out in small gardens, and cultivated by
+frost-bitten fags in February and March?”
+
+“Of course I do,” said Tom; “didn't I hate spending two hours in the
+afternoon grubbing in the tough dirt with the stump of a fives bat? But
+turf-cart was good fun enough.”
+
+“I dare say it was, but it was always leading to fights with the
+townspeople; and then the stealing flowers out of all the gardens in
+Rugby for the Easter show was abominable.”
+
+“Well, so it was,” said Tom, looking down, “but we fags couldn't help
+ourselves. But what has that to do with the Doctor's ruling?”
+
+“A great deal, I think,” said the master; “what brought island-fagging
+to an end?”
+
+“Why, the Easter speeches were put off till midsummer,” said Tom, “and
+the sixth had the gymnastic poles put up here.”
+
+“Well, and who changed the time of the speeches, and put the idea of
+gymnastic poles into the heads of their worships the sixth form?” said
+the master.
+
+“The Doctor, I suppose,” said Tom. “I never thought of that.”
+
+“Of course you didn't,” said the master, “or else, fag as you were,
+you would have shouted with the whole school against putting down old
+customs. And that's the way that all the Doctor's reforms have been
+carried out when he has been left to himself--quietly and naturally,
+putting a good thing in the place of a bad, and letting the bad die out;
+no wavering, and no hurry--the best thing that could be done for the
+time being, and patience for the rest.”
+
+“Just Tom's own way,” chimed in Arthur, nudging Tom with his
+elbow--“driving a nail where it will go;” to which allusion Tom answered
+by a sly kick.
+
+“Exactly so,” said the master, innocent of the allusion and by-play.
+
+Meantime Jack Raggles, with his sleeves tucked up above his great brown
+elbows, scorning pads and gloves, has presented himself at the wicket;
+and having run one for a forward drive of Johnson's, is about to receive
+his first ball. There are only twenty-four runs to make, and four
+wickets to go down--a winning match if they play decently steady. The
+ball is a very swift one, and rises fast, catching Jack on the outside
+of the thigh, and bounding away as if from india-rubber, while they
+run two for a leg-bye amidst great applause and shouts from Jack's many
+admirers. The next ball is a beautifully-pitched ball for the outer
+stump, which the reckless and unfeeling Jack catches hold of, and hits
+right round to leg for five, while the applause becomes deafening. Only
+seventeen runs to get with four wickets! The game is all but ours!
+
+It is over now, and Jack walks swaggering about his wicket, with his bat
+over his shoulder, while Mr. Aislabie holds a short parley with his
+men. Then the cover-point hitter, that cunning man, goes on to bowl slow
+twisters. Jack waves his hand triumphantly towards the tent, as much as
+to say, “See if I don't finish it all off now in three hits.”
+
+Alas, my son Jack, the enemy is too old for thee. The first ball of the
+over Jack steps out and meets, swiping with all his force. If he had
+only allowed for the twist! But he hasn't, and so the ball goes spinning
+up straight in the air, as if it would never come down again. Away runs
+Jack, shouting and trusting to the chapter of accidents; but the bowler
+runs steadily under it, judging every spin, and calling out, “I have
+it,” catches it, and playfully pitches it on to the back of the stalwart
+Jack, who is departing with a rueful countenance.
+
+“I knew how it would be,” says Tom, rising. “Come along; the game's
+getting very serious.”
+
+So they leave the island and go to the tent; and after deep
+consultation, Arthur is sent in, and goes off to the wicket with a last
+exhortation from Tom to play steady and keep his bat straight. To the
+suggestions that Winter is the best bat left, Tom only replies, “Arthur
+is the steadiest, and Johnson will make the runs if the wicket is only
+kept up.”
+
+“I am surprised to see Arthur in the eleven,” said the master, as they
+stood together in front of the dense crowd, which was now closing in
+round the ground.
+
+“Well, I'm not quite sure that he ought to be in for his play,” said
+Tom, “but I couldn't help putting him in. It will do him so much good,
+and you can't think what I owe him.”
+
+The master smiled. The clock strikes eight, and the whole field becomes
+fevered with excitement. Arthur, after two narrow escapes, scores one,
+and Johnson gets the ball. The bowling and fielding are superb, and
+Johnson's batting worthy the occasion. He makes here a two, and there a
+one, managing to keep the ball to himself, and Arthur backs up and runs
+perfectly. Only eleven runs to make now, and the crowd scarcely breathe.
+At last Arthur gets the ball again, and actually drives it forward
+for two, and feels prouder than when he got the three best prizes, at
+hearing Tom's shout of joy, “Well played, well played, young un!”
+
+But the next ball is too much for the young hand, and his bails fly
+different ways. Nine runs to make, and two wickets to go down: it is too
+much for human nerves.
+
+Before Winter can get in, the omnibus which is to take the Lord's men
+to the train pulls up at the side of the close, and Mr. Aislabie and Tom
+consult, and give out that the stumps will be drawn after the next over.
+And so ends the great match. Winter and Johnson carry out their bats,
+and, it being a one day's match, the Lord's men are declared the
+winners, they having scored the most in the first innings.
+
+But such a defeat is a victory: so think Tom and all the School eleven,
+as they accompany their conquerors to the omnibus, and send them off
+with three ringing cheers, after Mr. Aislabie has shaken hands all
+round, saying to Tom, “I must compliment you, sir, on your eleven, and I
+hope we shall have you for a member if you come up to town.”
+
+As Tom and the rest of the eleven were turning back into the close, and
+everybody was beginning to cry out for another country-dance, encouraged
+by the success of the night before, the young master, who was just
+leaving the close, stopped him, and asked him to come up to tea at
+half-past eight, adding, “I won't keep you more than half an hour, and
+ask Arthur to come up too.”
+
+“I'll come up with you directly, if you'll let me,” said Tom, “for I
+feel rather melancholy, and not quite up to the country-dance and supper
+with the rest.”
+
+“Do, by all means,” said the master; “I'll wait here for you.”
+
+So Tom went off to get his boots and things from the tent, to tell
+Arthur of the invitation, and to speak to his second in command about
+stopping the dancing and shutting up the close as soon as it grew dusk.
+Arthur promised to follow as soon as he had had a dance. So Tom handed
+his things over to the man in charge of the tent, and walked quietly
+away to the gate where the master was waiting, and the two took their
+way together up the Hillmorton road.
+
+Of course they found the master's house locked up, and all the servants
+away in the close--about this time, no doubt, footing it away on the
+grass, with extreme delight to themselves, and in utter oblivion of the
+unfortunate bachelor their master, whose one enjoyment in the shape
+of meals was his “dish of tea” (as our grandmothers called it) in the
+evening; and the phrase was apt in his case, for he always poured his
+out into the saucer before drinking. Great was the good man's horror at
+finding himself shut out of his own house. Had he been alone he
+would have treated it as a matter of course, and would have strolled
+contentedly up and down his gravel walk until some one came home; but he
+was hurt at the stain on his character of host, especially as the guest
+was a pupil. However, the guest seemed to think it a great joke, and
+presently, as they poked about round the house, mounted a wall, from
+which he could reach a passage window. The window, as it turned out, was
+not bolted, so in another minute Tom was in the house and down at the
+front door, which he opened from inside. The master chuckled grimly at
+this burglarious entry, and insisted on leaving the hall-door and two
+of the front windows open, to frighten the truants on their return; and
+then the two set about foraging for tea, in which operation the master
+was much at fault, having the faintest possible idea of where to find
+anything, and being, moreover, wondrously short-sighted; but Tom, by a
+sort of instinct, knew the right cupboards in the kitchen and pantry,
+and soon managed to place on the snuggery table better materials for a
+meal than had appeared there probably during the reign of his tutor, who
+was then and there initiated, amongst other things, into the excellence
+of that mysterious condiment, a dripping-cake. The cake was newly baked,
+and all rich and flaky; Tom had found it reposing in the cook's private
+cupboard, awaiting her return; and as a warning to her they finished
+it to the last crumb. The kettle sang away merrily on the hob of the
+snuggery, for, notwithstanding the time of year, they lighted a fire,
+throwing both the windows wide open at the same time; the heaps of books
+and papers were pushed away to the other end of the table, and the great
+solitary engraving of King's College Chapel over the mantelpiece looked
+less stiff than usual, as they settled themselves down in the twilight
+to the serious drinking of tea.
+
+After some talk on the match, and other indifferent subjects, the
+conversation came naturally back to Tom's approaching departure, over
+which he began again to make his moan.
+
+“Well, we shall all miss you quite as much as you will miss us,” said
+the master. “You are the Nestor of the School now, are you not?”
+
+“Yes, ever since East left,” answered Tom. “By-the-bye, have you heard
+from him?”
+
+“Yes, I had a letter in February, just before he started for India to
+join his regiment.”
+
+“He will make a capital officer.”
+
+“Ay, won't he!” said Tom, brightening. “No fellow could handle boys
+better, and I suppose soldiers are very like boys. And he'll never tell
+them to go where he won't go himself. No mistake about that. A braver
+fellow never walked.”
+
+“His year in the sixth will have taught him a good deal that will be
+useful to him now.”
+
+“So it will,”' said Tom, staring into the fire. “Poor dear Harry,” he
+went on--“how well I remember the day we were put out of the twenty! How
+he rose to the situation, and burnt his cigar-cases, and gave away his
+pistols, and pondered on the constitutional authority of the sixth, and
+his new duties to the Doctor, and the fifth form, and the fags! Ay, and
+no fellow ever acted up to them better, though he was always a people's
+man--for the fags, and against constituted authorities. He couldn't
+help that, you know. I'm sure the Doctor must have liked him?” said Tom,
+looking up inquiringly.
+
+“The Doctor sees the good in every one, and appreciates it,” said the
+master dogmatically; “but I hope East will get a good colonel. He won't
+do if he can't respect those above him. How long it took him, even here,
+to learn the lesson of obeying!”
+
+“Well, I wish I were alongside of him,” said Tom. “If I can't be at
+Rugby, I want to be at work in the world, and not dawdling away three
+years at Oxford.”
+
+“What do you mean by 'at work in the world'?” said the master, pausing
+with his lips close to his saucerful of tea, and peering at Tom over it.
+
+“Well, I mean real work--one's profession--whatever one will have really
+to do and make one's living by. I want to be doing some real good,
+feeling that I am not only at play in the world,” answered Tom, rather
+puzzled to find out himself what he really did mean.
+
+“You are mixing up two very different things in your head, I think,
+Brown,” said the master, putting down the empty saucer, “and you ought
+to get clear about them. You talk of 'working to get your living,' and
+'doing some real good in the world,' in the same breath. Now, you may be
+getting a very good living in a profession, and yet doing no good at all
+in the world, but quite the contrary, at the same time. Keep the latter
+before you as your one object, and you will be right, whether you make
+a living or not; but if you dwell on the other, you'll very likely drop
+into mere money-making, and let the world take care of itself for good
+or evil. Don't be in a hurry about finding your work in the world for
+yourself--you are not old enough to judge for yourself yet; but just
+look about you in the place you find yourself in, and try to make things
+a little better and honester there. You'll find plenty to keep your hand
+in at Oxford, or wherever else you go. And don't be led away to think
+this part of the world important and that unimportant. Every corner of
+the world is important. No man knows whether this part or that is most
+so, but every man may do some honest work in his own corner.” And then
+the good man went on to talk wisely to Tom of the sort of work which
+he might take up as an undergraduate, and warned him of the prevalent
+university sins, and explained to him the many and great differences
+between university and school life, till the twilight changed into
+darkness, and they heard the truant servants stealing in by the back
+entrance.
+
+“I wonder where Arthur can be,” said Tom at last, looking at his watch;
+“why, it's nearly half-past nine already.”
+
+“Oh, he is comfortably at supper with the eleven, forgetful of his
+oldest friends,” said the master. “Nothing has given me greater
+pleasure,” he went on, “than your friendship for him; it has been the
+making of you both.”
+
+“Of me, at any rate,” answered Tom; “I should never have been here now
+but for him. It was the luckiest chance in the world that sent him to
+Rugby and made him my chum.”
+
+“Why do you talk of lucky chances?” said the master. “I don't know that
+there are any such things in the world; at any rate, there was neither
+luck nor chance in that matter.”
+
+Tom looked at him inquiringly, and he went on. “Do you remember when the
+Doctor lectured you and East at the end of one half-year, when you were
+in the shell, and had been getting into all sorts of scrapes?”
+
+“Yes, well enough,” said Tom; “it was the half-year before Arthur came.”
+
+“Exactly so,” answered the master. “Now, I was with him a few minutes
+afterwards, and he was in great distress about you two. And after some
+talk, we both agreed that you in particular wanted some object in the
+School beyond games and mischief; for it was quite clear that you never
+would make the regular school work your first object. And so the Doctor,
+at the beginning of the next half-year, looked out the best of the new
+boys, and separated you and East, and put the young boy into your study,
+in the hope that when you had somebody to lean on you, you would
+begin to stand a little steadier yourself, and get manliness and
+thoughtfulness. And I can assure you he has watched the experiment ever
+since with great satisfaction. Ah! not one of you boys will ever know
+the anxiety you have given him, or the care with which he has watched
+over every step in your school lives.”
+
+Up to this time Tom had never given wholly in to or understood the
+Doctor. At first he had thoroughly feared him. For some years, as I have
+tried to show, he had learnt to regard him with love and respect, and
+to think him a very great and wise and good man. But as regarded his own
+position in the School, of which he was no little proud, Tom had no idea
+of giving any one credit for it but himself, and, truth to tell, was a
+very self-conceited young gentleman on the subject. He was wont to boast
+that he had fought his own way fairly up the School, and had never made
+up to or been taken up by any big fellow or master, and that it was
+now quite a different place from what it was when he first came. And,
+indeed, though he didn't actually boast of it, yet in his secret soul
+he did to a great extent believe that the great reform in the School
+had been owing quite as much to himself as to any one else. Arthur,
+he acknowledged, had done him good, and taught him a good deal; so had
+other boys in different ways, but they had not had the same means of
+influence on the School in general. And as for the Doctor, why, he was
+a splendid master; but every one knew that masters could do very little
+out of school hours. In short, he felt on terms of equality with his
+chief, so far as the social state of the School was concerned, and
+thought that the Doctor would find it no easy matter to get on without
+him. Moreover, his School Toryism was still strong, and he looked still
+with some jealousy on the Doctor, as somewhat of a fanatic in the matter
+of change, and thought it very desirable for the School that he should
+have some wise person (such as himself) to look sharply after vested
+School-rights, and see that nothing was done to the injury of the
+republic without due protest.
+
+It was a new light to him to find that, besides teaching the sixth, and
+governing and guiding the whole School, editing classics, and writing
+histories, the great headmaster had found time in those busy years
+to watch over the career even of him, Tom Brown, and his particular
+friends, and, no doubt, of fifty other boys at the same time, and all
+this without taking the least credit to himself, or seeming to know, or
+let any one else know, that he ever thought particularly of any boy at
+all.
+
+However, the Doctor's victory was complete from that moment over Tom
+Brown at any rate. He gave way at all points, and the enemy marched
+right over him--cavalry, infantry, and artillery, and the land transport
+corps, and the camp followers. It had taken eight long years to do it;
+but now it was done thoroughly, and there wasn't a corner of him left
+which didn't believe in the Doctor. Had he returned to School again, and
+the Doctor begun the half-year by abolishing fagging, and football, and
+the Saturday half-holiday, or all or any of the most cherished School
+institutions, Tom would have supported him with the blindest faith. And
+so, after a half confession of his previous shortcomings, and sorrowful
+adieus to his tutor, from whom he received two beautifully-bound volumes
+of the Doctor's sermons, as a parting present, he marched down to the
+Schoolhouse, a hero-worshipper, who would have satisfied the soul of
+Thomas Carlyle himself.
+
+There he found the eleven at high jinks after supper, Jack Raggles
+shouting comic songs and performing feats of strength, and was greeted
+by a chorus of mingled remonstrance at his desertion and joy at his
+reappearance. And falling in with the humour of the evening, he was soon
+as great a boy as all the rest; and at ten o'clock was chaired round
+the quadrangle, on one of the hall benches, borne aloft by the eleven,
+shouting in chorus, “For he's a jolly good fellow,” while old Thomas, in
+a melting mood, and the other School-house servants, stood looking on.
+
+And the next morning after breakfast he squared up all the cricketing
+accounts, went round to his tradesmen and other acquaintance, and said
+his hearty good-byes; and by twelve o'clock was in the train, and away
+for London, no longer a school-boy, and divided in his thoughts between
+hero-worship, honest regrets over the long stage of his life which was
+now slipping out of sight behind him, and hopes and resolves for the
+next stage upon which he was entering with all the confidence of a young
+traveller.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--FINIS.
+
+     “Strange friend, past, present, and to be;
+     Loved deeplier, darklier understood;
+     Behold I dream a dream of good,
+     And mingle all the world with thee.”--TENNYSON.
+
+In the summer of 1842, our hero stopped once again at the well-known
+station; and leaving his bag and fishing-rod with a porter, walked
+slowly and sadly up towards the town. It was now July. He had rushed
+away from Oxford the moment that term was over, for a fishing ramble in
+Scotland with two college friends, and had been for three weeks living
+on oatcake, mutton-hams, and whisky, in the wildest parts of Skye. They
+had descended one sultry evening on the little inn at Kyle Rhea ferry;
+and while Tom and another of the party put their tackle together
+and began exploring the stream for a sea-trout for supper, the third
+strolled into the house to arrange for their entertainment. Presently he
+came out in a loose blouse and slippers, a short pipe in his mouth, and
+an old newspaper in his hand, and threw himself on the heathery scrub
+which met the shingle, within easy hail of the fishermen. There he lay,
+the picture of free-and-easy, loafing, hand-to-mouth young England,
+“improving his mind,” as he shouted to them, by the perusal of the
+fortnight-old weekly paper, soiled with the marks of toddy-glasses and
+tobacco-ashes, the legacy of the last traveller, which he had hunted
+out from the kitchen of the little hostelry, and, being a youth of
+a communicative turn of mind, began imparting the contents to the
+fishermen as he went on.
+
+“What a bother they are making about these wretched corn-laws! Here's
+three or four columns full of nothing but sliding scales and fixed
+duties. Hang this tobacco, it's always going out! Ah, here's something
+better--a splendid match between Kent and England, Brown, Kent winning
+by three wickets. Felix fifty-six runs without a chance, and not out!”
+
+Tom, intent on a fish which had risen at him twice, answered only with a
+grunt.
+
+“Anything about the Goodwood?” called out the third man.
+
+“Rory O'More drawn. Butterfly colt amiss,” shouted the student.
+
+“Just my luck,” grumbled the inquirer, jerking his flies off the water,
+and throwing again with a heavy, sullen splash, and frightening Tom's
+fish.
+
+“I say, can't you throw lighter over there? We ain't fishing for
+grampuses,” shouted Tom across the stream.
+
+“Hullo, Brown! here's something for you,” called out the reading man
+next moment. “Why, your old master, Arnold of Rugby, is dead.”
+
+Tom's hand stopped half-way in his cast, and his line and flies went all
+tangling round and round his rod; you might have knocked him over with a
+feather. Neither of his companions took any notice of him, luckily; and
+with a violent effort he set to work mechanically to disentangle his
+line. He felt completely carried off his moral and intellectual legs, as
+if he had lost his standing-point in the invisible world. Besides which,
+the deep, loving loyalty which he felt for his old leader made the shock
+intensely painful. It was the first great wrench of his life, the first
+gap which the angel Death had made in his circle, and he felt numbed,
+and beaten down, and spiritless. Well, well! I believe it was good for
+him and for many others in like case, who had to learn by that loss
+that the soul of man cannot stand or lean upon any human prop, however
+strong, and wise, and good; but that He upon whom alone it can stand and
+lean will knock away all such props in His own wise and merciful way,
+until there is no ground or stay left but Himself, the Rock of Ages,
+upon whom alone a sure foundation for every soul of man is laid.
+
+As he wearily laboured at his line, the thought struck him, “It may
+be all false--a mere newspaper lie.” And he strode up to the recumbent
+smoker.
+
+“Let me look at the paper,” said he.
+
+“Nothing else in it,” answered the other, handing it up to him
+listlessly. “Hullo, Brown! what's the matter, old fellow? Ain't you
+well?”
+
+“Where is it?” said Tom, turning over the leaves, his hands trembling,
+and his eyes swimming, so that he could not read.
+
+“What? What are you looking for?” said his friend, jumping up and
+looking over his shoulder.
+
+“That--about Arnold,” said Tom.
+
+“Oh, here,” said the other, putting his finger on the paragraph. Tom
+read it over and over again. There could be no mistake of identity,
+though the account was short enough.
+
+“Thank you,” said he at last, dropping the paper. “I shall go for a
+walk. Don't you and Herbert wait supper for me.” And away he strode,
+up over the moor at the back of the house, to be alone, and master his
+grief if possible.
+
+His friend looked after him, sympathizing and wondering, and, knocking
+the ashes out of his pipe, walked over to Herbert. After a short parley
+they walked together up to the house.
+
+“I'm afraid that confounded newspaper has spoiled Brown's fun for this
+trip.”
+
+“How odd that he should be so fond of his old master,” said Herbert. Yet
+they also were both public-school men.
+
+The two, however, notwithstanding Tom's prohibition, waited supper
+for him, and had everything ready when he came back some half an hour
+afterwards. But he could not join in their cheerful talk, and the party
+was soon silent, notwithstanding the efforts of all three. One thing
+only had Tom resolved, and that was, that he couldn't stay in Scotland
+any longer: he felt an irresistible longing to get to Rugby, and then
+home, and soon broke it to the others, who had too much tact to oppose.
+
+So by daylight the next morning he was marching through Ross-shire,
+and in the evening hit the Caledonian Canal, took the next steamer,
+and travelled as fast as boat and railway could carry him to the Rugby
+station.
+
+As he walked up to the town, he felt shy and afraid of being seen,
+and took the back streets--why, he didn't know, but he followed his
+instinct. At the School-gates he made a dead pause; there was not a soul
+in the quadrangle--all was lonely, and silent, and sad. So with another
+effort he strode through the quadrangle, and into the School-house
+offices.
+
+He found the little matron in her room in deep mourning; shook her hand,
+tried to talk, and moved nervously about. She was evidently thinking of
+the same subject as he, but he couldn't begin talking.
+
+“Where shall I find Thomas?” said he at last, getting desperate.
+
+“In the servants' hall, I think, sir. But won't you take anything?” said
+the matron, looking rather disappointed.
+
+“No, thank you,” said he, and strode off again to find the old
+verger, who was sitting in his little den, as of old, puzzling over
+hieroglyphics.
+
+He looked up through his spectacles as Tom seized his hand and wrung it.
+
+“Ah! you've heard all about it, sir, I see,” said he. Tom nodded, and
+then sat down on the shoe-board, while the old man told his tale, and
+wiped his spectacles, and fairly flowed over with quaint, homely, honest
+sorrow.
+
+By the time he had done Tom felt much better.
+
+“Where is he buried, Thomas?” said he at last.
+
+“Under the altar in the chapel, sir,” answered Thomas. “You'd like to
+have the key, I dare say?”
+
+“Thank you, Thomas--yes, I should, very much.”
+
+And the old man fumbled among his bunch, and then got up, as though
+he would go with him; but after a few steps stopped short, and said,
+“Perhaps you'd like to go by yourself, sir?”
+
+Tom nodded, and the bunch of keys were handed to him, with an injunction
+to be sure and lock the door after him, and bring them back before eight
+o'clock.
+
+He walked quickly through the quadrangle and out into the close. The
+longing which had been upon him and driven him thus far, like the
+gad-fly in the Greek legends, giving him no rest in mind or body, seemed
+all of a sudden not to be satisfied, but to shrivel up and pall. “Why
+should I go on? It's no use,” he thought, and threw himself at full
+length on the turf, and looked vaguely and listlessly at all the
+well-known objects. There were a few of the town boys playing cricket,
+their wicket pitched on the best piece in the middle of the big-side
+ground--a sin about equal to sacrilege in the eyes of a captain of the
+eleven. He was very nearly getting up to go and send them off. “Pshaw!
+they won't remember me. They've more right there than I,” he muttered.
+And the thought that his sceptre had departed, and his mark was wearing
+out, came home to him for the first time, and bitterly enough. He was
+lying on the very spot where the fights came off--where he himself had
+fought six years ago his first and last battle. He conjured up the scene
+till he could almost hear the shouts of the ring, and East's whisper in
+his ear; and looking across the close to the Doctor's private door,
+half expected to see it open, and the tall figure in cap and gown come
+striding under the elm-trees towards him.
+
+No, no; that sight could never be seen again. There was no flag flying
+on the round tower; the School-house windows were all shuttered up; and
+when the flag went up again, and the shutters came down, it would be
+to welcome a stranger. All that was left on earth of him whom he had
+honoured was lying cold and still under the chapel floor. He would go in
+and see the place once more, and then leave it once for all. New men and
+new methods might do for other people; let those who would, worship the
+rising star; he, at least, would be faithful to the sun which had
+set. And so he got up, and walked to the chapel door, and unlocked it,
+fancying himself the only mourner in all the broad land, and feeding on
+his own selfish sorrow.
+
+He passed through the vestibule, and then paused for a moment to glance
+over the empty benches. His heart was still proud and high, and he
+walked up to the seat which he had last occupied as a sixth-form boy,
+and sat himself down there to collect his thoughts.
+
+And, truth to tell, they needed collecting and setting in order not a
+little. The memories of eight years were all dancing through his brain,
+and carrying him about whither they would; while, beneath them all, his
+heart was throbbing with the dull sense of a loss that could never be
+made up to him. The rays of the evening sun came solemnly through the
+painted windows above his head, and fell in gorgeous colours on the
+opposite wall, and the perfect stillness soothed his spirit by little
+and little. And he turned to the pulpit, and looked at it, and then,
+leaning forward with his head on his hands, groaned aloud. If he could
+only have seen the Doctor again for one five minutes--have told him all
+that was in his heart, what he owed to him, how he loved and reverenced
+him, and would, by God's help, follow his steps in life and death--he
+could have borne it all without a murmur. But that he should have gone
+away for ever without knowing it all, was too much to bear. “But am I
+sure that he does not know it all?” The thought made him start. “May he
+not even now be near me, in this very chapel? If he be, am I sorrowing
+as he would have me sorrow, as I should wish to have sorrowed when I
+shall meet him again?”
+
+He raised himself up and looked round, and after a minute rose and
+walked humbly down to the lowest bench, and sat down on the very seat
+which he had occupied on his first Sunday at Rugby. And then the old
+memories rushed back again, but softened and subdued, and soothing him
+as he let himself be carried away by them. And he looked up at the great
+painted window above the altar, and remembered how, when a little boy,
+he used to try not to look through it at the elm-trees and the rooks,
+before the painted glass came; and the subscription for the painted
+glass, and the letter he wrote home for money to give to it. And there,
+down below, was the very name of the boy who sat on his right hand on
+that first day, scratched rudely in the oak panelling.
+
+And then came the thought of all his old schoolfellows; and form after
+form of boys nobler, and braver, and purer than he rose up and seemed to
+rebuke him. Could he not think of them, and what they had felt and were
+feeling--they who had honoured and loved from the first the man whom he
+had taken years to know and love? Could he not think of those yet dearer
+to him who was gone, who bore his name and shared his blood, and were
+now without a husband or a father? Then the grief which he began to
+share with others became gentle and holy, and he rose up once more, and
+walked up the steps to the altar, and while the tears flowed freely down
+his cheeks, knelt down humbly and hopefully, to lay down there his share
+of a burden which had proved itself too heavy for him to bear in his own
+strength.
+
+Here let us leave him. Where better could we leave him than at the
+altar before which he had first caught a glimpse of the glory of his
+birthright, and felt the drawing of the bond which links all living
+souls together in one brotherhood--at the grave beneath the altar of him
+who had opened his eyes to see that glory, and softened his heart till
+it could feel that bond?
+
+And let us not be hard on him, if at that moment his soul is fuller of
+the tomb and him who lies there than of the altar and Him of whom it
+speaks. Such stages have to be gone through, I believe, by all young and
+brave souls, who must win their way through hero-worship to the worship
+of Him who is the King and Lord of heroes. For it is only through our
+mysterious human relationships--through the love and tenderness and
+purity of mothers and sisters and wives, through the strength and
+courage and wisdom of fathers and brothers and teachers--that we can
+come to the knowledge of Him in whom alone the love, and the tenderness,
+and the purity, and the strength, and the courage, and the wisdom of all
+these dwell for ever and ever in perfect fullness.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Tom Brown's Schooldays, by Thomas Hughes
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diff --git a/old/1480-0.zip b/old/1480-0.zip
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+++ b/old/1480-h/1480-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,12732 @@
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Tom Brown's Schooldays, by Thomas Hughes
+    </title>
+<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;"  />
+    <style type="text/css">
+    <!--
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    .indent5   { margin-left: 5%;}
+    .indent10  { margin-left: 10%;}
+    .indent15  { margin-left: 15%;}
+    .indent20  { margin-left: 20%;}
+    .indent30  { margin-left: 30%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 100%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    .side      { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 25%; padding-left: 0.8em;
+               border-left: dashed thin; text-align: left;
+               text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
+               font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;}
+    p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0}
+    span.dropcap         { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 1 }
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+    -->
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tom Brown's Schooldays, by Thomas Hughes
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Tom Brown's Schooldays
+
+Author: Thomas Hughes
+
+Illustrator: Louis Rhead
+
+Release Date: February 15, 2006 [EBook #1480]
+Last Updated: March 15, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+This illustrated html file was prepared by David Widger from the Project
+Gutenberg ebook #1480, which had been scanned and transcribed by Gil
+Jaysmith from the Thomas Nelson and Sons 1905 edition. The illustrations
+and the note by W.D. Howells in the html file were taken from the
+Harper Brothers 1911 edition.
+
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS ***
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Thomas Hughes
+    </h2>
+<h3>Illustrated by Louis Rhead</h3>
+
+<p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0001m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0001m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0001.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0008m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0008m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0008.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0009m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0009m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0009.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0011m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0011m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0011.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PART1"> <big><b>PART I.</b></big> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I&mdash;THE BROWN FAMILY </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II&mdash;THE &ldquo;VEAST.&rdquo; </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III&mdash;SUNDRY WARS AND ALLIANCES.
+        </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV&mdash;THE STAGE COACH. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V&mdash;RUGBY AND FOOTBALL. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI&mdash;AFTER THE MATCH. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII&mdash;SETTLING TO THE COLLAR. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII&mdash;THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.
+        </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX&mdash;A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PART2"> <big><b>PART II.</b></big> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER I&mdash;HOW THE TIDE TURNED. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER II&mdash;THE NEW BOY. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER III&mdash;ARTHUR MAKES A FRIEND. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER IV&mdash;THE BIRD-FANCIERS. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER V&mdash;THE FIGHT: </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER VI&mdash;FEVER IN THE SCHOOL. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER VII&mdash;HARRY EAST'S DILEMMAS AND
+        DELIVERANCES. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER VIII&mdash;TOM BROWN'S LAST MATCH. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER IX&mdash;FINIS. </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0013m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0013m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0013.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0014m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0014m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0014.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0023m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0023m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0023.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+      <img src="images/9023m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="9023m " width="100%" />
+      <a href="images/9023.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </div>
+<p>
+T is not often that in later years one finds any book as good as one
+remembers it from one's youth; but it has been my interesting experience
+to find the story of Tom Brown's School Days even better than I once
+thought it, say, fifty years ago; not only better, but more charming,
+more kindly, manlier, truer, realler. So far as I have been able to note
+there is not a moment of snobbishness in it, or meanness of whatever
+sort. Of course it is of its period, the period which people call Middle
+Victorian because the great Queen was then nearly at the end of
+the first half of her long reign, and not because she personally
+characterized the mood of arts, of letters, of morals then prevalent.
+</p>
+<p>
+The author openly preaches and praises himself for preaching; he does
+not hesitate to slip into the drama and deliver a sermon; he talks the
+story out with many self-interruptions and excursions; he knows nothing
+of the modern method of letting it walk along on its own legs, but
+is always putting his hands under its arms and helping it, or his arm
+across its shoulder and caressing it. In all this, which I think wrong,
+he is probably doing quite right for the boys who formed and will always
+form the greatest number of his readers; boys like to have things fully
+explained and commentated, whether they are grown up or not. In much
+else, in what I will not say are not the great matters, he is altogether
+right. By precept and by example he teaches boys to be good, that is, to
+be true, honest, clean-minded and clean-mouthed, kind and thoughtful. He
+forgives them the follies of their youth, but makes them see that they
+are follies.
+</p>
+<p>
+I suppose that American boys' schools are fashioned largely on what
+the English call their public schools; and so far as they emulate the
+democratic spirit of the English schools, with their sense of equality
+and their honor of personal worth, the American schools cannot be
+too like them. I have heard that some of our schools are cultures of
+unrepublican feeling, and that the meaner little souls in them make
+their account of what families it will be well to know after they leave
+school and restrict their school friendships accordingly, but I am not
+certain this is true. What I am certain of is that our school-boys can
+learn nothing of such baseness from the warm-hearted and large-minded
+man who wrote Tom Brown's School Days. He was one of our best friends
+in the Civil War, when we sorely needed friends in England, and it was
+his magnanimous admiration which made our great patriotic poet known to
+a public which had scarcely heard of James Russell Lowell before.
+</p>
+<p>
+But the manners and customs painted in this book are the manners and
+customs of the middle eighteen-fifties. It appears from its witness that
+English school-boys then freely drank beer and ale, and fought out their
+quarrels like prize-fighters with their naked fists, though the beer was
+allowed and the fighting disallowed by the school. Now, however, even
+the ruffians of the ring put on gloves, and probably the quarrels of our
+own schoolboys are not fought out even with gloves. Beer and ale must
+always have been as clandestine vices in our schools as pitched battles
+with fists in English schools; water was the rule, but probably if an
+American boy now went to an English school he would not have to teach by
+his singular example that water was a better drink for boys than beer.
+</p>
+<p>
+Our author had apparently no misgiving as to the beer; he does not blink
+it or defend it; beer was too merely a matter of course; but he makes
+a set argument for fighting, based upon the good old safe ground
+that there always had been fighting. Even in the heyday of muscular
+Christianity it seems that there must have been some question of
+fighting and it was necessary to defend it on the large and little
+scale, and his argument as to fisticuffs defeats itself. Concerning war,
+which we are now hoping that we see the beginning of the end of, he need
+only have looked into The Biglow Papers to find his idolized Lowell
+saying:
+</p>
+<pre>
+              &ldquo;Ez fur war I call it murder;
+               There ye hev it plain an' flat;
+               An' I don't want to go no furder
+               Then my Testament fur that.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+<p>
+I feel it laid upon me in commending this book to a new generation of
+readers, to guard them, so far as I may, against such errors of it.
+Possibly it might have been cleansed of them by editing, but that would
+have taken much of the life out of it, and would have been a grievous
+wrong to the author. They must remain a part of literature as many other
+regrettable things remain. They are a part of history, a color of
+the contemporary manners, and an excellently honest piece of
+self-portraiture. They are as the wart on Cromwell's face, and are
+essentially an element of a most Cromwellian genius. It was Puritanism,
+Macaulay says, that stamped with its ideal the modern English gentleman
+in dress and manner, and Puritanism has stamped the modern Englishman,
+the liberal, the radical, in morals. The author of Toni Brown was
+strongly of the English Church and the English State, but of the
+broad church and of the broad state. He was not only the best sort of
+Englishman, but he was the making of the best sort of American; and the
+American father can trust the American boy with his book, and fear no
+hurt to his republicanism, still less his democracy.
+</p>
+<p>
+It is full of the delight in nature and human nature, unpatronized and
+unsentimentalized. From his earliest boyhood up Tom Brown is the free
+and equal comrade of other decent boys of whatever station, and he
+ranges the woods, the fields, the streams with the joy in the sylvan
+life which is the birthright of all the boys born within reach of them.
+The American school-boy of this generation will as freshly taste the
+pleasure of the school life at Rugby as the American school-boys of the
+two generations past, and he can hardly fail to rise from it with the
+noble intentions, the magnanimous ambitions which only good books can
+inspire.
+</p>
+<p>
+W. D. Howells.
+</p>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <hr />
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0034m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0034m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0034.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART1" id="link2H_PART1">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      PART I.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0035m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0035m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0035.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I&mdash;THE BROWN FAMILY
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;I'm the Poet of White Horse Vale, sir,
+     With liberal notions under my cap.&rdquo;&mdash;Ballad
+</pre>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+      <img src="images/9035m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="9035m " width="100%" />
+      <a href="images/9035.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      he Browns have become illustrious by the pen of Thackeray and the pencil
+      of Doyle, within the memory of the young gentlemen who are now
+      matriculating at the universities. Notwithstanding the well-merited but
+      late fame which has now fallen upon them, any one at all acquainted with
+      the family must feel that much has yet to be written and said before the
+      British nation will be properly sensible of how much of its greatness it
+      owes to the Browns. For centuries, in their quiet, dogged, homespun way,
+      they have been subduing the earth in most English counties, and leaving
+      their mark in American forests and Australian uplands. Wherever the fleets
+      and armies of England have won renown, there stalwart sons of the Browns
+      have done yeomen's work. With the yew bow and cloth-yard shaft at Cressy
+      and Agincourt&mdash;with the brown bill and pike under the brave Lord
+      Willoughby&mdash;with culverin and demi-culverin against Spaniards and
+      Dutchmen&mdash;with hand-grenade and sabre, and musket and bayonet, under
+      Rodney and St. Vincent, Wolfe and Moore, Nelson and Wellington, they have
+      carried their lives in their hands, getting hard knocks and hard work in
+      plenty&mdash;which was on the whole what they looked for, and the best
+      thing for them&mdash;and little praise or pudding, which indeed they, and
+      most of us, are better without. Talbots and Stanleys, St. Maurs, and
+      such-like folk, have led armies and made laws time out of mind; but those
+      noble families would be somewhat astounded&mdash;if the accounts ever came
+      to be fairly taken&mdash;to find how small their work for England has been
+      by the side of that of the Browns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These latter, indeed, have, until the present generation, rarely been sung
+      by poet, or chronicled by sage. They have wanted their sacer vates, having
+      been too solid to rise to the top by themselves, and not having been
+      largely gifted with the talent of catching hold of, and holding on tight
+      to, whatever good things happened to be going&mdash;the foundation of the
+      fortunes of so many noble families. But the world goes on its way, and the
+      wheel turns, and the wrongs of the Browns, like other wrongs, seem in a
+      fair way to get righted. And this present writer, having for many years of
+      his life been a devout Brown-worshipper, and, moreover, having the honour
+      of being nearly connected with an eminently respectable branch of the
+      great Brown family, is anxious, so far as in him lies, to help the wheel
+      over, and throw his stone on to the pile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, gentle reader, or simple reader, whichever you may be, lest you
+      should be led to waste your precious time upon these pages, I make so bold
+      as at once to tell you the sort of folk you'll have to meet and put up
+      with, if you and I are to jog on comfortably together. You shall hear at
+      once what sort of folk the Browns are&mdash;at least my branch of them;
+      and then, if you don't like the sort, why, cut the concern at once, and
+      let you and I cry quits before either of us can grumble at the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the first place, the Browns are a fighting family. One may question
+      their wisdom, or wit, or beauty, but about their fight there can be no
+      question. Wherever hard knocks of any kind, visible or invisible, are
+      going; there the Brown who is nearest must shove in his carcass. And these
+      carcasses, for the most part, answer very well to the characteristic
+      propensity: they are a squareheaded and snake-necked generation, broad in
+      the shoulder, deep in the chest, and thin in the flank, carrying no
+      lumber. Then for clanship, they are as bad as Highlanders; it is amazing
+      the belief they have in one another. With them there is nothing like the
+      Browns, to the third and fourth generation. &ldquo;Blood is thicker than water,&rdquo;
+       is one of their pet sayings. They can't be happy unless they are always
+      meeting one another. Never were such people for family gatherings; which,
+      were you a stranger, or sensitive, you might think had better not have
+      been gathered together. For during the whole time of their being together
+      they luxuriate in telling one another their minds on whatever subject
+      turns up; and their minds are wonderfully antagonistic, and all their
+      opinions are downright beliefs. Till you've been among them some time and
+      understand them, you can't think but that they are quarrelling. Not a bit
+      of it. They love and respect one another ten times the more after a good
+      set family arguing bout, and go back, one to his curacy, another to his
+      chambers, and another to his regiment, freshened for work, and more than
+      ever convinced that the Browns are the height of company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This family training, too, combined with their turn for combativeness,
+      makes them eminently quixotic. They can't let anything alone which they
+      think going wrong. They must speak their mind about it, annoying all
+      easy-going folk, and spend their time and money in having a tinker at it,
+      however hopeless the job. It is an impossibility to a Brown to leave the
+      most disreputable lame dog on the other side of a stile. Most other folk
+      get tired of such work. The old Browns, with red faces, white whiskers,
+      and bald heads, go on believing and fighting to a green old age. They have
+      always a crotchet going, till the old man with the scythe reaps and
+      garners them away for troublesome old boys as they are.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the most provoking thing is, that no failures knock them up, or make
+      them hold their hands, or think you, or me, or other sane people in the
+      right. Failures slide off them like July rain off a duck's back feathers.
+      Jem and his whole family turn out bad, and cheat them one week, and the
+      next they are doing the same thing for Jack; and when he goes to the
+      treadmill, and his wife and children to the workhouse, they will be on the
+      lookout for Bill to take his place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, it is time for us to get from the general to the particular; so,
+      leaving the great army of Browns, who are scattered over the whole empire
+      on which the sun never sets, and whose general diffusion I take to be the
+      chief cause of that empire's stability; let us at once fix our attention
+      upon the small nest of Browns in which our hero was hatched, and which
+      dwelt in that portion of the royal county of Berks which is called the
+      Vale of White Horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Most of you have probably travelled down the Great Western Railway as far
+      as Swindon. Those of you who did so with their eyes open have been aware,
+      soon after leaving the Didcot station, of a fine range of chalk hills
+      running parallel with the railway on the left-hand side as you go down,
+      and distant some two or three miles, more or less, from the line. The
+      highest point in the range is the White Horse Hill, which you come in
+      front of just before you stop at the Shrivenham station. If you love
+      English scenery, and have a few hours to spare, you can't do better, the
+      next time you pass, than stop at the Farringdon Road or Shrivenham
+      station, and make your way to that highest point. And those who care for
+      the vague old stories that haunt country-sides all about England, will
+      not, if they are wise, be content with only a few hours' stay; for,
+      glorious as the view is, the neighbourhood is yet more interesting for its
+      relics of bygone times. I only know two English neighbourhoods thoroughly,
+      and in each, within a circle of five miles, there is enough of interest
+      and beauty to last any reasonable man his life. I believe this to be the
+      case almost throughout the country, but each has a special attraction, and
+      none can be richer than the one I am speaking of and going to introduce
+      you to very particularly, for on this subject I must be prosy; so those
+      that don't care for England in detail may skip the chapter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O young England! young England! you who are born into these racing
+      railroad times, when there's a Great Exhibition, or some monster sight,
+      every year, and you can get over a couple of thousand miles of ground for
+      three pound ten in a five-weeks' holiday, why don't you know more of your
+      own birthplaces? You're all in the ends of the earth, it seems to me, as
+      soon as you get your necks out of the educational collar, for midsummer
+      holidays, long vacations, or what not&mdash;going round Ireland, with a
+      return ticket, in a fortnight; dropping your copies of Tennyson on the
+      tops of Swiss mountains; or pulling down the Danube in Oxford racing
+      boats. And when you get home for a quiet fortnight, you turn the steam
+      off, and lie on your backs in the paternal garden, surrounded by the last
+      batch of books from Mudie's library, and half bored to death. Well, well!
+      I know it has its good side. You all patter French more or less, and
+      perhaps German; you have seen men and cities, no doubt, and have your
+      opinions, such as they are, about schools of painting, high art, and all
+      that; have seen the pictures of Dresden and the Louvre, and know the taste
+      of sour krout. All I say is, you don't know your own lanes and woods and
+      fields. Though you may be choke-full of science, not one in twenty of you
+      knows where to find the wood-sorrel, or bee-orchis, which grow in the next
+      wood, or on the down three miles off, or what the bog-bean and wood-sage
+      are good for. And as for the country legends, the stories of the old
+      gable-ended farmhouses, the place where the last skirmish was fought in
+      the civil wars, where the parish butts stood, where the last highwayman
+      turned to bay, where the last ghost was laid by the parson, they're gone
+      out of date altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, in my time, when we got home by the old coach, which put us down at
+      the cross-roads with our boxes, the first day of the holidays, and had
+      been driven off by the family coachman, singing &ldquo;Dulce Domum&rdquo; at the top
+      of our voices, there we were, fixtures, till black Monday came round. We
+      had to cut out our own amusements within a walk or a ride of home. And so
+      we got to know all the country folk and their ways and songs and stories
+      by heart, and went over the fields and woods and hills, again and again,
+      till we made friends of them all. We were Berkshire, or Gloucestershire,
+      or Yorkshire boys; and you're young cosmopolites, belonging to all
+      countries and no countries. No doubt it's all right; I dare say it is.
+      This is the day of large views, and glorious humanity, and all that; but I
+      wish back-sword play hadn't gone out in the Vale of White Horse, and that
+      that confounded Great Western hadn't carried away Alfred's Hill to make an
+      embankment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to return to the said Vale of White Horse, the country in which the
+      first scenes of this true and interesting story are laid. As I said, the
+      Great Western now runs right through it, and it is a land of large, rich
+      pastures bounded by ox-fences, and covered with fine hedgerow timber, with
+      here and there a nice little gorse or spinney, where abideth poor Charley,
+      having no other cover to which to betake himself for miles and miles, when
+      pushed out some fine November morning by the old Berkshire. Those who have
+      been there, and well mounted, only know how he and the stanch little pack
+      who dash after him&mdash;heads high and sterns low, with a breast-high
+      scent&mdash;can consume the ground at such times. There being little
+      ploughland, and few woods, the Vale is only an average sporting country,
+      except for hunting. The villages are straggling, queer, old-fashioned
+      places, the houses being dropped down without the least regularity, in
+      nooks and out-of-the-way corners, by the sides of shadowy lanes and
+      footpaths, each with its patch of garden. They are built chiefly of good
+      gray stone, and thatched; though I see that within the last year or two
+      the red-brick cottages are multiplying, for the Vale is beginning to
+      manufacture largely both bricks and tiles. There are lots of waste ground
+      by the side of the roads in every village, amounting often to village
+      greens, where feed the pigs and ganders of the people; and these roads are
+      old-fashioned, homely roads, very dirty and badly made, and hardly
+      endurable in winter, but still pleasant jog-trot roads running through the
+      great pasture-lands, dotted here and there with little clumps of thorns,
+      where the sleek kine are feeding, with no fence on either side of them,
+      and a gate at the end of each field, which makes you get out of your gig
+      (if you keep one), and gives you a chance of looking about you every
+      quarter of a mile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the moralists whom we sat under in our youth&mdash;was it the great
+      Richard Swiveller, or Mr. Stiggins&mdash;says, &ldquo;We are born in a vale, and
+      must take the consequences of being found in such a situation.&rdquo; These
+      consequences I, for one, am ready to encounter. I pity people who weren't
+      born in a vale. I don't mean a flat country; but a vale&mdash;that is, a
+      flat country bounded by hills. The having your hill always in view if you
+      choose to turn towards him&mdash;that's the essence of a vale. There he is
+      for ever in the distance, your friend and companion. You never lose him as
+      you do in hilly districts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then what a hill is the White Horse Hill! There it stands right up
+      above all the rest, nine hundred feet above the sea, and the boldest,
+      bravest shape for a chalk hill that you ever saw. Let us go up to the top
+      of him, and see what is to be found there. Ay, you may well wonder and
+      think it odd you never heard of this before; but wonder or not, as you
+      please, there are hundreds of such things lying about England, which wiser
+      folk than you know nothing of, and care nothing for. Yes, it's a
+      magnificent Roman camp, and no mistake, with gates and ditch and mounds,
+      all as complete as it was twenty years after the strong old rogues left
+      it. Here, right up on the highest point, from which they say you can see
+      eleven counties, they trenched round all the table-land, some twelve or
+      fourteen acres, as was their custom, for they couldn't bear anybody to
+      overlook them, and made their eyrie. The ground falls away rapidly on all
+      sides. Was there ever such turf in the whole world? You sink up to your
+      ankles at every step, and yet the spring of it is delicious. There is
+      always a breeze in the &ldquo;camp,&rdquo; as it is called; and here it lies, just as
+      the Romans left it, except that cairn on the east side, left by her
+      Majesty's corps of sappers and miners the other day, when they and the
+      engineer officer had finished their sojourn there, and their surveys for
+      the ordnance map of Berkshire. It is altogether a place that you won't
+      forget, a place to open a man's soul, and make him prophesy, as he looks
+      down on that great Vale spread out as the garden of the Lord before him,
+      and wave on wave of the mysterious downs behind, and to the right and left
+      the chalk hills running away into the distance, along which he can trace
+      for miles the old Roman road, &ldquo;the Ridgeway&rdquo; (&ldquo;the Rudge,&rdquo; as the country
+      folk call it), keeping straight along the highest back of the hills&mdash;such
+      a place as Balak brought Balaam to, and told him to prophesy against the
+      people in the valley beneath. And he could not, neither shall you, for
+      they are a people of the Lord who abide there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now we leave the camp, and descend towards the west, and are on the
+      Ashdown. We are treading on heroes. It is sacred ground for Englishmen&mdash;more
+      sacred than all but one or two fields where their bones lie whitening. For
+      this is the actual place where our Alfred won his great battle, the battle
+      of Ashdown (&ldquo;Aescendum&rdquo; in the chroniclers), which broke the Danish power,
+      and made England a Christian land. The Danes held the camp and the slope
+      where we are standing&mdash;the whole crown of the hill, in fact. &ldquo;The
+      heathen had beforehand seized the higher ground,&rdquo; as old Asser says,
+      having wasted everything behind them from London, and being just ready to
+      burst down on the fair Vale, Alfred's own birthplace and heritage. And up
+      the heights came the Saxons, as they did at the Alma. &ldquo;The Christians led
+      up their line from the lower ground. There stood also on that same spot a
+      single thorn-tree, marvellous stumpy (which we ourselves with our very own
+      eyes have seen).&rdquo; Bless the old chronicler! Does he think nobody ever saw
+      the &ldquo;single thorn-tree&rdquo; but himself? Why, there it stands to this very
+      day, just on the edge of the slope, and I saw it not three weeks since&mdash;an
+      old single thorn-tree, &ldquo;marvellous stumpy.&rdquo; At least, if it isn't the same
+      tree it ought to have been, for it's just in the place where the battle
+      must have been won or lost&mdash;&ldquo;around which, as I was saying, the two
+      lines of foemen came together in battle with a huge shout. And in this
+      place one of the two kings of the heathen and five of his earls fell down
+      and died, and many thousands of the heathen side in the same place.&rdquo; *
+      After which crowning mercy, the pious king, that there might never be
+      wanting a sign and a memorial to the country-side, carved out on the
+      northern side of the chalk hill, under the camp, where it is almost
+      precipitous, the great Saxon White Horse, which he who will may see from
+      the railway, and which gives its name to the Vale, over which it has
+      looked these thousand years and more.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * &ldquo;Pagani editiorem Iocum praeoccupaverant.  Christiani ab
+     inferiori loco aciem dirigebant.  Erat quoque in eodem loco
+     unica spinosa arbor, brevis admodum (quam nos ipsi nostris
+     propriis oculis vidimus).  Circa quam ergo hostiles inter se
+     acies cum ingenti clamore hostiliter conveniunt.  Quo in
+     loco alter de duobus Paganorum regibus et quinque comites
+     occisi occubuerunt, et multa millia Paganae partis in eodem
+     loco. Cecidit illic ergo Boegsceg Rex, et Sidroc ille senex
+     comes, et Sidroc Junior comes, et Obsbern comes,&rdquo; etc.&mdash;
+     Annales Rerum Gestarum AElfredi Magni, Auctore Asserio.
+     Recensuit Franciscus Wise. Oxford, 1722, p.23.
+</pre>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0043m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0043m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0043.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      Right down below the White Horse is a curious deep and broad gully called
+      &ldquo;the Manger,&rdquo; into one side of which the hills fall with a series of the
+      most lovely sweeping curves, known as &ldquo;the Giant's Stairs.&rdquo; They are not a
+      bit like stairs, but I never saw anything like them anywhere else, with
+      their short green turf, and tender bluebells, and gossamer and
+      thistle-down gleaming in the sun and the sheep-paths running along their
+      sides like ruled lines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other side of the Manger is formed by the Dragon's Hill, a curious
+      little round self-confident fellow, thrown forward from the range, utterly
+      unlike everything round him. On this hill some deliverer of mankind&mdash;St.
+      George, the country folk used to tell me&mdash;killed a dragon. Whether it
+      were St. George, I cannot say; but surely a dragon was killed there, for
+      you may see the marks yet where his blood ran down, and more by token the
+      place where it ran down is the easiest way up the hillside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Passing along the Ridgeway to the west for about a mile, we come to a
+      little clump of young beech and firs, with a growth of thorn and privet
+      underwood. Here you may find nests of the strong down partridge and
+      peewit, but take care that the keeper isn't down upon you; and in the
+      middle of it is an old cromlech, a huge flat stone raised on seven or
+      eight others, and led up to by a path, with large single stones set up on
+      each side. This is Wayland Smith's cave, a place of classic fame now; but
+      as Sir Walter has touched it, I may as well let it alone, and refer you to
+      &ldquo;Kenilworth&rdquo; for the legend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The thick, deep wood which you see in the hollow, about a mile off,
+      surrounds Ashdown Park, built by Inigo Jones. Four broad alleys are cut
+      through the wood from circumference to centre, and each leads to one face
+      of the house. The mystery of the downs hangs about house and wood, as they
+      stand there alone, so unlike all around, with the green slopes studded
+      with great stones just about this part, stretching away on all sides. It
+      was a wise Lord Craven, I think, who pitched his tent there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Passing along the Ridgeway to the east, we soon come to cultivated land.
+      The downs, strictly so called, are no more. Lincolnshire farmers have been
+      imported, and the long, fresh slopes are sheep-walks no more, but grow
+      famous turnips and barley. One of these improvers lives over there at the
+      &ldquo;Seven Barrows&rdquo; farm, another mystery of the great downs. There are the
+      barrows still, solemn and silent, like ships in the calm sea, the
+      sepulchres of some sons of men. But of whom? It is three miles from the
+      White Horse&mdash;too far for the slain of Ashdown to be buried there. Who
+      shall say what heroes are waiting there? But we must get down into the
+      Vale again, and so away by the Great Western Railway to town, for time and
+      the printer's devil press, and it is a terrible long and slippery descent,
+      and a shocking bad road. At the bottom, however, there is a pleasant
+      public; whereat we must really take a modest quencher, for the down air is
+      provocative of thirst. So we pull up under an old oak which stands before
+      the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the name of your hill, landlord?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blawing STWUN Hill, sir, to be sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      [READER. &ldquo;Stuym?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      AUTHOR: &ldquo;Stone, stupid&mdash;the Blowing Stone.&rdquo;]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And of your house? I can't make out the sign.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blawing Stwun, sir,&rdquo; says the landlord, pouring out his old ale from a
+      Toby Philpot jug, with a melodious crash, into the long-necked glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What queer names!&rdquo; say we, sighing at the end of our draught, and holding
+      out the glass to be replenished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bean't queer at all, as I can see, sir,&rdquo; says mine host, handing back our
+      glass, &ldquo;seeing as this here is the Blawing Stwun, his self,&rdquo; putting his
+      hand on a square lump of stone, some three feet and a half high,
+      perforated with two or three queer holes, like petrified antediluvian
+      rat-holes, which lies there close under the oak, under our very nose. We
+      are more than ever puzzled, and drink our second glass of ale, wondering
+      what will come next. &ldquo;Like to hear un, sir?&rdquo; says mine host, setting down
+      Toby Philpot on the tray, and resting both hands on the &ldquo;Stwun.&rdquo; We are
+      ready for anything; and he, without waiting for a reply, applies his mouth
+      to one of the ratholes. Something must come of it, if he doesn't burst.
+      Good heavens! I hope he has no apoplectic tendencies. Yes, here it comes,
+      sure enough, a gruesome sound between a moan and a roar, and spreads
+      itself away over the valley, and up the hillside, and into the woods at
+      the back of the house, a ghost-like, awful voice. &ldquo;Um do say, sir,&rdquo; says
+      mine host, rising purple-faced, while the moan is still coming out of the
+      Stwun, &ldquo;as they used in old times to warn the country-side by blawing the
+      Stwun when the enemy was a-comin', and as how folks could make un heered
+      then for seven mile round; leastways, so I've heered Lawyer Smith say, and
+      he knows a smart sight about them old times.&rdquo; We can hardly swallow Lawyer
+      Smith's seven miles; but could the blowing of the stone have been a
+      summons, a sort of sending the fiery cross round the neighbourhood in the
+      old times? What old times? Who knows? We pay for our beer, and are
+      thankful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what's the name of the village just below, landlord?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kingstone Lisle, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fine plantations you've got here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir; the Squire's 'mazing fond of trees and such like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No wonder. He's got some real beauties to be fond of. Good-day,
+      landlord.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-day, sir, and a pleasant ride to 'ee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, my boys, you whom I want to get for readers, have you had enough?
+      Will you give in at once, and say you're convinced, and let me begin my
+      story, or will you have more of it? Remember, I've only been over a little
+      bit of the hillside yet&mdash;what you could ride round easily on your
+      ponies in an hour. I'm only just come down into the Vale, by Blowing Stone
+      Hill; and if I once begin about the Vale, what's to stop me? You'll have
+      to hear all about Wantage, the birthplace of Alfred, and Farringdon, which
+      held out so long for Charles the First (the Vale was near Oxford, and
+      dreadfully malignant&mdash;full of Throgmortons, Puseys, and Pyes, and
+      such like; and their brawny retainers). Did you ever read Thomas
+      Ingoldsby's &ldquo;Legend of Hamilton Tighe&rdquo;? If you haven't, you ought to have.
+      Well, Farringdon is where he lived, before he went to sea; his real name
+      was Hamden Pye, and the Pyes were the great folk at Farringdon. Then
+      there's Pusey. You've heard of the Pusey horn, which King Canute gave to
+      the Puseys of that day, and which the gallant old squire, lately gone to
+      his rest (whom Berkshire freeholders turned out of last Parliament, to
+      their eternal disgrace, for voting according to his conscience), used to
+      bring out on high days, holidays, and bonfire nights. And the splendid old
+      cross church at Uffington, the Uffingas town. How the whole countryside
+      teems with Saxon names and memories! And the old moated grange at Compton,
+      nestled close under the hillside, where twenty Marianas may have lived,
+      with its bright water-lilies in the moat, and its yew walk, &ldquo;the cloister
+      walk,&rdquo; and its peerless terraced gardens. There they all are, and twenty
+      things beside, for those who care about them, and have eyes. And these are
+      the sort of things you may find, I believe, every one of you, in any
+      common English country neighbourhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Will you look for them under your own noses, or will you not? Well, well,
+      I've done what I can to make you; and if you will go gadding over half
+      Europe now, every holidays, I can't help it. I was born and bred a
+      west-country man, thank God! a Wessex man, a citizen of the noblest Saxon
+      kingdom of Wessex, a regular &ldquo;Angular Saxon,&rdquo; the very soul of me
+      adscriptus glebae. There's nothing like the old country-side for me, and
+      no music like the twang of the real old Saxon tongue, as one gets it fresh
+      from the veritable chaw in the White Horse Vale; and I say with &ldquo;Gaarge
+      Ridler,&rdquo; the old west-country yeoman,&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Throo aall the waarld owld Gaarge would bwoast,
+     Commend me to merry owld England mwoast;
+     While vools gwoes prating vur and nigh,
+     We stwops at whum, my dog and I.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Here, at any rate, lived and stopped at home Squire Brown, J.P. for the
+      county of Berks, in a village near the foot of the White Horse range. And
+      here he dealt out justice and mercy in a rough way, and begat sons and
+      daughters, and hunted the fox, and grumbled at the badness of the roads
+      and the times. And his wife dealt out stockings, and calico shirts, and
+      smock frocks, and comforting drinks to the old folks with the &ldquo;rheumatiz,&rdquo;
+       and good counsel to all; and kept the coal and clothes' clubs going, for
+      yule-tide, when the bands of mummers came round, dressed out in ribbons
+      and coloured paper caps, and stamped round the Squire's kitchen, repeating
+      in true sing-song vernacular the legend of St. George and his fight, and
+      the ten-pound doctor, who plays his part at healing the Saint&mdash;a
+      relic, I believe, of the old Middle-age mysteries. It was the first
+      dramatic representation which greeted the eyes of little Tom, who was
+      brought down into the kitchen by his nurse to witness it, at the mature
+      age of three years. Tom was the eldest child of his parents, and from his
+      earliest babyhood exhibited the family characteristics in great strength.
+      He was a hearty, strong boy from the first, given to fighting with and
+      escaping from his nurse, and fraternizing with all the village boys, with
+      whom he made expeditions all round the neighbourhood. And here, in the
+      quiet old-fashioned country village, under the shadow of the everlasting
+      hills, Tom Brown was reared, and never left it till he went first to
+      school, when nearly eight years of age, for in those days change of air
+      twice a year was not thought absolutely necessary for the health of all
+      her Majesty's lieges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have been credibly informed, and am inclined to believe, that the
+      various boards of directors of railway companies, those gigantic jobbers
+      and bribers, while quarrelling about everything else, agreed together some
+      ten years back to buy up the learned profession of medicine, body and
+      soul. To this end they set apart several millions of money, which they
+      continually distribute judiciously among the doctors, stipulating only
+      this one thing, that they shall prescribe change of air to every patient
+      who can pay, or borrow money to pay, a railway fare, and see their
+      prescription carried out. If it be not for this, why is it that none of us
+      can be well at home for a year together? It wasn't so twenty years ago,
+      not a bit of it. The Browns didn't go out of the country once in five
+      years. A visit to Reading or Abingdon twice a year, at assizes or quarter
+      sessions, which the Squire made on his horse with a pair of saddle-bags
+      containing his wardrobe, a stay of a day or two at some country
+      neighbour's, or an expedition to a county ball or the yeomanry review,
+      made up the sum of the Brown locomotion in most years. A stray Brown from
+      some distant county dropped in every now and then; or from Oxford, on
+      grave nag, an old don, contemporary of the Squire; and were looked upon by
+      the Brown household and the villagers with the same sort of feeling with
+      which we now regard a man who has crossed the Rocky Mountains, or launched
+      a boat on the Great Lake in Central Africa. The White Horse Vale,
+      remember, was traversed by no great road&mdash;nothing but country parish
+      roads, and these very bad. Only one coach ran there, and this one only
+      from Wantage to London, so that the western part of the Vale was without
+      regular means of moving on, and certainly didn't seem to want them. There
+      was the canal, by the way, which supplied the country-side with coal, and
+      up and down which continually went the long barges, with the big black men
+      lounging by the side of the horses along the towing-path, and the women in
+      bright-coloured handkerchiefs standing in the sterns steering. Standing I
+      say, but you could never see whether they were standing or sitting, all
+      but their heads and shoulders being out of sight in the cozy little cabins
+      which occupied some eight feet of the stern, and which Tom Brown pictured
+      to himself as the most desirable of residences. His nurse told him that
+      those good-natured-looking women were in the constant habit of enticing
+      children into the barges, and taking them up to London and selling them,
+      which Tom wouldn't believe, and which made him resolve as soon as possible
+      to accept the oft-proffered invitation of these sirens to &ldquo;young master&rdquo;
+       to come in and have a ride. But as yet the nurse was too much for Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet why should I, after all, abuse the gadabout propensities of my
+      countrymen? We are a vagabond nation now, that's certain, for better for
+      worse. I am a vagabond; I have been away from home no less than five
+      distinct times in the last year. The Queen sets us the example: we are
+      moving on from top to bottom. Little dirty Jack, who abides in Clement's
+      Inn gateway, and blacks my boots for a penny, takes his month's
+      hop-picking every year as a matter of course. Why shouldn't he? I'm
+      delighted at it. I love vagabonds, only I prefer poor to rich ones.
+      Couriers and ladies'-maids, imperials and travelling carriages, are an
+      abomination unto me; I cannot away with them. But for dirty Jack, and
+      every good fellow who, in the words of the capital French song, moves
+      about,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Comme le limacon,
+     Portant tout son bagage,
+     Ses meubles, sa maison,&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      on his own back, why, good luck to them, and many a merry roadside
+      adventure, and steaming supper in the chimney corners of roadside inns,
+      Swiss chalets, Hottentot kraals, or wherever else they like to go. So,
+      having succeeded in contradicting myself in my first chapter (which gives
+      me great hopes that you will all go on, and think me a good fellow
+      notwithstanding my crotchets), I shall here shut up for the present, and
+      consider my ways; having resolved to &ldquo;sar' it out,&rdquo; as we say in the Vale,
+      &ldquo;holus bolus&rdquo; just as it comes, and then you'll probably get the truth out
+      of me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0053m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0053m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0053.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II&mdash;THE &ldquo;VEAST.&rdquo;
+     </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;And the King commandeth and forbiddeth, that from
+     henceforth neither fairs nor markets be kept in Churchyards,
+     for the honour of the Church.&rdquo;&mdash;STATUTES : 13 Edw. I. Stat.
+     II. cap. vi.
+</pre>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+      <img src="images/9053m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="9053m " width="100%" />
+      <a href="images/9053.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      s that venerable and learned poet (whose voluminous works we all think it
+      the correct thing to admire and talk about, but don't read often) most
+      truly says, &ldquo;The child is father to the man;&rdquo; a fortiori, therefore, he
+      must be father to the boy. So as we are going at any rate to see Tom Brown
+      through his boyhood, supposing we never get any farther (which, if you
+      show a proper sense of the value of this history, there is no knowing but
+      what we may), let us have a look at the life and environments of the child
+      in the quiet country village to which we were introduced in the last
+      chapter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom, as has been already said, was a robust and combative urchin, and at
+      the age of four began to struggle against the yoke and authority of his
+      nurse. That functionary was a good-hearted, tearful, scatter-brained girl,
+      lately taken by Tom's mother, Madam Brown, as she was called, from the
+      village school to be trained as nurserymaid. Madam Brown was a rare
+      trainer of servants, and spent herself freely in the profession; for
+      profession it was, and gave her more trouble by half than many people take
+      to earn a good income. Her servants were known and sought after for miles
+      round. Almost all the girls who attained a certain place in the village
+      school were taken by her, one or two at a time, as housemaids,
+      laundrymaids, nurserymaids, or kitchenmaids, and after a year or two's
+      training were started in life amongst the neighbouring families, with good
+      principles and wardrobes. One of the results of this system was the
+      perpetual despair of Mrs. Brown's cook and own maid, who no sooner had a
+      notable girl made to their hands than missus was sure to find a good place
+      for her and send her off, taking in fresh importations from the school.
+      Another was, that the house was always full of young girls, with clean,
+      shining faces, who broke plates and scorched linen, but made an atmosphere
+      of cheerful, homely life about the place, good for every one who came
+      within its influence. Mrs. Brown loved young people, and in fact human
+      creatures in general, above plates and linen. They were more like a lot of
+      elder children than servants, and felt to her more as a mother or aunt
+      than as a mistress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom's nurse was one who took in her instruction very slowly&mdash;she
+      seemed to have two left hands and no head; and so Mrs. Brown kept her on
+      longer than usual, that she might expend her awkwardness and forgetfulness
+      upon those who would not judge and punish her too strictly for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charity Lamb was her name. It had been the immemorial habit of the village
+      to christen children either by Bible names, or by those of the cardinal
+      and other virtues; so that one was for ever hearing in the village street
+      or on the green, shrill sounds of &ldquo;Prudence! Prudence! thee cum' out o'
+      the gutter;&rdquo; or, &ldquo;Mercy! drat the girl, what bist thee a-doin' wi' little
+      Faith?&rdquo; and there were Ruths, Rachels, Keziahs, in every corner. The same
+      with the boys: they were Benjamins, Jacobs, Noahs, Enochs. I suppose the
+      custom has come down from Puritan times. There it is, at any rate, very
+      strong still in the Vale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, from early morning till dewy eve, when she had it out of him in the
+      cold tub before putting him to bed, Charity and Tom were pitted against
+      one another. Physical power was as yet on the side of Charity, but she
+      hadn't a chance with him wherever headwork was wanted. This war of
+      independence began every morning before breakfast, when Charity escorted
+      her charge to a neighbouring farmhouse, which supplied the Browns, and
+      where, by his mother's wish, Master Tom went to drink whey before
+      breakfast. Tom had no sort of objection to whey, but he had a decided
+      liking for curds, which were forbidden as unwholesome; and there was
+      seldom a morning that he did not manage to secure a handful of hard curds,
+      in defiance of Charity and of the farmer's wife. The latter good soul was
+      a gaunt, angular woman, who, with an old black bonnet on the top of her
+      head, the strings dangling about her shoulders, and her gown tucked
+      through her pocket-holes, went clattering about the dairy, cheese-room,
+      and yard, in high pattens. Charity was some sort of niece of the old
+      lady's, and was consequently free of the farmhouse and garden, into which
+      she could not resist going for the purposes of gossip and flirtation with
+      the heir-apparent, who was a dawdling fellow, never out at work as he
+      ought to have been. The moment Charity had found her cousin, or any other
+      occupation, Tom would slip away; and in a minute shrill cries would be
+      heard from the dairy, &ldquo;Charity, Charity, thee lazy huzzy, where bist?&rdquo; and
+      Tom would break cover, hands and mouth full of curds, and take refuge on
+      the shaky surface of the great muck reservoir in the middle of the yard,
+      disturbing the repose of the great pigs. Here he was in safety, as no
+      grown person could follow without getting over their knees; and the
+      luckless Charity, while her aunt scolded her from the dairy door, for
+      being &ldquo;allus hankering about arter our Willum, instead of minding Master
+      Tom,&rdquo; would descend from threats to coaxing, to lure Tom out of the muck,
+      which was rising over his shoes, and would soon tell a tale on his
+      stockings, for which she would be sure to catch it from missus's maid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom had two abettors, in the shape of a couple of old boys, Noah and
+      Benjamin by name, who defended him from Charity, and expended much time
+      upon his education. They were both of them retired servants of former
+      generations of the Browns. Noah Crooke was a keen, dry old man of almost
+      ninety, but still able to totter about. He talked to Tom quite as if he
+      were one of his own family, and indeed had long completely identified the
+      Browns with himself. In some remote age he had been the attendant of a
+      Miss Brown, and had conveyed her about the country on a pillion. He had a
+      little round picture of the identical gray horse, caparisoned with the
+      identical pillion, before which he used to do a sort of fetish worship,
+      and abuse turnpike-roads and carriages. He wore an old full-bottomed wig,
+      the gift of some dandy old Brown whom he had valeted in the middle of last
+      century, which habiliment Master Tom looked upon with considerable
+      respect, not to say fear; and indeed his whole feeling towards Noah was
+      strongly tainted with awe. And when the old gentleman was gathered to his
+      fathers, Tom's lamentation over him was not unaccompanied by a certain joy
+      at having seen the last of the wig. &ldquo;Poor old Noah, dead and gone,&rdquo; said
+      he; &ldquo;Tom Brown so sorry. Put him in the coffin, wig and all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But old Benjy was young master's real delight and refuge. He was a youth
+      by the side of Noah, scarce seventy years old&mdash;a cheery, humorous,
+      kind-hearted old man, full of sixty years of Vale gossip, and of all sorts
+      of helpful ways for young and old, but above all for children. It was he
+      who bent the first pin with which Tom extracted his first stickleback out
+      of &ldquo;Pebbly Brook,&rdquo; the little stream which ran through the village. The
+      first stickleback was a splendid fellow, with fabulous red and blue gills.
+      Tom kept him in a small basin till the day of his death, and became a
+      fisherman from that day. Within a month from the taking of the first
+      stickleback, Benjy had carried off our hero to the canal, in defiance of
+      Charity; and between them, after a whole afternoon's popjoying, they had
+      caught three or four small, coarse fish and a perch, averaging perhaps two
+      and a half ounces each, which Tom bore home in rapture to his mother as a
+      precious gift, and which she received like a true mother with equal
+      rapture, instructing the cook nevertheless, in a private interview, not to
+      prepare the same for the Squire's dinner. Charity had appealed against old
+      Benjy in the meantime, representing the dangers of the canal banks; but
+      Mrs. Brown, seeing the boy's inaptitude for female guidance, had decided
+      in Benjy's favour, and from thenceforth the old man was Tom's dry nurse.
+      And as they sat by the canal watching their little green-and-white float,
+      Benjy would instruct him in the doings of deceased Browns. How his
+      grandfather, in the early days of the great war, when there was much
+      distress and crime in the Vale, and the magistrates had been threatened by
+      the mob, had ridden in with a big stick in his hand, and held the petty
+      sessions by himself. How his great-uncle, the rector, had encountered and
+      laid the last ghost, who had frightened the old women, male and female, of
+      the parish out of their senses, and who turned out to be the blacksmith's
+      apprentice disguised in drink and a white sheet. It was Benjy, too, who
+      saddled Tom's first pony, and instructed him in the mysteries of
+      horsemanship, teaching him to throw his weight back and keep his hand low,
+      and who stood chuckling outside the door of the girls' school when Tom
+      rode his little Shetland into the cottage and round the table, where the
+      old dame and her pupils were seated at their work.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0057m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0057m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0057.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      Benjy himself was come of a family distinguished in the Vale for their
+      prowess in all athletic games. Some half-dozen of his brothers and kinsmen
+      had gone to the wars, of whom only one had survived to come home, with a
+      small pension, and three bullets in different parts of his body; he had
+      shared Benjy's cottage till his death, and had left him his old dragoon's
+      sword and pistol, which hung over the mantelpiece, flanked by a pair of
+      heavy single-sticks with which Benjy himself had won renown long ago as an
+      old gamester, against the picked men of Wiltshire and Somersetshire, in
+      many a good bout at the revels and pastimes of the country-side. For he
+      had been a famous back-swordman in his young days, and a good wrestler at
+      elbow and collar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Back-swording and wrestling were the most serious holiday pursuits of the
+      Vale&mdash;those by which men attained fame&mdash;and each village had its
+      champion. I suppose that, on the whole, people were less worked then than
+      they are now; at any rate, they seemed to have more time and energy for
+      the old pastimes. The great times for back-swording came round once a year
+      in each village; at the feast. The Vale &ldquo;veasts&rdquo; were not the common
+      statute feasts, but much more ancient business. They are literally, so far
+      as one can ascertain, feasts of the dedication&mdash;that is, they were
+      first established in the churchyard on the day on which the village church
+      was opened for public worship, which was on the wake or festival of the
+      patron saint, and have been held on the same day in every year since that
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no longer any remembrance of why the &ldquo;veast&rdquo; had been
+      instituted, but nevertheless it had a pleasant and almost sacred character
+      of its own; for it was then that all the children of the village, wherever
+      they were scattered, tried to get home for a holiday to visit their
+      fathers and mothers and friends, bringing with them their wages or some
+      little gift from up the country for the old folk. Perhaps for a day or two
+      before, but at any rate on &ldquo;veast day&rdquo; and the day after, in our village,
+      you might see strapping, healthy young men and women from all parts of the
+      country going round from house to house in their best clothes, and
+      finishing up with a call on Madam Brown, whom they would consult as to
+      putting out their earnings to the best advantage, or how best to expend
+      the same for the benefit of the old folk. Every household, however poor,
+      managed to raise a &ldquo;feast-cake&rdquo; and a bottle of ginger or raisin wine,
+      which stood on the cottage table ready for all comers, and not unlikely to
+      make them remember feast-time, for feast-cake is very solid, and full of
+      huge raisins. Moreover, feast-time was the day of reconciliation for the
+      parish. If Job Higgins and Noah Freeman hadn't spoken for the last six
+      months, their &ldquo;old women&rdquo; would be sure to get it patched up by that day.
+      And though there was a good deal of drinking and low vice in the booths of
+      an evening, it was pretty well confined to those who would have been doing
+      the like, &ldquo;veast or no veast;&rdquo; and on the whole, the effect was humanising
+      and Christian. In fact, the only reason why this is not the case still is
+      that gentlefolk and farmers have taken to other amusements, and have, as
+      usual, forgotten the poor. They don't attend the feasts themselves, and
+      call them disreputable; whereupon the steadiest of the poor leave them
+      also, and they become what they are called. Class amusements, be they for
+      dukes or ploughboys, always become nuisances and curses to a country. The
+      true charm of cricket and hunting is that they are still more or less
+      sociable and universal; there's a place for every man who will come and
+      take his part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one in the village enjoyed the approach of &ldquo;veast day&rdquo; more than Tom,
+      in the year in which he was taken under old Benjy's tutelage. The feast
+      was held in a large green field at the lower end of the village. The road
+      to Farringdon ran along one side of it, and the brook by the side of the
+      road; and above the brook was another large, gentle, sloping pasture-land,
+      with a footpath running down it from the churchyard; and the old church,
+      the originator of all the mirth, towered up with its gray walls and lancet
+      windows, overlooking and sanctioning the whole, though its own share
+      therein had been forgotten. At the point where the footpath crossed the
+      brook and road, and entered on the field where the feast was held, was a
+      long, low roadside inn; and on the opposite side of the field was a large
+      white thatched farmhouse, where dwelt an old sporting farmer, a great
+      promoter of the revels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Past the old church, and down the footpath, pottered the old man and the
+      child hand-in-hand early on the afternoon of the day before the feast, and
+      wandered all round the ground, which was already being occupied by the
+      &ldquo;cheap Jacks,&rdquo; with their green-covered carts and marvellous assortment of
+      wares; and the booths of more legitimate small traders, with their
+      tempting arrays of fairings and eatables; and penny peep-shows and other
+      shows, containing pink-eyed ladies, and dwarfs, and boa-constrictors, and
+      wild Indians. But the object of most interest to Benjy, and of course to
+      his pupil also, was the stage of rough planks some four feet high, which
+      was being put up by the village carpenter for the back-swording and
+      wrestling. And after surveying the whole tenderly, old Benjy led his
+      charge away to the roadside inn, where he ordered a glass of ale and a
+      long pipe for himself, and discussed these unwonted luxuries on the bench
+      outside in the soft autumn evening with mine host, another old servant of
+      the Browns, and speculated with him on the likelihood of a good show of
+      old gamesters to contend for the morrow's prizes, and told tales of the
+      gallant bouts of forty years back, to which Tom listened with all his ears
+      and eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But who shall tell the joy of the next morning, when the church bells were
+      ringing a merry peal, and old Benjy appeared in the servants' hall,
+      resplendent in a long blue coat and brass buttons, and a pair of old
+      yellow buckskins and top-boots which he had cleaned for and inherited from
+      Tom's grandfather, a stout thorn stick in his hand, and a nosegay of pinks
+      and lavender in his buttonhole, and led away Tom in his best clothes, and
+      two new shillings in his breeches-pockets? Those two, at any rate, look
+      like enjoying the day's revel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They quicken their pace when they get into the churchyard, for already
+      they see the field thronged with country folk; the men in clean, white
+      smocks or velveteen or fustian coats, with rough plush waistcoats of many
+      colours, and the women in the beautiful, long scarlet cloak&mdash;the
+      usual out-door dress of west-country women in those days, and which often
+      descended in families from mother to daughter&mdash;or in new-fashioned
+      stuff shawls, which, if they would but believe it, don't become them half
+      so well. The air resounds with the pipe and tabor, and the drums and
+      trumpets of the showmen shouting at the doors of their caravans, over
+      which tremendous pictures of the wonders to be seen within hang
+      temptingly; while through all rises the shrill &ldquo;root-too-too-too&rdquo; of Mr.
+      Punch, and the unceasing pan-pipe of his satellite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lawk a' massey, Mr. Benjamin,&rdquo; cries a stout, motherly woman in a red
+      cloak, as they enter the field, &ldquo;be that you? Well, I never! You do look
+      purely. And how's the Squire, and madam, and the family?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Benjy graciously shakes hands with the speaker, who has left our village
+      for some years, but has come over for &ldquo;veast&rdquo; day on a visit to an old
+      gossip, and gently indicates the heir-apparent of the Browns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless his little heart! I must gi' un a kiss.&mdash;Here, Susannah,
+      Susannah!&rdquo; cries she, raising herself from the embrace, &ldquo;come and see Mr.
+      Benjamin and young Master Tom.&mdash;You minds our Sukey, Mr. Benjamin;
+      she be growed a rare slip of a wench since you seen her, though her'll be
+      sixteen come Martinmas. I do aim to take her to see madam to get her a
+      place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Sukey comes bouncing away from a knot of old school-fellows, and drops
+      a curtsey to Mr. Benjamin. And elders come up from all parts to salute
+      Benjy, and girls who have been madam's pupils to kiss Master Tom. And they
+      carry him off to load him with fairings; and he returns to Benjy, his hat
+      and coat covered with ribbons, and his pockets crammed with wonderful
+      boxes which open upon ever new boxes, and popguns, and trumpets, and
+      apples, and gilt gingerbread from the stall of Angel Heavens, sole vender
+      thereof, whose booth groans with kings and queens, and elephants and
+      prancing steeds, all gleaming with gold. There was more gold on Angel's
+      cakes than there is ginger in those of this degenerate age. Skilled
+      diggers might yet make a fortune in the churchyards of the Vale, by
+      carefully washing the dust of the consumers of Angel's gingerbread. Alas!
+      he is with his namesakes, and his receipts have, I fear, died with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then they inspect the penny peep-show&mdash;at least Tom does&mdash;while
+      old Benjy stands outside and gossips and walks up the steps, and enters
+      the mysterious doors of the pink-eyed lady and the Irish giant, who do not
+      by any means come up to their pictures; and the boa will not swallow his
+      rabbit, but there the rabbit is waiting to be swallowed; and what can you
+      expect for tuppence? We are easily pleased in the Vale. Now there is a
+      rush of the crowd, and a tinkling bell is heard, and shouts of laughter;
+      and Master Tom mounts on Benjy's shoulders, and beholds a jingling match
+      in all its glory. The games are begun, and this is the opening of them. It
+      is a quaint game, immensely amusing to look at; and as I don't know
+      whether it is used in your counties, I had better describe it. A large
+      roped ring is made, into which are introduced a dozen or so of big boys
+      and young men who mean to play; these are carefully blinded and turned
+      loose into the ring, and then a man is introduced not blindfolded; with a
+      bell hung round his neck, and his two hands tied behind him. Of course
+      every time he moves the bell must ring, as he has no hand to hold it; and
+      so the dozen blindfolded men have to catch him. This they cannot always
+      manage if he is a lively fellow, but half of them always rush into the
+      arms of the other half, or drive their heads together, or tumble over; and
+      then the crowd laughs vehemently, and invents nicknames for them on the
+      spur of the moment; and they, if they be choleric, tear off the
+      handkerchiefs which blind them, and not unfrequently pitch into one
+      another, each thinking that the other must have run against him on
+      purpose. It is great fun to look at a jingling match certainly, and Tom
+      shouts and jumps on old Benjy's shoulders at the sight, until the old man
+      feels weary, and shifts him to the strong young shoulders of the groom,
+      who has just got down to the fun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, while they are climbing the pole in another part of the field,
+      and muzzling in a flour-tub in another, the old farmer whose house, as has
+      been said, overlooks the field, and who is master of the revels, gets up
+      the steps on to the stage, and announces to all whom it may concern that a
+      half-sovereign in money will be forthcoming to the old gamester who breaks
+      most heads; to which the Squire and he have added a new hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The amount of the prize is sufficient to stimulate the men of the
+      immediate neighbourhood, but not enough to bring any very high talent from
+      a distance; so, after a glance or two round, a tall fellow, who is a down
+      shepherd, chucks his hat on to the stage and climbs up the steps, looking
+      rather sheepish. The crowd, of course, first cheer, and then chaff as
+      usual, as he picks up his hat and begins handling the sticks to see which
+      will suit him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wooy, Willum Smith, thee canst plaay wi' he arra daay,&rdquo; says his
+      companion to the blacksmith's apprentice, a stout young fellow of nineteen
+      or twenty. Willum's sweetheart is in the &ldquo;veast&rdquo; somewhere, and has
+      strictly enjoined him not to get his head broke at back-swording, on pain
+      of her highest displeasure; but as she is not to be seen (the women
+      pretend not to like to see the backsword play, and keep away from the
+      stage), and as his hat is decidedly getting old, he chucks it on to the
+      stage, and follows himself, hoping that he will only have to break other
+      people's heads, or that, after all, Rachel won't really mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then follows the greasy cap lined with fur of a half-gypsy, poaching,
+      loafing fellow, who travels the Vale not for much good, I fancy:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;For twenty times was Peter feared
+     For once that Peter was respected,&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      in fact. And then three or four other hats, including the glossy castor of
+      Joe Willis, the self-elected and would-be champion of the neighbourhood, a
+      well-to-do young butcher of twenty-eight or thereabouts, and a great
+      strapping fellow, with his full allowance of bluster. This is a capital
+      show of gamesters, considering the amount of the prize; so, while they are
+      picking their sticks and drawing their lots, I think I must tell you, as
+      shortly as I can, how the noble old game of back-sword is played; for it
+      is sadly gone out of late, even in the Vale, and maybe you have never seen
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The weapon is a good stout ash stick with a large basket handle, heavier
+      and somewhat shorter than a common single-stick. The players are called
+      &ldquo;old gamesters&rdquo;&mdash;why, I can't tell you&mdash;and their object is
+      simply to break one another's heads; for the moment that blood runs an
+      inch anywhere above the eyebrow, the old gamester to whom it belongs is
+      beaten, and has to stop. A very slight blow with the sticks will fetch
+      blood, so that it is by no means a punishing pastime, if the men don't
+      play on purpose and savagely at the body and arms of their adversaries.
+      The old gamester going into action only takes off his hat and coat, and
+      arms himself with a stick; he then loops the fingers of his left hand in a
+      handkerchief or strap, which he fastens round his left leg, measuring the
+      length, so that when he draws it tight with his left elbow in the air,
+      that elbow shall just reach as high as his crown. Thus you see, so long as
+      he chooses to keep his left elbow up, regardless of cuts, he has a perfect
+      guard for the left side of his head. Then he advances his right hand above
+      and in front of his head, holding his stick across, so that its point
+      projects an inch or two over his left elbow; and thus his whole head is
+      completely guarded, and he faces his man armed in like manner; and they
+      stand some three feet apart, often nearer, and feint, and strike, and
+      return at one another's heads, until one cries &ldquo;hold,&rdquo; or blood flows. In
+      the first case they are allowed a minute's time; and go on again; in the
+      latter another pair of gamesters are called on. If good men are playing,
+      the quickness of the returns is marvellous: you hear the rattle like that
+      a boy makes drawing his stick along palings, only heavier; and the
+      closeness of the men in action to one another gives it a strange interest,
+      and makes a spell at back-swording a very noble sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They are all suited now with sticks, and Joe Willis and the gypsy man have
+      drawn the first lot. So the rest lean against the rails of the stage, and
+      Joe and the dark man meet in the middle, the boards having been strewed
+      with sawdust, Joe's white shirt and spotless drab breeches and boots
+      contrasting with the gypsy's coarse blue shirt and dirty green velveteen
+      breeches and leather gaiters. Joe is evidently turning up his nose at the
+      other, and half insulted at having to break his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gypsy is a tough, active fellow, but not very skilful with his weapon,
+      so that Joe's weight and strength tell in a minute; he is too heavy metal
+      for him. Whack, whack, whack, come his blows, breaking down the gypsy's
+      guard, and threatening to reach his head every moment. There it is at
+      last. &ldquo;Blood, blood!&rdquo; shout the spectators, as a thin stream oozes out
+      slowly from the roots of his hair, and the umpire calls to them to stop.
+      The gypsy scowls at Joe under his brows in no pleasant manner, while
+      Master Joe swaggers about, and makes attitudes, and thinks himself, and
+      shows that he thinks himself, the greatest man in the field.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0067m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0067m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0067.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      Then follow several stout sets-to between the other candidates for the new
+      hat, and at last come the shepherd and Willum Smith. This is the crack
+      set-to of the day. They are both in famous wind, and there is no crying
+      &ldquo;hold.&rdquo; The shepherd is an old hand, and up to all the dodges. He tries
+      them one after another, and very nearly gets at Willum's head by coming in
+      near, and playing over his guard at the half-stick; but somehow Willum
+      blunders through, catching the stick on his shoulders, neck, sides, every
+      now and then, anywhere but on his head, and his returns are heavy and
+      straight, and he is the youngest gamester and a favourite in the parish,
+      and his gallant stand brings down shouts and cheers, and the knowing ones
+      think he'll win if he keeps steady; and Tom, on the groom's shoulder,
+      holds his hands together, and can hardly breathe for excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alas for Willum! His sweetheart, getting tired of female companionship,
+      has been hunting the booths to see where he can have got to, and now
+      catches sight of him on the stage in full combat. She flushes and turns
+      pale; her old aunt catches hold of her, saying, &ldquo;Bless 'ee, child, doan't
+      'ee go a'nigst it;&rdquo; but she breaks away and runs towards the stage calling
+      his name. Willum keeps up his guard stoutly, but glances for a moment
+      towards the voice. No guard will do it, Willum, without the eye. The
+      shepherd steps round and strikes, and the point of his stick just grazes
+      Willum's forehead, fetching off the skin, and the blood flows, and the
+      umpire cries, &ldquo;Hold!&rdquo; and poor Willum's chance is up for the day. But he
+      takes it very well, and puts on his old hat and coat, and goes down to be
+      scolded by his sweetheart, and led away out of mischief. Tom hears him say
+      coaxingly, as he walks off,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now doan't 'ee, Rachel! I wouldn't ha' done it, only I wanted summut to
+      buy 'ee a fairing wi', and I be as vlush o' money as a twod o' feathers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thee mind what I tells 'ee,&rdquo; rejoins Rachel saucily, &ldquo;and doan't 'ee kep
+      blethering about fairings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom resolves in his heart to give Willum the remainder of his two
+      shillings after the back-swording.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joe Willis has all the luck to-day. His next bout ends in an easy victory,
+      while the shepherd has a tough job to break his second head; and when Joe
+      and the shepherd meet, and the whole circle expect and hope to see him get
+      a broken crown, the shepherd slips in the first round and falls against
+      the rails, hurting himself so that the old farmer will not let him go on,
+      much as he wishes to try; and that impostor Joe (for he is certainly not
+      the best man) struts and swaggers about the stage the conquering gamester,
+      though he hasn't had five minutes' really trying play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joe takes the new hat in his hand, and puts the money into it, and then,
+      as if a thought strikes him, and he doesn't think his victory quite
+      acknowledged down below, walks to each face of the stage, and looks down,
+      shaking the money, and chaffing, as how he'll stake hat and money and
+      another half-sovereign &ldquo;agin any gamester as hasn't played already.&rdquo;
+       Cunning Joe! he thus gets rid of Willum and the shepherd, who is quite
+      fresh again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one seems to like the offer, and the umpire is just coming down, when a
+      queer old hat, something like a doctor of divinity's shovel, is chucked on
+      to the stage and an elderly, quiet man steps out, who has been watching
+      the play, saying he should like to cross a stick wi' the prodigalish young
+      chap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crowd cheer, and begin to chaff Joe, who turns up his nose and
+      swaggers across to the sticks. &ldquo;Imp'dent old wosbird!&rdquo; says he; &ldquo;I'll
+      break the bald head on un to the truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old boy is very bald, certainly, and the blood will show fast enough
+      if you can touch him, Joe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He takes off his long-flapped coat, and stands up in a long-flapped
+      waistcoat, which Sir Roger de Coverley might have worn when it was new,
+      picks out a stick, and is ready for Master Joe, who loses no time, but
+      begins his old game, whack, whack, whack, trying to break down the old
+      man's guard by sheer strength. But it won't do; he catches every blow
+      close by the basket, and though he is rather stiff in his returns, after a
+      minute walks Joe about the stage, and is clearly a stanch old gamester.
+      Joe now comes in, and making the most of his height, tries to get over the
+      old man's guard at half-stick, by which he takes a smart blow in the ribs
+      and another on the elbow, and nothing more. And now he loses wind and
+      begins to puff, and the crowd laugh. &ldquo;Cry 'hold,' Joe; thee'st met thy
+      match!&rdquo; Instead of taking good advice and getting his wind, Joe loses his
+      temper, and strikes at the old man's body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blood, blood!&rdquo; shout the crowd; &ldquo;Joe's head's broke!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Who'd have thought it? How did it come? That body-blow left Joe's head
+      unguarded for a moment; and with one turn of the wrist the old gentleman
+      has picked a neat little bit of skin off the middle of his forehead; and
+      though he won't believe it, and hammers on for three more blows despite of
+      the shouts, is then convinced by the blood trickling into his eye. Poor
+      Joe is sadly crestfallen, and fumbles in his pocket for the other
+      half-sovereign, but the old gamester won't have it. &ldquo;Keep thy money, man,
+      and gi's thy hand,&rdquo; says he; and they shake hands. But the old gamester
+      gives the new hat to the shepherd, and, soon after, the half-sovereign to
+      Willum, who thereout decorates his sweetheart with ribbons to his heart's
+      content.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who can a be?&rdquo; &ldquo;Wur do a cum from?&rdquo; ask the crowd. And it soon flies
+      about that the old west-country champion, who played a tie with Shaw the
+      Lifeguardsman at &ldquo;Vizes&rdquo; twenty years before, has broken Joe Willis's
+      crown for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How my country fair is spinning out! I see I must skip the wrestling; and
+      the boys jumping in sacks, and rolling wheelbarrows blindfolded; and the
+      donkey-race, and the fight which arose thereout, marring the otherwise
+      peaceful &ldquo;veast;&rdquo; and the frightened scurrying away of the female
+      feast-goers, and descent of Squire Brown, summoned by the wife of one of
+      the combatants to stop it; which he wouldn't start to do till he had got
+      on his top-boots. Tom is carried away by old Benjy, dog-tired and
+      surfeited with pleasure, as the evening comes on and the dancing begins in
+      the booths; and though Willum, and Rachel in her new ribbons, and many
+      another good lad and lass don't come away just yet, but have a good step
+      out, and enjoy it, and get no harm thereby, yet we, being sober folk, will
+      just stroll away up through the churchyard, and by the old yew-tree, and
+      get a quiet dish of tea and a parley with our gossips, as the steady ones
+      of our village do, and so to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That's the fair, true sketch, as far as it goes, of one of the larger
+      village feasts in the Vale of Berks, when I was a little boy. They are
+      much altered for the worse, I am told. I haven't been at one these twenty
+      years, but I have been at the statute fairs in some west-country towns,
+      where servants are hired, and greater abominations cannot be found. What
+      village feasts have come to, I fear, in many cases, may be read in the
+      pages of &ldquo;Yeast&rdquo; (though I never saw one so bad&mdash;thank God!).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Do you want to know why? It is because, as I said before, gentlefolk and
+      farmers have left off joining or taking an interest in them. They don't
+      either subscribe to the prizes, or go down and enjoy the fun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Is this a good or a bad sign? I hardly know. Bad, sure enough, if it only
+      arises from the further separation of classes consequent on twenty years
+      of buying cheap and selling dear, and its accompanying overwork; or
+      because our sons and daughters have their hearts in London club-life, or
+      so-called &ldquo;society,&rdquo; instead of in the old English home-duties; because
+      farmers' sons are apeing fine gentlemen, and farmers' daughters caring
+      more to make bad foreign music than good English cheeses. Good, perhaps,
+      if it be that the time for the old &ldquo;veast&rdquo; has gone by; that it is no
+      longer the healthy, sound expression of English country holiday-making;
+      that, in fact, we, as a nation, have got beyond it, and are in a
+      transition state, feeling for and soon likely to find some better
+      substitute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only I have just got this to say before I quit the text. Don't let
+      reformers of any sort think that they are going really to lay hold of the
+      working boys and young men of England by any educational grapnel whatever,
+      which isn't some bona fide equivalent for the games of the old country
+      &ldquo;veast&rdquo; in it; something to put in the place of the back-swording and
+      wrestling and racing; something to try the muscles of men's bodies, and
+      the endurance of their hearts, and to make them rejoice in their strength.
+      In all the new-fangled comprehensive plans which I see, this is all left
+      out; and the consequence is, that your great mechanics' institutes end in
+      intellectual priggism, and your Christian young men's societies in
+      religious Pharisaism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, well, we must bide our time. Life isn't all beer and skittles; but
+      beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good
+      part of every Englishman's education. If I could only drive this into the
+      heads of you rising parliamentary lords, and young swells who &ldquo;have your
+      ways made for you,&rdquo; as the saying is, you, who frequent palaver houses and
+      West-end clubs, waiting always ready to strap yourselves on to the back of
+      poor dear old John, as soon as the present used-up lot (your fathers and
+      uncles), who sit there on the great parliamentary-majorities' pack-saddle,
+      and make believe they're guiding him with their red-tape bridle, tumble,
+      or have to be lifted off!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't think much of you yet&mdash;I wish I could&mdash;though you do go
+      talking and lecturing up and down the country to crowded audiences, and
+      are busy with all sorts of philanthropic intellectualism, and circulating
+      libraries and museums, and Heaven only knows what besides, and try to make
+      us think, through newspaper reports, that you are, even as we, of the
+      working classes. But bless your hearts, we &ldquo;ain't so green,&rdquo; though lots
+      of us of all sorts toady you enough certainly, and try to make you think
+      so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I'll tell you what to do now: instead of all this trumpeting and fuss,
+      which is only the old parliamentary-majority dodge over again, just you
+      go, each of you (you've plenty of time for it, if you'll only give up
+      t'other line), and quietly make three or four friends&mdash;real friends&mdash;among
+      us. You'll find a little trouble in getting at the right sort, because
+      such birds don't come lightly to your lure; but found they may be. Take,
+      say, two out of the professions, lawyer, parson, doctor&mdash;which you
+      will; one out of trade; and three or four out of the working classes&mdash;tailors,
+      engineers, carpenters, engravers. There's plenty of choice. Let them be
+      men of your own ages, mind, and ask them to your homes; introduce them to
+      your wives and sisters, and get introduced to theirs; give them good
+      dinners, and talk to them about what is really at the bottom of your
+      hearts; and box, and run, and row with them, when you have a chance. Do
+      all this honestly as man to man, and by the time you come to ride old
+      John, you'll be able to do something more than sit on his back, and may
+      feel his mouth with some stronger bridle than a red-tape one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, if you only would! But you have got too far out of the right rut, I
+      fear. Too much over-civilization, and the deceitfulness of riches. It is
+      easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. More's the pity. I
+      never came across but two of you who could value a man wholly and solely
+      for what was in him&mdash;who thought themselves verily and indeed of the
+      same flesh and blood as John Jones the attorney's clerk, and Bill Smith
+      the costermonger, and could act as if they thought so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0076m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0076m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0076.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III&mdash;SUNDRY WARS AND ALLIANCES.
+    </h2>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+      <img src="images/9076m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="9076m " width="100%" />
+      <a href="images/9076.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      oor old Benjy! The &ldquo;rheumatiz&rdquo; has much to answer for all through English
+      country-sides, but it never played a scurvier trick than in laying thee by
+      the heels, when thou wast yet in a green old age. The enemy, which had
+      long been carrying on a sort of border warfare, and trying his strength
+      against Benjy's on the battlefield of his hands and legs, now, mustering
+      all his forces, began laying siege to the citadel, and overrunning the
+      whole country. Benjy was seized in the back and loins; and though he made
+      strong and brave fight, it was soon clear enough that all which could be
+      beaten of poor old Benjy would have to give in before long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was as much as he could do now, with the help of his big stick and
+      frequent stops, to hobble down to the canal with Master Tom, and bait his
+      hook for him, and sit and watch his angling, telling him quaint old
+      country stories; and when Tom had no sport, and detecting a rat some
+      hundred yards or so off along the bank, would rush off with Toby the
+      turnspit terrier, his other faithful companion, in bootless pursuit, he
+      might have tumbled in and been drowned twenty times over before Benjy
+      could have got near him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cheery and unmindful of himself, as Benjy was, this loss of locomotive
+      power bothered him greatly. He had got a new object in his old age, and
+      was just beginning to think himself useful again in the world. He feared
+      much, too, lest Master Tom should fall back again into the hands of
+      Charity and the women. So he tried everything he could think of to get set
+      up. He even went an expedition to the dwelling of one of those queer
+      mortals, who&mdash;say what we will, and reason how we will&mdash;do cure
+      simple people of diseases of one kind or another without the aid of
+      physic, and so get to themselves the reputation of using charms, and
+      inspire for themselves and their dwellings great respect, not to say fear,
+      amongst a simple folk such as the dwellers in the Vale of White Horse.
+      Where this power, or whatever else it may be, descends upon the shoulders
+      of a man whose ways are not straight, he becomes a nuisance to the
+      neighbourhood&mdash;a receiver of stolen goods, giver of love-potions, and
+      deceiver of silly women&mdash;the avowed enemy of law and order, of
+      justices of the peace, head-boroughs, and gamekeepers,&mdash;such a man,
+      in fact, as was recently caught tripping, and deservedly dealt with by the
+      Leeds justices, for seducing a girl who had come to him to get back a
+      faithless lover, and has been convicted of bigamy since then. Sometimes,
+      however, they are of quite a different stamp&mdash;men who pretend to
+      nothing, and are with difficulty persuaded to exercise their occult arts
+      in the simplest cases.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of this latter sort was old Farmer Ives, as he was called, the &ldquo;wise man&rdquo;
+       to whom Benjy resorted (taking Tom with him as usual), in the early spring
+      of the year next after the feast described in the last chapter. Why he was
+      called &ldquo;farmer&rdquo; I cannot say, unless it be that he was the owner of a cow,
+      a pig or two, and some poultry, which he maintained on about an acre of
+      land inclosed from the middle of a wild common, on which probably his
+      father had squatted before lords of manors looked as keenly after their
+      rights as they do now. Here he had lived no one knew how long, a solitary
+      man. It was often rumoured that he was to be turned out and his cottage
+      pulled down, but somehow it never came to pass; and his pigs and cow went
+      grazing on the common, and his geese hissed at the passing children and at
+      the heels of the horse of my lord's steward, who often rode by with a
+      covetous eye on the inclosure still unmolested. His dwelling was some
+      miles from our village; so Benjy, who was half ashamed of his errand, and
+      wholly unable to walk there, had to exercise much ingenuity to get the
+      means of transporting himself and Tom thither without exciting suspicion.
+      However, one fine May morning he managed to borrow the old blind pony of
+      our friend the publican, and Tom persuaded Madam Brown to give him a
+      holiday to spend with old Benjy, and to lend them the Squire's light cart,
+      stored with bread and cold meat and a bottle of ale. And so the two in
+      high glee started behind old Dobbin, and jogged along the deep-rutted
+      plashy roads, which had not been mended after their winter's wear, towards
+      the dwelling of the wizard. About noon they passed the gate which opened
+      on to the large common, and old Dobbin toiled slowly up the hill, while
+      Benjy pointed out a little deep dingle on the left, out of which welled a
+      tiny stream. As they crept up the hill the tops of a few birch-trees came
+      in sight, and blue smoke curling up through their delicate light boughs;
+      and then the little white thatched home and inclosed ground of Farmer
+      Ives, lying cradled in the dingle, with the gay gorse common rising behind
+      and on both sides; while in front, after traversing a gentle slope, the
+      eye might travel for miles and miles over the rich vale. They now left the
+      main road and struck into a green track over the common marked lightly
+      with wheel and horse-shoe, which led down into the dingle and stopped at
+      the rough gate of Farmer Ives. Here they found the farmer, an iron-gray
+      old man, with a bushy eyebrow and strong aquiline nose, busied in one of
+      his vocations. He was a horse and cow doctor, and was tending a sick beast
+      which had been sent up to be cured. Benjy hailed him as an old friend, and
+      he returned the greeting cordially enough, looking however hard for a
+      moment both at Benjy and Tom, to see whether there was more in their visit
+      than appeared at first sight. It was a work of some difficulty and danger
+      for Benjy to reach the ground, which, however, he managed to do without
+      mishap; and then he devoted himself to unharnessing Dobbin and turning him
+      out for a graze (&ldquo;a run&rdquo; one could not say of that virtuous steed) on the
+      common. This done, he extricated the cold provisions from the cart, and
+      they entered the farmer's wicket; and he, shutting up the knife with which
+      he was taking maggots out of the cow's back and sides, accompanied them
+      towards the cottage. A big old lurcher got up slowly from the door-stone,
+      stretching first one hind leg and then the other, and taking Tom's
+      caresses and the presence of Toby, who kept, however, at a respectful
+      distance, with equal indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Us be cum to pay 'ee a visit. I've a been long minded to do't for old
+      sake's sake, only I vinds I dwon't get about now as I'd used to't. I be so
+      plaguy bad wi' th' rheumatiz in my back.&rdquo; Benjy paused, in hopes of
+      drawing the farmer at once on the subject of his ailments without further
+      direct application.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I see as you bean't quite so lissom as you was,&rdquo; replied the farmer,
+      with a grim smile, as he lifted the latch of his door; &ldquo;we bean't so young
+      as we was, nother on us, wuss luck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The farmer's cottage was very like those of the better class of peasantry
+      in general. A snug chimney corner with two seats, and a small carpet on
+      the hearth, an old flint gun and a pair of spurs over the fireplace, a
+      dresser with shelves on which some bright pewter plates and crockeryware
+      were arranged, an old walnut table, a few chairs and settles, some framed
+      samplers, and an old print or two, and a bookcase with some dozen volumes
+      on the walls, a rack with flitches of bacon, and other stores fastened to
+      the ceiling, and you have the best part of the furniture. No sign of
+      occult art is to be seen, unless the bundles of dried herbs hanging to the
+      rack and in the ingle and the row of labelled phials on one of the shelves
+      betoken it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom played about with some kittens who occupied the hearth, and with a
+      goat who walked demurely in at the open door&mdash;while their host and
+      Benjy spread the table for dinner&mdash;and was soon engaged in conflict
+      with the cold meat, to which he did much honour. The two old men's talk
+      was of old comrades and their deeds, mute inglorious Miltons of the Vale,
+      and of the doings thirty years back, which didn't interest him much,
+      except when they spoke of the making of the canal; and then indeed he
+      began to listen with all his ears, and learned, to his no small wonder,
+      that his dear and wonderful canal had not been there always&mdash;was not,
+      in fact, so old as Benjy or Farmer Ives, which caused a strange commotion
+      in his small brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After dinner Benjy called attention to a wart which Tom had on the
+      knuckles of his hand, and which the family doctor had been trying his
+      skill on without success, and begged the farmer to charm it away. Farmer
+      Ives looked at it, muttered something or another over it, and cut some
+      notches in a short stick, which he handed to Benjy, giving him
+      instructions for cutting it down on certain days, and cautioning Tom not
+      to meddle with the wart for a fortnight. And then they strolled out and
+      sat on a bench in the sun with their pipes, and the pigs came up and
+      grunted sociably and let Tom scratch them; and the farmer, seeing how he
+      liked animals, stood up and held his arms in the air, and gave a call,
+      which brought a flock of pigeons wheeling and dashing through the
+      birch-trees. They settled down in clusters on the farmer's arms and
+      shoulders, making love to him and scrambling over one another's backs to
+      get to his face; and then he threw them all off, and they fluttered about
+      close by, and lighted on him again and again when he held up his arms. All
+      the creatures about the place were clean and fearless, quite unlike their
+      relations elsewhere; and Tom begged to be taught how to make all the pigs
+      and cows and poultry in our village tame, at which the farmer only gave
+      one of his grim chuckles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It wasn't till they were just ready to go, and old Dobbin was harnessed,
+      that Benjy broached the subject of his rheumatism again, detailing his
+      symptoms one by one. Poor old boy! He hoped the farmer could charm it away
+      as easily as he could Tom's wart, and was ready with equal faith to put
+      another notched stick into his other pocket, for the cure of his own
+      ailments. The physician shook his head, but nevertheless produced a
+      bottle, and handed it to Benjy, with instructions for use. &ldquo;Not as 't'll
+      do 'ee much good&mdash;leastways I be afeard not,&rdquo; shading his eyes with
+      his hand, and looking up at them in the cart. &ldquo;There's only one thing as I
+      knows on as'll cure old folks like you and I o' th' rheumatiz.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wot be that then, farmer?&rdquo; inquired Benjy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Churchyard mould,&rdquo; said the old iron-gray man, with another chuckle. And
+      so they said their good-byes and went their ways home. Tom's wart was gone
+      in a fortnight, but not so Benjy's rheumatism, which laid him by the heels
+      more and more. And though Tom still spent many an hour with him, as he sat
+      on a bench in the sunshine, or by the chimney corner when it was cold, he
+      soon had to seek elsewhere for his regular companions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom had been accustomed often to accompany his mother in her visits to the
+      cottages, and had thereby made acquaintance with many of the village boys
+      of his own age. There was Job Rudkin, son of widow Rudkin, the most
+      bustling woman in the parish. How she could ever have had such a stolid
+      boy as Job for a child must always remain a mystery. The first time Tom
+      went to their cottage with his mother, Job was not indoors; but he entered
+      soon after, and stood with both hands in his pockets, staring at Tom.
+      Widow Rudkin, who would have had to cross madam to get at young Hopeful&mdash;a
+      breach of good manners of which she was wholly incapable&mdash;began a
+      series of pantomime signs, which only puzzled him; and at last, unable to
+      contain herself longer, burst out with, &ldquo;Job! Job! where's thy cap?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! bean't 'ee on ma head, mother?&rdquo; replied Job, slowly extricating one
+      hand from a pocket, and feeling for the article in question; which he
+      found on his head sure enough, and left there, to his mother's horror and
+      Tom's great delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was poor Jacob Dodson, the half-witted boy, who ambled about
+      cheerfully, undertaking messages and little helpful odds and ends for
+      every one, which, however, poor Jacob managed always hopelessly to
+      imbrangle. Everything came to pieces in his hands, and nothing would stop
+      in his head. They nicknamed him Jacob Doodle-calf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But above all there was Harry Winburn, the quickest and best boy in the
+      parish. He might be a year older than Tom, but was very little bigger, and
+      he was the Crichton of our village boys. He could wrestle and climb and
+      run better than all the rest, and learned all that the schoolmaster could
+      teach him faster than that worthy at all liked. He was a boy to be proud
+      of, with his curly brown hair, keen gray eye, straight active figure, and
+      little ears and hands and feet, &ldquo;as fine as a lord's,&rdquo; as Charity remarked
+      to Tom one day, talking, as usual, great nonsense. Lords' hands and ears
+      and feet are just as ugly as other folk's when they are children, as any
+      one may convince himself if he likes to look. Tight boots and gloves, and
+      doing nothing with them, I allow make a difference by the time they are
+      twenty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now that Benjy was laid on the shelf, and his young brothers were still
+      under petticoat government, Tom, in search of companions, began to
+      cultivate the village boys generally more and more. Squire Brown, be it
+      said, was a true-blue Tory to the backbone, and believed honestly that the
+      powers which be were ordained of God, and that loyalty and steadfast
+      obedience were men's first duties. Whether it were in consequence or in
+      spite of his political creed, I do not mean to give an opinion, though I
+      have one; but certain it is that he held therewith divers social
+      principles not generally supposed to be true blue in colour. Foremost of
+      these, and the one which the Squire loved to propound above all others,
+      was the belief that a man is to be valued wholly and solely for that which
+      he is in himself, for that which stands up in the four fleshly walls of
+      him, apart from clothes, rank, fortune, and all externals whatsoever.
+      Which belief I take to be a wholesome corrective of all political
+      opinions, and, if held sincerely, to make all opinions equally harmless,
+      whether they be blue, red, or green. As a necessary corollary to this
+      belief, Squire Brown held further that it didn't matter a straw whether
+      his son associated with lords' sons or ploughmen's sons, provided they
+      were brave and honest. He himself had played football and gone
+      bird-nesting with the farmers whom he met at vestry and the labourers who
+      tilled their fields, and so had his father and grandfather, with their
+      progenitors. So he encouraged Tom in his intimacy with the boys of the
+      village, and forwarded it by all means in his power, and gave them the run
+      of a close for a playground, and provided bats and balls and a football
+      for their sports.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our village was blessed amongst other things with a well-endowed school.
+      The building stood by itself, apart from the master's house, on an angle
+      of ground where three roads met&mdash;an old gray stone building with a
+      steep roof and mullioned windows. On one of the opposite angles stood
+      Squire Brown's stables and kennel, with their backs to the road, over
+      which towered a great elm-tree; on the third stood the village carpenter
+      and wheelwright's large open shop, and his house and the schoolmaster's,
+      with long low eaves, under which the swallows built by scores.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment Tom's lessons were over, he would now get him down to this
+      corner by the stables, and watch till the boys came out of school. He
+      prevailed on the groom to cut notches for him in the bark of the elm so
+      that he could climb into the lower branches; and there he would sit
+      watching the school door, and speculating on the possibility of turning
+      the elm into a dwelling-place for himself and friends, after the manner of
+      the Swiss Family Robinson. But the school hours were long and Tom's
+      patience short, so that he soon began to descend into the street, and go
+      and peep in at the school door and the wheelwright's shop, and look out
+      for something to while away the time. Now the wheelwright was a choleric
+      man, and one fine afternoon, returning from a short absence, found Tom
+      occupied with one of his pet adzes, the edge of which was fast vanishing
+      under our hero's care. A speedy flight saved Tom from all but one sound
+      cuff on the ears; but he resented this unjustifiable interruption of his
+      first essays at carpentering, and still more the further proceedings of
+      the wheelwright, who cut a switch, and hung it over the door of his
+      workshop, threatening to use it upon Tom if he came within twenty yards of
+      his gate. So Tom, to retaliate, commenced a war upon the swallows who
+      dwelt under the wheelwright's eaves, whom he harassed with sticks and
+      stones; and being fleeter of foot than his enemy, escaped all punishment,
+      and kept him in perpetual anger. Moreover, his presence about the school
+      door began to incense the master, as the boys in that neighbourhood
+      neglected their lessons in consequence; and more than once he issued into
+      the porch, rod in hand, just as Tom beat a hasty retreat. And he and the
+      wheelwright, laying their heads together, resolved to acquaint the Squire
+      with Tom's afternoon occupations; but in order to do it with effect,
+      determined to take him captive and lead him away to judgment fresh from
+      his evil doings. This they would have found some difficulty in doing, had
+      Tom continued the war single-handed, or rather single-footed, for he would
+      have taken to the deepest part of Pebbly Brook to escape them; but, like
+      other active powers, he was ruined by his alliances. Poor Jacob
+      Doodle-calf could not go to the school with the other boys, and one fine
+      afternoon, about three o'clock (the school broke up at four), Tom found
+      him ambling about the street, and pressed him into a visit to the
+      school-porch. Jacob, always ready to do what he was asked, consented, and
+      the two stole down to the school together. Tom first reconnoitred the
+      wheelwright's shop; and seeing no signs of activity, thought all safe in
+      that quarter, and ordered at once an advance of all his troops upon the
+      schoolporch. The door of the school was ajar, and the boys seated on the
+      nearest bench at once recognized and opened a correspondence with the
+      invaders. Tom, waxing bold, kept putting his head into the school and
+      making faces at the master when his back was turned. Poor Jacob, not in
+      the least comprehending the situation, and in high glee at finding himself
+      so near the school, which he had never been allowed to enter, suddenly, in
+      a fit of enthusiasm, pushed by Tom, and ambling three steps into the
+      school, stood there, looking round him and nodding with a self-approving
+      smile. The master, who was stooping over a boy's slate, with his back to
+      the door, became aware of something unusual, and turned quickly round. Tom
+      rushed at Jacob, and began dragging him back by his smock-frock, and the
+      master made at them, scattering forms and boys in his career. Even now
+      they might have escaped, but that in the porch, barring retreat, appeared
+      the crafty wheelwright, who had been watching all their proceedings. So
+      they were seized, the school dismissed, and Tom and Jacob led away to
+      Squire Brown as lawful prize, the boys following to the gate in groups,
+      and speculating on the result.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Squire was very angry at first, but the interview, by Tom's pleading,
+      ended in a compromise. Tom was not to go near the school till three
+      o'clock, and only then if he had done his own lessons well, in which case
+      he was to be the bearer of a note to the master from Squire Brown; and the
+      master agreed in such case to release ten or twelve of the best boys an
+      hour before the time of breaking up, to go off and play in the close. The
+      wheelwright's adzes and swallows were to be for ever respected; and that
+      hero and the master withdrew to the servants' hall to drink the Squire's
+      health, well satisfied with their day's work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second act of Tom's life may now be said to have begun. The war of
+      independence had been over for some time: none of the women now&mdash;not
+      even his mother's maid&mdash;dared offer to help him in dressing or
+      washing. Between ourselves, he had often at first to run to Benjy in an
+      unfinished state of toilet. Charity and the rest of them seemed to take a
+      delight in putting impossible buttons and ties in the middle of his back;
+      but he would have gone without nether integuments altogether, sooner than
+      have had recourse to female valeting. He had a room to himself, and his
+      father gave him sixpence a week pocket-money. All this he had achieved by
+      Benjy's advice and assistance. But now he had conquered another step in
+      life&mdash;the step which all real boys so long to make: he had got
+      amongst his equals in age and strength, and could measure himself with
+      other boys; he lived with those whose pursuits and wishes and ways were
+      the same in kind as his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little governess who had lately been installed in the house found her
+      work grow wondrously easy, for Tom slaved at his lessons, in order to make
+      sure of his note to the schoolmaster. So there were very few days in the
+      week in which Tom and the village boys were not playing in their close by
+      three o'clock. Prisoner's base, rounders, high-cock-a-lorum, cricket,
+      football&mdash;he was soon initiated into the delights of them all; and
+      though most of the boys were older than himself, he managed to hold his
+      own very well. He was naturally active and strong, and quick of eye and
+      hand, and had the advantage of light shoes and well-fitting dress, so that
+      in a short time he could run and jump and climb with any of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They generally finished their regular games half an hour or so before
+      tea-time, and then began trials of skill and strength in many ways. Some
+      of them would catch the Shetland pony who was turned out in the field, and
+      get two or three together on his back, and the little rogue, enjoying the
+      fun, would gallop off for fifty yards, and then turn round, or stop short
+      and shoot them on to the turf, and then graze quietly on till he felt
+      another load; others played at peg-top or marbles, while a few of the
+      bigger ones stood up for a bout at wrestling. Tom at first only looked on
+      at this pastime, but it had peculiar attractions for him, and he could not
+      long keep out of it. Elbow and collar wrestling, as practised in the
+      western counties, was, next to back-swording, the way to fame for the
+      youth of the Vale; and all the boys knew the rules of it, and were more or
+      less expert. But Job Rudkin and Harry Winburn were the stars&mdash;the
+      former stiff and sturdy, with legs like small towers; the latter pliant as
+      indiarubber and quick as lightning. Day after day they stood foot to foot,
+      and offered first one hand and then the other, and grappled and closed,
+      and swayed and strained, till a well-aimed crook of the heel or thrust of
+      the loin took effect, and a fair back-fall ended the matter. And Tom
+      watched with all his eyes, and first challenged one of the less
+      scientific, and threw him; and so one by one wrestled his way up to the
+      leaders.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0087m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0087m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0087.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      Then indeed for months he had a poor time of it; it was not long indeed
+      before he could manage to keep his legs against Job, for that hero was
+      slow of offence, and gained his victories chiefly by allowing others to
+      throw themselves against his immovable legs and loins. But Harry Winburn
+      was undeniably his master; from the first clutch of hands when they stood
+      up, down to the last trip which sent him on to his back on the turf, he
+      felt that Harry knew more and could do more than he. Luckily Harry's
+      bright unconsciousness and Tom's natural good temper kept them from
+      quarrelling; and so Tom worked on and on, and trod more and more nearly on
+      Harry's heels, and at last mastered all the dodges and falls except one.
+      This one was Harry's own particular invention and pet; he scarcely ever
+      used it except when hard pressed, but then out it came, and as sure as it
+      did, over went poor Tom. He thought about that fall at his meals, in his
+      walks, when he lay awake in bed, in his dreams, but all to no purpose,
+      until Harry one day in his open way suggested to him how he thought it
+      should be met; and in a week from that time the boys were equal, save only
+      the slight difference of strength in Harry's favour, which some extra ten
+      months of age gave. Tom had often afterwards reason to be thankful for
+      that early drilling, and above all, for having mastered Harry Winburn's
+      fall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides their home games, on Saturdays the boys would wander all over the
+      neighbourhood; sometimes to the downs, or up to the camp, where they cut
+      their initials out in the springy turf, and watched the hawks soaring, and
+      the &ldquo;peert&rdquo; bird, as Harry Winburn called the gray plover, gorgeous in his
+      wedding feathers; and so home, racing down the Manger with many a roll
+      among the thistles, or through Uffington Wood to watch the fox cubs
+      playing in the green rides; sometimes to Rosy Brook, to cut long
+      whispering reeds which grew there, to make pan-pipes of; sometimes to Moor
+      Mills, where was a piece of old forest land, with short browsed turf and
+      tufted brambly thickets stretching under the oaks, amongst which rumour
+      declared that a raven, last of his race, still lingered; or to the
+      sand-hills, in vain quest of rabbits; and bird-nesting in the season,
+      anywhere and everywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The few neighbours of the Squire's own rank every now and then would shrug
+      their shoulders as they drove or rode by a party of boys with Tom in the
+      middle, carrying along bulrushes or whispering reeds, or great bundles of
+      cowslip and meadow-sweet, or young starlings or magpies, or other spoil of
+      wood, brook, or meadow; and Lawyer Red-tape might mutter to Squire
+      Straight-back at the Board that no good would come of the young Browns, if
+      they were let run wild with all the dirty village boys, whom the best
+      farmers' sons even would not play with. And the squire might reply with a
+      shake of his head that his sons only mixed with their equals, and never
+      went into the village without the governess or a footman. But, luckily,
+      Squire Brown was full as stiffbacked as his neighbours, and so went on his
+      own way; and Tom and his younger brothers, as they grew up, went on
+      playing with the village boys, without the idea of equality or inequality
+      (except in wrestling, running, and climbing) ever entering their heads; as
+      it doesn't till it's put there by Jack Nastys or fine ladies' maids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't mean to say it would be the case in all villages, but it certainly
+      was so in this one: the village boys were full as manly and honest, and
+      certainly purer, than those in a higher rank; and Tom got more harm from
+      his equals in his first fortnight at a private school, where he went when
+      he was nine years old, than he had from his village friends from the day
+      he left Charity's apron-strings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Great was the grief amongst the village school-boys when Tom drove off
+      with the Squire, one August morning, to meet the coach on his way to
+      school. Each of them had given him some little present of the best that he
+      had, and his small private box was full of peg-taps, white marbles (called
+      &ldquo;alley-taws&rdquo; in the Vale), screws, birds' eggs, whip-cord, jews-harps, and
+      other miscellaneous boys' wealth. Poor Jacob Doodle-calf, in floods of
+      tears, had pressed upon him with spluttering earnestness his lame pet
+      hedgehog (he had always some poor broken-down beast or bird by him); but
+      this Tom had been obliged to refuse, by the Squire's order. He had given
+      them all a great tea under the big elm in their playground, for which
+      Madam Brown had supplied the biggest cake ever seen in our village; and
+      Tom was really as sorry to leave them as they to lose him, but his sorrow
+      was not unmixed with the pride and excitement of making a new step in
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this feeling carried him through his first parting with his mother
+      better than could have been expected. Their love was as fair and whole as
+      human love can be&mdash;perfect self-sacrifice on the one side meeting a
+      young and true heart on the other. It is not within the scope of my book,
+      however, to speak of family relations, or I should have much to say on the
+      subject of English mothers&mdash;ay, and of English fathers, and sisters,
+      and brothers too. Neither have I room to speak of our private schools.
+      What I have to say is about public schools&mdash;those much-abused and
+      much-belauded institutions peculiar to England. So we must hurry through
+      Master Tom's year at a private school as fast as we can.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a fair average specimen, kept by a gentleman, with another
+      gentleman as second master; but it was little enough of the real work they
+      did&mdash;merely coming into school when lessons were prepared and all
+      ready to be heard. The whole discipline of the school out of lesson hours
+      was in the hands of the two ushers, one of whom was always with the boys
+      in their playground, in the school, at meals&mdash;in fact, at all times
+      and every where, till they were fairly in bed at night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the theory of private schools is (or was) constant supervision out of
+      school&mdash;therein differing fundamentally from that of public schools.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be right or wrong; but if right, this supervision surely ought to
+      be the especial work of the head-master, the responsible person. The
+      object of all schools is not to ram Latin and Greek into boys, but to make
+      them good English boys, good future citizens; and by far the most
+      important part of that work must be done, or not done, out of school
+      hours. To leave it, therefore, in the hands of inferior men, is just
+      giving up the highest and hardest part of the work of education. Were I a
+      private school-master, I should say, Let who will hear the boys their
+      lessons, but let me live with them when they are at play and rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two ushers at Tom's first school were not gentlemen, and very poorly
+      educated, and were only driving their poor trade of usher to get such
+      living as they could out of it. They were not bad men, but had little
+      heart for their work, and of course were bent on making it as easy as
+      possible. One of the methods by which they endeavoured to accomplish this
+      was by encouraging tale-bearing, which had become a frightfully common
+      vice in the school in consequence, and had sapped all the foundations of
+      school morality. Another was, by favouring grossly the biggest boys, who
+      alone could have given them much trouble; whereby those young gentlemen
+      became most abominable tyrants, oppressing the little boys in all the
+      small mean ways which prevail in private schools.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor little Tom was made dreadfully unhappy in his first week by a
+      catastrophe which happened to his first letter home. With huge labour he
+      had, on the very evening of his arrival, managed to fill two sides of a
+      sheet of letter-paper with assurances of his love for dear mamma, his
+      happiness at school, and his resolves to do all she would wish. This
+      missive, with the help of the boy who sat at the desk next him, also a new
+      arrival, he managed to fold successfully; but this done, they were sadly
+      put to it for means of sealing. Envelopes were then unknown; they had no
+      wax, and dared not disturb the stillness of the evening school-room by
+      getting up and going to ask the usher for some. At length Tom's friend,
+      being of an ingenious turn of mind, suggested sealing with ink; and the
+      letter was accordingly stuck down with a blob of ink, and duly handed by
+      Tom, on his way to bed, to the housekeeper to be posted. It was not till
+      four days afterwards that the good dame sent for him, and produced the
+      precious letter and some wax, saying, &ldquo;O Master Brown, I forgot to tell
+      you before, but your letter isn't sealed.&rdquo; Poor Tom took the wax in
+      silence and sealed his letter, with a huge lump rising in his throat
+      during the process, and then ran away to a quiet corner of the playground,
+      and burst into an agony of tears. The idea of his mother waiting day after
+      day for the letter he had promised her at once, and perhaps thinking him
+      forgetful of her, when he had done all in his power to make good his
+      promise, was as bitter a grief as any which he had to undergo for many a
+      long year. His wrath, then, was proportionately violent when he was aware
+      of two boys, who stopped close by him, and one of whom, a fat gaby of a
+      fellow, pointed at him and called him &ldquo;Young mammy-sick!&rdquo; Whereupon Tom
+      arose, and giving vent thus to his grief and shame and rage, smote his
+      derider on the nose; and made it bleed; which sent that young worthy
+      howling to the usher, who reported Tom for violent and unprovoked assault
+      and battery. Hitting in the face was a felony punishable with flogging,
+      other hitting only a misdemeanour&mdash;a distinction not altogether clear
+      in principle. Tom, however, escaped the penalty by pleading primum tempus;
+      and having written a second letter to his mother, inclosing some
+      forget-me-nots, which he picked on their first half-holiday walk, felt
+      quite happy again, and began to enjoy vastly a good deal of his new life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These half-holiday walks were the great events of the week. The whole
+      fifty boys started after dinner with one of the ushers for Hazeldown,
+      which was distant some mile or so from the school. Hazeldown measured some
+      three miles round, and in the neighbourhood were several woods full of all
+      manner of birds and butterflies. The usher walked slowly round the down
+      with such boys as liked to accompany him; the rest scattered in all
+      directions, being only bound to appear again when the usher had completed
+      his round, and accompany him home. They were forbidden, however, to go
+      anywhere except on the down and into the woods; the village had been
+      especially prohibited, where huge bull's-eyes and unctuous toffy might be
+      procured in exchange for coin of the realm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Various were the amusements to which the boys then betook themselves. At
+      the entrance of the down there was a steep hillock, like the barrows of
+      Tom's own downs. This mound was the weekly scene of terrific combats, at a
+      game called by the queer name of &ldquo;mud-patties.&rdquo; The boys who played
+      divided into sides under different leaders, and one side occupied the
+      mound. Then, all parties having provided themselves with many sods of
+      turf, cut with their bread-and-cheese knives, the side which remained at
+      the bottom proceeded to assault the mound, advancing up on all sides under
+      cover of a heavy fire of turfs, and then struggling for victory with the
+      occupants, which was theirs as soon as they could, even for a moment,
+      clear the summit, when they in turn became the besieged. It was a good,
+      rough, dirty game, and of great use in counteracting the sneaking
+      tendencies of the school. Then others of the boys spread over the downs,
+      looking for the holes of humble-bees and mice, which they dug up without
+      mercy, often (I regret to say) killing and skinning the unlucky mice, and
+      (I do not regret to say) getting well stung by the bumble-bees. Others
+      went after butterflies and birds' eggs in their seasons; and Tom found on
+      Hazeldown, for the first time, the beautiful little blue butterfly with
+      golden spots on his wings, which he had never seen on his own downs, and
+      dug out his first sand-martin's nest. This latter achievement resulted in
+      a flogging, for the sand-martins built in a high bank close to the
+      village, consequently out of bounds; but one of the bolder spirits of the
+      school, who never could be happy unless he was doing something to which
+      risk was attached, easily persuaded Tom to break bounds and visit the
+      martins' bank. From whence it being only a step to the toffy shop, what
+      could be more simple than to go on there and fill their pockets; or what
+      more certain than that on their return, a distribution of treasure having
+      been made, the usher should shortly detect the forbidden smell of
+      bull's-eyes, and, a search ensuing, discover the state of the
+      breeches-pockets of Tom and his ally?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This ally of Tom's was indeed a desperate hero in the sight of the boys,
+      and feared as one who dealt in magic, or something approaching thereto.
+      Which reputation came to him in this wise. The boys went to bed at eight,
+      and, of course, consequently lay awake in the dark for an hour or two,
+      telling ghost-stories by turns. One night when it came to his turn, and he
+      had dried up their souls by his story, he suddenly declared that he would
+      make a fiery hand appear on the door; and to the astonishment and terror
+      of the boys in his room, a hand, or something like it, in pale light, did
+      then and there appear. The fame of this exploit having spread to the other
+      rooms, and being discredited there, the young necromancer declared that
+      the same wonder would appear in all the rooms in turn, which it
+      accordingly did; and the whole circumstances having been privately
+      reported to one of the ushers as usual, that functionary, after listening
+      about at the doors of the rooms, by a sudden descent caught the performer
+      in his night-shirt, with a box of phosphorus in his guilty hand.
+      Lucifer-matches and all the present facilities for getting acquainted with
+      fire were then unknown&mdash;the very name of phosphorus had something
+      diabolic in it to the boy-mind; so Tom's ally, at the cost of a sound
+      flogging, earned what many older folk covet much&mdash;the very decided
+      fear of most of his companions.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0095m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0095m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0095.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      He was a remarkable boy, and by no means a bad one. Tom stuck to him till
+      he left, and got into many scrapes by so doing. But he was the great
+      opponent of the tale-bearing habits of the school, and the open enemy of
+      the ushers; and so worthy of all support.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom imbibed a fair amount of Latin and Greek at the school, but somehow,
+      on the whole, it didn't suit him, or he it, and in the holidays he was
+      constantly working the Squire to send him at once to a public school.
+      Great was his joy then, when in the middle of his third half-year, in
+      October 183-, a fever broke out in the village, and the master having
+      himself slightly sickened of it, the whole of the boys were sent off at a
+      day's notice to their respective homes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Squire was not quite so pleased as Master Tom to see that young
+      gentleman's brown, merry face appear at home, some two months before the
+      proper time, for the Christmas holidays; and so, after putting on his
+      thinking cap, he retired to his study and wrote several letters, the
+      result of which was that, one morning at the breakfast-table, about a
+      fortnight after Tom's return, he addressed his wife with&mdash;&ldquo;My dear, I
+      have arranged that Tom shall go to Rugby at once, for the last six weeks
+      of this half-year, instead of wasting them in riding and loitering about
+      home. It is very kind of the doctor to allow it. Will you see that his
+      things are all ready by Friday, when I shall take him up to town, and send
+      him down the next day by himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Brown was prepared for the announcement, and merely suggested a doubt
+      whether Tom were yet old enough to travel by himself. However, finding
+      both father and son against her on this point, she gave in, like a wise
+      woman, and proceeded to prepare Tom's kit for his launch into a public
+      school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0100m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0100m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0100.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV&mdash;THE STAGE COACH.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Let the steam-pot hiss till it's hot;
+     Give me the speed of the Tantivy trot.&rdquo;
+      Coaching Song, by R.E.E. Warburton, Esq.
+</pre>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+      <img src="images/9100m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="9100m " width="100%" />
+      <a href="images/9100.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      ow, sir, time to get up, if you please. Tally-ho coach for Leicester'll
+      be round in half an hour, and don't wait for nobody.&rdquo; So spake the boots
+      of the Peacock Inn Islington, at half-past two o'clock on the morning of a
+      day in the early part of November 183-, giving Tom at the same time a
+      shake by the shoulder, and then putting down a candle; and carrying off
+      his shoes to clean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom and his father arrived in town from Berkshire the day before, and
+      finding, on inquiry, that the Birmingham coaches which ran from the city
+      did not pass through Rugby, but deposited their passengers at Dunchurch, a
+      village three miles distant on the main road, where said passengers had to
+      wait for the Oxford and Leicester coach in the evening, or to take a
+      post-chaise, had resolved that Tom should travel down by the Tally-ho,
+      which diverged from the main road and passed through Rugby itself. And as
+      the Tally-ho was an early coach, they had driven out to the Peacock to be
+      on the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom had never been in London, and would have liked to have stopped at the
+      Belle Savage, where they had been put down by the Star, just at dusk, that
+      he might have gone roving about those endless, mysterious, gas-lit
+      streets, which, with their glare and hum and moving crowds, excited him so
+      that he couldn't talk even. But as soon as he found that the Peacock
+      arrangement would get him to Rugby by twelve o'clock in the day, whereas
+      otherwise he wouldn't be there till the evening, all other plans melted
+      away, his one absorbing aim being to become a public school-boy as fast as
+      possible, and six hours sooner or later seeming to him of the most
+      alarming importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom and his father had alighted at the Peacock at about seven in the
+      evening; and having heard with unfeigned joy the paternal order, at the
+      bar, of steaks and oyster-sauce for supper in half an hour, and seen his
+      father seated cozily by the bright fire in the coffee-room with the paper
+      in his hand, Tom had run out to see about him, had wondered at all the
+      vehicles passing and repassing, and had fraternized with the boots and
+      hostler, from whom he ascertained that the Tally-ho was a tip-top goer&mdash;ten
+      miles an hour including stoppages&mdash;and so punctual that all the road
+      set their clocks by her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then being summoned to supper, he had regaled himself in one of the bright
+      little boxes of the Peacock coffee-room, on the beef-steak and unlimited
+      oyster-sauce and brown stout (tasted then for the first time&mdash;a day
+      to be marked for ever by Tom with a white stone); had at first attended to
+      the excellent advice which his father was bestowing on him from over his
+      glass of steaming brandy-and-water, and then began nodding, from the
+      united effects of the stout, the fire, and the lecture; till the Squire,
+      observing Tom's state, and remembering that it was nearly nine o'clock,
+      and that the Tally-ho left at three, sent the little fellow off to the
+      chambermaid, with a shake of the hand (Tom having stipulated in the
+      morning before starting that kissing should now cease between them), and a
+      few parting words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now, Tom, my boy,&rdquo; said the Squire, &ldquo;remember you are going, at your
+      own earnest request, to be chucked into this great school, like a young
+      bear, with all your troubles before you&mdash;earlier than we should have
+      sent you perhaps. If schools are what they were in my time, you'll see a
+      great many cruel blackguard things done, and hear a deal of foul, bad
+      talk. But never fear. You tell the truth, keep a brave and kind heart, and
+      never listen to or say anything you wouldn't have your mother and sister
+      hear, and you'll never feel ashamed to come home, or we to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The allusion to his mother made Tom feel rather choky, and he would have
+      liked to have hugged his father well, if it hadn't been for the recent
+      stipulation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As it was, he only squeezed his father's hand, and looked bravely up and
+      said, &ldquo;I'll try, father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know you will, my boy. Is your money all safe?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Tom, diving into one pocket to make sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your keys?&rdquo; said the Squire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Tom, diving into the other pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, good-night. God bless you! I'll tell boots to call you, and
+      be up to see you off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom was carried off by the chambermaid in a brown study, from which he was
+      roused in a clean little attic, by that buxom person calling him a little
+      darling and kissing him as she left the room; which indignity he was too
+      much surprised to resent. And still thinking of his father's last words,
+      and the look with which they were spoken, he knelt down and prayed that,
+      come what might, he might never bring shame or sorrow on the dear folk at
+      home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, the Squire's last words deserved to have their effect, for they
+      had been the result of much anxious thought. All the way up to London he
+      had pondered what he should say to Tom by way of parting advice&mdash;something
+      that the boy could keep in his head ready for use. By way of assisting
+      meditation, he had even gone the length of taking out his flint and steel
+      and tinder, and hammering away for a quarter of an hour till he had
+      manufactured a light for a long Trichinopoli cheroot, which he silently
+      puffed, to the no small wonder of coachee, who was an old friend, and an
+      institution on the Bath road, and who always expected a talk on the
+      prospects and doings, agricultural and social, of the whole country, when
+      he carried the Squire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To condense the Squire's meditation, it was somewhat as follows: &ldquo;I won't
+      tell him to read his Bible, and love and serve God; if he don't do that
+      for his mother's sake and teaching, he won't for mine. Shall I go into the
+      sort of temptations he'll meet with? No, I can't do that. Never do for an
+      old fellow to go into such things with a boy. He won't understand me. Do
+      him more harm than good, ten to one. Shall I tell him to mind his work,
+      and say he's sent to school to make himself a good scholar? Well, but he
+      isn't sent to school for that&mdash;at any rate, not for that mainly. I
+      don't care a straw for Greek particles, or the digamma; no more does his
+      mother. What is he sent to school for? Well, partly because he wanted so
+      to go. If he'll only turn out a brave, helpful, truth-telling Englishman,
+      and a gentleman, and a Christian, that's all I want,&rdquo; thought the Squire;
+      and upon this view of the case he framed his last words of advice to Tom,
+      which were well enough suited to his purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For they were Tom's first thoughts as he tumbled out of bed at the summons
+      of boots, and proceeded rapidly to wash and dress himself. At ten minutes
+      to three he was down in the coffee-room in his stockings, carrying his
+      hat-box, coat, and comforter in his hand; and there he found his father
+      nursing a bright fire, and a cup of hot coffee and a hard biscuit on the
+      table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then, Tom, give us your things here, and drink this. There's nothing
+      like starting warm, old fellow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom addressed himself to the coffee, and prattled away while he worked
+      himself into his shoes and his greatcoat, well warmed through&mdash;a
+      Petersham coat with velvet collar, made tight after the abominable fashion
+      of those days. And just as he is swallowing his last mouthful, winding his
+      comforter round his throat, and tucking the ends into the breast of his
+      coat, the horn sounds; boots looks in and says, &ldquo;Tally-ho, sir;&rdquo; and they
+      hear the ring and the rattle of the four fast trotters and the town-made
+      drag, as it dashes up to the Peacock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anything for us, Bob?&rdquo; says the burly guard, dropping down from behind,
+      and slapping himself across the chest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Young gen'lm'n, Rugby; three parcels, Leicester; hamper o' game, Rugby,&rdquo;
+       answers hostler.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell young gent to look alive,&rdquo; says guard, opening the hind-boot and
+      shooting in the parcels after examining them by the lamps. &ldquo;Here; shove
+      the portmanteau up a-top. I'll fasten him presently.&mdash;Now then, sir,
+      jump up behind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0105m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0105m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0105.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, father&mdash;my love at home.&rdquo; A last shake of the hand. Up
+      goes Tom, the guard catching his hatbox and holding on with one hand,
+      while with the other he claps the horn to his mouth. Toot, toot, toot! the
+      hostlers let go their heads, the four bays plunge at the collar, and away
+      goes the Tally-ho into the darkness, forty-five seconds from the time they
+      pulled up. Hostler, boots, and the Squire stand looking after them under
+      the Peacock lamp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sharp work!&rdquo; says the Squire, and goes in again to his bed, the coach
+      being well out of sight and hearing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom stands up on the coach and looks back at his father's figure as long
+      as he can see it; and then the guard, having disposed of his luggage,
+      comes to an anchor, and finishes his buttonings and other preparations for
+      facing the three hours before dawn&mdash;no joke for those who minded
+      cold, on a fast coach in November, in the reign of his late Majesty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I sometimes think that you boys of this generation are a deal tenderer
+      fellows than we used to be. At any rate you're much more comfortable
+      travellers, for I see every one of you with his rug or plaid, and other
+      dodges for preserving the caloric, and most of you going in, those fuzzy,
+      dusty, padded first-class carriages. It was another affair altogether, a
+      dark ride on the top of the Tally-ho, I can tell you, in a tight Petersham
+      coat, and your feet dangling six inches from the floor. Then you knew what
+      cold was, and what it was to be without legs, for not a bit of feeling had
+      you in them after the first half-hour. But it had its pleasures, the old
+      dark ride. First there was the consciousness of silent endurance, so dear
+      to every Englishman&mdash;of standing out against something, and not
+      giving in. Then there was the music of the rattling harness, and the ring
+      of the horses' feet on the hard road, and the glare of the two bright
+      lamps through the steaming hoar frost, over the leaders' ears, into the
+      darkness, and the cheery toot of the guard's horn, to warn some drowsy
+      pikeman or the hostler at the next change; and the looking forward to
+      daylight; and last, but not least, the delight of returning sensation in
+      your toes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the break of dawn and the sunrise, where can they be ever seen in
+      perfection but from a coach roof? You want motion and change and music to
+      see them in their glory&mdash;not the music of singing men and singing
+      women, but good, silent music, which sets itself in your own head, the
+      accompaniment of work and getting over the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Tally-ho is past St. Albans, and Tom is enjoying the ride, though
+      half-frozen. The guard, who is alone with him on the back of the coach, is
+      silent, but has muffled Tom's feet up in straw, and put the end of an
+      oat-sack over his knees. The darkness has driven him inwards, and he has
+      gone over his little past life, and thought of all his doings and
+      promises, and of his mother and sister, and his father's last words; and
+      has made fifty good resolutions, and means to bear himself like a brave
+      Brown as he is, though a young one. Then he has been forward into the
+      mysterious boy-future, speculating as to what sort of place Rugby is, and
+      what they do there, and calling up all the stories of public schools which
+      he has heard from big boys in the holidays. He is choke-full of hope and
+      life, notwithstanding the cold, and kicks his heels against the
+      back-board, and would like to sing, only he doesn't know how his friend
+      the silent guard might take it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now the dawn breaks at the end of the fourth stage, and the coach
+      pulls up at a little roadside inn with huge stables behind. There is a
+      bright fire gleaming through the red curtains of the bar window, and the
+      door is open. The coachman catches his whip into a double thong, and
+      throws it to the hostler; the steam of the horses rises straight up into
+      the air. He has put them along over the last two miles, and is two minutes
+      before his time. He rolls down from the box and into the inn. The guard
+      rolls off behind. &ldquo;Now, sir,&rdquo; says he to Tom, &ldquo;you just jump down, and
+      I'll give you a drop of something to keep the cold out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom finds a difficulty in jumping, or indeed in finding the top of the
+      wheel with his feet, which may be in the next world for all he feels; so
+      the guard picks him off the coach top, and sets him on his legs, and they
+      stump off into the bar, and join the coachman and the other outside
+      passengers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here a fresh-looking barmaid serves them each with a glass of early purl
+      as they stand before the fire, coachman and guard exchanging business
+      remarks. The purl warms the cockles of Tom's heart, and makes him cough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rare tackle that, sir, of a cold morning,&rdquo; says the coachman, smiling.
+      &ldquo;Time's up.&rdquo; They are out again and up; coachee the last, gathering the
+      reins into his hands and talking to Jem the hostler about the mare's
+      shoulder, and then swinging himself up on to the box&mdash;the horses
+      dashing off in a canter before he falls into his seat.
+      Toot-toot-tootle-too goes the horn, and away they are again,
+      five-and-thirty miles on their road (nearly half-way to Rugby, thinks
+      Tom), and the prospect of breakfast at the end of the stage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now they begin to see, and the early life of the country-side comes
+      out&mdash;a market cart or two; men in smock-frocks going to their work,
+      pipe in mouth, a whiff of which is no bad smell this bright morning. The
+      sun gets up, and the mist shines like silver gauze. They pass the hounds
+      jogging along to a distant meet, at the heels of the huntsman's back,
+      whose face is about the colour of the tails of his old pink, as he
+      exchanges greetings with coachman and guard. Now they pull up at a lodge,
+      and take on board a well-muffled-up sportsman, with his gun-case and
+      carpet-bag, An early up-coach meets them, and the coachmen gather up their
+      horses, and pass one another with the accustomed lift of the elbow, each
+      team doing eleven miles an hour, with a mile to spare behind if necessary.
+      And here comes breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twenty minutes here, gentlemen,&rdquo; says the coachman, as they pull up at
+      half-past seven at the inn-door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Have we not endured nobly this morning? and is not this a worthy reward
+      for much endurance? There is the low, dark wainscoted room hung with
+      sporting prints; the hat-stand (with a whip or two standing up in it
+      belonging to bagmen who are still snug in bed) by the door; the blazing
+      fire, with the quaint old glass over the mantelpiece, in which is stuck a
+      large card with the list of the meets for the week of the county hounds;
+      the table covered with the whitest of cloths and of china, and bearing a
+      pigeon-pie, ham, round of cold boiled beef cut from a mammoth ox, and the
+      great loaf of household bread on a wooden trencher. And here comes in the
+      stout head waiter, puffing under a tray of hot viands&mdash;kidneys and a
+      steak, transparent rashers and poached eggs, buttered toast and muffins,
+      coffee and tea, all smoking hot. The table can never hold it all. The cold
+      meats are removed to the sideboard&mdash;they were only put on for show
+      and to give us an appetite. And now fall on, gentlemen all. It is a
+      well-known sporting-house, and the breakfasts are famous. Two or three men
+      in pink, on their way to the meet, drop in, and are very jovial and
+      sharp-set, as indeed we all are.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tea or coffee, sir?&rdquo; says head waiter, coming round to Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Coffee, please,&rdquo; says Tom, with his mouth full of muffin and kidney.
+      Coffee is a treat to him, tea is not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our coachman, I perceive, who breakfasts with us, is a cold beef man. He
+      also eschews hot potations, and addicts himself to a tankard of ale, which
+      is brought him by the barmaid. Sportsman looks on approvingly, and orders
+      a ditto for himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom has eaten kidney and pigeon-pie, and imbibed coffee, till his little
+      skin is as tight as a drum; and then has the further pleasure of paying
+      head waiter out of his own purse, in a dignified manner, and walks out
+      before the inn-door to see the horses put to. This is done leisurely and
+      in a highly-finished manner by the hostlers, as if they enjoyed the not
+      being hurried. Coachman comes out with his waybill, and puffing a fat
+      cigar which the sportsman has given him. Guard emerges from the tap, where
+      he prefers breakfasting, licking round a tough-looking doubtful cheroot,
+      which you might tie round your finger, and three whiffs of which would
+      knock any one else out of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pinks stand about the inn-door lighting cigars and waiting to see us
+      start, while their hacks are led up and down the market-place, on which
+      the inn looks. They all know our sportsman, and we feel a reflected credit
+      when we see him chatting and laughing with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, sir, please,&rdquo; says the coachman. All the rest of the passengers are
+      up; the guard is locking up the hind-boot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A good run to you!&rdquo; says the sportsman to the pinks, and is by the
+      coachman's side in no time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let 'em go, Dick!&rdquo; The hostlers fly back, drawing off the cloths from
+      their glossy loins, and away we go through the market-place and down the
+      High Street, looking in at the first-floor windows, and seeing several
+      worthy burgesses shaving thereat; while all the shopboys who are cleaning
+      the windows, and housemaids who are doing the steps, stop and look pleased
+      as we rattle past, as if we were a part of their legitimate morning's
+      amusement. We clear the town, and are well out between the hedgerows again
+      as the town clock strikes eight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun shines almost warmly, and breakfast has oiled all springs and
+      loosened all tongues. Tom is encouraged by a remark or two of the guard's
+      between the puffs of his oily cheroot, and besides is getting tired of not
+      talking. He is too full of his destination to talk about anything else,
+      and so asks the guard if he knows Rugby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Goes through it every day of my life. Twenty minutes afore twelve down&mdash;ten
+      o'clock up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What sort of place is it, please?&rdquo; says Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Guard looks at him with a comical expression. &ldquo;Werry out-o'-the-way place,
+      sir; no paving to streets, nor no lighting. 'Mazin' big horse and cattle
+      fair in autumn&mdash;lasts a week&mdash;just over now. Takes town a week
+      to get clean after it. Fairish hunting country. But slow place, sir, slow
+      place&mdash;off the main road, you see&mdash;only three coaches a day, and one
+      on 'em a two-oss wan, more like a hearse nor a coach&mdash;Regulator&mdash;comes
+      from Oxford. Young genl'm'n at school calls her Pig and Whistle, and goes
+      up to college by her (six miles an hour) when they goes to enter. Belong
+      to school, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; says Tom, not unwilling for a moment that the guard should think
+      him an old boy. But then, having some qualms as to the truth of the
+      assertion, and seeing that if he were to assume the character of an old
+      boy he couldn't go on asking the questions he wanted, added&mdash;&ldquo;That is
+      to say, I'm on my way there. I'm a new boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The guard looked as if he knew this quite as well as Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're werry late, sir,&rdquo; says the guard; &ldquo;only six weeks to-day to the
+      end of the half.&rdquo; Tom assented. &ldquo;We takes up fine loads this day six
+      weeks, and Monday and Tuesday arter. Hopes we shall have the pleasure of
+      carrying you back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom said he hoped they would; but he thought within himself that his fate
+      would probably be the Pig and Whistle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It pays uncommon cert'nly,&rdquo; continues the guard. &ldquo;Werry free with their
+      cash is the young genl'm'n. But, Lor' bless you, we gets into such rows
+      all 'long the road, what wi' their pea-shooters, and long whips, and
+      hollering, and upsetting every one as comes by, I'd a sight sooner carry
+      one or two on 'em, sir, as I may be a-carryin' of you now, than a
+      coach-load.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do they do with the pea-shooters?&rdquo; inquires Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do wi' 'em! Why, peppers every one's faces as we comes near, 'cept the
+      young gals, and breaks windows wi' them too, some on 'em shoots so hard.
+      Now 'twas just here last June, as we was a-driving up the first-day boys,
+      they was mendin' a quarter-mile of road, and there was a lot of Irish
+      chaps, reg'lar roughs, a-breaking stones. As we comes up, 'Now, boys,'
+      says young gent on the box (smart young fellow and desper't reckless),
+      'here's fun! Let the Pats have it about the ears.' 'God's sake sir!' says
+      Bob (that's my mate the coachman); 'don't go for to shoot at 'em. They'll
+      knock us off the coach.' 'Damme, coachee,' says young my lord, 'you ain't
+      afraid.&mdash;Hoora, boys! let 'em have it.' 'Hoora!' sings out the
+      others, and fill their mouths choke-full of peas to last the whole line.
+      Bob, seeing as 'twas to come, knocks his hat over his eyes, hollers to his
+      osses, and shakes 'em up; and away we goes up to the line on 'em, twenty
+      miles an hour. The Pats begin to hoora too, thinking it was a runaway; and
+      first lot on 'em stands grinnin' and wavin' their old hats as we comes
+      abreast on 'em; and then you'd ha' laughed to see how took aback and
+      choking savage they looked, when they gets the peas a-stinging all over
+      'em. But bless you, the laugh weren't all of our side, sir, by a long way.
+      We was going so fast, and they was so took aback, that they didn't take
+      what was up till we was half-way up the line. Then 'twas, 'Look out all!'
+      surely. They howls all down the line fit to frighten you; some on 'em runs
+      arter us and tries to clamber up behind, only we hits 'em over the fingers
+      and pulls their hands off; one as had had it very sharp act'ly runs right
+      at the leaders, as though he'd ketch 'em by the heads, only luck'ly for
+      him he misses his tip and comes over a heap o' stones first. The rest
+      picks up stones, and gives it us right away till we gets out of shot, the
+      young gents holding out werry manful with the pea-shooters and such stones
+      as lodged on us, and a pretty many there was too. Then Bob picks hisself
+      up again, and looks at young gent on box werry solemn. Bob'd had a rum un
+      in the ribs, which'd like to ha' knocked him off the box, or made him drop
+      the reins. Young gent on box picks hisself up, and so does we all, and
+      looks round to count damage. Box's head cut open and his hat gone; 'nother
+      young gent's hat gone; mine knocked in at the side, and not one on us as
+      wasn't black and blue somewheres or another, most on 'em all over. Two
+      pound ten to pay for damage to paint, which they subscribed for there and
+      then, and give Bob and me a extra half-sovereign each; but I wouldn't go
+      down that line again not for twenty half-sovereigns.&rdquo; And the guard shook
+      his head slowly, and got up and blew a clear, brisk toot-toot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What fun!&rdquo; said Tom, who could scarcely contain his pride at this exploit
+      of his future school-fellows. He longed already for the end of the half,
+      that he might join them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Taint such good fun, though, sir, for the folk as meets the coach, nor
+      for we who has to go back with it next day. Them Irishers last summer had
+      all got stones ready for us, and was all but letting drive, and we'd got
+      two reverend gents aboard too. We pulled up at the beginning of the line,
+      and pacified them, and we're never going to carry no more pea-shooters,
+      unless they promises not to fire where there's a line of Irish chaps
+      a-stonebreaking.&rdquo; The guard stopped and pulled away at his cheroot,
+      regarding Tom benignantly the while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don't stop! Tell us something more about the pea-shooting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there'd like to have been a pretty piece of work over it at
+      Bicester, a while back. We was six mile from the town, when we meets an
+      old square-headed gray-haired yeoman chap, a-jogging along quite quiet. He
+      looks up at the coach, and just then a pea hits him on the nose, and some
+      catches his cob behind and makes him dance up on his hind legs. I see'd
+      the old boy's face flush and look plaguy awkward, and I thought we was in
+      for somethin' nasty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He turns his cob's head and rides quietly after us just out of shot. How
+      that 'ere cob did step! We never shook him off not a dozen yards in the
+      six miles. At first the young gents was werry lively on him; but afore we
+      got in, seeing how steady the old chap come on, they was quite quiet, and
+      laid their heads together what they should do. Some was for fighting, some
+      for axing his pardon. He rides into the town close after us, comes up when
+      we stops, and says the two as shot at him must come before a magistrate;
+      and a great crowd comes round, and we couldn't get the osses to. But the
+      young uns they all stand by one another, and says all or none must go, and
+      as how they'd fight it out, and have to be carried. Just as 'twas gettin'
+      serious, and the old boy and the mob was going to pull 'em off the coach,
+      one little fellow jumps up and says, 'Here&mdash;I'll stay. I'm only going
+      three miles farther. My father's name's Davis; he's known about here, and
+      I'll go before the magistrate with this gentleman.' 'What! be thee parson
+      Davis's son?' says the old boy. 'Yes,' says the young un. 'Well, I be
+      mortal sorry to meet thee in such company; but for thy father's sake and
+      thine (for thee bist a brave young chap) I'll say no more about it.'
+      Didn't the boys cheer him, and the mob cheered the young chap; and then
+      one of the biggest gets down, and begs his pardon werry gentlemanly for
+      all the rest, saying as they all had been plaguy vexed from the first, but
+      didn't like to ax his pardon till then, 'cause they felt they hadn't ought
+      to shirk the consequences of their joke. And then they all got down, and
+      shook hands with the old boy, and asked him to all parts of the country,
+      to their homes; and we drives off twenty minutes behind time, with
+      cheering and hollering as if we was county 'members. But, Lor' bless you,
+      sir,&rdquo; says the guard, smacking his hand down on his knee and looking full
+      into Tom's face, &ldquo;ten minutes arter they was all as bad as ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom showed such undisguised and open-mouthed interest in his narrations
+      that the old guard rubbed up his memory, and launched out into a graphic
+      history of all the performances of the boys on the roads for the last
+      twenty years. Off the road he couldn't go; the exploit must have been
+      connected with horses or vehicles to hang in the old fellow's head. Tom
+      tried him off his own ground once or twice, but found he knew nothing
+      beyond, and so let him have his head, and the rest of the road bowled
+      easily away; for old Blow-hard (as the boys called him) was a dry old
+      file, with much kindness and humour, and a capital spinner of a yarn when
+      he had broken the neck of his day's work, and got plenty of ale under his
+      belt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What struck Tom's youthful imagination most was the desperate and lawless
+      character of most of the stories. Was the guard hoaxing him? He couldn't
+      help hoping that they were true. It's very odd how almost all English boys
+      love danger. You can get ten to join a game, or climb a tree, or swim a
+      stream, when there's a chance of breaking their limbs or getting drowned,
+      for one who'll stay on level ground, or in his depth, or play quoits or
+      bowls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The guard had just finished an account of a desperate fight which had
+      happened at one of the fairs between the drovers and the farmers with
+      their whips, and the boys with cricket-bats and wickets, which arose out
+      of a playful but objectionable practice of the boys going round to the
+      public-houses and taking the linch-pins out of the wheels of the gigs, and
+      was moralizing upon the way in which the Doctor, &ldquo;a terrible stern man
+      he'd heard tell,&rdquo; had come down upon several of the performers, &ldquo;sending
+      three on 'em off next morning in a po-shay with a parish constable,&rdquo; when
+      they turned a corner and neared the milestone, the third from Rugby. By
+      the stone two boys stood, their jackets buttoned tight, waiting for the
+      coach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, sir,&rdquo; says the guard, after giving a sharp toot-toot; &ldquo;there's
+      two on 'em; out-and-out runners they be. They comes out about twice or
+      three times a week, and spirts a mile alongside of us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And as they came up, sure enough, away went two boys along the foot-path,
+      keeping up with the horses&mdash;the first a light, clean-made fellow
+      going on springs; the other stout and round-shouldered, labouring in his
+      pace, but going as dogged as a bull-terrier.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0115m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0115m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0115.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      Old Blow-hard looked on admiringly. &ldquo;See how beautiful that there un holds
+      hisself together, and goes from his hips, sir,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;he's a 'mazin'
+      fine runner. Now many coachmen as drives a first-rate team'd put it on,
+      and try and pass 'em. But Bob, sir, bless you, he's tender-hearted; he'd
+      sooner pull in a bit if he see'd 'em a-gettin' beat. I do b'lieve, too, as
+      that there un'd sooner break his heart than let us go by him afore next
+      milestone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the second milestone the boys pulled up short, and waved their hats to
+      the guard, who had his watch out and shouted &ldquo;4.56,&rdquo; thereby indicating
+      that the mile had been done in four seconds under the five minutes. They
+      passed several more parties of boys, all of them objects of the deepest
+      interest to Tom, and came in sight of the town at ten minutes before
+      twelve. Tom fetched a long breath, and thought he had never spent a
+      pleasanter day. Before he went to bed he had quite settled that it must be
+      the greatest day he should ever spend, and didn't alter his opinion for
+      many a long year&mdash;if he has yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0119m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0119m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0119.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V&mdash;RUGBY AND FOOTBALL.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Foot and eye opposed
+     In dubious strife.&rdquo;&mdash;Scott.
+</pre>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+      <img src="images/9119m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="9119m " width="100%" />
+      <a href="images/9119.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      nd so here's Rugby, sir, at last, and you'll be in plenty of time for
+      dinner at the School-house, as I telled you,&rdquo; said the old guard, pulling
+      his horn out of its case and tootle-tooing away, while the coachman shook
+      up his horses, and carried them along the side of the school close, round
+      Dead-man's corner, past the school-gates, and down the High Street to the
+      Spread Eagle, the wheelers in a spanking trot, and leaders cantering, in a
+      style which would not have disgraced &ldquo;Cherry Bob,&rdquo; &ldquo;ramping, stamping,
+      tearing, swearing Billy Harwood,&rdquo; or any other of the old coaching heroes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom's heart beat quick as he passed the great schoolfield or close, with
+      its noble elms, in which several games at football were going on, and
+      tried to take in at once the long line of gray buildings, beginning with
+      the chapel, and ending with the School-house, the residence of the
+      head-master, where the great flag was lazily waving from the highest round
+      tower. And he began already to be proud of being a Rugby boy, as he passed
+      the schoolgates, with the oriel window above, and saw the boys standing
+      there, looking as if the town belonged to them, and nodding in a familiar
+      manner to the coachman, as if any one of them would be quite equal to
+      getting on the box, and working the team down street as well as he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the young heroes, however, ran out from the rest, and scrambled up
+      behind; where, having righted himself, and nodded to the guard, with &ldquo;How
+      do, Jem?&rdquo; he turned short round to Tom, and after looking him over for a
+      minute, began,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, you fellow, is your name Brown?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Tom, in considerable astonishment, glad, however, to have
+      lighted on some one already who seemed to know him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I thought so. You know my old aunt, Miss East. She lives somewhere
+      down your way in Berkshire. She wrote to me that you were coming to-day,
+      and asked me to give you a lift.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom was somewhat inclined to resent the patronizing air of his new friend,
+      a boy of just about his own height and age, but gifted with the most
+      transcendent coolness and assurance, which Tom felt to be aggravating and
+      hard to bear, but couldn't for the life of him help admiring and envying&mdash;especially
+      when young my lord begins hectoring two or three long loafing fellows,
+      half porter, half stableman, with a strong touch of the blackguard, and in
+      the end arranges with one of them, nicknamed Cooey, to carry Tom's luggage
+      up to the School-house for sixpence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And hark 'ee, Cooey; it must be up in ten minutes, or no more jobs from
+      me. Come along, Brown.&rdquo; And away swaggers the young potentate, with his
+      hands in his pockets, and Tom at his side.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0121m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0121m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0121.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, sir,&rdquo; says Cooey, touching his hat, with a leer and a wink at
+      his companions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo though,&rdquo; says East, pulling up, and taking another look at Tom;
+      &ldquo;this'll never do. Haven't you got a hat? We never wear caps here. Only
+      the louts wear caps. Bless you, if you were to go into the quadrangle with
+      that thing on, I don't know what'd happen.&rdquo; The very idea was quite beyond
+      young Master East, and he looked unutterable things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom thought his cap a very knowing affair, but confessed that he had a hat
+      in his hat-box; which was accordingly at once extracted from the
+      hind-boot, and Tom equipped in his go-to-meeting roof, as his new friend
+      called it. But this didn't quite suit his fastidious taste in another
+      minute, being too shiny; so, as they walk up the town, they dive into
+      Nixon's the hatter's, and Tom is arrayed, to his utter astonishment, and
+      without paying for it, in a regulation cat-skin at seven-and-sixpence,
+      Nixon undertaking to send the best hat up to the matron's room,
+      School-house, in half an hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can send in a note for a tile on Monday, and make it all right, you
+      know,&rdquo; said Mentor; &ldquo;we're allowed two seven-and-sixers a half, besides
+      what we bring from home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom by this time began to be conscious of his new social position and
+      dignities, and to luxuriate in the realized ambition of being a public
+      school-boy at last, with a vested right of spoiling two seven-and-sixers
+      in half a year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; said his friend, as they strolled up towards the school-gates,
+      in explanation of his conduct, &ldquo;a great deal depends on how a fellow cuts
+      up at first. If he's got nothing odd about him, and answers
+      straightforward, and holds his head up, he gets on. Now, you'll do very
+      well as to rig, all but that cap. You see I'm doing the handsome thing by
+      you, because my father knows yours; besides, I want to please the old
+      lady. She gave me half a sov. this half, and perhaps'll double it next, if
+      I keep in her good books.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There's nothing for candour like a lower-school boy, and East was a
+      genuine specimen&mdash;frank, hearty, and good-natured, well-satisfied
+      with himself and his position, and choke-full of life and spirits, and all
+      the Rugby prejudices and traditions which he had been able to get together
+      in the long course of one half-year during which he had been at the
+      School-house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Tom, notwithstanding his bumptiousness, felt friends with him at once,
+      and began sucking in all his ways and prejudices, as fast as he could
+      understand them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      East was great in the character of cicerone. He carried Tom through the
+      great gates, where were only two or three boys. These satisfied themselves
+      with the stock questions, &ldquo;You fellow, what's your name? Where do you come
+      from? How old are you? Where do you board?&rdquo; and, &ldquo;What form are you in?&rdquo;
+       And so they passed on through the quadrangle and a small courtyard, upon
+      which looked down a lot of little windows (belonging, as his guide
+      informed him, to some of the School-house studies), into the matron's
+      room, where East introduced Tom to that dignitary; made him give up the
+      key of his trunk, that the matron might unpack his linen, and told the
+      story of the hat and of his own presence of mind: upon the relation
+      whereof the matron laughingly scolded him for the coolest new boy in the
+      house; and East, indignant at the accusation of newness, marched Tom off
+      into the quadrangle, and began showing him the schools, and examining him
+      as to his literary attainments; the result of which was a prophecy that
+      they would be in the same form, and could do their lessons together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now come in and see my study&mdash;we shall have just time before
+      dinner; and afterwards, before calling over, we'll do the close.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom followed his guide through the School-house hall, which opens into the
+      quadrangle. It is a great room, thirty feet long and eighteen high, or
+      thereabouts, with two great tables running the whole length, and two large
+      fireplaces at the side, with blazing fires in them, at one of which some
+      dozen boys were standing and lounging, some of whom shouted to East to
+      stop; but he shot through with his convoy, and landed him in the long,
+      dark passages, with a large fire at the end of each, upon which the
+      studies opened. Into one of these, in the bottom passage, East bolted with
+      our hero, slamming and bolting the door behind them, in case of pursuit
+      from the hall, and Tom was for the first time in a Rugby boy's citadel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hadn't been prepared for separate studies, and was not a little
+      astonished and delighted with the palace in question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It wasn't very large, certainly, being about six feet long by four broad.
+      It couldn't be called light, as there were bars and a grating to the
+      window; which little precautions were necessary in the studies on the
+      ground-floor looking out into the close, to prevent the exit of small boys
+      after locking up, and the entrance of contraband articles. But it was
+      uncommonly comfortable to look at, Tom thought. The space under the window
+      at the farther end was occupied by a square table covered with a
+      reasonably clean and whole red and blue check tablecloth; a hard-seated
+      sofa covered with red stuff occupied one side, running up to the end, and
+      making a seat for one, or by sitting close, for two, at the table and a
+      good stout wooden chair afforded a seat to another boy, so that three
+      could sit and work together. The walls were wainscoted half-way up, the
+      wainscot being covered with green baize, the remainder with a
+      bright-patterned paper, on which hung three or four prints of dogs' heads;
+      Grimaldi winning the Aylesbury steeple-chase; Amy Robsart, the reigning
+      Waverley beauty of the day; and Tom Crib, in a posture of defence, which
+      did no credit to the science of that hero, if truly represented. Over the
+      door were a row of hat-pegs, and on each side bookcases with cupboards at
+      the bottom, shelves and cupboards being filled indiscriminately with
+      school-books, a cup or two, a mouse-trap and candlesticks, leather straps,
+      a fustian bag, and some curious-looking articles which puzzled Tom not a
+      little, until his friend explained that they were climbing-irons, and
+      showed their use. A cricket-bat and small fishing-rod stood up in one
+      corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the residence of East and another boy in the same form, and had
+      more interest for Tom than Windsor Castle, or any other residence in the
+      British Isles. For was he not about to become the joint owner of a similar
+      home, the first place he could call his own? One's own! What a charm there
+      is in the words! How long it takes boy and man to find out their worth!
+      How fast most of us hold on to them&mdash;faster and more jealously, the
+      nearer we are to that general home into which we can take nothing, but
+      must go naked as we came into the world! When shall we learn that he who
+      multiplieth possessions multiplieth troubles, and that the one single use
+      of things which we call our own is that they may be his who hath need of
+      them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And shall I have a study like this too?&rdquo; said Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, of course; you'll be chummed with some fellow on Monday, and you can
+      sit here till then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What nice places!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're well enough,&rdquo; answered East, patronizingly, &ldquo;only uncommon cold
+      at nights sometimes. Gower&mdash;that's my chum&mdash;and I make a fire
+      with paper on the floor after supper generally, only that makes it so
+      smoky.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there's a big fire out in the passage,&rdquo; said Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Precious little we get out of that, though,&rdquo; said East. &ldquo;Jones the
+      praepostor has the study at the fire end, and he has rigged up an iron rod
+      and green baize curtain across the passage, which he draws at night, and
+      sits there with his door open; so he gets all the fire, and hears if we
+      come out of our studies after eight, or make a noise. However, he's taken
+      to sitting in the fifth-form room lately, so we do get a bit of fire now
+      sometimes; only to keep a sharp lookout that he don't catch you behind his
+      curtain when he comes down&mdash;that's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A quarter past one now struck, and the bell began tolling for dinner; so
+      they went into the hall and took their places, Tom at the very bottom of
+      the second table, next to the praepostor (who sat at the end to keep order
+      there), and East a few paces higher. And now Tom for the first time saw
+      his future school-fellows in a body. In they came, some hot and ruddy from
+      football or long walks, some pale and chilly from hard reading in their
+      studies, some from loitering over the fire at the pastrycook's, dainty
+      mortals, bringing with them pickles and saucebottles to help them with
+      their dinners. And a great big-bearded man, whom Tom took for a master,
+      began calling over the names, while the great joints were being rapidly
+      carved on the third table in the corner by the old verger and the
+      housekeeper. Tom's turn came last, and meanwhile he was all eyes, looking
+      first with awe at the great man, who sat close to him, and was helped
+      first, and who read a hard-looking book all the time he was eating; and
+      when he got up and walked off to the fire, at the small boys round him,
+      some of whom were reading, and the rest talking in whispers to one
+      another, or stealing one another's bread, or shooting pellets, or digging
+      their forks through the tablecloth. However, notwithstanding his
+      curiosity, he managed to make a capital dinner by the time the big man
+      called &ldquo;Stand up!&rdquo; and said grace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as dinner was over, and Tom had been questioned by such of his
+      neighbours as were curious as to his birth, parentage, education, and
+      other like matters, East, who evidently enjoyed his new dignity of patron
+      and mentor, proposed having a look at the close, which Tom, athirst for
+      knowledge, gladly assented to; and they went out through the quadrangle
+      and past the big fives court, into the great playground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the chapel, you see,&rdquo; said East; &ldquo;and there, just behind it, is
+      the place for fights. You see it's most out of the way of the masters, who
+      all live on the other side, and don't come by here after first lesson or
+      callings-over. That's when the fights come off. And all this part where we
+      are is the little-side ground, right up to the trees; and on the other
+      side of the trees is the big-side ground, where the great matches are
+      played. And there's the island in the farthest corner; you'll know that
+      well enough next half, when there's island fagging. I say, it's horrid
+      cold; let's have a run across.&rdquo; And away went East, Tom close behind him.
+      East was evidently putting his best foot foremost; and Tom, who was mighty
+      proud of his running, and not a little anxious to show his friend that,
+      although a new boy, he was no milksop, laid himself down to work in his
+      very best style. Right across the close they went, each doing all he knew,
+      and there wasn't a yard between them when they pulled up at the island
+      moat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say,&rdquo; said East, as soon as he got his wind, looking with much
+      increased respect at Tom, &ldquo;you ain't a bad scud, not by no means. Well,
+      I'm as warm as a toast now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why do you wear white trousers in November?&rdquo; said Tom. He had been
+      struck by this peculiarity in the costume of almost all the School-house
+      boys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, bless us, don't you know? No; I forgot. Why, to-day's the
+      School-house match. Our house plays the whole of the School at football.
+      And we all wear white trousers, to show 'em we don't care for hacks.
+      You're in luck to come to-day. You just will see a match; and Brooke's
+      going to let me play in quarters. That's more than he'll do for any other
+      lower-school boy, except James, and he's fourteen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's Brooke?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that big fellow who called over at dinner, to be sure. He's cock of
+      the school, and head of the School-house side, and the best kick and
+      charger in Rugby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but do show me where they play. And tell me about it. I love football
+      so, and have played all my life. Won't Brooke let me play?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not he,&rdquo; said East, with some indignation. &ldquo;Why, you don't know the
+      rules; you'll be a month learning them. And then it's no joke playing-up
+      in a match, I can tell you&mdash;quite another thing from your private
+      school games. Why, there's been two collar-bones broken this half, and a
+      dozen fellows lamed. And last year a fellow had his leg broken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom listened with the profoundest respect to this chapter of accidents,
+      and followed East across the level ground till they came to a sort of
+      gigantic gallows of two poles, eighteen feet high, fixed upright in the
+      ground some fourteen feet apart, with a cross-bar running from one to the
+      other at the height of ten feet or thereabouts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is one of the goals,&rdquo; said East, &ldquo;and you see the other, across
+      there, right opposite, under the Doctor's wall. Well, the match is for the
+      best of three goals; whichever side kicks two goals wins: and it won't do,
+      you see, just to kick the ball through these posts&mdash;it must go over
+      the cross-bar; any height'll do, so long as it's between the posts. You'll
+      have to stay in goal to touch the ball when it rolls behind the posts,
+      because if the other side touch it they have a try at goal. Then we
+      fellows in quarters, we play just about in front of goal here, and have to
+      turn the ball and kick it back before the big fellows on the other side
+      can follow it up. And in front of us all the big fellows play, and that's
+      where the scrummages are mostly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom's respect increased as he struggled to make out his friend's
+      technicalities, and the other set to work to explain the mysteries of &ldquo;off
+      your side,&rdquo; &ldquo;drop-kicks,&rdquo; &ldquo;punts,&rdquo; &ldquo;places,&rdquo; and the other intricacies of
+      the great science of football.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how do you keep the ball between the goals?&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;I can't see
+      why it mightn't go right down to the chapel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why; that's out of play,&rdquo; answered East. &ldquo;You see this gravel-walk
+      running down all along this side of the playing-ground, and the line of
+      elms opposite on the other? Well, they're the bounds. As soon as the ball
+      gets past them, it's in touch, and out of play. And then whoever first
+      touches it has to knock it straight out amongst the players-up, who make
+      two lines with a space between them, every fellow going on his own side.
+      Ain't there just fine scrummages then! And the three trees you see there
+      which come out into the play, that's a tremendous place when the ball
+      hangs there, for you get thrown against the trees, and that's worse than
+      any hack.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom wondered within himself, as they strolled back again towards the fives
+      court, whether the matches were really such break-neck affairs as East
+      represented, and whether, if they were, he should ever get to like them
+      and play up well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hadn't long to wonder, however, for next minute East cried out,
+      &ldquo;Hurrah! here's the punt-about; come along and try your hand at a kick.&rdquo;
+       The punt-about is the practice-ball, which is just brought out and kicked
+      about anyhow from one boy to another before callings-over and dinner, and
+      at other odd times. They joined the boys who had brought it out, all small
+      School-house fellows, friends of East; and Tom had the pleasure of trying
+      his skill, and performed very creditably, after first driving his foot
+      three inches into the ground, and then nearly kicking his leg into the
+      air, in vigorous efforts to accomplish a drop-kick after the manner of
+      East.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently more boys and bigger came out, and boys from other houses on
+      their way to calling-over, and more balls were sent for. The crowd
+      thickened as three o'clock approached; and when the hour struck, one
+      hundred and fifty boys were hard at work. Then the balls were held, the
+      master of the week came down in cap and gown to calling-over, and the
+      whole school of three hundred boys swept into the big school to answer to
+      their names.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I may come in, mayn't I?&rdquo; said Tom, catching East by the arm, and longing
+      to feel one of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, come along; nobody'll say anything. You won't be so eager to get
+      into calling-over after a month,&rdquo; replied his friend; and they marched
+      into the big school together, and up to the farther end, where that
+      illustrious form, the lower fourth, which had the honour of East's
+      patronage for the time being, stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The master mounted into the high desk by the door, and one of the
+      praepostors of the week stood by him on the steps, the other three marching
+      up and down the middle of the school with their canes, calling out,
+      &ldquo;Silence, silence!&rdquo; The sixth form stood close by the door on the left,
+      some thirty in number, mostly great big grown men, as Tom thought,
+      surveying them from a distance with awe; the fifth form behind them, twice
+      their number, and not quite so big. These on the left; and on the right
+      the lower fifth, shell, and all the junior forms in order; while up the
+      middle marched the three praepostors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the praepostor who stands by the master calls out the names, beginning
+      with the sixth form; and as he calls each boy answers &ldquo;here&rdquo; to his name,
+      and walks out. Some of the sixth stop at the door to turn the whole string
+      of boys into the close. It is a great match-day, and every boy in the
+      school, will he, nill he, must be there. The rest of the sixth go forwards
+      into the close, to see that no one escapes by any of the side gates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To-day, however, being the School-house match, none of the School-house
+      praepostors stay by the door to watch for truants of their side; there is
+      carte blanche to the School-house fags to go where they like. &ldquo;They trust
+      to our honour,&rdquo; as East proudly informs Tom; &ldquo;they know very well that no
+      School-house boy would cut the match. If he did, we'd very soon cut him, I
+      can tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The master of the week being short-sighted, and the praepostors of the week
+      small and not well up to their work, the lower-school boys employ the ten
+      minutes which elapse before their names are called in pelting one another
+      vigorously with acorns, which fly about in all directions. The small
+      praepostors dash in every now and then, and generally chastise some quiet,
+      timid boy who is equally afraid of acorns and canes, while the principal
+      performers get dexterously out of the way. And so calling-over rolls on
+      somehow, much like the big world, punishments lighting on wrong shoulders,
+      and matters going generally in a queer, cross-grained way, but the end
+      coming somehow, which is, after all, the great point. And now the master
+      of the week has finished, and locked up the big school; and the praepostors
+      of the week come out, sweeping the last remnant of the school fags, who
+      had been loafing about the corners by the fives court, in hopes of a
+      chance of bolting, before them into the close.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold the punt-about!&rdquo; &ldquo;To the goals!&rdquo; are the cries; and all stray balls
+      are impounded by the authorities, and the whole mass of boys moves up
+      towards the two goals, dividing as they go into three bodies. That little
+      band on the left, consisting of from fifteen to twenty boys, Tom amongst
+      them, who are making for the goal under the School-house wall, are the
+      School-house boys who are not to play up, and have to stay in goal. The
+      larger body moving to the island goal are the School boys in a like
+      predicament. The great mass in the middle are the players-up, both sides
+      mingled together; they are hanging their jackets (and all who mean real
+      work), their hats, waistcoats, neck-handkerchiefs, and braces, on the
+      railings round the small trees; and there they go by twos and threes up to
+      their respective grounds. There is none of the colour and tastiness of
+      get-up, you will perceive, which lends such a life to the present game at
+      Rugby, making the dullest and worst-fought match a pretty sight. Now each
+      house has its own uniform of cap and jersey, of some lively colour; but at
+      the time we are speaking of plush caps have not yet come in, or uniforms
+      of any sort, except the School-house white trousers, which are abominably
+      cold to-day. Let us get to work, bare-headed, and girded with our plain
+      leather straps. But we mean business, gentlemen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now that the two sides have fairly sundered, and each occupies its own
+      ground, and we get a good look at them, what absurdity is this? You don't
+      mean to say that those fifty or sixty boys in white trousers, many of them
+      quite small, are going to play that huge mass opposite? Indeed I do,
+      gentlemen. They're going to try, at any rate, and won't make such a bad
+      fight of it either, mark my word; for hasn't old Brooke won the toss, with
+      his lucky halfpenny, and got choice of goals and kick-off? The new ball
+      you may see lie there quite by itself, in the middle, pointing towards the
+      School or island goal; in another minute it will be well on its way there.
+      Use that minute in remarking how the Schoolhouse side is drilled. You will
+      see, in the first place, that the sixth-form boy, who has the charge of
+      goal, has spread his force (the goalkeepers) so as to occupy the whole
+      space behind the goal-posts, at distances of about five yards apart. A
+      safe and well-kept goal is the foundation of all good play. Old Brooke is
+      talking to the captain of quarters, and now he moves away. See how that
+      youngster spreads his men (the light brigade) carefully over the ground,
+      half-way between their own goal and the body of their own players-up (the
+      heavy brigade). These again play in several bodies. There is young Brooke
+      and the bull-dogs. Mark them well. They are the &ldquo;fighting brigade,&rdquo; the
+      &ldquo;die-hards,&rdquo; larking about at leap-frog to keep themselves warm, and
+      playing tricks on one another. And on each side of old Brooke, who is now
+      standing in the middle of the ground and just going to kick off, you see a
+      separate wing of players-up, each with a boy of acknowledged prowess to
+      look to&mdash;here Warner, and there Hedge; but over all is old Brooke,
+      absolute as he of Russia, but wisely and bravely ruling over willing and
+      worshipping subjects, a true football king. His face is earnest and
+      careful as he glances a last time over his array, but full of pluck and
+      hope&mdash;the sort of look I hope to see in my general when I go out to
+      fight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The School side is not organized in the same way. The goal-keepers are all
+      in lumps, anyhow and nohow; you can't distinguish between the players-up
+      and the boys in quarters, and there is divided leadership. But with such
+      odds in strength and weight it must take more than that to hinder them
+      from winning; and so their leaders seem to think, for they let the
+      players-up manage themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now look! there is a slight move forward of the School-house wings, a
+      shout of &ldquo;Are you ready?&rdquo; and loud affirmative reply. Old Brooke takes
+      half a dozen quick steps, and away goes the ball spinning towards the
+      School goal, seventy yards before it touches ground, and at no point above
+      twelve or fifteen feet high, a model kick-off; and the School-house cheer
+      and rush on. The ball is returned, and they meet it and drive it back
+      amongst the masses of the School already in motion. Then the two sides
+      close, and you can see nothing for minutes but a swaying crowd of boys, at
+      one point violently agitated. That is where the ball is, and there are the
+      keen players to be met, and the glory and the hard knocks to be got. You
+      hear the dull thud, thud of the ball, and the shouts of &ldquo;Off your side,&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Down with him,&rdquo; &ldquo;Put him over,&rdquo; &ldquo;Bravo.&rdquo; This is what we call &ldquo;a
+      scrummage,&rdquo; gentlemen, and the first scrummage in a School-house match was
+      no joke in the consulship of Plancus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But see! it has broken; the ball is driven out on the School-house side,
+      and a rush of the School carries it past the School-house players-up.
+      &ldquo;Look out in quarters,&rdquo; Brooke's and twenty other voices ring out. No need
+      to call, though: the School-house captain of quarters has caught it on the
+      bound, dodges the foremost School boys, who are heading the rush, and
+      sends it back with a good drop-kick well into the enemy's country. And
+      then follows rush upon rush, and scrummage upon scrummage, the ball now
+      driven through into the School-house quarters, and now into the School
+      goal; for the School-house have not lost the advantage which the kick-off
+      and a slight wind gave them at the outset, and are slightly &ldquo;penning&rdquo;
+       their adversaries. You say you don't see much in it all&mdash;nothing but
+      a struggling mass of boys, and a leather ball which seems to excite them
+      all to great fury, as a red rag does a bull. My dear sir, a battle would
+      look much the same to you, except that the boys would be men, and the
+      balls iron; but a battle would be worth your looking at for all that, and
+      so is a football match. You can't be expected to appreciate the delicate
+      strokes of play, the turns by which a game is lost and won&mdash;it takes
+      an old player to do that; but the broad philosophy of football you can
+      understand if you will. Come along with me a little nearer, and let us
+      consider it together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ball has just fallen again where the two sides are thickest, and they
+      close rapidly around it in a scrummage. It must be driven through now by
+      force or skill, till it flies out on one side or the other. Look how
+      differently the boys face it! Here come two of the bulldogs, bursting
+      through the outsiders; in they go, straight to the heart of the scrummage,
+      bent on driving that ball out on the opposite side. That is what they mean
+      to do. My sons, my sons! you are too hot; you have gone past the ball, and
+      must struggle now right through the scrummage, and get round and back
+      again to your own side, before you can be of any further use. Here comes
+      young Brooke; he goes in as straight as you, but keeps his head, and backs
+      and bends, holding himself still behind the ball, and driving it furiously
+      when he gets the chance. Take a leaf out of his book, you young chargers.
+      Here comes Speedicut, and Flashman the School-house bully, with shouts and
+      great action. Won't you two come up to young Brooke, after locking-up, by
+      the School-house fire, with &ldquo;Old fellow, wasn't that just a splendid
+      scrummage by the three trees?&rdquo; But he knows you, and so do we. You don't
+      really want to drive that ball through that scrummage, chancing all hurt
+      for the glory of the School-house, but to make us think that's what you
+      want&mdash;a vastly different thing; and fellows of your kidney will never
+      go through more than the skirts of a scrummage, where it's all push and no
+      kicking. We respect boys who keep out of it, and don't sham going in; but
+      you&mdash;we had rather not say what we think of you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the boys who are bending and watching on the outside, mark them: they
+      are most useful players, the dodgers, who seize on the ball the moment it
+      rolls out from amongst the chargers, and away with it across to the
+      opposite goal. They seldom go into the scrummage, but must have more
+      coolness than the chargers. As endless as are boys' characters, so are
+      their ways of facing or not facing a scrummage at football.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three-quarters of an hour are gone; first winds are failing, and weight
+      and numbers beginning to tell. Yard by yard the School-house have been
+      driven back, contesting every inch of ground. The bull-dogs are the colour
+      of mother earth from shoulder to ankle, except young Brooke, who has a
+      marvellous knack of keeping his legs. The School-house are being penned in
+      their turn, and now the ball is behind their goal, under the Doctor's
+      wall. The Doctor and some of his family are there looking on, and seem as
+      anxious as any boy for the success of the School-house. We get a minute's
+      breathing-time before old Brooke kicks out, and he gives the word to play
+      strongly for touch, by the three trees. Away goes the ball, and the
+      bull-dogs after it, and in another minute there is shout of &ldquo;In touch!&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Our ball!&rdquo; Now's your time, old Brooke, while your men are still fresh.
+      He stands with the ball in his hand, while the two sides form in deep
+      lines opposite one another; he must strike it straight out between them.
+      The lines are thickest close to him, but young Brooke and two or three of
+      his men are shifting up farther, where the opposite line is weak. Old
+      Brooke strikes it out straight and strong, and it falls opposite his
+      brother. Hurrah! that rush has taken it right through the School line, and
+      away past the three trees, far into their quarters, and young Brooke and
+      the bull-dogs are close upon it. The School leaders rush back, shouting,
+      &ldquo;Look out in goal!&rdquo; and strain every nerve to catch him, but they are
+      after the fleetest foot in Rugby. There they go straight for the School
+      goal-posts, quarters scattering before them. One after another the
+      bull-dogs go down, but young Brooke holds on. &ldquo;He is down.&rdquo; No! a long
+      stagger, but the danger is past. That was the shock of Crew, the most
+      dangerous of dodgers. And now he is close to the School goal, the ball not
+      three yards before him. There is a hurried rush of the School fags to the
+      spot, but no one throws himself on the ball, the only chance, and young
+      Brooke has touched it right under the School goal-posts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The School leaders come up furious, and administer toco to the wretched
+      fags nearest at hand. They may well be angry, for it is all Lombard Street
+      to a china orange that the School-house kick a goal with the ball touched
+      in such a good place. Old Brooke, of course, will kick it out, but who
+      shall catch and place it? Call Crab Jones. Here he comes, sauntering along
+      with a straw in his mouth, the queerest, coolest fish in Rugby. If he were
+      tumbled into the moon this minute, he would just pick himself up without
+      taking his hands out of his pockets or turning a hair. But it is a moment
+      when the boldest charger's heart beats quick. Old Brooke stands with the
+      ball under his arm motioning the School back; he will not kick out till
+      they are all in goal, behind the posts. They are all edging forwards, inch
+      by inch, to get nearer for the rush at Crab Jones, who stands there in
+      front of old Brooke to catch the ball. If they can reach and destroy him
+      before he catches, the danger is over; and with one and the same rush they
+      will carry it right away to the School-house goal. Fond hope! it is kicked
+      out and caught beautifully. Crab strikes his heel into the ground, to mark
+      the spot where the ball was caught, beyond which the school line may not
+      advance; but there they stand, five deep, ready to rush the moment the
+      ball touches the ground. Take plenty of room. Don't give the rush a chance
+      of reaching you. Place it true and steady. Trust Crab Jones. He has made a
+      small hole with his heel for the ball to lie on, by which he is resting on
+      one knee, with his eye on old Brooke. &ldquo;Now!&rdquo; Crab places the ball at the
+      word, old Brooke kicks, and it rises slowly and truly as the School rush
+      forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a moment's pause, while both sides look up at the spinning ball.
+      There it flies, straight between the two posts, some five feet above the
+      cross-bar, an unquestioned goal; and a shout of real, genuine joy rings
+      out from the School-house players-up, and a faint echo of it comes over
+      the close from the goal-keepers under the Doctor's wall. A goal in the
+      first hour&mdash;such a thing hasn't been done in the School-house match
+      these five years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Over!&rdquo; is the cry. The two sides change goals, and the School-house
+      goal-keepers come threading their way across through the masses of the
+      School, the most openly triumphant of them&mdash;amongst whom is Tom, a
+      School-house boy of two hours' standing&mdash;getting their ears boxed in
+      the transit. Tom indeed is excited beyond measure, and it is all the
+      sixth-form boy, kindest and safest of goal-keepers, has been able to do,
+      to keep him from rushing out whenever the ball has been near their goal.
+      So he holds him by his side, and instructs him in the science of touching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment Griffith, the itinerant vender of oranges from Hill Morton,
+      enters the close with his heavy baskets. There is a rush of small boys
+      upon the little pale-faced man, the two sides mingling together, subdued
+      by the great goddess Thirst, like the English and French by the streams in
+      the Pyrenees. The leaders are past oranges and apples, but some of them
+      visit their coats, and apply innocent-looking ginger-beer bottles to their
+      mouths. It is no ginger-beer though, I fear, and will do you no good. One
+      short mad rush, and then a stitch in the side, and no more honest play.
+      That's what comes of those bottles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now Griffith's baskets are empty, the ball is placed again midway, and
+      the School are going to kick off. Their leaders have sent their lumber
+      into goal, and rated the rest soundly, and one hundred and twenty picked
+      players-up are there, bent on retrieving the game. They are to keep the
+      ball in front of the School-house goal, and then to drive it in by sheer
+      strength and weight. They mean heavy play and no mistake, and so old
+      Brooke sees, and places Crab Jones in quarters just before the goal, with
+      four or five picked players who are to keep the ball away to the sides,
+      where a try at goal, if obtained, will be less dangerous than in front. He
+      himself, and Warner and Hedge, who have saved themselves till now, will
+      lead the charges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you ready?&rdquo; &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; And away comes the ball, kicked high in the air,
+      to give the School time to rush on and catch it as it falls. And here they
+      are amongst us. Meet them like Englishmen, you Schoolhouse boys, and
+      charge them home. Now is the time to show what mettle is in you; and there
+      shall be a warm seat by the hall fire, and honour, and lots of bottled
+      beer to-night for him who does his duty in the next half-hour. And they
+      are well met. Again and again the cloud of their players-up gathers before
+      our goal, and comes threatening on, and Warner or Hedge, with young Brooke
+      and the relics of the bull-dogs, break through and carry the ball back;
+      and old Brooke ranges the field like Job's war-horse. The thickest
+      scrummage parts asunder before his rush, like the waves before a clipper's
+      bows; his cheery voice rings out over the field, and his eye is
+      everywhere. And if these miss the ball, and it rolls dangerously in front
+      of our goal, Crab Jones and his men have seized it and sent it away
+      towards the sides with the unerring drop-kick. This is worth living for&mdash;the
+      whole sum of school-boy existence gathered up into one straining,
+      struggling half-hour, a half-hour worth a year of common life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The quarter to five has struck, and the play slackens for a minute before
+      goal; but there is Crew, the artful dodger, driving the ball in behind our
+      goal, on the island side, where our quarters are weakest. Is there no one
+      to meet him? Yes; look at little East! The ball is just at equal distances
+      between the two, and they rush together, the young man of seventeen and
+      the boy of twelve, and kick it at the same moment. Crew passes on without
+      a stagger; East is hurled forward by the shock, and plunges on his
+      shoulder, as if he would bury himself in the ground; but the ball rises
+      straight into the air, and falls behind Crew's back, while the &ldquo;bravoes&rdquo;
+       of the School-house attest the pluckiest charge of all that hard-fought
+      day. Warner picks East up lame and half stunned, and he hobbles back into
+      goal, conscious of having played the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now the last minutes are come, and the School gather for their last
+      rush, every boy of the hundred and twenty who has a run left in him.
+      Reckless of the defence of their own goal, on they come across the level
+      big-side ground, the ball well down amongst them, straight for our goal,
+      like the column of the Old Guard up the slope at Waterloo. All former
+      charges have been child's play to this. Warner and Hedge have met them,
+      but still on they come. The bull-dogs rush in for the last time; they are
+      hurled over or carried back, striving hand, foot, and eyelids. Old Brooke
+      comes sweeping round the skirts of the play, and turning short round,
+      picks out the very heart of the scrummage, and plunges in. It wavers for a
+      moment; he has the ball. No, it has passed him, and his voice rings out
+      clear over the advancing tide, &ldquo;Look out in goal!&rdquo; Crab Jones catches it
+      for a moment; but before he can kick, the rush is upon him and passes over
+      him; and he picks himself up behind them with his straw in his mouth, a
+      little dirtier, but as cool as ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ball rolls slowly in behind the School-house goal, not three yards in
+      front of a dozen of the biggest School players-up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There stands the School-house praepostor, safest of goal-keepers, and Tom
+      Brown by his side, who has learned his trade by this time. Now is your
+      time, Tom. The blood of all the Browns is up, and the two rush in
+      together, and throw themselves on the ball, under the very feet of the
+      advancing column&mdash;the praepostor on his hands and knees, arching his
+      back, and Tom all along on his face. Over them topple the leaders of the
+      rush, shooting over the back of the praepostor, but falling flat on Tom,
+      and knocking all the wind out of his small carcass. &ldquo;Our ball,&rdquo; says the
+      praepostor, rising with his prize; &ldquo;but get up there; there's a little
+      fellow under you.&rdquo; They are hauled and roll off him, and Tom is
+      discovered, a motionless body.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0139m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0139m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0139.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      Old Brooke picks him up. &ldquo;Stand back, give him air,&rdquo; he says; and then
+      feeling his limbs, adds, &ldquo;No bones broken.&mdash;How do you feel, young
+      un?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hah-hah!&rdquo; gasps Tom, as his wind comes back; &ldquo;pretty well, thank you&mdash;all
+      right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is he?&rdquo; says Brooke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it's Brown; he's a new boy; I know him,&rdquo; says East, coming up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he is a plucky youngster, and will make a player,&rdquo; says Brooke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And five o'clock strikes. &ldquo;No side&rdquo; is called, and the first day of the
+      School-house match is over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0144m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0144m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0144.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI&mdash;AFTER THE MATCH.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Some food we had.&rdquo;&mdash;Shakespeare.
+     [Greek text]&mdash;Theocr. Id.
+</pre>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+      <img src="images/9144m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="9144m " width="100%" />
+      <a href="images/9144.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      s the boys scattered away from the ground, and East, leaning on Tom's
+      arm, and limping along, was beginning to consider what luxury they should
+      go and buy for tea to celebrate that glorious victory, the two Brookes
+      came striding by. Old Brooke caught sight of East, and stopped; put his
+      hand kindly on his shoulder, and said, &ldquo;Bravo, youngster; you played
+      famously. Not much the matter, I hope?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, nothing at all,&rdquo; said East&mdash;&ldquo;only a little twist from that
+      charge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, mind and get all right for next Saturday.&rdquo; And the leader passed
+      on, leaving East better for those few words than all the opodeldoc in
+      England would have made him, and Tom ready to give one of his ears for as
+      much notice. Ah! light words of those whom we love and honour, what a
+      power ye are, and how carelessly wielded by those who can use you! Surely
+      for these things also God will ask an account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tea's directly after locking-up, you see,&rdquo; said East, hobbling along as
+      fast as he could, &ldquo;so you come along down to Sally Harrowell's; that's our
+      School-house tuck-shop. She bakes such stunning murphies, we'll have a
+      penn'orth each for tea. Come along, or they'll all be gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom's new purse and money burnt in his pocket; he wondered, as they
+      toddled through the quadrangle and along the street, whether East would be
+      insulted if he suggested further extravagance, as he had not sufficient
+      faith in a pennyworth of potatoes. At last he blurted out,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, East, can't we get something else besides potatoes? I've got lots
+      of money, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless us, yes; I forgot,&rdquo; said East, &ldquo;you've only just come. You see all
+      my tin's been gone this twelve weeks&mdash;it hardly ever lasts beyond the
+      first fortnight; and our allowances were all stopped this morning for
+      broken windows, so I haven't got a penny. I've got a tick at Sally's, of
+      course; but then I hate running it high, you see, towards the end of the
+      half, 'cause one has to shell out for it all directly one comes back, and
+      that's a bore.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom didn't understand much of this talk, but seized on the fact that East
+      had no money, and was denying himself some little pet luxury in
+      consequence. &ldquo;Well, what shall I buy?&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I'm uncommon hungry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say,&rdquo; said East, stopping to look at him and rest his leg, &ldquo;you're a
+      trump, Brown. I'll do the same by you next half. Let's have a pound of
+      sausages then. That's the best grub for tea I know of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said Tom, as pleased as possible; &ldquo;where do they sell them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, over here, just opposite.&rdquo; And they crossed the street and walked
+      into the cleanest little front room of a small house, half parlour, half
+      shop, and bought a pound of most particular sausages, East talking
+      pleasantly to Mrs. Porter while she put them in paper, and Tom doing the
+      paying part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Porter's they adjourned to Sally Harrowell's, where they found a lot
+      of School-house boys waiting for the roast potatoes, and relating their
+      own exploits in the day's match at the top of their voices. The street
+      opened at once into Sally's kitchen, a low brick-floored room, with large
+      recess for fire, and chimney-corner seats. Poor little Sally, the most
+      good-natured and much-enduring of womankind, was bustling about, with a
+      napkin in her hand, from her own oven to those of the neighbours' cottages
+      up the yard at the back of the house. Stumps, her husband, a short,
+      easy-going shoemaker, with a beery, humorous eye and ponderous calves, who
+      lived mostly on his wife's earnings, stood in a corner of the room,
+      exchanging shots of the roughest description of repartee with every boy in
+      turn. &ldquo;Stumps, you lout, you've had too much beer again to-day.&rdquo; &ldquo;'Twasn't
+      of your paying for, then.&rdquo; &ldquo;Stumps's calves are running down into his
+      ankles; they want to get to grass.&rdquo; &ldquo;Better be doing that than gone
+      altogether like yours,&rdquo; etc. Very poor stuff it was, but it served to make
+      time pass; and every now and then Sally arrived in the middle with a
+      smoking tin of potatoes, which was cleared off in a few seconds, each boy
+      as he seized his lot running off to the house with &ldquo;Put me down
+      two-penn'orth, Sally;&rdquo; &ldquo;Put down three-penn'orth between me and Davis,&rdquo;
+       etc. How she ever kept the accounts so straight as she did, in her head
+      and on her slate, was a perfect wonder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      East and Tom got served at last, and started back for the School-house,
+      just as the locking-up bell began to ring, East on the way recounting the
+      life and adventures of Stumps, who was a character. Amongst his other
+      small avocations, he was the hind carrier of a sedan-chair, the last of
+      its race, in which the Rugby ladies still went out to tea, and in which,
+      when he was fairly harnessed and carrying a load, it was the delight of
+      small and mischievous boys to follow him and whip his calves. This was too
+      much for the temper even of Stumps, and he would pursue his tormentors in
+      a vindictive and apoplectic manner when released, but was easily pacified
+      by twopence to buy beer with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lower-school boys of the School-house, some fifteen in number, had tea
+      in the lower-fifth school, and were presided over by the old verger or
+      head-porter. Each boy had a quarter of a loaf of bread and pat of butter,
+      and as much tea as he pleased; and there was scarcely one who didn't add
+      to this some further luxury, such as baked potatoes, a herring, sprats, or
+      something of the sort. But few at this period of the half-year could live
+      up to a pound of Porter's sausages, and East was in great magnificence
+      upon the strength of theirs. He had produced a toasting-fork from his
+      study, and set Tom to toast the sausages, while he mounted guard over
+      their butter and potatoes. &ldquo;'Cause,&rdquo; as he explained, &ldquo;you're a new boy,
+      and they'll play you some trick and get our butter; but you can toast just
+      as well as I.&rdquo; So Tom, in the midst of three or four more urchins
+      similarly employed, toasted his face and the sausages at the same time
+      before the huge fire, till the latter cracked; when East from his
+      watch-tower shouted that they were done, and then the feast proceeded, and
+      the festive cups of tea were filled and emptied, and Tom imparted of the
+      sausages in small bits to many neighbours, and thought he had never tasted
+      such good potatoes or seen such jolly boys. They on their parts waived all
+      ceremony, and pegged away at the sausages and potatoes, and remembering
+      Tom's performance in goal, voted East's new crony a brick. After tea, and
+      while the things were being cleared away, they gathered round the fire,
+      and the talk on the match still went on; and those who had them to show
+      pulled up their trousers and showed the hacks they had received in the
+      good cause.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0147m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0147m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0147.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      They were soon, however, all turned out of the school; and East conducted
+      Tom up to his bedroom, that he might get on clean things, and wash himself
+      before singing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's singing?&rdquo; said Tom, taking his head out of his basin, where he had
+      been plunging it in cold water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you are jolly green,&rdquo; answered his friend, from a neighbouring
+      basin. &ldquo;Why, the last six Saturdays of every half we sing of course; and
+      this is the first of them. No first lesson to do, you know, and lie in bed
+      to-morrow morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But who sings?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, everybody, of course; you'll see soon enough. We begin directly
+      after supper, and sing till bed-time. It ain't such good fun now, though,
+      as in the summer half; 'cause then we sing in the little fives court,
+      under the library, you know. We take out tables, and the big boys sit
+      round and drink beer&mdash;double allowance on Saturday nights; and we cut
+      about the quadrangle between the songs, and it looks like a lot of robbers
+      in a cave. And the louts come and pound at the great gates, and we pound
+      back again, and shout at them. But this half we only sing in the hall.
+      Come along down to my study.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Their principal employment in the study was to clear out East's table;
+      removing the drawers and ornaments and tablecloth; for he lived in the
+      bottom passage, and his table was in requisition for the singing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Supper came in due course at seven o'clock, consisting of bread and cheese
+      and beer, which was all saved for the singing; and directly afterwards the
+      fags went to work to prepare the hall. The School-house hall, as has been
+      said, is a great long high room, with two large fires on one side, and two
+      large iron-bound tables, one running down the middle, and the other along
+      the wall opposite the fireplaces. Around the upper fire the fags placed
+      the tables in the form of a horse-shoe, and upon them the jugs with the
+      Saturday night's allowance of beer. Then the big boys used to drop in and
+      take their seats, bringing with them bottled beer and song books; for
+      although they all knew the songs by heart, it was the thing to have an old
+      manuscript book descended from some departed hero, in which they were all
+      carefully written out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sixth-form boys had not yet appeared; so, to fill up the gap, an
+      interesting and time-honoured ceremony was gone through. Each new boy was
+      placed on the table in turn, and made to sing a solo, under the penalty of
+      drinking a large mug of salt and water if he resisted or broke down.
+      However, the new boys all sing like nightingales to-night, and the salt
+      water is not in requisition&mdash;Tom, as his part, performing the old
+      west-country song of &ldquo;The Leather Bottel&rdquo; with considerable applause. And
+      at the half-hour down come the sixth and fifth form boys, and take their
+      places at the tables, which are filled up by the next biggest boys, the
+      rest, for whom there is no room at the table, standing round outside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The glasses and mugs are filled, and then the fugleman strikes up the old
+      sea-song,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;A wet sheet and a flowing sea,
+     And a wind that follows fast,&rdquo; etc.,
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      which is the invariable first song in the School-house; and all the
+      seventy voices join in, not mindful of harmony, but bent on noise, which
+      they attain decidedly, but the general effect isn't bad. And then follow
+      &ldquo;The British Grenadiers,&rdquo; &ldquo;Billy Taylor,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Siege of Seringapatam,&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Three Jolly Postboys,&rdquo; and other vociferous songs in rapid succession,
+      including &ldquo;The Chesapeake and Shannon,&rdquo; a song lately introduced in honour
+      of old Brooke; and when they come to the words,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Brave Broke he waved his sword, crying, Now, my lads, aboard,
+     And we'll stop their playing Yankee-doodle-dandy oh!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      you expect the roof to come down. The sixth and fifth know that &ldquo;brave
+      Broke&rdquo; of the Shannon was no sort of relation to our old Brooke. The
+      fourth form are uncertain in their belief, but for the most part hold that
+      old Brooke was a midshipman then on board his uncle's ship. And the lower
+      school never doubt for a moment that it was our old Brooke who led the
+      boarders, in what capacity they care not a straw. During the pauses the
+      bottled-beer corks fly rapidly, and the talk is fast and merry, and the
+      big boys&mdash;at least all of them who have a fellow-feeling for dry
+      throats&mdash;hand their mugs over their shoulders to be emptied by the
+      small ones who stand round behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Warner, the head of the house, gets up and wants to speak; but he
+      can't, for every boy knows what's coming. And the big boys who sit at the
+      tables pound them and cheer; and the small boys who stand behind pound one
+      another, and cheer, and rush about the hall cheering. Then silence being
+      made, Warner reminds them of the old School-house custom of drinking the
+      healths, on the first night of singing, of those who are going to leave at
+      the end of the half. &ldquo;He sees that they know what he is going to say
+      already&rdquo; (loud cheers), &ldquo;and so won't keep them, but only ask them to
+      treat the toast as it deserves. It is the head of the eleven, the head of
+      big-side football, their leader on this glorious day&mdash;Pater Brooke!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And away goes the pounding and cheering again, becoming deafening when old
+      Brooke gets on his legs; till, a table having broken down, and a gallon or
+      so of beer been upset, and all throats getting dry, silence ensues, and
+      the hero speaks, leaning his hands on the table, and bending a little
+      forwards. No action, no tricks of oratory&mdash;plain, strong, and
+      straight, like his play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gentlemen of the School-house! I am very proud of the way in which you
+      have received my name, and I wish I could say all I should like in return.
+      But I know I shan't. However, I'll do the best I can to say what seems to
+      me ought to be said by a fellow who's just going to leave, and who has
+      spent a good slice of his life here. Eight years it is, and eight such
+      years as I can never hope to have again. So now I hope you'll all listen
+      to me&rdquo; (loud cheers of &ldquo;That we will&rdquo;), &ldquo;for I'm going to talk seriously.
+      You're bound to listen to me for what's the use of calling me 'pater,' and
+      all that, if you don't mind what I say? And I'm going to talk seriously,
+      because I feel so. It's a jolly time, too, getting to the end of the half,
+      and a goal kicked by us first day&rdquo; (tremendous applause), &ldquo;after one of
+      the hardest and fiercest day's play I can remember in eight years.&rdquo;
+       (Frantic shoutings.) &ldquo;The School played splendidly, too, I will say, and
+      kept it up to the last. That last charge of theirs would have carried away
+      a house. I never thought to see anything again of old Crab there, except
+      little pieces, when I saw him tumbled over by it.&rdquo; (Laughter and shouting,
+      and great slapping on the back of Jones by the boys nearest him.) &ldquo;Well,
+      but we beat 'em.&rdquo; (Cheers.) &ldquo;Ay, but why did we beat 'em? Answer me that.&rdquo;
+       (Shouts of &ldquo;Your play.&rdquo;) &ldquo;Nonsense! 'Twasn't the wind and kick-off either&mdash;that
+      wouldn't do it. 'Twasn't because we've half a dozen of the best players in
+      the school, as we have. I wouldn't change Warner, and Hedge, and Crab, and
+      the young un, for any six on their side.&rdquo; (Violent cheers.) &ldquo;But half a
+      dozen fellows can't keep it up for two hours against two hundred. Why is
+      it, then? I'll tell you what I think. It's because we've more reliance on
+      one another, more of a house feeling, more fellowship than the School can
+      have. Each of us knows and can depend on his next-hand man better. That's
+      why we beat 'em to-day. We've union, they've division&mdash;there's the
+      secret.&rdquo; (Cheers.) &ldquo;But how's this to be kept up? How's it to be improved?
+      That's the question. For I take it we're all in earnest about beating the
+      School, whatever else we care about. I know I'd sooner win two
+      School-house matches running than get the Balliol scholarship any day.&rdquo;
+       (Frantic cheers.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, I'm as proud of the house as any one. I believe it's the best house
+      in the school, out and out.&rdquo; (Cheers.) &ldquo;But it's a long way from what I
+      want to see it. First, there's a deal of bullying going on. I know it
+      well. I don't pry about and interfere; that only makes it more underhand,
+      and encourages the small boys to come to us with their fingers in their
+      eyes telling tales, and so we should be worse off than ever. It's very
+      little kindness for the sixth to meddle generally&mdash;you youngsters
+      mind that. You'll be all the better football players for learning to stand
+      it, and to take your own parts, and fight it through. But depend on it,
+      there's nothing breaks up a house like bullying. Bullies are cowards, and
+      one coward makes many; so good-bye to the School-house match if bullying
+      gets ahead here.&rdquo; (Loud applause from the small boys, who look meaningly
+      at Flashman and other boys at the tables.) &ldquo;Then there's fuddling about in
+      the public-house, and drinking bad spirits, and punch, and such rot-gut
+      stuff. That won't make good drop-kicks or chargers of you, take my word
+      for it. You get plenty of good beer here, and that's enough for you; and
+      drinking isn't fine or manly, whatever some of you may think of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One other thing I must have a word about. A lot of you think and say, for
+      I've heard you, 'There's this new Doctor hasn't been here so long as some
+      of us, and he's changing all the old customs. Rugby, and the Schoolhouse
+      especially, are going to the dogs. Stand up for the good old ways, and
+      down with the Doctor!' Now I'm as fond of old Rugby customs and ways as
+      any of you, and I've been here longer than any of you, and I'll give you a
+      word of advice in time, for I shouldn't like to see any of you getting
+      sacked. 'Down with the Doctor's' easier said than done. You'll find him
+      pretty tight on his perch, I take it, and an awkwardish customer to handle
+      in that line. Besides now, what customs has he put down? There was the
+      good old custom of taking the linchpins out of the farmers' and bagmen's
+      gigs at the fairs, and a cowardly, blackguard custom it was. We all know
+      what came of it, and no wonder the Doctor objected to it. But come now,
+      any of you, name a custom that he has put down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The hounds,&rdquo; calls out a fifth-form boy, clad in a green cutaway with
+      brass buttons and cord trousers, the leader of the sporting interest, and
+      reputed a great rider and keen hand generally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we had six or seven mangy harriers and beagles belonging to the
+      house, I'll allow, and had had them for years, and that the Doctor put
+      them down. But what good ever came of them? Only rows with all the keepers
+      for ten miles round; and big-side hare-and-hounds is better fun ten times
+      over. What else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I won't go on. Think it over for yourselves. You'll find, I
+      believe, that he don't meddle with any one that's worth keeping. And mind
+      now, I say again, look out for squalls if you will go your own way, and
+      that way ain't the Doctor's, for it'll lead to grief. You all know that
+      I'm not the fellow to back a master through thick and thin. If I saw him
+      stopping football, or cricket, or bathing, or sparring, I'd be as ready as
+      any fellow to stand up about it. But he don't; he encourages them. Didn't
+      you see him out to-day for half an hour watching us?&rdquo; (loud cheers for the
+      Doctor); &ldquo;and he's a strong, true man, and a wise one too, and a
+      public-school man too&rdquo; (cheers), &ldquo;and so let's stick to him, and talk no
+      more rot, and drink his health as the head of the house.&rdquo; (Loud cheers.)
+      &ldquo;And now I've done blowing up, and very glad I am to have done. But it's a
+      solemn thing to be thinking of leaving a place which one has lived in and
+      loved for eight years; and if one can say a word for the good of the old
+      house at such a time, why, it should be said, whether bitter or sweet. If
+      I hadn't been proud of the house and you&mdash;ay, no one knows how proud&mdash;I
+      shouldn't be blowing you up. And now let's get to singing. But before I
+      sit down I must give you a toast to be drunk with three-times-three and
+      all the honours. It's a toast which I hope every one of us, wherever he
+      may go hereafter, will never fail to drink when he thinks of the brave,
+      bright days of his boyhood. It's a toast which should bind us all
+      together, and to those who've gone before and who'll come after us here.
+      It is the dear old School-house&mdash;the best house of the best school in
+      England!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My dear boys, old and young, you who have belonged, or do belong, to other
+      schools and other houses, don't begin throwing my poor little book about
+      the room, and abusing me and it, and vowing you'll read no more when you
+      get to this point. I allow you've provocation for it. But come now&mdash;would
+      you, any of you, give a fig for a fellow who didn't believe in and stand
+      up for his own house and his own school? You know you wouldn't. Then don't
+      object to me cracking up the old School house, Rugby. Haven't I a right to
+      do it, when I'm taking all the trouble of writing this true history for
+      all of your benefits? If you ain't satisfied, go and write the history of
+      your own houses in your own times, and say all you know for your own
+      schools and houses, provided it's true, and I'll read it without abusing
+      you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last few words hit the audience in their weakest place. They had been
+      not altogether enthusiastic at several parts of old Brooke's speech; but
+      &ldquo;the best house of the best school in England&rdquo; was too much for them all,
+      and carried even the sporting and drinking interests off their legs into
+      rapturous applause, and (it is to be hoped) resolutions to lead a new life
+      and remember old Brooke's words&mdash;which, however, they didn't
+      altogether do, as will appear hereafter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it required all old Brooke's popularity to carry down parts of his
+      speech&mdash;especially that relating to the Doctor. For there are no such
+      bigoted holders by established forms and customs, be they never so foolish
+      or meaningless, as English school-boys&mdash;at least, as the school-boys
+      of our generation. We magnified into heroes every boy who had left, and
+      looked upon him with awe and reverence when he revisited the place a year
+      or so afterwards, on his way to or from Oxford or Cambridge; and happy was
+      the boy who remembered him, and sure of an audience as he expounded what
+      he used to do and say, though it were sad enough stuff to make angels, not
+      to say head-masters, weep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We looked upon every trumpery little custom and habit which had obtained
+      in the School as though it had been a law of the Medes and Persians, and
+      regarded the infringement or variation of it as a sort of sacrilege. And
+      the Doctor, than whom no man or boy had a stronger liking for old school
+      customs which were good and sensible, had, as has already been hinted,
+      come into most decided collision with several which were neither the one
+      nor the other. And as old Brooke had said, when he came into collision
+      with boys or customs, there was nothing for them but to give in or take
+      themselves off; because what he said had to be done, and no mistake about
+      it. And this was beginning to be pretty clearly understood. The boys felt
+      that there was a strong man over them, who would have things his own way,
+      and hadn't yet learnt that he was a wise and loving man also. His personal
+      character and influence had not had time to make itself felt, except by a
+      very few of the bigger boys with whom he came more directly into contact;
+      and he was looked upon with great fear and dislike by the great majority
+      even of his own house. For he had found School and School-house in a state
+      of monstrous license and misrule, and was still employed in the necessary
+      but unpopular work of setting up order with a strong hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, as has been said, old Brooke triumphed, and the boys cheered him
+      and then the Doctor. And then more songs came, and the healths of the
+      other boys about to leave, who each made a speech, one flowery, another
+      maudlin, a third prosy, and so on, which are not necessary to be here
+      recorded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half-past nine struck in the middle of the performance of &ldquo;Auld Lang
+      Syne,&rdquo; a most obstreperous proceeding, during which there was an immense
+      amount of standing with one foot on the table, knocking mugs together and
+      shaking hands, without which accompaniments it seems impossible for the
+      youths of Britain to take part in that famous old song. The under-porter
+      of the School-house entered during the performance, bearing five or six
+      long wooden candlesticks with lighted dips in them, which he proceeded to
+      stick into their holes in such part of the great tables as he could get
+      at; and then stood outside the ring till the end of the song, when he was
+      hailed with shouts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bill you old muff, the half-hour hasn't struck.&rdquo; &ldquo;Here, Bill, drink some
+      cocktail.&rdquo; &ldquo;Sing us a song, old boy.&rdquo; &ldquo;Don't you wish you may get the
+      table?&rdquo; Bill drank the proffered cocktail not unwillingly, and putting
+      down the empty glass, remonstrated. &ldquo;Now gentlemen, there's only ten
+      minutes to prayers, and we must get the hall straight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Shouts of &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; and a violent effort to strike up &ldquo;Billy Taylor&rdquo; for
+      the third time. Bill looked appealingly to old Brooke, who got up and
+      stopped the noise. &ldquo;Now then, lend a hand, you youngsters, and get the
+      tables back; clear away the jugs and glasses. Bill's right. Open the
+      windows, Warner.&rdquo; The boy addressed, who sat by the long ropes, proceeded
+      to pull up the great windows, and let in a clear, fresh rush of night air,
+      which made the candles flicker and gutter, and the fires roar. The circle
+      broke up, each collaring his own jug, glass, and song-book; Bill pounced
+      on the big table, and began to rattle it away to its place outside the
+      buttery door. The lower-passage boys carried off their small tables, aided
+      by their friends; while above all, standing on the great hall-table, a
+      knot of untiring sons of harmony made night doleful by a prolonged
+      performance of &ldquo;God Save the King.&rdquo; His Majesty King William the Fourth
+      then reigned over us, a monarch deservedly popular amongst the boys
+      addicted to melody, to whom he was chiefly known from the beginning of
+      that excellent if slightly vulgar song in which they much delighted,&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Come, neighbours all, both great and small,
+     Perform your duties here,
+     And loudly sing, 'Live Billy, our king,'
+     For bating the tax upon beer.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Others of the more learned in songs also celebrated his praises in a sort
+      of ballad, which I take to have been written by some Irish loyalist. I
+      have forgotten all but the chorus, which ran,&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;God save our good King William,
+     Be his name for ever blest;
+     He's the father of all his people,
+     And the guardian of all the rest.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      In troth we were loyal subjects in those days, in a rough way. I trust
+      that our successors make as much of her present Majesty, and, having
+      regard to the greater refinement of the times, have adopted or written
+      other songs equally hearty, but more civilized, in her honour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the quarter to ten struck, and the prayer-bell rang. The sixth and
+      fifth form boys ranged themselves in their school order along the wall, on
+      either side of the great fires, the middle-fifth and upper-school boys
+      round the long table in the middle of the hall, and the lower-school boys
+      round the upper part of the second long table, which ran down the side of
+      the hall farthest from the fires. Here Tom found himself at the bottom of
+      all, in a state of mind and body not at all fit for prayers, as he
+      thought; and so tried hard to make himself serious, but couldn't, for the
+      life of him, do anything but repeat in his head the choruses of some of
+      the songs, and stare at all the boys opposite, wondering at the brilliancy
+      of their waistcoats, and speculating what sort of fellows they were. The
+      steps of the head-porter are heard on the stairs, and a light gleams at
+      the door. &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; from the fifth-form boys who stand there, and then in
+      strides the Doctor, cap on head, book in one hand, and gathering up his
+      gown in the other. He walks up the middle, and takes his post by Warner,
+      who begins calling over the names. The Doctor takes no notice of anything,
+      but quietly turns over his book and finds the place, and then stands, cap
+      in hand and finger in book, looking straight before his nose. He knows
+      better than any one when to look, and when to see nothing. To-night is
+      singing night, and there's been lots of noise and no harm done&mdash;nothing
+      but beer drunk, and nobody the worse for it, though some of them do look
+      hot and excited. So the Doctor sees nothing, but fascinates Tom in a
+      horrible manner as he stands there, and reads out the psalm, in that deep,
+      ringing, searching voice of his. Prayers are over, and Tom still stares
+      open-mouthed after the Doctor's retiring figure, when he feels a pull at
+      his sleeve, and turning round, sees East.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, were you ever tossed in a blanket?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Tom; &ldquo;why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Cause there'll be tossing to-night, most likely, before the sixth come
+      up to bed. So if you funk, you just come along and hide, or else they'll
+      catch you and toss you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were you ever tossed? Does it hurt?&rdquo; inquired Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, bless you, a dozen times,&rdquo; said East, as he hobbled along by
+      Tom's side upstairs. &ldquo;It don't hurt unless you fall on the floor. But most
+      fellows don't like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They stopped at the fireplace in the top passage, where were a crowd of
+      small boys whispering together, and evidently unwilling to go up into the
+      bedrooms. In a minute, however, a study door opened, and a sixth-form boy
+      came out, and off they all scuttled up the stairs, and then noiselessly
+      dispersed to their different rooms. Tom's heart beat rather quick as he
+      and East reached their room, but he had made up his mind. &ldquo;I shan't hide,
+      East,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, old fellow,&rdquo; replied East, evidently pleased; &ldquo;no more shall
+      I. They'll be here for us directly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The room was a great big one, with a dozen beds in it, but not a boy that
+      Tom could see except East and himself. East pulled off his coat and
+      waistcoat, and then sat on the bottom of his bed whistling and pulling off
+      his boots. Tom followed his example.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A noise and steps are heard in the passage, the door opens, and in rush
+      four or five great fifth-form boys, headed by Flashman in his glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom and East slept in the farther corner of the room, and were not seen at
+      first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gone to ground, eh?&rdquo; roared Flashman. &ldquo;Push 'em out then, boys; look
+      under the beds.&rdquo; And he pulled up the little white curtain of the one
+      nearest him. &ldquo;Who-o-op!&rdquo; he roared, pulling away at the leg of a small
+      boy, who held on tight to the leg of the bed, and sang out lustily for
+      mercy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, lend a hand, one of you, and help me pull out this young howling
+      brute.&mdash;Hold your tongue, sir, or I'll kill you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, please, Flashman, please, Walker, don't toss me! I'll fag for you&mdash;I'll
+      do anything&mdash;only don't toss me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You be hanged,&rdquo; said Flashman, lugging the wretched boy along; &ldquo;'twon't
+      hurt you,&mdash;you!&mdash;Come along, boys; here he is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Flashey,&rdquo; sang out another of the big boys; &ldquo;drop that; you heard
+      what old Pater Brooke said to-night. I'll be hanged if we'll toss any one
+      against their will. No more bullying. Let him go, I say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Flashman, with an oath and a kick, released his prey, who rushed headlong
+      under his bed again, for fear they should change their minds, and crept
+      along underneath the other beds, till he got under that of the sixth-form
+      boy, which he knew they daren't disturb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's plenty of youngsters don't care about it,&rdquo; said Walker. &ldquo;Here,
+      here's Scud East&mdash;you'll be tossed, won't you, young un?&rdquo; Scud was
+      East's nickname, or Black, as we called it, gained by his fleetness of
+      foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said East, &ldquo;if you like, only mind my foot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And here's another who didn't hide.&mdash;Hullo! new boy; what's your
+      name, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Whitey Brown, you don't mind being tossed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Tom, setting his teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along then, boys,&rdquo; sang out Walker; and away they all went, carrying
+      along Tom and East, to the intense relief of four or five other small
+      boys, who crept out from under the beds and behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a trump Scud is!&rdquo; said one. &ldquo;They won't come back here now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that new boy, too; he must be a good-plucked one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! wait till he has been tossed on to the floor; see how he'll like it
+      then!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime the procession went down the passage to Number 7, the largest
+      room, and the scene of the tossing, in the middle of which was a great
+      open space. Here they joined other parties of the bigger boys, each with a
+      captive or two, some willing to be tossed, some sullen, and some
+      frightened to death. At Walker's suggestion all who were afraid were let
+      off, in honour of Pater Brooke's speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a dozen big boys seized hold of a blanket, dragged from one of the
+      beds. &ldquo;In with Scud; quick! there's no time to lose.&rdquo; East was chucked
+      into the blanket. &ldquo;Once, twice, thrice, and away!&rdquo; Up he went like a
+      shuttlecock, but not quite up to the ceiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, boys, with a will,&rdquo; cried Walker; &ldquo;once, twice, thrice, and away!&rdquo;
+       This time he went clean up, and kept himself from touching the ceiling
+      with his hand, and so again a third time, when he was turned out, and up
+      went another boy. And then came Tom's turn. He lay quite still, by East's
+      advice, and didn't dislike the &ldquo;once, twice, thrice;&rdquo; but the &ldquo;away&rdquo;
+       wasn't so pleasant. They were in good wind now, and sent him slap up to
+      the ceiling first time, against which his knees came rather sharply. But
+      the moment's pause before descending was the rub&mdash;the feeling of
+      utter helplessness and of leaving his whole inside behind him sticking to
+      the ceiling. Tom was very near shouting to be set down when he found
+      himself back in the blanket, but thought of East, and didn't; and so took
+      his three tosses without a kick or a cry, and was called a young trump for
+      his pains.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0161m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0161m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0161.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      He and East, having earned it, stood now looking on. No catastrophe
+      happened, as all the captives were cool hands, and didn't struggle. This
+      didn't suit Flashman. What your real bully likes in tossing is when the
+      boys kick and struggle, or hold on to one side of the blanket, and so get
+      pitched bodily on to the floor; it's no fun to him when no one is hurt or
+      frightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's toss two of them together, Walker,&rdquo; suggested he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a cursed bully you are, Flashey!&rdquo; rejoined the other. &ldquo;Up with
+      another one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so now two boys were tossed together, the peculiar hardship of which
+      is, that it's too much for human nature to lie still then and share
+      troubles; and so the wretched pair of small boys struggle in the air which
+      shall fall a-top in the descent, to the no small risk of both falling out
+      of the blanket, and the huge delight of brutes like Flashman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now there's a cry that the praepostor of the room is coming; so the
+      tossing stops, and all scatter to their different rooms; and Tom is left
+      to turn in, with the first day's experience of a public school to meditate
+      upon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0166m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0166m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0166.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII&mdash;SETTLING TO THE COLLAR.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Says Giles, ''Tis mortal hard to go,
+     But if so be's I must
+     I means to follow arter he
+     As goes hisself the fust.'&rdquo;&mdash;Ballad.
+</pre>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+      <img src="images/9166m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="9166m " width="100%" />
+      <a href="images/9166.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      verybody, I suppose, knows the dreamy, delicious state in which one lies,
+      half asleep, half awake, while consciousness begins to return after a
+      sound night's rest in a new place which we are glad to be in, following
+      upon a day of unwonted excitement and exertion. There are few pleasanter
+      pieces of life. The worst of it is that they last such a short time; for
+      nurse them as you will, by lying perfectly passive in mind and body, you
+      can't make more than five minutes or so of them. After which time the
+      stupid, obtrusive, wakeful entity which we call &ldquo;I&rdquo;, as impatient as he is
+      stiff-necked, spite of our teeth will force himself back again, and take
+      possession of us down to our very toes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in this state that Master Tom lay at half-past seven on the morning
+      following the day of his arrival, and from his clean little white bed
+      watched the movements of Bogle (the generic name by which the successive
+      shoeblacks of the School-house were known), as he marched round from bed
+      to bed, collecting the dirty shoes and boots, and depositing clean ones in
+      their places.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There he lay, half doubtful as to where exactly in the universe he was,
+      but conscious that he had made a step in life which he had been anxious to
+      make. It was only just light as he looked lazily out of the wide windows,
+      and saw the tops of the great elms, and the rooks circling about and
+      cawing remonstrances to the lazy ones of their commonwealth before
+      starting in a body for the neighbouring ploughed fields. The noise of the
+      room-door closing behind Bogle, as he made his exit with the shoebasket
+      under his arm, roused him thoroughly, and he sat up in bed and looked
+      round the room. What in the world could be the matter with his shoulders
+      and loins? He felt as if he had been severely beaten all down his back&mdash;the
+      natural results of his performance at his first match. He drew up his
+      knees and rested his chin on them, and went over all the events of
+      yesterday, rejoicing in his new life, what he had seen of it, and all that
+      was to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently one or two of the other boys roused themselves, and began to sit
+      up and talk to one another in low tones. Then East, after a roll or two,
+      came to an anchor also, and nodding to Tom, began examining his ankle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a pull,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;that it's lie-in-bed, for I shall be as lame as a
+      tree, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Sunday morning, and Sunday lectures had not yet been established;
+      so that nothing but breakfast intervened between bed and eleven o'clock
+      chapel&mdash;a gap by no means easy to fill up: in fact, though received
+      with the correct amount of grumbling, the first lecture instituted by the
+      Doctor shortly afterwards was a great boon to the School. It was
+      lie-in-bed, and no one was in a hurry to get up, especially in rooms where
+      the sixth-form boy was a good-tempered fellow, as was the case in Tom's
+      room, and allowed the small boys to talk and laugh and do pretty much what
+      they pleased, so long as they didn't disturb him. His bed was a bigger one
+      than the rest, standing in the corner by the fireplace, with a
+      washing-stand and large basin by the side, where he lay in state with his
+      white curtains tucked in so as to form a retiring place&mdash;an awful
+      subject of contemplation to Tom, who slept nearly opposite, and watched
+      the great man rouse himself and take a book from under his pillow, and
+      begin reading, leaning his head on his hand, and turning his back to the
+      room. Soon, however, a noise of striving urchins arose, and muttered
+      encouragements from the neighbouring boys of &ldquo;Go it, Tadpole!&rdquo; &ldquo;Now, young
+      Green!&rdquo; &ldquo;Haul away his blanket!&rdquo; &ldquo;Slipper him on the hands!&rdquo; Young Green
+      and little Hall, commonly called Tadpole, from his great black head and
+      thin legs, slept side by side far away by the door, and were for ever
+      playing one another tricks, which usually ended, as on this morning, in
+      open and violent collision; and now, unmindful of all order and authority,
+      there they were, each hauling away at the other's bedclothes with one
+      hand, and with the other, armed with a slipper, belabouring whatever
+      portion of the body of his adversary came within reach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold that noise up in the corner,&rdquo; called out the praepostor, sitting up
+      and looking round his curtains; and the Tadpole and young Green sank down
+      into their disordered beds; and then, looking at his watch, added, &ldquo;Hullo!
+      past eight. Whose turn for hot water?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      (Where the praepostor was particular in his ablutions, the fags in his room
+      had to descend in turn to the kitchen, and beg or steal hot water for him;
+      and often the custom extended farther, and two boys went down every
+      morning to get a supply for the whole room.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;East's and Tadpole's,&rdquo; answered the senior fag, who kept the rota.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't go,&rdquo; said East; &ldquo;I'm dead lame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, be quick some of you, that's all,&rdquo; said the great man, as he turned
+      out of bed, and putting on his slippers, went out into the great passage,
+      which runs the whole length of the bedrooms, to get his Sunday habiliments
+      out of his portmanteau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me go for you,&rdquo; said Tom to East; &ldquo;I should like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, thank 'ee, that's a good fellow. Just pull on your trousers, and
+      take your jug and mine. Tadpole will show you the way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so Tom and the Tadpole, in nightshirts and trousers, started off
+      downstairs, and through &ldquo;Thos's hole,&rdquo; as the little buttery, where
+      candles and beer and bread and cheese were served out at night, was
+      called, across the School-house court, down a long passage, and into the
+      kitchen; where, after some parley with the stalwart, handsome cook, who
+      declared that she had filled a dozen jugs already, they got their hot
+      water, and returned with all speed and great caution. As it was, they
+      narrowly escaped capture by some privateers from the fifth-form rooms, who
+      were on the lookout for the hot-water convoys, and pursued them up to the
+      very door of their room, making them spill half their load in the passage.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0169m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0169m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0169.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better than going down again though,&rdquo; as Tadpole remarked, &ldquo;as we should
+      have had to do if those beggars had caught us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time that the calling-over bell rang, Tom and his new comrades were
+      all down, dressed in their best clothes, and he had the satisfaction of
+      answering &ldquo;here&rdquo; to his name for the first time, the praepostor of the week
+      having put it in at the bottom of his list. And then came breakfast and a
+      saunter about the close and town with East, whose lameness only became
+      severe when any fagging had to be done. And so they whiled away the time
+      until morning chapel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a fine November morning, and the close soon became alive with boys
+      of all ages, who sauntered about on the grass, or walked round the gravel
+      walk, in parties of two or three. East, still doing the cicerone, pointed
+      out all the remarkable characters to Tom as they passed: Osbert, who could
+      throw a cricket-ball from the little-side ground over the rook-trees to
+      the Doctor's wall; Gray, who had got the Balliol scholarship, and, what
+      East evidently thought of much more importance, a half-holiday for the
+      School by his success; Thorne, who had run ten miles in two minutes over
+      the hour; Black, who had held his own against the cock of the town in the
+      last row with the louts; and many more heroes, who then and there walked
+      about and were worshipped, all trace of whom has long since vanished from
+      the scene of their fame. And the fourth-form boy who reads their names
+      rudely cut on the old hall tables, or painted upon the big-side cupboard
+      (if hall tables and big-side cupboards still exist), wonders what manner
+      of boys they were. It will be the same with you who wonder, my sons,
+      whatever your prowess may be in cricket, or scholarship, or football. Two
+      or three years, more or less, and then the steadily advancing, blessed
+      wave will pass over your names as it has passed over ours. Nevertheless,
+      play your games and do your work manfully&mdash;see only that that be done&mdash;and
+      let the remembrance of it take care of itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chapel-bell began to ring at a quarter to eleven, and Tom got in early
+      and took his place in the lowest row, and watched all the other boys come
+      in and take their places, filling row after row; and tried to construe the
+      Greek text which was inscribed over the door with the slightest possible
+      success, and wondered which of the masters, who walked down the chapel and
+      took their seats in the exalted boxes at the end, would be his lord. And
+      then came the closing of the doors, and the Doctor in his robes, and the
+      service, which, however, didn't impress him much, for his feeling of
+      wonder and curiosity was too strong. And the boy on one side of him was
+      scratching his name on the oak panelling in front, and he couldn't help
+      watching to see what the name was, and whether it was well scratched; and
+      the boy on the other side went to sleep, and kept falling against him; and
+      on the whole, though many boys even in that part of the school were
+      serious and attentive, the general atmosphere was by no means devotional;
+      and when he got out into the close again, he didn't feel at all
+      comfortable, or as if he had been to church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at afternoon chapel it was quite another thing. He had spent the time
+      after dinner in writing home to his mother, and so was in a better frame
+      of mind; and his first curiosity was over, and he could attend more to the
+      service. As the hymn after the prayers was being sung, and the chapel was
+      getting a little dark, he was beginning to feel that he had been really
+      worshipping. And then came that great event in his, as in every Rugby
+      boy's life of that day&mdash;the first sermon from the Doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More worthy pens than mine have described that scene&mdash;the oak pulpit
+      standing out by itself above the School seats; the tall, gallant form, the
+      kindling eye, the voice, now soft as the low notes of a flute, now clear
+      and stirring as the call of the light-infantry bugle, of him who stood
+      there Sunday after Sunday, witnessing and pleading for his Lord, the King
+      of righteousness and love and glory, with whose Spirit he was filled, and
+      in whose power he spoke; the long lines of young faces, rising tier above
+      tier down the whole length of the chapel, from the little boy's who had
+      just left his mother to the young man's who was going out next week into
+      the great world, rejoicing in his strength. It was a great and solemn
+      sight, and never more so than at this time of year, when the only lights
+      in the chapel were in the pulpit and at the seats of the praepostors of the
+      week, and the soft twilight stole over the rest of the chapel, deepening
+      into darkness in the high gallery behind the organ.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what was it, after all, which seized and held these three hundred
+      boys, dragging them out of themselves, willing or unwilling, for twenty
+      minutes, on Sunday afternoons? True, there always were boys scattered up
+      and down the School, who in heart and head were worthy to hear and able to
+      carry away the deepest and wisest words there spoken. But these were a
+      minority always, generally a very small one, often so small a one as to be
+      countable on the fingers of your hand. What was it that moved and held us,
+      the rest of the three hundred reckless, childish boys, who feared the
+      Doctor with all our hearts, and very little besides in heaven or earth;
+      who thought more of our sets in the School than of the Church of Christ,
+      and put the traditions of Rugby and the public opinion of boys in our
+      daily life above the laws of God? We couldn't enter into half that we
+      heard; we hadn't the knowledge of our own hearts or the knowledge of one
+      another, and little enough of the faith, hope, and love needed to that
+      end. But we listened, as all boys in their better moods will listen (ay,
+      and men too for the matter of that), to a man whom we felt to be, with all
+      his heart and soul and strength, striving against whatever was mean and
+      unmanly and unrighteous in our little world. It was not the cold, clear
+      voice of one giving advice and warning from serene heights to those who
+      were struggling and sinning below, but the warm, living voice of one who
+      was fighting for us and by our sides, and calling on us to help him and
+      ourselves and one another. And so, wearily and little by little, but
+      surely and steadily on the whole, was brought home to the young boy, for
+      the first time, the meaning of his life&mdash;that it was no fool's or
+      sluggard's paradise into which he had wandered by chance, but a
+      battlefield ordained from of old, where there are no spectators, but the
+      youngest must take his side, and the stakes are life and death. And he who
+      roused this consciousness in them showed them at the same time, by every
+      word he spoke in the pulpit, and by his whole daily life, how that battle
+      was to be fought, and stood there before them their fellow-soldier and the
+      captain of their band&mdash;the true sort of captain, too, for a boy's
+      army&mdash;one who had no misgivings, and gave no uncertain word of
+      command, and, let who would yield or make truce, would fight the fight out
+      (so every boy felt) to the last gasp and the last drop of blood. Other
+      sides of his character might take hold of and influence boys here and
+      there; but it was this thoroughness and undaunted courage which, more than
+      anything else, won his way to the hearts of the great mass of those on
+      whom he left his mark, and made them believe first in him and then in his
+      Master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was this quality above all others which moved such boys as our hero,
+      who had nothing whatever remarkable about him except excess of boyishness&mdash;by
+      which I mean animal life in its fullest measure, good nature and honest
+      impulses, hatred of injustice and meanness, and thoughtlessness enough to
+      sink a three-decker. And so, during the next two years, in which it was
+      more than doubtful whether he would get good or evil from the School, and
+      before any steady purpose or principle grew up in him, whatever his week's
+      sins and shortcomings might have been, he hardly ever left the chapel on
+      Sunday evenings without a serious resolve to stand by and follow the
+      Doctor, and a feeling that it was only cowardice (the incarnation of all
+      other sins in such a boy's mind) which hindered him from doing so with all
+      his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day Tom was duly placed in the third form, and began his lessons
+      in a corner of the big School. He found the work very easy, as he had been
+      well grounded, and knew his grammar by heart; and, as he had no intimate
+      companions to make him idle (East and his other School-house friends being
+      in the lower fourth, the form above him), soon gained golden opinions from
+      his master, who said he was placed too low, and should be put out at the
+      end of the half-year. So all went well with him in School, and he wrote
+      the most flourishing letters home to his mother, full of his own success
+      and the unspeakable delights of a public school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the house, too, all went well. The end of the half-year was drawing
+      near, which kept everybody in a good humour, and the house was ruled well
+      and strongly by Warner and Brooke. True, the general system was rough and
+      hard, and there was bullying in nooks and corners&mdash;bad signs for the
+      future; but it never got farther, or dared show itself openly, stalking
+      about the passages and hall and bedrooms, and making the life of the small
+      boys a continual fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom, as a new boy, was of right excused fagging for the first month, but
+      in his enthusiasm for his new life this privilege hardly pleased him; and
+      East and others of his young friends, discovering this, kindly allowed him
+      to indulge his fancy, and take their turns at night fagging and cleaning
+      studies. These were the principal duties of the fags in the house. From
+      supper until nine o'clock three fags taken in order stood in the passages,
+      and answered any praepostor who called &ldquo;Fag,&rdquo; racing to the door, the last
+      comer having to do the work. This consisted generally of going to the
+      buttery for beer and bread and cheese (for the great men did not sup with
+      the rest, but had each his own allowance in his study or the fifth-form
+      room), cleaning candlesticks and putting in new candles, toasting cheese,
+      bottling beer, and carrying messages about the house; and Tom, in the
+      first blush of his hero-worship, felt it a high privilege to receive
+      orders from and be the bearer of the supper of old Brooke. And besides
+      this night-work, each praepostor had three or four fags specially allotted
+      to him, of whom he was supposed to be the guide, philosopher, and friend,
+      and who in return for these good offices had to clean out his study every
+      morning by turns, directly after first lesson and before he returned from
+      breakfast. And the pleasure of seeing the great men's studies, and looking
+      at their pictures, and peeping into their books, made Tom a ready
+      substitute for any boy who was too lazy to do his own work. And so he soon
+      gained the character of a good-natured, willing fellow, who was ready to
+      do a turn for any one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In all the games, too, he joined with all his heart, and soon became well
+      versed in all the mysteries of football, by continual practice at the
+      School-house little-side, which played daily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only incident worth recording here, however, was his first run at
+      hare-and-hounds. On the last Tuesday but one of the half-year he was
+      passing through the hall after dinner, when he was hailed with shouts from
+      Tadpole and several other fags seated at one of the long tables, the
+      chorus of which was, &ldquo;Come and help us tear up scent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom approached the table in obedience to the mysterious summons, always
+      ready to help, and found the party engaged in tearing up old newspapers,
+      copy-books, and magazines, into small pieces, with which they were filling
+      four large canvas bags.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the turn of our house to find scent for big-side hare-and-hounds,&rdquo;
+       exclaimed Tadpole. &ldquo;Tear away; there's no time to lose before
+      calling-over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it's a great shame,&rdquo; said another small boy, &ldquo;to have such a hard
+      run for the last day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which run is it?&rdquo; said Tadpole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the Barby run, I hear,&rdquo; answered the other; &ldquo;nine miles at least, and
+      hard ground; no chance of getting in at the finish, unless you're a
+      first-rate scud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm going to have a try,&rdquo; said Tadpole; &ldquo;it's the last run of the
+      half, and if a fellow gets in at the end big-side stands ale and bread and
+      cheese and a bowl of punch; and the Cock's such a famous place for ale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to try too,&rdquo; said Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, leave your waistcoat behind, and listen at the door, after
+      calling-over, and you'll hear where the meet is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After calling-over, sure enough there were two boys at the door, calling
+      out, &ldquo;Big-side hare-and-hounds meet at White Hall;&rdquo; and Tom, having girded
+      himself with leather strap, and left all superfluous clothing behind, set
+      off for White Hall, an old gable-ended house some quarter of a mile from
+      the town, with East, whom he had persuaded to join, notwithstanding his
+      prophecy that they could never get in, as it was the hardest run of the
+      year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the meet they found some forty or fifty boys, and Tom felt sure, from
+      having seen many of them run at football, that he and East were more
+      likely to get in than they.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a few minutes' waiting, two well-known runners, chosen for the
+      hares, buckled on the four bags filled with scent, compared their watches
+      with those of young Brooke and Thorne, and started off at a long, slinging
+      trot across the fields in the direction of Barby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the hounds clustered round Thorne, who explained shortly, &ldquo;They're to
+      have six minutes' law. We run into the Cock, and every one who comes in
+      within a quarter of an hour of the hares'll be counted, if he has been
+      round Barby church.&rdquo; Then came a minute's pause or so, and then the
+      watches are pocketed, and the pack is led through the gateway into the
+      field which the hares had first crossed. Here they break into a trot,
+      scattering over the field to find the first traces of the scent which the
+      hares throw out as they go along. The old hounds make straight for the
+      likely points, and in a minute a cry of &ldquo;Forward&rdquo; comes from one of them,
+      and the whole pack, quickening their pace, make for the spot, while the
+      boy who hit the scent first, and the two or three nearest to him, are over
+      the first fence, and making play along the hedgerow in the long
+      grass-field beyond. The rest of the pack rush at the gap already made, and
+      scramble through, jostling one another. &ldquo;Forward&rdquo; again, before they are
+      half through. The pace quickens into a sharp run, the tail hounds all
+      straining to get up to the lucky leaders. They are gallant hares, and the
+      scent lies thick right across another meadow and into a ploughed field,
+      where the pace begins to tell; then over a good wattle with a ditch on the
+      other side, and down a large pasture studded with old thorns, which slopes
+      down to the first brook. The great Leicestershire sheep charge away across
+      the field as the pack comes racing down the slope. The brook is a small
+      one, and the scent lies right ahead up the opposite slope, and as thick as
+      ever&mdash;not a turn or a check to favour the tail hounds, who strain on,
+      now trailing in a long line, many a youngster beginning to drag his legs
+      heavily, and feel his heart beat like a hammer, and the bad-plucked ones
+      thinking that after all it isn't worth while to keep it up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom, East, and the Tadpole had a good start, and are well up for such
+      young hands, and after rising the slope and crossing the next field, find
+      themselves up with the leading hounds, who have overrun the scent, and are
+      trying back. They have come a mile and a half in about eleven minutes, a
+      pace which shows that it is the last day. About twenty-five of the
+      original starters only show here, the rest having already given in; the
+      leaders are busy making casts into the fields on the left and right, and
+      the others get their second winds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then comes the cry of &ldquo;Forward&rdquo; again from young Brooke, from the extreme
+      left, and the pack settles down to work again steadily and doggedly, the
+      whole keeping pretty well together. The scent, though still good, is not
+      so thick; there is no need of that, for in this part of the run every one
+      knows the line which must be taken, and so there are no casts to be made,
+      but good downright running and fencing to be done. All who are now up mean
+      coming in, and they come to the foot of Barby Hill without losing more
+      than two or three more of the pack. This last straight two miles and a
+      half is always a vantage ground for the hounds, and the hares know it
+      well; they are generally viewed on the side of Barby Hill, and all eyes
+      are on the lookout for them to-day. But not a sign of them appears, so now
+      will be the hard work for the hounds, and there is nothing for it but to
+      cast about for the scent, for it is now the hares' turn, and they may
+      baffle the pack dreadfully in the next two miles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ill fares it now with our youngsters, that they are School-house boys, and
+      so follow young Brooke, for he takes the wide casts round to the left,
+      conscious of his own powers, and loving the hard work. For if you would
+      consider for a moment, you small boys, you would remember that the Cock,
+      where the run ends and the good ale will be going, lies far out to the
+      right on the Dunchurch road, so that every cast you take to the left is so
+      much extra work. And at this stage of the run, when the evening is closing
+      in already, no one remarks whether you run a little cunning or not; so you
+      should stick to those crafty hounds who keep edging away to the right, and
+      not follow a prodigal like young Brooke, whose legs are twice as long as
+      yours and of cast-iron, wholly indifferent to one or two miles more or
+      less. However, they struggle after him, sobbing and plunging along, Tom
+      and East pretty close, and Tadpole, whose big head begins to pull him
+      down, some thirty yards behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now comes a brook, with stiff clay banks, from which they can hardly drag
+      their legs, and they hear faint cries for help from the wretched Tadpole,
+      who has fairly stuck fast. But they have too little run left in themselves
+      to pull up for their own brothers. Three fields more, and another check,
+      and then &ldquo;Forward&rdquo; called away to the extreme right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two boys' souls die within them; they can never do it. Young Brooke
+      thinks so too, and says kindly, &ldquo;You'll cross a lane after next field;
+      keep down it, and you'll hit the Dunchurch road below the Cock,&rdquo; and then
+      steams away for the run in, in which he's sure to be first, as if he were
+      just starting. They struggle on across the next field, the &ldquo;forwards&rdquo;
+       getting fainter and fainter, and then ceasing. The whole hunt is out of
+      ear-shot, and all hope of coming in is over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hang it all!&rdquo; broke out East, as soon as he had got wind enough, pulling
+      off his hat and mopping at his face, all spattered with dirt and lined
+      with sweat, from which went up a thick steam into the still, cold air. &ldquo;I
+      told you how it would be. What a thick I was to come! Here we are, dead
+      beat, and yet I know we're close to the run in, if we knew the country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Tom, mopping away, and gulping down his disappointment, &ldquo;it
+      can't be helped. We did our best anyhow. Hadn't we better find this lane,
+      and go down it, as young Brooke told us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so&mdash;nothing else for it,&rdquo; grunted East. &ldquo;If ever I go out
+      last day again.&rdquo; Growl, growl, growl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So they tried back slowly and sorrowfully, and found the lane, and went
+      limping down it, plashing in the cold puddly ruts, and beginning to feel
+      how the run had taken it out of them. The evening closed in fast, and
+      clouded over, dark, cold, and dreary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, it must be locking-up, I should think,&rdquo; remarked East, breaking
+      the silence&mdash;&ldquo;it's so dark.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What if we're late?&rdquo; said Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No tea, and sent up to the Doctor,&rdquo; answered East.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The thought didn't add to their cheerfulness. Presently a faint halloo was
+      heard from an adjoining field. They answered it and stopped, hoping for
+      some competent rustic to guide them, when over a gate some twenty yards
+      ahead crawled the wretched Tadpole, in a state of collapse. He had lost a
+      shoe in the brook, and had been groping after it up to his elbows in the
+      stiff, wet clay, and a more miserable creature in the shape of boy seldom
+      has been seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sight of him, notwithstanding, cheered them, for he was some degrees
+      more wretched than they. They also cheered him, as he was no longer under
+      the dread of passing his night alone in the fields. And so, in better
+      heart, the three plashed painfully down the never-ending lane. At last it
+      widened, just as utter darkness set in, and they came out on a turnpike
+      road, and there paused, bewildered, for they had lost all bearings, and
+      knew not whether to turn to the right or left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Luckily for them they had not to decide, for lumbering along the road,
+      with one lamp lighted and two spavined horses in the shafts, came a heavy
+      coach, which after a moment's suspense they recognized as the Oxford
+      coach, the redoubtable Pig and Whistle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It lumbered slowly up, and the boys, mustering their last run, caught it
+      as it passed, and began clambering up behind, in which exploit East missed
+      his footing and fell flat on his nose along the road. Then the others
+      hailed the old scarecrow of a coachman, who pulled up and agreed to take
+      them in for a shilling; so there they sat on the back seat, drubbing with
+      their heels, and their teeth chattering with cold, and jogged into Rugby
+      some forty minutes after locking-up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five minutes afterwards three small, limping, shivering figures steal
+      along through the Doctor's garden, and into the house by the servants'
+      entrance (all the other gates have been closed long since), where the
+      first thing they light upon in the passage is old Thomas, ambling along,
+      candle in one hand and keys in the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stops and examines their condition with a grim smile. &ldquo;Ah! East, Hall,
+      and Brown, late for locking-up. Must go up to the Doctor's study at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well but, Thomas, mayn't we go and wash first? You can put down the time,
+      you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doctor's study d'rectly you come in&mdash;that's the orders,&rdquo; replied old
+      Thomas, motioning towards the stairs at the end of the passage which led
+      up into the Doctor's house; and the boys turned ruefully down it, not
+      cheered by the old verger's muttered remark, &ldquo;What a pickle they boys be
+      in!&rdquo; Thomas referred to their faces and habiliments, but they construed it
+      as indicating the Doctor's state of mind. Upon the short flight of stairs
+      they paused to hold counsel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who'll go in first?&rdquo; inquires Tadpole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&mdash;you're the senior,&rdquo; answered East.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Catch me. Look at the state I'm in,&rdquo; rejoined Hall, showing the arms of
+      his jacket. &ldquo;I must get behind you two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, but look at me,&rdquo; said East, indicating the mass of clay behind
+      which he was standing; &ldquo;I'm worse than you, two to one. You might grow
+      cabbages on my trousers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all down below, and you can keep your legs behind the sofa,&rdquo; said
+      Hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, Brown; you're the show-figure. You must lead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But my face is all muddy,&rdquo; argued Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, we're all in one boat for that matter; but come on; we're only making
+      it worse, dawdling here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, just give us a brush then,&rdquo; said Tom. And they began trying to rub
+      off the superfluous dirt from each other's jackets; but it was not dry
+      enough, and the rubbing made them worse; so in despair they pushed through
+      the swing-door at the head of the stairs, and found themselves in the
+      Doctor's hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the library door,&rdquo; said East in a whisper, pushing Tom forwards.
+      The sound of merry voices and laughter came from within, and his first
+      hesitating knock was unanswered. But at the second, the Doctor's voice
+      said, &ldquo;Come in;&rdquo; and Tom turned the handle, and he, with the others behind
+      him, sidled into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Doctor looked up from his task; he was working away with a great
+      chisel at the bottom of a boy's sailing boat, the lines of which he was no
+      doubt fashioning on the model of one of Nicias's galleys. Round him stood
+      three or four children; the candles burnt brightly on a large table at the
+      farther end, covered with books and papers, and a great fire threw a ruddy
+      glow over the rest of the room. All looked so kindly, and homely, and
+      comfortable that the boys took heart in a moment, and Tom advanced from
+      behind the shelter of the great sofa. The Doctor nodded to the children,
+      who went out, casting curious and amused glances at the three young
+      scarecrows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my little fellows,&rdquo; began the Doctor, drawing himself up with his
+      back to the fire, the chisel in one hand and his coat-tails in the other,
+      and his eyes twinkling as he looked them over; &ldquo;what makes you so late?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please, sir, we've been out big-side hare-and-hounds, and lost our way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hah! you couldn't keep up, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; said East, stepping out, and not liking that the Doctor
+      should think lightly of his running powers, &ldquo;we got round Barby all right;
+      but then&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what a state you're in, my boy!&rdquo; interrupted the Doctor, as the
+      pitiful condition of East's garments was fully revealed to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the fall I got, sir, in the road,&rdquo; said East, looking down at
+      himself; &ldquo;the Old Pig came by&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The what?&rdquo; said the Doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Oxford coach, sir,&rdquo; explained Hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hah! yes, the Regulator,&rdquo; said the Doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I tumbled on my face, trying to get up behind,&rdquo; went on East.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're not hurt, I hope?&rdquo; said the Doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well now, run upstairs, all three of you, and get clean things on, and
+      then tell the housekeeper to give you some tea. You're too young to try
+      such long runs. Let Warner know I've seen you. Good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night, sir.&rdquo; And away scuttled the three boys in high glee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a brick, not to give us even twenty lines to learn!&rdquo; said the
+      Tadpole, as they reached their bedroom; and in half an hour afterwards
+      they were sitting by the fire in the housekeeper's room at a sumptuous
+      tea, with cold meat&mdash;&ldquo;Twice as good a grub as we should have got in
+      the hall,&rdquo; as the Tadpole remarked with a grin, his mouth full of buttered
+      toast. All their grievances were forgotten, and they were resolving to go
+      out the first big-side next half, and thinking hare-and-hounds the most
+      delightful of games.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A day or two afterwards the great passage outside the bedrooms was cleared
+      of the boxes and portmanteaus, which went down to be packed by the matron,
+      and great games of chariot-racing, and cock-fighting, and bolstering went
+      on in the vacant space, the sure sign of a closing half-year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came the making up of parties for the journey home, and Tom joined a
+      party who were to hire a coach, and post with four horses to Oxford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the last Saturday, on which the Doctor came round to each form to
+      give out the prizes, and hear the master's last reports of how they and
+      their charges had been conducting themselves; and Tom, to his huge
+      delight, was praised, and got his remove into the lower fourth, in which
+      all his School-house friends were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the next Tuesday morning at four o'clock hot coffee was going on in the
+      housekeeper's and matron's rooms; boys wrapped in great-coats and mufflers
+      were swallowing hasty mouthfuls, rushing about, tumbling over luggage, and
+      asking questions all at once of the matron; outside the School-gates were
+      drawn up several chaises and the four-horse coach which Tom's party had
+      chartered, the postboys in their best jackets and breeches, and a
+      cornopean player, hired for the occasion, blowing away &ldquo;A southerly wind
+      and a cloudy sky,&rdquo; waking all peaceful inhabitants half-way down the High
+      Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every minute the bustle and hubbub increased: porters staggered about with
+      boxes and bags, the cornopean played louder. Old Thomas sat in his den
+      with a great yellow bag by his side, out of which he was paying
+      journey-money to each boy, comparing by the light of a solitary dip the
+      dirty, crabbed little list in his own handwriting with the Doctor's list
+      and the amount of his cash; his head was on one side, his mouth screwed
+      up, and his spectacles dim from early toil. He had prudently locked the
+      door, and carried on his operations solely through the window, or he would
+      have been driven wild and lost all his money.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0185m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0185m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0185.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thomas, do be quick; we shall never catch the Highflyer at Dunchurch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's your money all right, Green.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo, Thomas, the Doctor said I was to have two pound ten; you've only
+      given me two pound.&rdquo; (I fear that Master Green is not confining himself
+      strictly to truth.) Thomas turns his head more on one side than ever, and
+      spells away at the dirty list. Green is forced away from the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, Thomas&mdash;never mind him; mine's thirty shillings.&rdquo; &ldquo;And mine
+      too,&rdquo; &ldquo;And mine,&rdquo; shouted others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One way or another, the party to which Tom belonged all got packed and
+      paid, and sallied out to the gates, the cornopean playing frantically
+      &ldquo;Drops of Brandy,&rdquo; in allusion, probably, to the slight potations in which
+      the musician and postboys had been already indulging. All luggage was
+      carefully stowed away inside the coach and in the front and hind boots, so
+      that not a hat-box was visible outside. Five or six small boys, with
+      pea-shooters, and the cornopean player, got up behind; in front the big
+      boys, mostly smoking, not for pleasure, but because they are now gentlemen
+      at large, and this is the most correct public method of notifying the
+      fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Robinson's coach will be down the road in a minute; it has gone up to
+      Bird's to pick up. We'll wait till they're close, and make a race of it,&rdquo;
+       says the leader. &ldquo;Now, boys, half a sovereign apiece if you beat 'em into
+      Dunchurch by one hundred yards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, sir,&rdquo; shouted the grinning postboys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down comes Robinson's coach in a minute or two, with a rival cornopean,
+      and away go the two vehicles, horses galloping, boys cheering, horns
+      playing loud. There is a special providence over school-boys as well as
+      sailors, or they must have upset twenty times in the first five miles&mdash;sometimes
+      actually abreast of one another, and the boys on the roofs exchanging
+      volleys of peas; now nearly running over a post-chaise which had started
+      before them; now half-way up a bank; now with a wheel and a half over a
+      yawning ditch: and all this in a dark morning, with nothing but their own
+      lamps to guide them. However, it's all over at last, and they have run
+      over nothing but an old pig in Southam Street. The last peas are
+      distributed in the Corn Market at Oxford, where they arrive between eleven
+      and twelve, and sit down to a sumptuous breakfast at the Angel, which they
+      are made to pay for accordingly. Here the party breaks up, all going now
+      different ways; and Tom orders out a chaise and pair as grand as a lord,
+      though he has scarcely five shillings left in his pocket, and more than
+      twenty miles to get home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where to, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Red Lion, Farringdon,&rdquo; says Tom, giving hostler a shilling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, sir.&mdash;Red Lion, Jem,&rdquo; to the postboy; and Tom rattles
+      away towards home. At Farringdon, being known to the innkeeper, he gets
+      that worthy to pay for the Oxford horses, and forward him in another
+      chaise at once; and so the gorgeous young gentleman arrives at the
+      paternal mansion, and Squire Brown looks rather blue at having to pay two
+      pound ten shillings for the posting expenses from Oxford. But the boy's
+      intense joy at getting home, and the wonderful health he is in, and the
+      good character he brings, and the brave stories he tells of Rugby, its
+      doings and delights, soon mollify the Squire, and three happier people
+      didn't sit down to dinner that day in England (it is the boy's first
+      dinner at six o'clock at home&mdash;great promotion already) than the
+      Squire and his wife and Tom Brown, at the end of his first half-year at
+      Rugby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0190m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0190m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0190.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII&mdash;THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;They are slaves who will not choose
+     Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
+     Rather than in silence shrink
+     From the truth they needs must think;
+     They are slaves who dare not be
+     In the right with two or three.&rdquo;
+      &mdash;LOWELL, Stanzas on Freedom.
+</pre>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+      <img src="images/9190m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="9190m " width="100%" />
+      <a href="images/9190.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      he lower-fourth form, in which Tom found himself at the beginning of the
+      next half-year, was the largest form in the lower school, and numbered
+      upwards of forty boys. Young gentlemen of all ages from nine to fifteen
+      were to be found there, who expended such part of their energies as was
+      devoted to Latin and Greek upon a book of Livy, the &ldquo;Bucolics&rdquo; of Virgil,
+      and the &ldquo;Hecuba&rdquo; of Euripides, which were ground out in small daily
+      portions. The driving of this unlucky lower-fourth must have been grievous
+      work to the unfortunate master, for it was the most unhappily constituted
+      of any in the school. Here stuck the great stupid boys, who, for the life
+      of them, could never master the accidence&mdash;the objects alternately of
+      mirth and terror to the youngsters, who were daily taking them up and
+      laughing at them in lesson, and getting kicked by them for so doing in
+      play-hours. There were no less than three unhappy fellows in tail coats,
+      with incipient down on their chins, whom the Doctor and the master of the
+      form were always endeavouring to hoist into the upper school, but whose
+      parsing and construing resisted the most well-meant shoves. Then came the
+      mass of the form, boys of eleven and twelve, the most mischievous and
+      reckless age of British youth, of whom East and Tom Brown were fair
+      specimens. As full of tricks as monkeys, and of excuses as Irishwomen,
+      making fun of their master, one another, and their lessons, Argus himself
+      would have been puzzled to keep an eye on them; and as for making them
+      steady or serious for half an hour together, it was simply hopeless. The
+      remainder of the form consisted of young prodigies of nine and ten, who
+      were going up the school at the rate of a form a half-year, all boys'
+      hands and wits being against them in their progress. It would have been
+      one man's work to see that the precocious youngsters had fair play; and as
+      the master had a good deal besides to do, they hadn't, and were for ever
+      being shoved down three or four places, their verses stolen, their books
+      inked, their jackets whitened, and their lives otherwise made a burden to
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lower-fourth, and all the forms below it, were heard in the great
+      school, and were not trusted to prepare their lessons before coming in,
+      but were whipped into school three-quarters of an hour before the lesson
+      began by their respective masters, and there, scattered about on the
+      benches, with dictionary and grammar, hammered out their twenty lines of
+      Virgil and Euripides in the midst of babel. The masters of the lower
+      school walked up and down the great school together during this
+      three-quarters of an hour, or sat in their desks reading or looking over
+      copies, and keeping such order as was possible. But the lower-fourth was
+      just now an overgrown form, too large for any one man to attend to
+      properly, and consequently the elysium or ideal form of the young
+      scapegraces who formed the staple of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom, as has been said, had come up from the third with a good character,
+      but the temptations of the lower-fourth soon proved too strong for him,
+      and he rapidly fell away, and became as unmanageable as the rest. For some
+      weeks, indeed, he succeeded in maintaining the appearance of steadiness,
+      and was looked upon favourably by his new master, whose eyes were first
+      opened by the following little incident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides the desk which the master himself occupied, there was another
+      large unoccupied desk in the corner of the great school, which was
+      untenanted. To rush and seize upon this desk, which was ascended by three
+      steps and held four boys, was the great object of ambition of the
+      lower-fourthers; and the contentions for the occupation of it bred such
+      disorder that at last the master forbade its use altogether. This, of
+      course, was a challenge to the more adventurous spirits to occupy it; and
+      as it was capacious enough for two boys to lie hid there completely, it
+      was seldom that it remained empty, notwithstanding the veto. Small holes
+      were cut in the front, through which the occupants watched the masters as
+      they walked up and down; and as lesson time approached, one boy at a time
+      stole out and down the steps, as the masters' backs were turned, and
+      mingled with the general crowd on the forms below. Tom and East had
+      successfully occupied the desk some half-dozen times, and were grown so
+      reckless that they were in the habit of playing small games with fives
+      balls inside when the masters were at the other end of the big school. One
+      day, as ill-luck would have it, the game became more exciting than usual,
+      and the ball slipped through East's fingers, and rolled slowly down the
+      steps and out into the middle of the school, just as the masters turned in
+      their walk and faced round upon the desk. The young delinquents watched
+      their master, through the lookout holes, march slowly down the school
+      straight upon their retreat, while all the boys in the neighbourhood, of
+      course, stopped their work to look on; and not only were they
+      ignominiously drawn out, and caned over the hand then and there, but their
+      characters for steadiness were gone from that time. However, as they only
+      shared the fate of some three-fourths of the rest of the form, this did
+      not weigh heavily upon them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In fact, the only occasions on which they cared about the matter were the
+      monthly examinations, when the Doctor came round to examine their form,
+      for one long, awful hour, in the work which they had done in the preceding
+      month. The second monthly examination came round soon after Tom's fall,
+      and it was with anything but lively anticipations that he and the other
+      lower-fourth boys came in to prayers on the morning of the examination
+      day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Prayers and calling-over seemed twice as short as usual, and before they
+      could get construes of a tithe of the hard passages marked in the margin
+      of their books, they were all seated round, and the Doctor was standing in
+      the middle, talking in whispers to the master. Tom couldn't hear a word
+      which passed, and never lifted his eyes from his book; but he knew by a
+      sort of magnetic instinct that the Doctor's under-lip was coming out, and
+      his eye beginning to burn, and his gown getting gathered up more and more
+      tightly in his left hand. The suspense was agonizing, and Tom knew that he
+      was sure on such occasions to make an example of the School-house boys.
+      &ldquo;If he would only begin,&rdquo; thought Tom, &ldquo;I shouldn't mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the whispering ceased, and the name which was called out was not
+      Brown. He looked up for a moment, but the Doctor's face was too awful; Tom
+      wouldn't have met his eye for all he was worth, and buried himself in his
+      book again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy who was called up first was a clever, merry School-house boy, one
+      of their set; he was some connection of the Doctor's, and a great
+      favourite, and ran in and out of his house as he liked, and so was
+      selected for the first victim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Triste lupus stabulis,&rdquo; began the luckless youngster, and stammered
+      through some eight or ten lines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, that will do,&rdquo; said the Doctor; &ldquo;now construe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On common occasions the boy could have construed the passage well enough
+      probably, but now his head was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Triste lupus, the sorrowful wolf,&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A shudder ran through the whole form, and the Doctor's wrath fairly boiled
+      over. He made three steps up to the construer, and gave him a good box on
+      the ear. The blow was not a hard one, but the boy was so taken by surprise
+      that he started back; the form caught the back of his knees, and over he
+      went on to the floor behind. There was a dead silence over the whole
+      school. Never before and never again while Tom was at school did the
+      Doctor strike a boy in lesson. The provocation must have been great.
+      However, the victim had saved his form for that occasion, for the Doctor
+      turned to the top bench, and put on the best boys for the rest of the hour
+      and though, at the end of the lesson, he gave them all such a rating as
+      they did not forget, this terrible field-day passed over without any
+      severe visitations in the shape of punishments or floggings. Forty young
+      scapegraces expressed their thanks to the &ldquo;sorrowful wolf&rdquo; in their
+      different ways before second lesson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a character for steadiness once gone is not easily recovered, as Tom
+      found; and for years afterwards he went up the school without it, and the
+      masters' hands were against him, and his against them. And he regarded
+      them, as a matter of course, as his natural enemies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Matters were not so comfortable, either, in the house as they had been;
+      for old Brooke left at Christmas, and one or two others of the sixth-form
+      boys at the following Easter. Their rule had been rough, but strong and
+      just in the main, and a higher standard was beginning to be set up; in
+      fact, there had been a short foretaste of the good time which followed
+      some years later. Just now, however, all threatened to return into
+      darkness and chaos again. For the new praepostors were either small young
+      boys, whose cleverness had carried them up to the top of the school, while
+      in strength of body and character they were not yet fit for a share in the
+      government; or else big fellows of the wrong sort&mdash;boys whose
+      friendships and tastes had a downward tendency, who had not caught the
+      meaning of their position and work, and felt none of its responsibilities.
+      So under this no-government the School-house began to see bad times. The
+      big fifth-form boys, who were a sporting and drinking set, soon began to
+      usurp power, and to fag the little boys as if they were praepostors, and to
+      bully and oppress any who showed signs of resistance. The bigger sort of
+      sixth-form boys just described soon made common cause with the fifth,
+      while the smaller sort, hampered by their colleagues' desertion to the
+      enemy, could not make head against them. So the fags were without their
+      lawful masters and protectors, and ridden over rough-shod by a set of boys
+      whom they were not bound to obey, and whose only right over them stood in
+      their bodily powers; and, as old Brooke had prophesied, the house by
+      degrees broke up into small sets and parties, and lost the strong feeling
+      of fellowship which he set so much store by, and with it much of the
+      prowess in games and the lead in all school matters which he had done so
+      much to keep up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In no place in the world has individual character more weight than at a
+      public school. Remember this, I beseech you, all you boys who are getting
+      into the upper forms. Now is the time in all your lives, probably, when
+      you may have more wide influence for good or evil on the society you live
+      in than you ever can have again. Quit yourselves like men, then; speak up,
+      and strike out if necessary, for whatsoever is true, and manly, and
+      lovely, and of good report; never try to be popular, but only to do your
+      duty and help others to do theirs, and you may leave the tone of feeling
+      in the school higher than you found it, and so be doing good which no
+      living soul can measure to generations of your countrymen yet unborn. For
+      boys follow one another in herds like sheep, for good or evil; they hate
+      thinking, and have rarely any settled principles. Every school, indeed,
+      has its own traditionary standard of right and wrong, which cannot be
+      transgressed with impunity, marking certain things as low and blackguard,
+      and certain others as lawful and right. This standard is ever varying,
+      though it changes only slowly and little by little; and, subject only to
+      such standard, it is the leading boys for the time being who give the tone
+      to all the rest, and make the School either a noble institution for the
+      training of Christian Englishmen, or a place where a young boy will get
+      more evil than he would if he were turned out to make his way in London
+      streets, or anything between these two extremes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The change for the worse in the School-house, however, didn't press very
+      heavily on our youngsters for some time. They were in a good bedroom,
+      where slept the only praepostor left who was able to keep thorough order,
+      and their study was in his passage. So, though they were fagged more or
+      less, and occasionally kicked or cuffed by the bullies, they were, on the
+      whole, well off; and the fresh, brave school-life, so full of games,
+      adventures, and good-fellowship, so ready at forgetting, so capacious at
+      enjoying, so bright at forecasting, outweighed a thousand-fold their
+      troubles with the master of their form, and the occasional ill-usage of
+      the big boys in the house. It wasn't till some year or so after the events
+      recorded above that the praepostor of their room and passage left. None of
+      the other sixth-form boys would move into their passage, and, to the
+      disgust and indignation of Tom and East, one morning after breakfast they
+      were seized upon by Flashman, and made to carry down his books and
+      furniture into the unoccupied study, which he had taken. From this time
+      they began to feel the weight of the tyranny of Flashman and his friends,
+      and, now that trouble had come home to their own doors, began to look out
+      for sympathizers and partners amongst the rest of the fags; and meetings
+      of the oppressed began to be held, and murmurs to arise, and plots to be
+      laid as to how they should free themselves and be avenged on their
+      enemies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While matters were in this state, East and Tom were one evening sitting in
+      their study. They had done their work for first lesson, and Tom was in a
+      brown study, brooding, like a young William Tell, upon the wrongs of fags
+      in general, and his own in particular.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Scud,&rdquo; said he at last, rousing himself to snuff the candle, &ldquo;what
+      right have the fifth-form boys to fag us as they do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more right than you have to fag them,&rdquo; answered East, without looking
+      up from an early number of &ldquo;Pickwick,&rdquo; which was just coming out, and
+      which he was luxuriously devouring, stretched on his back on the sofa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom relapsed into his brown study, and East went on reading and chuckling.
+      The contrast of the boys' faces would have given infinite amusement to a
+      looker-on&mdash;the one so solemn and big with mighty purpose, the other
+      radiant and bubbling over with fun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know, old fellow, I've been thinking it over a good deal,&rdquo; began
+      Tom again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, I know&mdash;fagging you are thinking of. Hang it all! But listen
+      here, Tom&mdash;here's fun. Mr. Winkle's horse&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I've made up my mind,&rdquo; broke in Tom, &ldquo;that I won't fag except for the
+      sixth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite right too, my boy,&rdquo; cried East, putting his finger on the place and
+      looking up; &ldquo;but a pretty peck of troubles you'll get into, if you're
+      going to play that game. However, I'm all for a strike myself, if we can
+      get others to join. It's getting too bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't we get some sixth-form fellow to take it up?&rdquo; asked Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, perhaps we might. Morgan would interfere, I think. Only,&rdquo; added
+      East, after a moment's pause, &ldquo;you see, we should have to tell him about
+      it, and that's against School principles. Don't you remember what old
+      Brooke said about learning to take our own parts?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I wish old Brooke were back again. It was all right in his time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes, you see, then the strongest and best fellows were in the sixth,
+      and the fifth-form fellows were afraid of them, and they kept good order;
+      but now our sixth-form fellows are too small, and the fifth don't care for
+      them, and do what they like in the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so we get a double set of masters,&rdquo; cried Tom indignantly&mdash;&ldquo;the
+      lawful ones, who are responsible to the Doctor at any rate, and the
+      unlawful, the tyrants, who are responsible to nobody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Down with the tyrants!&rdquo; cried East; &ldquo;I'm all for law and order, and
+      hurrah for a revolution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shouldn't mind if it were only for young Brooke now,&rdquo; said Tom; &ldquo;he's
+      such a good-hearted, gentlemanly fellow, and ought to be in the sixth. I'd
+      do anything for him. But that blackguard Flashman, who never speaks to one
+      without a kick or an oath&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The cowardly brute,&rdquo; broke in East&mdash;&ldquo;how I hate him! And he knows it
+      too; he knows that you and I think him a coward. What a bore that he's got
+      a study in this passage! Don't you hear them now at supper in his den?
+      Brandy-punch going, I'll bet. I wish the Doctor would come out and catch
+      him. We must change our study as soon as we can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Change or no change, I'll never fag for him again,&rdquo; said Tom, thumping
+      the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fa-a-a-ag!&rdquo; sounded along the passage from Flashman's study. The two boys
+      looked at one another in silence. It had struck nine, so the regular
+      night-fags had left duty, and they were the nearest to the supper-party.
+      East sat up, and began to look comical, as he always did under
+      difficulties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fa-a-a-ag!&rdquo; again. No answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, Brown! East! you cursed young skulks,&rdquo; roared out Flashman, coming
+      to his open door; &ldquo;I know you're in; no shirking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom stole to their door, and drew the bolts as noiselessly as he could;
+      East blew out the candle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Barricade the first,&rdquo; whispered he. &ldquo;Now, Tom, mind, no surrender.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trust me for that,&rdquo; said Tom between his teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In another minute they heard the supper-party turn out and come down the
+      passage to their door. They held their breaths, and heard whispering, of
+      which they only made out Flashman's words, &ldquo;I know the young brutes are
+      in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came summonses to open, which being unanswered, the assault
+      commenced. Luckily the door was a good strong oak one, and resisted the
+      united weight of Flashman's party. A pause followed, and they heard a
+      besieger remark, &ldquo;They're in safe enough. Don't you see how the door holds
+      at top and bottom? So the bolts must be drawn. We should have forced the
+      lock long ago.&rdquo; East gave Tom a nudge, to call attention to this
+      scientific remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came attacks on particular panels, one of which at last gave way to
+      the repeated kicks; but it broke inwards, and the broken pieces got jammed
+      across (the door being lined with green baize), and couldn't easily be
+      removed from outside: and the besieged, scorning further concealment,
+      strengthened their defences by pressing the end of their sofa against the
+      door. So, after one or two more ineffectual efforts, Flashman and Company
+      retired, vowing vengeance in no mild terms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first danger over, it only remained for the besieged to effect a safe
+      retreat, as it was now near bed-time. They listened intently, and heard
+      the supper-party resettle themselves, and then gently drew back first one
+      bolt and then the other. Presently the convivial noises began again
+      steadily. &ldquo;Now then, stand by for a run,&rdquo; said East, throwing the door
+      wide open and rushing into the passage, closely followed by Tom. They were
+      too quick to be caught; but Flashman was on the lookout, and sent an empty
+      pickle-jar whizzing after them, which narrowly missed Tom's head, and
+      broke into twenty pieces at the end of the passage. &ldquo;He wouldn't mind
+      killing one, if he wasn't caught,&rdquo; said East, as they turned the corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no pursuit, so the two turned into the hall, where they found a
+      knot of small boys round the fire. Their story was told. The war of
+      independence had broken out. Who would join the revolutionary forces?
+      Several others present bound themselves not to fag for the fifth form at
+      once. One or two only edged off, and left the rebels. What else could they
+      do? &ldquo;I've a good mind to go to the Doctor straight,&rdquo; said Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That'll never do. Don't you remember the levy of the school last half?&rdquo;
+       put in another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In fact, the solemn assembly, a levy of the School, had been held, at
+      which the captain of the School had got up, and after premising that
+      several instances had occurred of matters having been reported to the
+      masters; that this was against public morality and School tradition; that
+      a levy of the sixth had been held on the subject, and they had resolved
+      that the practice must be stopped at once; and given out that any boy, in
+      whatever form, who should thenceforth appeal to a master, without having
+      first gone to some praepostor and laid the case before him, should be
+      thrashed publicly, and sent to Coventry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, let's try the sixth. Try Morgan,&rdquo; suggested another. &ldquo;No use&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Blabbing
+      won't do,&rdquo; was the general feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll give you fellows a piece of advice,&rdquo; said a voice from the end of
+      the hall. They all turned round with a start, and the speaker got up from
+      a bench on which he had been lying unobserved, and gave himself a shake.
+      He was a big, loose-made fellow, with huge limbs which had grown too far
+      through his jacket and trousers. &ldquo;Don't you go to anybody at all&mdash;you
+      just stand out; say you won't fag. They'll soon get tired of licking you.
+      I've tried it on years ago with their forerunners.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! Did you? Tell us how it was?&rdquo; cried a chorus of voices, as they
+      clustered round him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, just as it is with you. The fifth form would fag us, and I and some
+      more struck, and we beat 'em. The good fellows left off directly, and the
+      bullies who kept on soon got afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was Flashman here then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; and a dirty, little, snivelling, sneaking fellow he was too. He
+      never dared join us, and used to toady the bullies by offering to fag for
+      them, and peaching against the rest of us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why wasn't he cut, then?&rdquo; said East.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, toadies never get cut; they're too useful. Besides, he has no end of
+      great hampers from home, with wine and game in them; so he toadied and fed
+      himself into favour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The quarter-to-ten bell now rang, and the small boys went off upstairs,
+      still consulting together, and praising their new counsellor, who
+      stretched himself out on the bench before the hall fire again. There he
+      lay, a very queer specimen of boyhood, by name Diggs, and familiarly
+      called &ldquo;the Mucker.&rdquo; He was young for his size, and a very clever fellow,
+      nearly at the top of the fifth. His friends at home, having regard, I
+      suppose, to his age, and not to his size and place in the school, hadn't
+      put him into tails; and even his jackets were always too small; and he had
+      a talent for destroying clothes and making himself look shabby. He wasn't
+      on terms with Flashman's set, who sneered at his dress and ways behind his
+      back; which he knew, and revenged himself by asking Flashman the most
+      disagreeable questions, and treating him familiarly whenever a crowd of
+      boys were round him. Neither was he intimate with any of the other bigger
+      boys, who were warned off by his oddnesses, for he was a very queer
+      fellow; besides, amongst other failings, he had that of impecuniosity in a
+      remarkable degree. He brought as much money as other boys to school, but
+      got rid of it in no time, no one knew how; and then, being also reckless,
+      borrowed from any one; and when his debts accumulated and creditors
+      pressed, would have an auction in the hall of everything he possessed in
+      the world, selling even his school-books, candlestick, and study table.
+      For weeks after one of these auctions, having rendered his study
+      uninhabitable, he would live about in the fifth-form room and hall, doing
+      his verses on old letter-backs and odd scraps of paper, and learning his
+      lessons no one knew how. He never meddled with any little boy, and was
+      popular with them, though they all looked on him with a sort of
+      compassion, and called him &ldquo;Poor Diggs,&rdquo; not being able to resist
+      appearances, or to disregard wholly even the sneers of their enemy
+      Flashman. However, he seemed equally indifferent to the sneers of big boys
+      and the pity of small ones, and lived his own queer life with much
+      apparent enjoyment to himself. It is necessary to introduce Diggs thus
+      particularly, as he not only did Tom and East good service in their
+      present warfare, as is about to be told, but soon afterwards, when he got
+      into the sixth, chose them for his fags, and excused them from study-fagging,
+      thereby earning unto himself eternal gratitude from them and all who are
+      interested in their history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And seldom had small boys more need of a friend, for the morning after the
+      siege the storm burst upon the rebels in all its violence. Flashman laid
+      wait, and caught Tom before second lesson, and receiving a point-blank
+      &ldquo;No&rdquo; when told to fetch his hat, seized him and twisted his arm, and went
+      through the other methods of torture in use. &ldquo;He couldn't make me cry,
+      though,&rdquo; as Tom said triumphantly to the rest of the rebels; &ldquo;and I kicked
+      his shins well, I know.&rdquo; And soon it crept out that a lot of the fags were
+      in league, and Flashman excited his associates to join him in bringing the
+      young vagabonds to their senses; and the house was filled with constant
+      chasings, and sieges, and lickings of all sorts; and in return, the
+      bullies' beds were pulled to pieces and drenched with water, and their
+      names written up on the walls with every insulting epithet which the fag
+      invention could furnish. The war, in short, raged fiercely; but soon, as
+      Diggs had told them, all the better fellows in the fifth gave up trying to
+      fag them, and public feeling began to set against Flashman and his two or
+      three intimates, and they were obliged to keep their doings more secret,
+      but being thorough bad fellows, missed no opportunity of torturing in
+      private. Flashman was an adept in all ways, but above all in the power of
+      saying cutting and cruel things, and could often bring tears to the eyes
+      of boys in this way, which all the thrashings in the world wouldn't have
+      wrung from them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as his operations were being cut short in other directions, he now
+      devoted himself chiefly to Tom and East, who lived at his own door, and
+      would force himself into their study whenever he found a chance, and sit
+      there, sometimes alone, and sometimes with a companion, interrupting all
+      their work, and exulting in the evident pain which every now and then he
+      could see he was inflicting on one or the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The storm had cleared the air for the rest of the house, and a better
+      state of things now began than there had been since old Brooke had left;
+      but an angry, dark spot of thunder-cloud still hung over the end of the
+      passage where Flashman's study and that of East and Tom lay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt that they had been the first rebels, and that the rebellion had
+      been to a great extent successful; but what above all stirred the hatred
+      and bitterness of his heart against them was that in the frequent
+      collisions which there had been of late they had openly called him coward
+      and sneak. The taunts were too true to be forgiven. While he was in the
+      act of thrashing them, they would roar out instances of his funking at
+      football, or shirking some encounter with a lout of half his own size.
+      These things were all well enough known in the house, but to have his own
+      disgrace shouted out by small boys, to feel that they despised him, to be
+      unable to silence them by any amount of torture, and to see the open laugh
+      and sneer of his own associates (who were looking on, and took no trouble
+      to hide their scorn from him, though they neither interfered with his
+      bullying nor lived a bit the less intimately with him), made him beside
+      himself. Come what might, he would make those boys' lives miserable. So
+      the strife settled down into a personal affair between Flashman and our
+      youngsters&mdash;a war to the knife, to be fought out in the little
+      cockpit at the end of the bottom passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Flashman, be it said, was about seventeen years old, and big and strong of
+      his age. He played well at all games where pluck wasn't much wanted, and
+      managed generally to keep up appearances where it was; and having a bluff,
+      off-hand manner, which passed for heartiness, and considerable powers of
+      being pleasant when he liked, went down with the school in general for a
+      good fellow enough. Even in the School-house, by dint of his command of
+      money, the constant supply of good things which he kept up, and his adroit
+      toadyism, he had managed to make himself not only tolerated, but rather
+      popular amongst his own contemporaries; although young Brooke scarcely
+      spoke to him, and one or two others of the right sort showed their
+      opinions of him whenever a chance offered. But the wrong sort happened to
+      be in the ascendant just now, and so Flashman was a formidable enemy for
+      small boys. This soon became plain enough. Flashman left no slander
+      unspoken, and no deed undone, which could in any way hurt his victims, or
+      isolate them from the rest of the house. One by one most of the other
+      rebels fell away from them, while Flashman's cause prospered, and several
+      other fifth-form boys began to look black at them and ill-treat them as
+      they passed about the house. By keeping out of bounds, or at all events
+      out of the house and quadrangle, all day, and carefully barring themselves
+      in at night, East and Tom managed to hold on without feeling very
+      miserable; but it was as much as they could do. Greatly were they drawn
+      then towards old Diggs, who, in an uncouth way, began to take a good deal
+      of notice of them, and once or twice came to their study when Flashman was
+      there, who immediately decamped in consequence. The boys thought that
+      Diggs must have been watching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When therefore, about this time, an auction was one night announced to
+      take place in the hall, at which, amongst the superfluities of other boys,
+      all Diggs's penates for the time being were going to the hammer, East and
+      Tom laid their heads together, and resolved to devote their ready cash
+      (some four shillings sterling) to redeem such articles as that sum would
+      cover. Accordingly, they duly attended to bid, and Tom became the owner of
+      two lots of Diggs's things:&mdash;Lot 1, price one-and-threepence,
+      consisting (as the auctioneer remarked) of a &ldquo;valuable assortment of old
+      metals,&rdquo; in the shape of a mouse-trap, a cheese-toaster without a handle,
+      and a saucepan: Lot 2, of a villainous dirty table-cloth and green-baize
+      curtain; while East, for one-and-sixpence, purchased a leather paper-case,
+      with a lock but no key, once handsome, but now much the worse for wear.
+      But they had still the point to settle of how to get Diggs to take the
+      things without hurting his feelings. This they solved by leaving them in
+      his study, which was never locked when he was out. Diggs, who had attended
+      the auction, remembered who had bought the lots, and came to their study
+      soon after, and sat silent for some time, cracking his great red
+      finger-joints. Then he laid hold of their verses, and began looking over
+      and altering them, and at last got up, and turning his back to them, said,
+      &ldquo;You're uncommon good-hearted little beggars, you two. I value that
+      paper-case; my sister gave it to me last holidays. I won't forget.&rdquo; And so
+      he tumbled out into the passage, leaving them somewhat embarrassed, but
+      not sorry that he knew what they had done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning was Saturday, the day on which the allowances of one
+      shilling a week were paid&mdash;an important event to spendthrift
+      youngsters; and great was the disgust amongst the small fry to hear that
+      all the allowances had been impounded for the Derby lottery. That great
+      event in the English year, the Derby, was celebrated at Rugby in those
+      days by many lotteries. It was not an improving custom, I own, gentle
+      reader, and led to making books, and betting, and other objectionable
+      results; but when our great Houses of Palaver think it right to stop the
+      nation's business on that day and many of the members bet heavily
+      themselves, can you blame us boys for following the example of our
+      betters? At any rate we did follow it. First there was the great school
+      lottery, where the first prize was six or seven pounds; then each house
+      had one or more separate lotteries. These were all nominally voluntary, no
+      boy being compelled to put in his shilling who didn't choose to do so. But
+      besides Flashman, there were three or four other fast, sporting young
+      gentlemen in the Schoolhouse, who considered subscription a matter of duty
+      and necessity; and so, to make their duty come easy to the small boys,
+      quietly secured the allowances in a lump when given out for distribution,
+      and kept them. It was no use grumbling&mdash;so many fewer tartlets and
+      apples were eaten and fives balls bought on that Saturday; and after
+      locking-up, when the money would otherwise have been spent, consolation
+      was carried to many a small boy by the sound of the night-fags shouting
+      along the passages, &ldquo;Gentlemen sportsmen of the School-house; the
+      lottery's going to be drawn in the hall.&rdquo; It was pleasant to be called a
+      gentleman sportsman, also to have a chance of drawing a favourite horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hall was full of boys, and at the head of one of the long tables stood
+      the sporting interest, with a hat before them, in which were the tickets
+      folded up. One of them then began calling out the list of the house. Each
+      boy as his name was called drew a ticket from the hat, and opened it; and
+      most of the bigger boys, after drawing, left the hall directly to go back
+      to their studies or the fifth-form room. The sporting interest had all
+      drawn blanks, and they were sulky accordingly; neither of the favourites
+      had yet been drawn, and it had come down to the upper-fourth. So now, as
+      each small boy came up and drew his ticket, it was seized and opened by
+      Flashman, or some other of the standers-by. But no great favourite is
+      drawn until it comes to the Tadpole's turn, and he shuffles up and draws,
+      and tries to make off, but is caught, and his ticket is opened like the
+      rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here you are! Wanderer&mdash;the third favourite!&rdquo; shouts the opener.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, just give me my ticket, please,&rdquo; remonstrates Tadpole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo! don't be in a hurry,&rdquo; breaks in Flashman; &ldquo;what'll you sell
+      Wanderer for now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want to sell,&rdquo; rejoins Tadpole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don't you! Now listen, you young fool: you don't know anything about
+      it; the horse is no use to you. He won't win, but I want him as a hedge.
+      Now, I'll give you half a crown for him.&rdquo; Tadpole holds out, but between
+      threats and cajoleries at length sells half for one shilling and sixpence&mdash;about
+      a fifth of its fair market value; however, he is glad to realize anything,
+      and, as he wisely remarks, &ldquo;Wanderer mayn't win, and the tizzy is safe
+      anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      East presently comes up and draws a blank. Soon after comes Tom's turn.
+      His ticket, like the others, is seized and opened. &ldquo;Here you are then,&rdquo;
+       shouts the opener, holding it up&mdash;&ldquo;Harkaway!&mdash;By Jove, Flashey,
+      your young friend's in luck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me the ticket,&rdquo; says Flashman, with an oath, leaning across the
+      table with open hand and his face black with rage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn't you like it?&rdquo; replies the opener, not a bad fellow at the
+      bottom, and no admirer of Flashman. &ldquo;Here, Brown, catch hold.&rdquo; And he
+      hands the ticket to Tom, who pockets it. Whereupon Flashman makes for the
+      door at once, that Tom and the ticket may not escape, and there keeps
+      watch until the drawing is over and all the boys are gone, except the
+      sporting set of five or six, who stay to compare books, make bets, and so
+      on; Tom, who doesn't choose to move while Flashman is at the door; and
+      East, who stays by his friend, anticipating trouble. The sporting set now
+      gathered round Tom. Public opinion wouldn't allow them actually to rob him
+      of his ticket, but any humbug or intimidation by which he could be driven
+      to sell the whole or part at an undervalue was lawful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, young Brown, come, what'll you sell me Harkaway for? I hear he isn't
+      going to start. I'll give you five shillings for him,&rdquo; begins the boy who
+      had opened the ticket. Tom, remembering his good deed, and moreover in his
+      forlorn state wishing to make a friend, is about to accept the offer, when
+      another cries out, &ldquo;I'll give you seven shillings.&rdquo; Tom hesitated and
+      looked from one to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; said Flashman, pushing in, &ldquo;leave me to deal with him; we'll
+      draw lots for it afterwards. Now sir, you know me: you'll sell Harkaway to
+      us for five shillings, or you'll repent it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't sell a bit of him,&rdquo; answered Tom shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hear that now!&rdquo; said Flashman, turning to the others. &ldquo;He's the
+      coxiest young blackguard in the house. I always told you so. We're to have
+      all the trouble and risk of getting up the lotteries for the benefit of
+      such fellows as he.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Flashman forgets to explain what risk they ran, but he speaks to willing
+      ears. Gambling makes boys selfish and cruel as well as men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's true. We always draw blanks,&rdquo; cried one.&mdash;&ldquo;Now, sir, you
+      shall sell half, at any rate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't,&rdquo; said Tom, flushing up to his hair, and lumping them all in his
+      mind with his sworn enemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well then; let's roast him,&rdquo; cried Flashman, and catches hold of Tom
+      by the collar. One or two boys hesitate, but the rest join in. East seizes
+      Tom's arm, and tries to pull him away, but is knocked back by one of the
+      boys, and Tom is dragged along struggling. His shoulders are pushed
+      against the mantelpiece, and he is held by main force before the fire,
+      Flashman drawing his trousers tight by way of extra torture. Poor East, in
+      more pain even than Tom, suddenly thinks of Diggs, and darts off to find
+      him. &ldquo;Will you sell now for ten shillings?&rdquo; says one boy who is relenting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom only answers by groans and struggles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Flashey, he has had enough,&rdquo; says the same boy, dropping the arm
+      he holds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; another turn'll do it,&rdquo; answers Flashman. But poor Tom is done
+      already, turns deadly pale, and his head falls forward on his breast, just
+      as Diggs, in frantic excitement, rushes into the hall with East at his
+      heels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cowardly brutes!&rdquo; is all he can say, as he catches Tom from them and
+      supports him to the hall table. &ldquo;Good God! he's dying. Here, get some cold
+      water&mdash;run for the housekeeper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Flashman and one or two others slink away; the rest, ashamed and sorry,
+      bend over Tom or run for water, while East darts off for the housekeeper.
+      Water comes, and they throw it on his hands and face, and he begins to
+      come to. &ldquo;Mother!&rdquo;&mdash;the words came feebly and slowly&mdash;&ldquo;it's very
+      cold to-night.&rdquo; Poor old Diggs is blubbering like a child. &ldquo;Where am I?&rdquo;
+       goes on Tom, opening his eyes, &ldquo;Ah! I remember now.&rdquo; And he shut his eyes
+      again and groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say,&rdquo; is whispered, &ldquo;we can't do any good, and the housekeeper will be
+      here in a minute.&rdquo; And all but one steal away. He stays with Diggs, silent
+      and sorrowful, and fans Tom's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The housekeeper comes in with strong salts, and Tom soon recovers enough
+      to sit up. There is a smell of burning. She examines his clothes, and
+      looks up inquiringly. The boys are silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did he come so?&rdquo; No answer. &ldquo;There's been some bad work here,&rdquo; she
+      adds, looking very serious, &ldquo;and I shall speak to the Doctor about it.&rdquo;
+       Still no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hadn't we better carry him to the sick-room?&rdquo; suggests Diggs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I can walk now,&rdquo; says Tom; and, supported by East and the
+      housekeeper, goes to the sick-room. The boy who held his ground is soon
+      amongst the rest, who are all in fear of their lives. &ldquo;Did he peach?&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Does she know about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a word; he's a stanch little fellow.&rdquo; And pausing a moment, he adds,
+      &ldquo;I'm sick of this work; what brutes we've been!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Tom is stretched on the sofa in the housekeeper's room, with East
+      by his side, while she gets wine and water and other restoratives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you much hurt, dear old boy?&rdquo; whispers East.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0209m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0209m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0209.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only the back of my legs,&rdquo; answers Tom. They are indeed badly scorched,
+      and part of his trousers burnt through. But soon he is in bed with cold
+      bandages. At first he feels broken, and thinks of writing home and getting
+      taken away; and the verse of a hymn he had learned years ago sings through
+      his head, and he goes to sleep, murmuring,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where the wicked cease from troubling, And the weary are at rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But after a sound night's rest, the old boy-spirit comes back again. East
+      comes in, reporting that the whole house is with him; and he forgets
+      everything, except their old resolve never to be beaten by that bully
+      Flashman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not a word could the housekeeper extract from either of them, and though
+      the Doctor knew all that she knew that morning, he never knew any more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I trust and believe that such scenes are not possible now at school, and
+      that lotteries and betting-books have gone out; but I am writing of
+      schools as they were in our time, and must give the evil with the good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0213m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0213m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0213.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX&mdash;A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Wherein I [speak] of most disastrous chances,
+     Of moving accidents by flood and field,
+     Of hair-breadth 'scapes.&rdquo;&mdash;SHAKESPEARE.
+</pre>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+      <img src="images/9213m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="9213m " width="100%" />
+      <a href="images/9213.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      hen Tom came back into school after a couple of days in the sick-room, he
+      found matters much changed for the better, as East had led him to expect.
+      Flashman's brutality had disgusted most even of his intimate friends, and
+      his cowardice had once more been made plain to the house; for Diggs had
+      encountered him on the morning after the lottery, and after high words on
+      both sides, had struck him, and the blow was not returned. However,
+      Flashey was not unused to this sort of thing, and had lived through as
+      awkward affairs before, and, as Diggs had said, fed and toadied himself
+      back into favour again. Two or three of the boys who had helped to roast
+      Tom came up and begged his pardon, and thanked him for not telling
+      anything. Morgan sent for him, and was inclined to take the matter up
+      warmly, but Tom begged him not to do it; to which he agreed, on Tom's
+      promising to come to him at once in future&mdash;a promise which, I regret
+      to say, he didn't keep. Tom kept Harkaway all to himself, and won the
+      second prize in the lottery, some thirty shillings, which he and East
+      contrived to spend in about three days in the purchase of pictures for
+      their study, two new bats and a cricket-ball&mdash;all the best that could
+      be got&mdash;and a supper of sausages, kidneys, and beef-steak pies to all
+      the rebels. Light come, light go; they wouldn't have been comfortable with
+      money in their pockets in the middle of the half.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The embers of Flashman's wrath, however, were still smouldering, and burst
+      out every now and then in sly blows and taunts, and they both felt that
+      they hadn't quite done with him yet. It wasn't long, however, before the
+      last act of that drama came, and with it the end of bullying for Tom and
+      East at Rugby. They now often stole out into the hall at nights, incited
+      thereto partly by the hope of finding Diggs there and having a talk with
+      him, partly by the excitement of doing something which was against rules;
+      for, sad to say, both of our youngsters, since their loss of character for
+      steadiness in their form, had got into the habit of doing things which
+      were forbidden, as a matter of adventure,&mdash;just in the same way, I
+      should fancy, as men fall into smuggling, and for the same sort of reasons&mdash;thoughtlessness
+      in the first place. It never occurred to them to consider why such and
+      such rules were laid down: the reason was nothing to them, and they only
+      looked upon rules as a sort of challenge from the rule-makers, which it
+      would be rather bad pluck in them not to accept; and then again, in the
+      lower parts of the school they hadn't enough to do. The work of the form
+      they could manage to get through pretty easily, keeping a good enough
+      place to get their regular yearly remove; and not having much ambition
+      beyond this, their whole superfluous steam was available for games and
+      scrapes. Now, one rule of the house which it was a daily pleasure of all
+      such boys to break was that after supper all fags, except the three on
+      duty in the passages, should remain in their own studies until nine
+      o'clock; and if caught about the passages or hall, or in one another's
+      studies, they were liable to punishments or caning. The rule was stricter
+      than its observance; for most of the sixth spent their evenings in the
+      fifth-form room, where the library was, and the lessons were learnt in
+      common. Every now and then, however, a praepostor would be seized with a
+      fit of district visiting, and would make a tour of the passages and hall
+      and the fags' studies. Then, if the owner were entertaining a friend or
+      two, the first kick at the door and ominous &ldquo;Open here&rdquo; had the effect of
+      the shadow of a hawk over a chicken-yard: every one cut to cover&mdash;one
+      small boy diving under the sofa, another under the table, while the owner
+      would hastily pull down a book or two and open them, and cry out in a meek
+      voice, &ldquo;Hullo, who's there?&rdquo; casting an anxious eye round to see that no
+      protruding leg or elbow could betray the hidden boys. &ldquo;Open, sir,
+      directly; it's Snooks.&rdquo; &ldquo;Oh, I'm very sorry; I didn't know it was you,
+      Snooks.&rdquo; And then with well-feigned zeal the door would be opened, young
+      hopeful praying that that beast Snooks mightn't have heard the scuffle
+      caused by his coming. If a study was empty, Snooks proceeded to draw the
+      passages and hall to find the truants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, one evening, in forbidden hours, Tom and East were in the hall. They
+      occupied the seats before the fire nearest the door, while Diggs sprawled
+      as usual before the farther fire. He was busy with a copy of verses, and
+      East and Tom were chatting together in whispers by the light of the fire,
+      and splicing a favourite old fives bat which had sprung. Presently a step
+      came down the bottom passage. They listened a moment, assured themselves
+      that it wasn't a praepostor, and then went on with their work, and the door
+      swung open, and in walked Flashman. He didn't see Diggs, and thought it a
+      good chance to keep his hand in; and as the boys didn't move for him,
+      struck one of them, to make them get out of his way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that for?&rdquo; growled the assaulted one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I choose. You've no business here. Go to your study.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't send us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't I? Then I'll thrash you if you stay,&rdquo; said Flashman savagely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, you two,&rdquo; said Diggs, from the end of the hall, rousing up and
+      resting himself on his elbow&mdash;&ldquo;you'll never get rid of that fellow
+      till you lick him. Go in at him, both of you. I'll see fair play.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Flashman was taken aback, and retreated two steps. East looked at Tom.
+      &ldquo;Shall we try!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Tom desperately. So the two advanced
+      on Flashman, with clenched fists and beating hearts. They were about up to
+      his shoulder, but tough boys of their age, and in perfect training; while
+      he, though strong and big, was in poor condition from his monstrous habit
+      of stuffing and want of exercise. Coward as he was, however, Flashman
+      couldn't swallow such an insult as this; besides, he was confident of
+      having easy work, and so faced the boys, saying, &ldquo;You impudent young
+      blackguards!&rdquo; Before he could finish his abuse, they rushed in on him, and
+      began pummelling at all of him which they could reach. He hit out wildly
+      and savagely; but the full force of his blows didn't tell&mdash;they were
+      too near to him. It was long odds, though, in point of strength; and in
+      another minute Tom went spinning backwards over a form, and Flashman
+      turned to demolish East with a savage grin. But now Diggs jumped down from
+      the table on which he had seated himself. &ldquo;Stop there,&rdquo; shouted he; &ldquo;the
+      round's over&mdash;half-minute time allowed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the &mdash;- is it to you?&rdquo; faltered Flashman, who began to lose
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to see fair, I tell you,&rdquo; said Diggs, with a grin, and snapping
+      his great red fingers; &ldquo;'taint fair for you to be fighting one of them at
+      a time.&mdash;Are you ready, Brown? Time's up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The small boys rushed in again. Closing, they saw, was their best chance,
+      and Flashman was wilder and more flurried than ever: he caught East by the
+      throat, and tried to force him back on the iron-bound table. Tom grasped
+      his waist, and remembering the old throw he had learned in the Vale from
+      Harry Winburn, crooked his leg inside Flashman's, and threw his whole
+      weight forward. The three tottered for a moment, and then over they went
+      on to the floor, Flashman striking his head against a form in the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two youngsters sprang to their legs, but he lay there still. They
+      began to be frightened. Tom stooped down, and then cried out, scared out
+      of his wits, &ldquo;He's bleeding awfully. Come here, East! Diggs, he's dying!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not he,&rdquo; said Diggs, getting leisurely off the table; &ldquo;it's all sham;
+      he's only afraid to fight it out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0217m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0217m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0217.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      East was as frightened as Tom. Diggs lifted Flashman's head, and he
+      groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter?&rdquo; shouted Diggs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My skull's fractured,&rdquo; sobbed Flashman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, let me run for the housekeeper!&rdquo; cried Tom. &ldquo;What shall we do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fiddlesticks! It's nothing but the skin broken,&rdquo; said the relentless
+      Diggs, feeling his head. &ldquo;Cold water and a bit of rag's all he'll want.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me go,&rdquo; said Flashman surlily, sitting up; &ldquo;I don't want your help.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're really very sorry&mdash;&rdquo; began East.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hang your sorrow!&rdquo; answered Flashman, holding his handkerchief to the
+      place; &ldquo;you shall pay for this, I can tell you, both of you.&rdquo; And he
+      walked out of the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can't be very bad,&rdquo; said Tom, with a deep sigh, much relieved to see
+      his enemy march so well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not he,&rdquo; said Diggs; &ldquo;and you'll see you won't be troubled with him any
+      more. But, I say, your head's broken too; your collar is covered with
+      blood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it though?&rdquo; said Tom, putting up his hand; &ldquo;I didn't know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, mop it up, or you'll have your jacket spoilt. And you have got a
+      nasty eye, Scud. You'd better go and bathe it well in cold water.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cheap enough too, if we're done with our old friend Flashey,&rdquo; said East,
+      as they made off upstairs to bathe their wounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had done with Flashman in one sense, for he never laid finger on
+      either of them again; but whatever harm a spiteful heart and venomous
+      tongue could do them, he took care should be done. Only throw dirt enough,
+      and some of it is sure to stick; and so it was with the fifth form and the
+      bigger boys in general, with whom he associated more or less, and they not
+      at all. Flashman managed to get Tom and East into disfavour, which did not
+      wear off for some time after the author of it had disappeared from the
+      School world. This event, much prayed for by the small fry in general,
+      took place a few months after the above encounter. One fine summer evening
+      Flashman had been regaling himself on gin-punch, at Brownsover; and,
+      having exceeded his usual limits, started home uproarious. He fell in with
+      a friend or two coming back from bathing, proposed a glass of beer, to
+      which they assented, the weather being hot, and they thirsty souls, and
+      unaware of the quantity of drink which Flashman had already on board. The
+      short result was, that Flashey became beastly drunk. They tried to get him
+      along, but couldn't; so they chartered a hurdle and two men to carry him.
+      One of the masters came upon them, and they naturally enough fled. The
+      flight of the rest raised the master's suspicions, and the good angel of
+      the fags incited him to examine the freight, and, after examination, to
+      convoy the hurdle himself up to the School-house; and the Doctor, who had
+      long had his eye on Flashman, arranged for his withdrawal next morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evil that men and boys too do lives after them: Flashman was gone, but
+      our boys, as hinted above, still felt the effects of his hate. Besides,
+      they had been the movers of the strike against unlawful fagging. The cause
+      was righteous&mdash;the result had been triumphant to a great extent; but
+      the best of the fifth&mdash;even those who had never fagged the small
+      boys, or had given up the practice cheerfully&mdash;couldn't help feeling
+      a small grudge against the first rebels. After all, their form had been
+      defied, on just grounds, no doubt&mdash;so just, indeed, that they had at
+      once acknowledged the wrong, and remained passive in the strife. Had they
+      sided with Flashman and his set, the rebels must have given way at once.
+      They couldn't help, on the whole, being glad that they had so acted, and
+      that the resistance had been successful against such of their own form as
+      had shown fight; they felt that law and order had gained thereby, but the
+      ringleaders they couldn't quite pardon at once. &ldquo;Confoundedly coxy those
+      young rascals will get, if we don't mind,&rdquo; was the general feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So it is, and must be always, my dear boys. If the angel Gabriel were to
+      come down from heaven, and head a successful rise against the most
+      abominable and unrighteous vested interest which this poor old world
+      groans under, he would most certainly lose his character for many years,
+      probably for centuries, not only with the upholders of said vested
+      interest, but with the respectable mass of the people whom he had
+      delivered. They wouldn't ask him to dinner, or let their names appear with
+      his in the papers; they would be very careful how they spoke of him in the
+      Palaver, or at their clubs. What can we expect, then, when we have only
+      poor gallant blundering men like Kossuth, Garibaldi, Mazzini, and
+      righteous causes which do not triumph in their hands&mdash;men who have
+      holes enough in their armour, God knows, easy to be hit by
+      respectabilities sitting in their lounging chairs, and having large
+      balances at their bankers'? But you are brave, gallant boys, who hate
+      easy-chairs, and have no balances or bankers. You only want to have your
+      heads set straight, to take the right side; so bear in mind that
+      majorities, especially respectable ones, are nine times out of ten in the
+      wrong; and that if you see a man or boy striving earnestly on the weak
+      side, however wrong-headed or blundering he may be, you are not to go and
+      join the cry against him. If you can't join him and help him, and make him
+      wiser, at any rate remember that he has found something in the world which
+      he will fight and suffer for, which is just what you have got to do for
+      yourselves; and so think and speak of him tenderly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So East and Tom, the Tadpole, and one or two more, became a sort of young
+      Ishmaelites, their hands against every one, and every one's hand against
+      them. It has been already told how they got to war with the masters and
+      the fifth form, and with the sixth it was much the same. They saw the
+      praepostors cowed by or joining with the fifth and shirking their own
+      duties; so they didn't respect them, and rendered no willing obedience. It
+      had been one thing to clean out studies for sons of heroes like old
+      Brooke, but was quite another to do the like for Snooks and Green, who had
+      never faced a good scrummage at football, and couldn't keep the passages
+      in order at night. So they only slurred through their fagging just well
+      enough to escape a licking, and not always that, and got the character of
+      sulky, unwilling fags. In the fifth-form room, after supper, when such
+      matters were often discussed and arranged, their names were for ever
+      coming up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Green,&rdquo; Snooks began one night, &ldquo;isn't that new boy, Harrison,
+      your fag?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I know something of him at home, and should like to excuse him. Will
+      you swop?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who will you give me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, let's see. There's Willis, Johnson. No, that won't do. Yes, I have
+      it. There's young East; I'll give you him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you wish you may get it?&rdquo; replied Green. &ldquo;I'll give you two for
+      Willis, if you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who, then?&rdquo; asked Snooks. &ldquo;Hall and Brown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn't have 'em at a gift.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better than East, though; for they ain't quite so sharp,&rdquo; said Green,
+      getting up and leaning his back against the mantelpiece. He wasn't a bad
+      fellow, and couldn't help not being able to put down the unruly fifth
+      form. His eye twinkled as he went on, &ldquo;Did I ever tell you how the young
+      vagabond sold me last half?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; how?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he never half cleaned my study out&mdash;only just stuck the
+      candlesticks in the cupboard, and swept the crumbs on to the floor. So at
+      last I was mortal angry, and had him up, and made him go through the whole
+      performance under my eyes. The dust the young scamp made nearly choked me,
+      and showed that he hadn't swept the carpet before. Well, when it was all
+      finished, 'Now, young gentleman,' says I, 'mind, I expect this to be done
+      every morning&mdash;floor swept, table-cloth taken off and shaken, and
+      everything dusted.' 'Very well,' grunts he. Not a bit of it though. I was
+      quite sure, in a day or two, that he never took the table-cloth off even.
+      So I laid a trap for him. I tore up some paper, and put half a dozen bits
+      on my table one night, and the cloth over them as usual. Next morning
+      after breakfast up I came, pulled off the cloth, and, sure enough, there
+      was the paper, which fluttered down on to the floor. I was in a towering
+      rage. 'I've got you now,' thought I, and sent for him, while I got out my
+      cane. Up he came as cool as you please, with his hands in his pockets.
+      'Didn't I tell you to shake my table-cloth every morning?' roared I.
+      'Yes,' says he. 'Did you do it this morning?' 'Yes.' 'You young liar! I
+      put these pieces of paper on the table last night, and if you'd taken the
+      table-cloth off you'd have seen them, so I'm going to give you a good
+      licking.' Then my youngster takes one hand out of his pocket, and just
+      stoops down and picks up two of the bits of paper, and holds them out to
+      me. There was written on each, in great round text, 'Harry East, his
+      mark.' The young rogue had found my trap out, taken away my paper, and put
+      some of his there, every bit ear-marked. I'd a great mind to lick him for
+      his impudence; but, after all, one has no right to be laying traps, so I
+      didn't. Of course I was at his mercy till the end of the half, and in his
+      weeks my study was so frowzy I couldn't sit in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They spoil one's things so, too,&rdquo; chimed in a third boy. &ldquo;Hall and Brown
+      were night-fags last week. I called 'fag,' and gave them my candlesticks
+      to clean. Away they went, and didn't appear again. When they'd had time
+      enough to clean them three times over, I went out to look after them. They
+      weren't in the passages so down I went into the hall, where I heard music;
+      and there I found them sitting on the table, listening to Johnson, who was
+      playing the flute, and my candlesticks stuck between the bars well into
+      the fire, red-hot, clean spoiled. They've never stood straight since, and
+      I must get some more. However, I gave them a good licking; that's one
+      comfort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such were the sort of scrapes they were always getting into; and so,
+      partly by their own faults, partly from circumstances, partly from the
+      faults of others, they found themselves outlaws, ticket-of-leave men, or
+      what you will in that line&mdash;in short, dangerous parties&mdash;and
+      lived the sort of hand-to-mouth, wild, reckless life which such parties
+      generally have to put up with. Nevertheless they never quite lost favour
+      with young Brooke, who was now the cock of the house, and just getting
+      into the sixth; and Diggs stuck to them like a man, and gave them store of
+      good advice, by which they never in the least profited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And even after the house mended, and law and order had been restored,
+      which soon happened after young Brooke and Diggs got into the sixth, they
+      couldn't easily or at once return into the paths of steadiness, and many
+      of the old, wild, out-of-bounds habits stuck to them as firmly as ever.
+      While they had been quite little boys, the scrapes they got into in the
+      School hadn't much mattered to any one; but now they were in the upper
+      school, all wrong-doers from which were sent up straight to the Doctor at
+      once. So they began to come under his notice; and as they were a sort of
+      leaders in a small way amongst their own contemporaries, his eye, which
+      was everywhere, was upon them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a toss-up whether they turned out well or ill, and so they were
+      just the boys who caused most anxiety to such a master. You have been told
+      of the first occasion on which they were sent up to the Doctor, and the
+      remembrance of it was so pleasant that they had much less fear of him than
+      most boys of their standing had. &ldquo;It's all his look,&rdquo; Tom used to say to
+      East, &ldquo;that frightens fellows. Don't you remember, he never said anything
+      to us my first half-year for being an hour late for locking-up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The next time that Tom came before him, however, the interview was of a
+      very different kind. It happened just about the time at which we have now
+      arrived, and was the first of a series of scrapes into which our hero
+      managed now to tumble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The river Avon at Rugby is a slow and not very clear stream, in which
+      chub, dace, roach, and other coarse fish are (or were) plentiful enough,
+      together with a fair sprinkling of small jack, but no fish worth sixpence
+      either for sport or food. It is, however, a capital river for bathing, as
+      it has many nice small pools and several good reaches for swimming, all
+      within about a mile of one another, and at an easy twenty minutes' walk
+      from the school. This mile of water is rented, or used to be rented, for
+      bathing purposes by the trustees of the School, for the boys. The footpath
+      to Brownsover crosses the river by &ldquo;the Planks,&rdquo; a curious old
+      single-plank bridge running for fifty or sixty yards into the flat meadows
+      on each side of the river&mdash;for in the winter there are frequent
+      floods. Above the Planks were the bathing-places for the smaller boys&mdash;Sleath's,
+      the first bathing-place, where all new boys had to begin, until they had
+      proved to the bathing men (three steady individuals, who were paid to
+      attend daily through the summer to prevent accidents) that they could swim
+      pretty decently, when they were allowed to go on to Anstey's, about one
+      hundred and fifty yards below. Here there was a hole about six feet deep
+      and twelve feet across, over which the puffing urchins struggled to the
+      opposite side, and thought no small beer of themselves for having been out
+      of their depths. Below the Planks came larger and deeper holes, the first
+      of which was Wratislaw's, and the last Swift's, a famous hole, ten or
+      twelve feet deep in parts, and thirty yards across, from which there was a
+      fine swimming reach right down to the mill. Swift's was reserved for the
+      sixth and fifth forms, and had a spring board and two sets of steps: the
+      others had one set of steps each, and were used indifferently by all the
+      lower boys, though each house addicted itself more to one hole than to
+      another. The School-house at this time affected Wratislaw's hole, and Tom
+      and East, who had learnt to swim like fishes, were to be found there as
+      regular as the clock through the summer, always twice, and often three
+      times a day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the boys either had, or fancied they had, a right also to fish at
+      their pleasure over the whole of this part of the river, and would not
+      understand that the right (if any) only extended to the Rugby side. As
+      ill-luck would have it, the gentleman who owned the opposite bank, after
+      allowing it for some time without interference, had ordered his keepers
+      not to let the boys fish on his side&mdash;the consequence of which had
+      been that there had been first wranglings and then fights between the
+      keepers and boys; and so keen had the quarrel become that the landlord and
+      his keepers, after a ducking had been inflicted on one of the latter, and
+      a fierce fight ensued thereon, had been up to the great school at
+      calling-over to identify the delinquents, and it was all the Doctor
+      himself and five or six masters could do to keep the peace. Not even his
+      authority could prevent the hissing; and so strong was the feeling that
+      the four praepostors of the week walked up the school with their canes,
+      shouting &ldquo;S-s-s-s-i-lenc-c-c-c-e&rdquo; at the top of their voices. However, the
+      chief offenders for the time were flogged and kept in bounds; but the
+      victorious party had brought a nice hornet's nest about their ears. The
+      landlord was hissed at the School-gates as he rode past, and when he
+      charged his horse at the mob of boys, and tried to thrash them with his
+      whip, was driven back by cricket-bats and wickets, and pursued with
+      pebbles and fives balls; while the wretched keepers' lives were a burden
+      to them, from having to watch the waters so closely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The School-house boys of Tom's standing, one and all, as a protest against
+      this tyranny and cutting short of their lawful amusements, took to fishing
+      in all ways, and especially by means of night-lines. The little
+      tacklemaker at the bottom of the town would soon have made his fortune had
+      the rage lasted, and several of the barbers began to lay in
+      fishing-tackle. The boys had this great advantage over their enemies, that
+      they spent a large portion of the day in nature's garb by the river-side,
+      and so, when tired of swimming, would get out on the other side and fish,
+      or set night-lines, till the keepers hove in sight, and then plunge in and
+      swim back and mix with the other bathers, and the keepers were too wise to
+      follow across the stream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While things were in this state, one day Tom and three or four others were
+      bathing at Wratislaw's, and had, as a matter of course, been taking up and
+      re-setting night-lines. They had all left the water, and were sitting or
+      standing about at their toilets, in all costumes, from a shirt upwards,
+      when they were aware of a man in a velveteen shooting-coat approaching
+      from the other side. He was a new keeper, so they didn't recognize or
+      notice him, till he pulled up right opposite, and began:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see'd some of you young gentlemen over this side a-fishing just now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo! who are you? What business is that of yours, old Velveteens?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm the new under-keeper, and master's told me to keep a sharp lookout on
+      all o' you young chaps. And I tells 'ee I means business, and you'd better
+      keep on your own side, or we shall fall out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that's right, Velveteens; speak out, and let's know your mind at
+      once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, old boy,&rdquo; cried East, holding up a miserable, coarse fish or
+      two and a small jack; &ldquo;would you like to smell 'em and see which bank they
+      lived under?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll give you a bit of advice, keeper,&rdquo; shouted Tom, who was sitting in
+      his shirt paddling with his feet in the river: &ldquo;you'd better go down there
+      to Swift's, where the big boys are; they're beggars at setting lines,
+      and'll put you up to a wrinkle or two for catching the five-pounders.&rdquo; Tom
+      was nearest to the keeper, and that officer, who was getting angry at the
+      chaff, fixed his eyes on our hero, as if to take a note of him for future
+      use. Tom returned his gaze with a steady stare, and then broke into a
+      laugh, and struck into the middle of a favourite School-house song,&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;As I and my companions
+     Were setting of a snare
+     The gamekeeper was watching us;
+     For him we did not care:
+     For we can wrestle and fight, my boys,
+     And jump out anywhere.
+     For it's my delight of a likely night,
+     In the season of the year.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The chorus was taken up by the other boys with shouts of laughter, and the
+      keeper turned away with a grunt, but evidently bent on mischief. The boys
+      thought no more of the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now came on the May-fly season; the soft, hazy summer weather lay
+      sleepily along the rich meadows by Avon side, and the green and gray flies
+      flickered with their graceful, lazy up-and-down flight over the reeds and
+      the water and the meadows, in myriads upon myriads. The May-flies must
+      surely be the lotus-eaters of the ephemerae&mdash;the happiest, laziest,
+      carelessest fly that dances and dreams out his few hours of sunshiny life
+      by English rivers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every little pitiful, coarse fish in the Avon was on the alert for the
+      flies, and gorging his wretched carcass with hundreds daily, the
+      gluttonous rogues! and every lover of the gentle craft was out to avenge
+      the poor May-flies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So one fine Thursday afternoon, Tom, having borrowed East's new rod,
+      started by himself to the river. He fished for some time with small
+      success&mdash;not a fish would rise at him; but as he prowled along the
+      bank, he was presently aware of mighty ones feeding in a pool on the
+      opposite side, under the shade of a huge willow-tree. The stream was deep
+      here, but some fifty yards below was a shallow, for which he made off
+      hot-foot; and forgetting landlords, keepers, solemn prohibitions of the
+      Doctor, and everything else, pulled up his trousers, plunged across, and
+      in three minutes was creeping along on all fours towards the clump of
+      willows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It isn't often that great chub, or any other coarse fish, are in earnest
+      about anything; but just then they were thoroughly bent on feeding, and in
+      half an hour Master Tom had deposited three thumping fellows at the foot
+      of the giant willow. As he was baiting for a fourth pounder, and just
+      going to throw in again, he became aware of a man coming up the bank not
+      one hundred yards off. Another look told him that it was the under-keeper.
+      Could he reach the shallow before him? No, not carrying his rod. Nothing
+      for it but the tree. So Tom laid his bones to it, shinning up as fast as
+      he could, and dragging up his rod after him. He had just time to reach and
+      crouch along upon a huge branch some ten feet up, which stretched out over
+      the river, when the keeper arrived at the clump. Tom's heart beat fast as
+      he came under the tree; two steps more and he would have passed, when, as
+      ill-luck would have it, the gleam on the scales of the dead fish caught
+      his eye, and he made a dead point at the foot of the tree. He picked up
+      the fish one by one; his eye and touch told him that they had been alive
+      and feeding within the hour. Tom crouched lower along the branch, and
+      heard the keeper beating the clump. &ldquo;If I could only get the rod hidden,&rdquo;
+       thought he, and began gently shifting it to get it alongside of him;
+      &ldquo;willowtrees don't throw out straight hickory shoots twelve feet long,
+      with no leaves, worse luck.&rdquo; Alas! the keeper catches the rustle, and then
+      a sight of the rod, and then of Tom's hand and arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, be up ther', be 'ee?&rdquo; says he, running under the tree. &ldquo;Now you come
+      down this minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0231m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0231m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0231.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tree'd at last,&rdquo; thinks Tom, making no answer, and keeping as close as
+      possible, but working away at the rod, which he takes to pieces. &ldquo;I'm in
+      for it, unless I can starve him out.&rdquo; And then he begins to meditate
+      getting along the branch for a plunge, and scramble to the other side; but
+      the small branches are so thick, and the opposite bank so difficult, that
+      the keeper will have lots of time to get round by the ford before he can
+      get out, so he gives that up. And now he hears the keeper beginning to
+      scramble up the trunk. That will never do; so he scrambles himself back to
+      where his branch joins the trunk; and stands with lifted rod.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo, Velveteens; mind your fingers if you come any higher.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The keeper stops and looks up, and then with a grin says, &ldquo;Oh! be you, be
+      it, young measter? Well, here's luck. Now I tells 'ee to come down at
+      once, and 't'll be best for 'ee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank 'ee, Velveteens; I'm very comfortable,&rdquo; said Tom, shortening the
+      rod in his hand, and preparing for battle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Werry well; please yourself,&rdquo; says the keeper, descending, however, to
+      the ground again, and taking his seat on the bank. &ldquo;I bean't in no hurry,
+      so you may take your time. I'll l'arn 'ee to gee honest folk names afore
+      I've done with 'ee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My luck as usual,&rdquo; thinks Tom; &ldquo;what a fool I was to give him a black! If
+      I'd called him 'keeper,' now, I might get off. The return match is all his
+      way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The keeper quietly proceeded to take out his pipe, fill, and light it,
+      keeping an eye on Tom, who now sat disconsolately across the branch,
+      looking at keeper&mdash;a pitiful sight for men and fishes. The more he
+      thought of it the less he liked it. &ldquo;It must be getting near second
+      calling-over,&rdquo; thinks he. Keeper smokes on stolidly. &ldquo;If he takes me up, I
+      shall be flogged safe enough. I can't sit here all night. Wonder if he'll
+      rise at silver.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, keeper,&rdquo; said he meekly, &ldquo;let me go for two bob?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for twenty neither,&rdquo; grunts his persecutor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so they sat on till long past second calling-over, and the sun came
+      slanting in through the willow-branches, and telling of locking-up near at
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm coming down, keeper,&rdquo; said Tom at last, with a sigh, fairly tired
+      out. &ldquo;Now what are you going to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Walk 'ee up to School, and give 'ee over to the Doctor; them's my
+      orders,&rdquo; says Velveteens, knocking the ashes out of his fourth pipe, and
+      standing up and shaking himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; said Tom; &ldquo;but hands off, you know. I'll go with you quietly,
+      so no collaring or that sort of thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Keeper looked at him a minute. &ldquo;Werry good,&rdquo; said he at last. And so Tom
+      descended, and wended his way drearily by the side of the keeper, up to
+      the Schoolhouse, where they arrived just at locking-up. As they passed the
+      School-gates, the Tadpole and several others who were standing there
+      caught the state of things, and rushed out, crying, &ldquo;Rescue!&rdquo; But Tom
+      shook his head; so they only followed to the Doctor's gate, and went back
+      sorely puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How changed and stern the Doctor seemed from the last time that Tom was up
+      there, as the keeper told the story, not omitting to state how Tom had
+      called him blackguard names. &ldquo;Indeed, sir,&rdquo; broke in the culprit, &ldquo;it was
+      only Velveteens.&rdquo; The Doctor only asked one question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know the rule about the banks, Brown?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then wait for me to-morrow, after first lesson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought so,&rdquo; muttered Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And about the rod, sir?&rdquo; went on the keeper. &ldquo;Master's told we as we
+      might have all the rods&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, please, sir,&rdquo; broke in Tom, &ldquo;the rod isn't mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Doctor looked puzzled; but the keeper, who was a good-hearted fellow,
+      and melted at Tom's evident distress, gave up his claim. Tom was flogged
+      next morning, and a few days afterwards met Velveteens, and presented him
+      with half a crown for giving up the rod claim, and they became sworn
+      friends; and I regret to say that Tom had many more fish from under the
+      willow that May-fly season, and was never caught again by Velveteens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It wasn't three weeks before Tom, and now East by his side, were again in
+      the awful presence. This time, however, the Doctor was not so terrible. A
+      few days before, they had been fagged at fives to fetch the balls that
+      went off the court. While standing watching the game, they saw five or six
+      nearly new balls hit on the top of the School. &ldquo;I say, Tom,&rdquo; said East,
+      when they were dismissed, &ldquo;couldn't we get those balls somehow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's try, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So they reconnoitred the walls carefully, borrowed a coal-hammer from old
+      Stumps, bought some big nails, and after one or two attempts, scaled the
+      Schools, and possessed themselves of huge quantities of fives balls. The
+      place pleased them so much that they spent all their spare time there,
+      scratching and cutting their names on the top of every tower; and at last,
+      having exhausted all other places, finished up with inscribing H.EAST,
+      T.BROWN, on the minute-hand of the great clock; in the doing of which they
+      held the minute-hand, and disturbed the clock's economy. So next morning,
+      when masters and boys came trooping down to prayers, and entered the
+      quadrangle, the injured minute-hand was indicating three minutes to the
+      hour. They all pulled up, and took their time. When the hour struck, doors
+      were closed, and half the school late. Thomas being set to make inquiry,
+      discovers their names on the minute-hand, and reports accordingly; and
+      they are sent for, a knot of their friends making derisive and pantomimic
+      allusions to what their fate will be as they walk off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Doctor, after hearing their story, doesn't make much of it, and
+      only gives them thirty lines of Homer to learn by heart, and a lecture on
+      the likelihood of such exploits ending in broken bones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alas! almost the next day was one of the great fairs in the town; and as
+      several rows and other disagreeable accidents had of late taken place on
+      these occasions, the Doctor gives out, after prayers in the morning, that
+      no boy is to go down into the town. Wherefore East and Tom, for no earthly
+      pleasure except that of doing what they are told not to do, start away,
+      after second lesson, and making a short circuit through the fields, strike
+      a back lane which leads into the town, go down it, and run plump upon one
+      of the masters as they emerge into the High Street. The master in
+      question, though a very clever, is not a righteous man. He has already
+      caught several of his own pupils, and gives them lines to learn, while he
+      sends East and Tom, who are not his pupils, up to the Doctor, who, on
+      learning that they had been at prayers in the morning, flogs them soundly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flogging did them no good at the time, for the injustice of their
+      captor was rankling in their minds; but it was just the end of the half,
+      and on the next evening but one Thomas knocks at their door, and says the
+      Doctor wants to see them. They look at one another in silent dismay. What
+      can it be now? Which of their countless wrong-doings can he have heard of
+      officially? However, it's no use delaying, so up they go to the study.
+      There they find the Doctor, not angry, but very graver. &ldquo;He has sent for
+      them to speak to very seriously before they go home. They have each been
+      flogged several times in the half-year for direct and wilful breaches of
+      rules. This cannot go on. They are doing no good to themselves or others,
+      and now they are getting up in the School, and have influence. They seem
+      to think that rules are made capriciously, and for the pleasure of the
+      masters; but this is not so. They are made for the good of the whole
+      School, and must and shall be obeyed. Those who thoughtlessly or wilfully
+      break them will not be allowed to stay at the School. He should be sorry
+      if they had to leave, as the School might do them both much good, and
+      wishes them to think very seriously in the holidays over what he has said.
+      Good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so the two hurry off horribly scared; the idea of having to leave has
+      never crossed their minds, and is quite unbearable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they go out, they meet at the door old Holmes, a sturdy, cheery
+      praepostor of another house, who goes in to the Doctor; and they hear his
+      genial, hearty greeting of the newcomer, so different to their own
+      reception, as the door closes, and return to their study with heavy
+      hearts, and tremendous resolves to break no more rules.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five minutes afterwards the master of their form&mdash;a late arrival and
+      a model young master&mdash;knocks at the Doctor's study-door. &ldquo;Come in!&rdquo;
+       And as he enters, the Doctor goes on, to Holmes&mdash;&ldquo;You see, I do not
+      know anything of the case officially, and if I take any notice of it at
+      all, I must publicly expel the boy. I don't wish to do that, for I think
+      there is some good in him. There's nothing for it but a good sound
+      thrashing.&rdquo; He paused to shake hands with the master, which Holmes does
+      also, and then prepares to leave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand. Good-night, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night, Holmes. And remember,&rdquo; added the Doctor, emphasizing the
+      words, &ldquo;a good sound thrashing before the whole house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The door closed on Holmes; and the Doctor, in answer to the puzzled look
+      of his lieutenant, explained shortly. &ldquo;A gross case of bullying. Wharton,
+      the head of the house, is a very good fellow, but slight and weak, and
+      severe physical pain is the only way to deal with such a case; so I have
+      asked Holmes to take it up. He is very careful and trustworthy, and has
+      plenty of strength. I wish all the sixth had as much. We must have it
+      here, if we are to keep order at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now I don't want any wiseacres to read this book, but if they should, of
+      course they will prick up their long ears, and howl, or rather bray, at
+      the above story. Very good&mdash;I don't object; but what I have to add
+      for you boys is this, that Holmes called a levy of his house after
+      breakfast next morning, made them a speech on the case of bullying in
+      question, and then gave the bully a &ldquo;good sound thrashing;&rdquo; and that years
+      afterwards, that boy sought out Holmes, and thanked him, saying it had
+      been the kindest act which had ever been done upon him, and the
+      turning-point in his character; and a very good fellow he became, and a
+      credit to his School.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After some other talk between them, the Doctor said, &ldquo;I want to speak to
+      you about two boys in your form, East and Brown. I have just been speaking
+      to them. What do you think of them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, they are not hard workers, and very thoughtless and full of
+      spirits; but I can't help liking them. I think they are sound, good
+      fellows at the bottom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm glad of it. I think so too: But they make me very uneasy. They are
+      taking the lead a good deal amongst the fags in my house, for they are
+      very active, bold fellows. I should be sorry to lose them, but I shan't
+      let them stay if I don't see them gaining character and manliness. In
+      another year they may do great harm to all the younger boys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I hope you won't send them away,&rdquo; pleaded their master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not if I can help it. But now I never feel sure, after any half-holiday,
+      that I shan't have to flog one of them next morning, for some foolish,
+      thoughtless scrape. I quite dread seeing either of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were both silent for a minute. Presently the Doctor began again:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They don't feel that they have any duty or work to do in the school, and
+      how is one to make them feel it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think if either of them had some little boy to take care of, it would
+      steady them. Brown is the most reckless of the two, I should say. East
+      wouldn't get into so many scrapes without him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the Doctor, with something like a sigh, &ldquo;I'll think of it.&rdquo;
+       And they went on to talk of other subjects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART II.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;I [hold] it truth, with him who sings,
+     To one clear harp in divers tones,
+     That men may rise on stepping-stones
+     Of their dead selves to higher things.&rdquo;
+      &mdash;TENNYSON.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0241m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0241m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0241.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I&mdash;HOW THE TIDE TURNED.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
+     In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.
+     . . . .
+     Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
+     Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified.&rdquo;
+      &mdash;LOWELL.
+</pre>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+      <img src="images/9241m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="9241m " width="100%" />
+      <a href="images/9241.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      he turning-point in our hero's school career had now come, and the manner
+      of it was as follows. On the evening of the first day of the next
+      half-year, Tom, East, and another School-house boy, who had just been
+      dropped at the Spread Eagle by the old Regulator, rushed into the matron's
+      room in high spirits, such as all real boys are in when they first get
+      back, however fond they may be of home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Mrs. Wixie,&rdquo; shouted one, seizing on the methodical, active, little
+      dark-eyed woman, who was busy stowing away the linen of the boys who had
+      already arrived into their several pigeon-holes, &ldquo;here we are again, you
+      see, as jolly as ever. Let us help you put the things away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, Mary,&rdquo; cried another (she was called indifferently by either name),
+      &ldquo;who's come back? Has the Doctor made old Jones leave? How many new boys
+      are there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I and East to have Gray's study? You know you promised to get it for
+      us if you could,&rdquo; shouted Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And am I to sleep in Number 4?&rdquo; roared East.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How's old Sam, and Bogle, and Sally?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless the boys!&rdquo; cries Mary, at last getting in a word; &ldquo;why, you'll
+      shake me to death. There, now, do go away up to the housekeeper's room and
+      get your suppers; you know I haven't time to talk. You'll find plenty more
+      in the house.&mdash;Now, Master East, do let those things alone. You're
+      mixing up three new boys' things.&rdquo; And she rushed at East, who escaped
+      round the open trunks holding up a prize.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo! look here, Tommy,&rdquo; shouted he; &ldquo;here's fun!&rdquo; and he brandished
+      above his head some pretty little night-caps, beautifully made and marked,
+      the work of loving fingers in some distant country home. The kind mother
+      and sisters who sewed that delicate stitching with aching hearts little
+      thought of the trouble they might be bringing on the young head for which
+      they were meant. The little matron was wiser, and snatched the caps from
+      East before he could look at the name on them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Master East, I shall be very angry if you don't go,&rdquo; said she;
+      &ldquo;there's some capital cold beef and pickles upstairs, and I won't have you
+      old boys in my room first night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hurrah for the pickles! Come along, Tommy&mdash;come along, Smith. We
+      shall find out who the young count is, I'll be bound. I hope he'll sleep
+      in my room. Mary's always vicious first week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As the boys turned to leave the room, the matron touched Tom's arm, and
+      said, &ldquo;Master Brown, please stop a minute; I want to speak to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, Mary. I'll come in a minute, East. Don't finish the pickles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Master Brown,&rdquo; went on the little matron, when the rest had gone,
+      &ldquo;you're to have Gray's study, Mrs. Arnold says. And she wants you to take
+      in this young gentleman. He's a new boy, and thirteen years old though he
+      don't look it. He's very delicate, and has never been from home before.
+      And I told Mrs. Arnold I thought you'd be kind to him, and see that they
+      don't bully him at first. He's put into your form, and I've given him the
+      bed next to yours in Number 4; so East can't sleep there this half.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom was rather put about by this speech. He had got the double study which
+      he coveted, but here were conditions attached which greatly moderated his
+      joy. He looked across the room, and in the far corner of the sofa was
+      aware of a slight, pale boy, with large blue eyes and light fair hair, who
+      seemed ready to shrink through the floor. He saw at a glance that the
+      little stranger was just the boy whose first half-year at a public school
+      would be misery to himself if he were left alone, or constant anxiety to
+      any one who meant to see him through his troubles. Tom was too honest to
+      take in the youngster, and then let him shift for himself; and if he took
+      him as his chum instead of East, where were all his pet plans of having a
+      bottled-beer cellar under his window, and making night-lines and slings,
+      and plotting expeditions to Brownsover Mills and Caldecott's Spinney? East
+      and he had made up their minds to get this study, and then every night
+      from locking-up till ten they would be together to talk about fishing,
+      drink bottled-beer, read Marryat's novels, and sort birds' eggs. And this
+      new boy would most likely never go out of the close, and would be afraid
+      of wet feet, and always getting laughed at, and called Molly, or Jenny, or
+      some derogatory feminine nickname.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The matron watched him for a moment, and saw what was passing in his mind,
+      and so, like a wise negotiator, threw in an appeal to his warm heart.
+      &ldquo;Poor little fellow,&rdquo; said she, in almost a whisper; &ldquo;his father's dead,
+      and he's got no brothers. And his mamma&mdash;such a kind, sweet lady&mdash;almost
+      broke her heart at leaving him this morning; and she said one of his
+      sisters was like to die of decline, and so&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well,&rdquo; burst in Tom, with something like a sigh at the effort, &ldquo;I
+      suppose I must give up East.&mdash;Come along, young un. What's your name?
+      We'll go and have some supper, and then I'll show you our study.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His name's George Arthur,&rdquo; said the matron, walking up to him with Tom,
+      who grasped his little delicate hand as the proper preliminary to making a
+      chum of him, and felt as if he could have blown him away. &ldquo;I've had his
+      books and things put into the study, which his mamma has had new papered,
+      and the sofa covered, and new green-baize curtains over the door&rdquo; (the
+      diplomatic matron threw this in, to show that the new boy was contributing
+      largely to the partnership comforts). &ldquo;And Mrs. Arnold told me to say,&rdquo;
+       she added, &ldquo;that she should like you both to come up to tea with her. You
+      know the way, Master Brown, and the things are just gone up, I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here was an announcement for Master Tom! He was to go up to tea the first
+      night, just as if he were a sixth or fifth form boy, and of importance in
+      the School world, instead of the most reckless young scapegrace amongst
+      the fags. He felt himself lifted on to a higher social and moral platform
+      at once. Nevertheless he couldn't give up without a sigh the idea of the
+      jolly supper in the housekeeper's room with East and the rest, and a rush
+      round to all the studies of his friends afterwards, to pour out the deeds
+      and wonders of the holidays, to plot fifty plans for the coming half-year,
+      and to gather news of who had left and what new boys had come, who had got
+      who's study, and where the new praepostors slept. However, Tom consoled
+      himself with thinking that he couldn't have done all this with the new boy
+      at his heels, and so marched off along the passages to the Doctor's
+      private house with his young charge in tow, in monstrous good-humour with
+      himself and all the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is needless, and would be impertinent, to tell how the two young boys
+      were received in that drawing-room. The lady who presided there is still
+      living, and has carried with her to her peaceful home in the north the
+      respect and love of all those who ever felt and shared that gentle and
+      high-bred hospitality. Ay, many is the brave heart, now doing its work and
+      bearing its load in country curacies, London chambers, under the Indian
+      sun, and in Australian towns and clearings, which looks back with fond and
+      grateful memory to that School-house drawing-room, and dates much of its
+      highest and best training to the lessons learnt there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides Mrs. Arnold and one or two of the elder children, there were one
+      of the younger masters, young Brooke (who was now in the sixth, and had
+      succeeded to his brother's position and influence), and another sixth-form
+      boy, talking together before the fire. The master and young Brooke, now a
+      great strapping fellow six feet high, eighteen years old, and powerful as
+      a coal-heaver, nodded kindly to Tom, to his intense glory, and then went
+      on talking. The other did not notice them. The hostess, after a few kind
+      words, which led the boys at once and insensibly to feel at their ease and
+      to begin talking to one another, left them with her own children while she
+      finished a letter. The young ones got on fast and well, Tom holding forth
+      about a prodigious pony he had been riding out hunting, and hearing
+      stories of the winter glories of the lakes, when tea came in, and
+      immediately after the Doctor himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How frank, and kind, and manly was his greeting to the party by the fire!
+      It did Tom's heart good to see him and young Brooke shake hands, and look
+      one another in the face; and he didn't fail to remark that Brooke was
+      nearly as tall and quite as broad as the Doctor. And his cup was full when
+      in another moment his master turned to him with another warm shake of the
+      hand, and, seemingly oblivious of all the late scrapes which he had been
+      getting into, said, &ldquo;Ah, Brown, you here! I hope you left your father and
+      all well at home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir, quite well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And this is the little fellow who is to share your study. Well, he
+      doesn't look as we should like to see him. He wants some Rugby air, and
+      cricket. And you must take him some good long walks, to Bilton Grange, and
+      Caldecott's Spinney, and show him what a little pretty country we have
+      about here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom wondered if the Doctor knew that his visits to Bilton Grange were for
+      the purpose of taking rooks' nests (a proceeding strongly discountenanced
+      by the owner thereof), and those to Caldecott's Spinney were prompted
+      chiefly by the conveniences for setting night-lines. What didn't the
+      Doctor know? And what a noble use he always made of it! He almost resolved
+      to abjure rook-pies and night-lines for ever. The tea went merrily off,
+      the Doctor now talking of holiday doings, and then of the prospects of the
+      half-year&mdash;what chance there was for the Balliol scholarship, whether
+      the eleven would be a good one. Everybody was at his ease, and everybody
+      felt that he, young as he might be, was of some use in the little School
+      world, and had a work to do there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon after tea the Doctor went off to his study, and the young boys a few
+      minutes afterwards took their leave and went out of the private door which
+      led from the Doctor's house into the middle passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the fire, at the farther end of the passage, was a crowd of boys in
+      loud talk and laughter. There was a sudden pause when the door opened, and
+      then a great shout of greeting, as Tom was recognized marching down the
+      passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo, Brown! where do you come from?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I've been to tea with the Doctor,&rdquo; says Tom, with great dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My eye!&rdquo; cried East, &ldquo;Oh! so that's why Mary called you back, and you
+      didn't come to supper. You lost something. That beef and pickles was no
+      end good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, young fellow,&rdquo; cried Hall, detecting Arthur and catching him by
+      the collar, &ldquo;what's your name? Where do you come from? How old are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom saw Arthur shrink back and look scared as all the group turned to him,
+      but thought it best to let him answer, just standing by his side to
+      support in case of need.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arthur, sir. I come from Devonshire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't call me 'sir,' you young muff. How old are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thirteen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you sing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor boy was trembling and hesitating. Tom struck in&mdash;&ldquo;You be
+      hanged, Tadpole. He'll have to sing, whether he can or not, Saturday
+      twelve weeks, and that's long enough off yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know him at home, Brown?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; but he's my chum in Gray's old study, and it's near prayer-time, and
+      I haven't had a look at it yet.&mdash;Come along, Arthur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Away went the two, Tom longing to get his charge safe under cover, where
+      he might advise him on his deportment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a queer chum for Tom Brown,&rdquo; was the comment at the fire; and it
+      must be confessed so thought Tom himself, as he lighted his candle, and
+      surveyed the new green-baize curtains and the carpet and sofa with much
+      satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Arthur, what a brick your mother is to make us so cozy! But look
+      here now; you must answer straight up when the fellows speak to you, and
+      don't be afraid. If you're afraid, you'll get bullied. And don't you say
+      you can sing; and don't you ever talk about home, or your mother and
+      sisters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor little Arthur looked ready to cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, please,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;mayn't I talk about&mdash;about home to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes; I like it. But don't talk to boys you don't know, or they'll call
+      you home-sick, or mamma's darling, or some such stuff. What a jolly desk!
+      Is that yours? And what stunning binding! Why, your school-books look like
+      novels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Tom was soon deep in Arthur's goods and chattels, all new, and good
+      enough for a fifth-form boy, and hardly thought of his friends outside
+      till the prayer-bell rang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have already described the School-house prayers. They were the same on
+      the first night as on the other nights, save for the gaps caused by the
+      absence of those boys who came late, and the line of new boys who stood
+      all together at the farther table&mdash;of all sorts and sizes, like young
+      bears with all their troubles to come, as Tom's father had said to him
+      when he was in the same position. He thought of it as he looked at the
+      line, and poor little slight Arthur standing with them, and as he was
+      leading him upstairs to Number 4, directly after prayers, and showing him
+      his bed. It was a huge, high, airy room, with two large windows looking on
+      to the School close. There were twelve beds in the room. The one in the
+      farthest corner by the fireplace, occupied by the sixth-form boy, who was
+      responsible for the discipline of the room, and the rest by boys in the
+      lower-fifth and other junior forms, all fags (for the fifth-form boys, as
+      has been said, slept in rooms by themselves). Being fags, the eldest of
+      them was not more than about sixteen years old, and were all bound to be
+      up and in bed by ten. The sixth-form boys came to bed from ten to a
+      quarter-past (at which time the old verger came round to put the candles
+      out), except when they sat up to read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within a few minutes therefore of their entry, all the other boys who
+      slept in Number 4 had come up. The little fellows went quietly to their
+      own beds, and began undressing, and talking to each other in whispers;
+      while the elder, amongst whom was Tom, sat chatting about on one another's
+      beds, with their jackets and waistcoats off. Poor little Arthur was
+      overwhelmed with the novelty of his position. The idea of sleeping in the
+      room with strange boys had clearly never crossed his mind before, and was
+      as painful as it was strange to him. He could hardly bear to take his
+      jacket off; however, presently, with an effort, off it came, and then he
+      paused and looked at Tom, who was sitting at the bottom of his bed talking
+      and laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please, Brown,&rdquo; he whispered, &ldquo;may I wash my face and hands?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, if you like,&rdquo; said Tom, staring; &ldquo;that's your washhand-stand,
+      under the window, second from your bed. You'll have to go down for more
+      water in the morning if you use it all.&rdquo; And on he went with his talk,
+      while Arthur stole timidly from between the beds out to his
+      washhand-stand, and began his ablutions, thereby drawing for a moment on
+      himself the attention of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On went the talk and laughter. Arthur finished his washing and undressing,
+      and put on his night-gown. He then looked round more nervously than ever.
+      Two or three of the little boys were already in bed, sitting up with their
+      chins on their knees. The light burned clear, the noise went on. It was a
+      trying moment for the poor little lonely boy; however, this time he didn't
+      ask Tom what he might or might not do, but dropped on his knees by his
+      bedside, as he had done every day from his childhood, to open his heart to
+      Him who heareth the cry and beareth the sorrows of the tender child, and
+      the strong man in agony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom was sitting at the bottom of his bed unlacing his boots, so that his
+      back was towards Arthur, and he didn't see what had happened, and looked
+      up in wonder at the sudden silence. Then two or three boys laughed and
+      sneered, and a big, brutal fellow who was standing in the middle of the
+      room picked up a slipper, and shied it at the kneeling boy, calling him a
+      snivelling young shaver. Then Tom saw the whole, and the next moment the
+      boot he had just pulled off flew straight at the head of the bully, who
+      had just time to throw up his arm and catch it on his elbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Confound you, Brown! what's that for?&rdquo; roared he, stamping with pain.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0251m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0251m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0251.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind what I mean,&rdquo; said Tom, stepping on to the floor, every drop
+      of blood in his body tingling; &ldquo;if any fellow wants the other boot, he
+      knows how to get it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What would have been the result is doubtful, for at this moment the
+      sixth-form boy came in, and not another word could be said. Tom and the
+      rest rushed into bed and finished their unrobing there, and the old
+      verger, as punctual as the clock, had put out the candle in another
+      minute, and toddled on to the next room, shutting their door with his
+      usual &ldquo;Good-night, gen'lm'n.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There were many boys in the room by whom that little scene was taken to
+      heart before they slept. But sleep seemed to have deserted the pillow of
+      poor Tom. For some time his excitement, and the flood of memories which
+      chased one another through his brain, kept him from thinking or resolving.
+      His head throbbed, his heart leapt, and he could hardly keep himself from
+      springing out of bed and rushing about the room. Then the thought of his
+      own mother came across him, and the promise he had made at her knee, years
+      ago, never to forget to kneel by his bedside, and give himself up to his
+      Father, before he laid his head on the pillow, from which it might never
+      rise; and he lay down gently, and cried as if his heart would break. He
+      was only fourteen years old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was no light act of courage in those days, my dear boys, for a little
+      fellow to say his prayers publicly, even at Rugby. A few years later, when
+      Arnold's manly piety had begun to leaven the School, the tables turned;
+      before he died, in the School-house at least, and I believe in the other
+      house, the rule was the other way. But poor Tom had come to school in
+      other times. The first few nights after he came he did not kneel down
+      because of the noise, but sat up in bed till the candle was out, and then
+      stole out and said his prayers, in fear lest some one should find him out.
+      So did many another poor little fellow. Then he began to think that he
+      might just as well say his prayers in bed, and then that it didn't matter
+      whether he was kneeling, or sitting, or lying down. And so it had come to
+      pass with Tom, as with all who will not confess their Lord before men; and
+      for the last year he had probably not said his prayers in earnest a dozen
+      times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Tom! the first and bitterest feeling which was like to break his
+      heart was the sense of his own cowardice. The vice of all others which he
+      loathed was brought in and burnt in on his own soul. He had lied to his
+      mother, to his conscience, to his God. How could he bear it? And then the
+      poor little weak boy, whom he had pitied and almost scorned for his
+      weakness, had done that which he, braggart as he was, dared not do. The
+      first dawn of comfort came to him in swearing to himself that he would
+      stand by that boy through thick and thin, and cheer him, and help him, and
+      bear his burdens for the good deed done that night. Then he resolved to
+      write home next day and tell his mother all, and what a coward her son had
+      been. And then peace came to him as he resolved, lastly, to bear his
+      testimony next morning. The morning would be harder than the night to
+      begin with, but he felt that he could not afford to let one chance slip.
+      Several times he faltered, for the devil showed him first all his old
+      friends calling him &ldquo;Saint&rdquo; and &ldquo;Square-toes,&rdquo; and a dozen hard names, and
+      whispered to him that his motives would be misunderstood, and he would
+      only be left alone with the new boy; whereas it was his duty to keep all
+      means of influence, that he might do good to the largest number. And then
+      came the more subtle temptation, &ldquo;Shall I not be showing myself braver
+      than others by doing this? Have I any right to begin it now? Ought I not
+      rather to pray in my own study, letting other boys know that I do so, and
+      trying to lead them to it, while in public at least I should go on as I
+      have done?&rdquo; However, his good angel was too strong that night, and he
+      turned on his side and slept, tired of trying to reason, but resolved to
+      follow the impulse which had been so strong, and in which he had found
+      peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning he was up and washed and dressed, all but his jacket and
+      waistcoat, just as the ten minutes' bell began to ring, and then in the
+      face of the whole room knelt down to pray. Not five words could he say&mdash;the
+      bell mocked him; he was listening for every whisper in the room&mdash;what
+      were they all thinking of him? He was ashamed to go on kneeling, ashamed
+      to rise from his knees. At last, as it were from his inmost heart, a
+      still, small voice seemed to breathe forth the words of the publican, &ldquo;God
+      be merciful to me a sinner!&rdquo; He repeated them over and over, clinging to
+      them as for his life, and rose from his knees comforted and humbled, and
+      ready to face the whole world. It was not needed: two other boys besides
+      Arthur had already followed his example, and he went down to the great
+      School with a glimmering of another lesson in his heart&mdash;the lesson
+      that he who has conquered his own coward spirit has conquered the whole
+      outward world; and that other one which the old prophet learnt in the cave
+      in Mount Horeb, when he hid his face, and the still, small voice asked,
+      &ldquo;What doest thou here, Elijah?&rdquo; that however we may fancy ourselves alone
+      on the side of good, the King and Lord of men is nowhere without His
+      witnesses; for in every society, however seemingly corrupt and godless,
+      there are those who have not bowed the knee to Baal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found, too, how greatly he had exaggerated the effect to be produced by
+      his act. For a few nights there was a sneer or a laugh when he knelt down,
+      but this passed off soon, and one by one all the other boys but three or
+      four followed the lead. I fear that this was in some measure owing to the
+      fact that Tom could probably have thrashed any boy in the room except the
+      praepostor; at any rate, every boy knew that he would try upon very slight
+      provocation, and didn't choose to run the risk of a hard fight because Tom
+      Brown had taken a fancy to say his prayers. Some of the small boys of
+      Number 4 communicated the new state of things to their chums, and in
+      several other rooms the poor little fellows tried it on&mdash;in one
+      instance or so, where the praepostor heard of it and interfered very
+      decidedly, with partial success; but in the rest, after a short struggle,
+      the confessors were bullied or laughed down, and the old state of things
+      went on for some time longer. Before either Tom Brown or Arthur left the
+      School-house, there was no room in which it had not become the regular
+      custom. I trust it is so still, and that the old heathen state of things
+      has gone out for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0256m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0256m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0256.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II&mdash;THE NEW BOY.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;And Heaven's rich instincts in him grew
+     As effortless as woodland nooks
+     Send violets up and paint them blue.&rdquo;&mdash;LOWELL.
+</pre>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+      <img src="images/9256m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="9256m " width="100%" />
+      <a href="images/9256.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      do not mean to recount all the little troubles and annoyances which
+      thronged upon Tom at the beginning of this half-year, in his new character
+      of bear-leader to a gentle little boy straight from home. He seemed to
+      himself to have become a new boy again, without any of the long-suffering
+      and meekness indispensable for supporting that character with moderate
+      success. From morning till night he had the feeling of responsibility on
+      his mind, and even if he left Arthur in their study or in the close for an
+      hour, was never at ease till he had him in sight again. He waited for him
+      at the doors of the school after every lesson and every calling-over;
+      watched that no tricks were played him, and none but the regulation
+      questions asked; kept his eye on his plate at dinner and breakfast, to see
+      that no unfair depredations were made upon his viands; in short, as East
+      remarked, cackled after him like a hen with one chick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur took a long time thawing, too, which made it all the harder work;
+      was sadly timid; scarcely ever spoke unless Tom spoke to him first; and,
+      worst of all, would agree with him in everything&mdash;the hardest thing
+      in the world for a Brown to bear. He got quite angry sometimes, as they
+      sat together of a night in their study, at this provoking habit of
+      agreement, and was on the point of breaking out a dozen times with a
+      lecture upon the propriety of a fellow having a will of his own and
+      speaking out, but managed to restrain himself by the thought that he might
+      only frighten Arthur, and the remembrance of the lesson he had learnt from
+      him on his first night at Number 4. Then he would resolve to sit still and
+      not say a word till Arthur began; but he was always beat at that game, and
+      had presently to begin talking in despair, fearing lest Arthur might think
+      he was vexed at something if he didn't, and dog-tired of sitting
+      tongue-tied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was hard work. But Tom had taken it up, and meant to stick to it, and
+      go through with it so as to satisfy himself; in which resolution he was
+      much assisted by the chafing of East and his other old friends, who began
+      to call him &ldquo;dry-nurse,&rdquo; and otherwise to break their small wit on him.
+      But when they took other ground, as they did every now and then, Tom was
+      sorely puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell you what, Tommy,&rdquo; East would say; &ldquo;you'll spoil young Hopeful with
+      too much coddling. Why can't you let him go about by himself and find his
+      own level? He'll never be worth a button if you go on keeping him under
+      your skirts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, but he ain't fit to fight his own way yet; I'm trying to get him to
+      it every day, but he's very odd. Poor little beggar! I can't make him out
+      a bit. He ain't a bit like anything I've ever seen or heard of&mdash;he
+      seems all over nerves; anything you say seems to hurt him like a cut or a
+      blow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That sort of boy's no use here,&rdquo; said East; &ldquo;he'll only spoil. Now I'll
+      tell you what to do, Tommy. Go and get a nice large band-box made, and put
+      him in with plenty of cotton-wool and a pap-bottle, labelled 'With care&mdash;this
+      side up,' and send him back to mamma.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I shall make a hand of him though,&rdquo; said Tom, smiling, &ldquo;say what
+      you will. There's something about him, every now and then, which shows me
+      he's got pluck somewhere in him. That's the only thing after all that'll
+      wash, ain't it, old Scud? But how to get at it and bring it out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom took one hand out of his breeches-pocket and stuck it in his back hair
+      for a scratch, giving his hat a tilt over his nose, his one method of
+      invoking wisdom. He stared at the ground with a ludicrously puzzled look,
+      and presently looked up and met East's eyes. That young gentleman slapped
+      him on the back, and then put his arm round his shoulder, as they strolled
+      through the quadrangle together. &ldquo;Tom,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;blest if you ain't the
+      best old fellow ever was. I do like to see you go into a thing. Hang it, I
+      wish I could take things as you do; but I never can get higher than a
+      joke. Everything's a joke. If I was going to be flogged next minute, I
+      should be in a blue funk, but I couldn't help laughing at it for the life
+      of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0259m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0259m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0259.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brown and East, you go and fag for Jones on the great fives court.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo, though, that's past a joke,&rdquo; broke out East, springing at the
+      young gentleman who addressed them, and catching him by the collar.&mdash;&ldquo;Here,
+      Tommy, catch hold of him t'other side before he can holla.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The youth was seized, and dragged, struggling, out of the quadrangle into
+      the School-house hall. He was one of the miserable little pretty
+      white-handed, curly-headed boys, petted and pampered by some of the big
+      fellows, who wrote their verses for them, taught them to drink and use bad
+      language, and did all they could to spoil them for everything * in this
+      world and the next. One of the avocations in which these young gentlemen
+      took particular delight was in going about and getting fags for their
+      protectors, when those heroes were playing any game. They carried about
+      pencil and paper with them, putting down the names of all the boys they
+      sent, always sending five times as many as were wanted, and getting all
+      those thrashed who didn't go. The present youth belonged to a house which
+      was very jealous of the School-house, and always picked out School-house
+      fags when he could find them. However, this time he'd got the wrong sow by
+      the ear. His captors slammed the great door of the hall, and East put his
+      back against it, while Tom gave the prisoner a shake up, took away his
+      list, and stood him up on the floor, while he proceeded leisurely to
+      examine that document.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * A kind and wise critic, an old Rugboean, notes here in the
+     margin: &ldquo;The small friend system was not so utterly bad from
+     1841-1847.&rdquo; Before that, too, there were many noble
+     friendships between big and little boys; but I can't strike
+     out the passage. Many boys will know why it is left in.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me out, let me go!&rdquo; screamed the boy, in a furious passion. &ldquo;I'll go
+      and tell Jones this minute, and he'll give you both the &mdash;- thrashing
+      you ever had.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty little dear,&rdquo; said East, patting the top of his hat.&mdash;&ldquo;Hark
+      how he swears, Tom. Nicely brought up young man, ain't he, I don't think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me alone, &mdash;- you,&rdquo; roared the boy, foaming with rage, and
+      kicking at East, who quietly tripped him up, and deposited him on the
+      floor in a place of safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gently, young fellow,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;'tain't improving for little
+      whippersnappers like you to be indulging in blasphemy; so you stop that,
+      or you'll get something you won't like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll have you both licked when I get out, that I will,&rdquo; rejoined the boy,
+      beginning to snivel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two can play at that game, mind you,&rdquo; said Tom, who had finished his
+      examination of the list. &ldquo;Now you just listen here. We've just come across
+      the fives court, and Jones has four fags there already&mdash;two more than
+      he wants. If he'd wanted us to change, he'd have stopped us himself. And
+      here, you little blackguard, you've got seven names down on your list
+      besides ours, and five of them School-house.&rdquo; Tom walked up to him, and
+      jerked him on to his legs; he was by this time whining like a whipped
+      puppy. &ldquo;Now just listen to me. We ain't going to fag for Jones. If you
+      tell him you've sent us, we'll each of us give you such a thrashing as
+      you'll remember.&rdquo; And Tom tore up the list and threw the pieces into the
+      fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And mind you, too,&rdquo; said East, &ldquo;don't let me catch you again sneaking
+      about the School-house, and picking up our fags. You haven't got the sort
+      of hide to take a sound licking kindly.&rdquo; And he opened the door and sent
+      the young gentleman flying into the quadrangle with a parting kick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nice boy, Tommy,&rdquo; said East, shoving his hands in his pockets, and
+      strolling to the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Worst sort we breed,&rdquo; responded Tom, following his example. &ldquo;Thank
+      goodness, no big fellow ever took to petting me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd never have been like that,&rdquo; said East. &ldquo;I should like to have put
+      him in a museum: Christian young gentleman, nineteenth century, highly
+      educated. Stir him up with a long pole, Jack, and hear him swear like a
+      drunken sailor. He'd make a respectable public open its eyes, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think he'll tell Jones?&rdquo; said Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said East. &ldquo;Don't care if he does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor I,&rdquo; said Tom. And they went back to talk about Arthur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young gentleman had brains enough not to tell Jones, reasoning that
+      East and Brown, who were noted as some of the toughest fags in the School,
+      wouldn't care three straws for any licking Jones might give them, and
+      would be likely to keep their words as to passing it on with interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the above conversation, East came a good deal to their study, and
+      took notice of Arthur, and soon allowed to Tom that he was a thorough
+      little gentleman, and would get over his shyness all in good time; which
+      much comforted our hero. He felt every day, too, the value of having an
+      object in his life&mdash;something that drew him out of himself; and it
+      being the dull time of the year, and no games going about for which he
+      much cared, was happier than he had ever yet been at school, which was
+      saying a great deal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The time which Tom allowed himself away from his charge was from
+      locking-up till supper-time. During this hour or hour and a half he used
+      to take his fling, going round to the studies of all his acquaintance,
+      sparring or gossiping in the hall, now jumping the old iron-bound tables,
+      or carving a bit of his name on them, then joining in some chorus of merry
+      voices&mdash;in fact, blowing off his steam, as we should now call it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This process was so congenial to his temper, and Arthur showed himself so
+      pleased at the arrangement, that it was several weeks before Tom was ever
+      in their study before supper. One evening, however, he rushed in to look
+      for an old chisel, or some corks, or other article essential to his
+      pursuit for the time being, and while rummaging about in the cupboards,
+      looked up for a moment, and was caught at once by the figure of poor
+      little Arthur. The boy was sitting with his elbows on the table, and his
+      head leaning on his hands, and before him an open book, on which his tears
+      were falling fast. Tom shut the door at once, and sat down on the sofa by
+      Arthur, putting his arm round his neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, young un, what's the matter?&rdquo; said he kindly; &ldquo;you ain't unhappy,
+      are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no, Brown,&rdquo; said the little boy, looking up with the great tears in
+      his eyes; &ldquo;you are so kind to me, I'm very happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't you call me Tom? Lots of boys do that I don't like half so much
+      as you. What are you reading, then? Hang it! you must come about with me,
+      and not mope yourself.&rdquo; And Tom cast down his eyes on the book, and saw it
+      was the Bible. He was silent for a minute, and thought to himself, &ldquo;Lesson
+      Number 2, Tom Brown;&rdquo; and then said gently, &ldquo;I'm very glad to see this,
+      Arthur, and ashamed that I don't read the Bible more myself. Do you read
+      it every night before supper while I'm out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I wish you'd wait till afterwards, and then we'd read together.
+      But, Arthur, why does it make you cry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it isn't that I'm unhappy. But at home, while my father was alive, we
+      always read the lessons after tea; and I love to read them over now, and
+      try to remember what he said about them. I can't remember all and I think
+      I scarcely understand a great deal of what I do remember. But it all comes
+      back to me so fresh that I can't help crying sometimes to think I shall
+      never read them again with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur had never spoken of his home before, and Tom hadn't encouraged him
+      to do so, as his blundering schoolboy reasoning made him think that Arthur
+      would be softened and less manly for thinking of home. But now he was
+      fairly interested, and forgot all about chisels and bottled beer; while
+      with very little encouragement Arthur launched into his home history, and
+      the prayer-bell put them both out sadly when it rang to call them to the
+      hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From this time Arthur constantly spoke of his home, and above all, of his
+      father, who had been dead about a year, and whose memory Tom soon got to
+      love and reverence almost as much as his own son did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur's father had been the clergyman of a parish in the Midland
+      counties, which had risen into a large town during the war, and upon which
+      the hard years which followed had fallen with fearful weight. The trade
+      had been half ruined; and then came the old, sad story, of masters
+      reducing their establishments, men turned off and wandering about, hungry
+      and wan in body, and fierce in soul, from the thought of wives and
+      children starving at home, and the last sticks of furniture going to the
+      pawnshop; children taken from school, and lounging about the dirty streets
+      and courts, too listless almost to play, and squalid in rags and misery;
+      and then the fearful struggle between the employers and men&mdash;lowerings
+      of wages, strikes, and the long course of oft-repeated crime, ending every
+      now and then with a riot, a fire, and the county yeomanry. There is no
+      need here to dwell upon such tales: the Englishman into whose soul they
+      have not sunk deep is not worthy the name. You English boys, for whom this
+      book is meant (God bless your bright faces and kind hearts!), will learn
+      it all soon enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Into such a parish and state of society Arthur's father had been thrown at
+      the age of twenty-five&mdash;a young married parson, full of faith, hope,
+      and love. He had battled with it like a man, and had lots of fine Utopian
+      ideas about the perfectibility of mankind, glorious humanity, and
+      such-like, knocked out of his head, and a real, wholesome Christian love
+      for the poor, struggling, sinning men, of whom he felt himself one, and
+      with and for whom he spent fortune, and strength, and life, driven into
+      his heart. He had battled like a man, and gotten a man's reward&mdash;no
+      silver tea-pots or salvers, with flowery inscriptions setting forth his
+      virtues and the appreciation of a genteel parish; no fat living or stall,
+      for which he never looked, and didn't care; no sighs and praises of
+      comfortable dowagers and well-got-up young women, who worked him slippers,
+      sugared his tea, and adored him as &ldquo;a devoted man;&rdquo; but a manly respect,
+      wrung from the unwilling souls of men who fancied his order their natural
+      enemies; the fear and hatred of every one who was false or unjust in the
+      district, were he master or man; and the blessed sight of women and
+      children daily becoming more human and more homely, a comfort to
+      themselves and to their husbands and fathers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These things, of course, took time, and had to be fought for with toil and
+      sweat of brain and heart, and with the life-blood poured out. All that,
+      Arthur had laid his account to give, and took as a matter of course,
+      neither pitying himself, nor looking on himself as a martyr, when he felt
+      the wear and tear making him feel old before his time, and the stifling
+      air of fever-dens telling on his health. His wife seconded him in
+      everything. She had been rather fond of society, and much admired and run
+      after before her marriage; and the London world to which she had belonged
+      pitied poor Fanny Evelyn when she married the young clergyman, and went to
+      settle in that smoky hole Turley; a very nest of Chartism and Atheism, in
+      a part of the country which all the decent families had had to leave for
+      years. However, somehow or other she didn't seem to care. If her husband's
+      living had been amongst green fields and near pleasant neighbours she
+      would have liked it better&mdash;that she never pretended to deny. But
+      there they were. The air wasn't bad, after all; the people were very good
+      sort of people&mdash;civil to you if you were civil to them, after the
+      first brush; and they didn't expect to work miracles, and convert them all
+      off-hand into model Christians. So he and she went quietly among the folk,
+      talking to and treating them just as they would have done people of their
+      own rank. They didn't feel that they were doing anything out of the common
+      way, and so were perfectly natural, and had none of that condescension or
+      consciousness of manner which so outrages the independent poor. And thus
+      they gradually won respect and confidence; and after sixteen years he was
+      looked up to by the whole neighbourhood as the just man, the man to whom
+      masters and men could go in their strikes, and in all their quarrels and
+      difficulties, and by whom the right and true word would be said without
+      fear or favour. And the women had come round to take her advice, and go to
+      her as a friend in all their troubles; while the children all worshipped
+      the very ground she trod on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had three children, two daughters and a son, little Arthur, who came
+      between his sisters. He had been a very delicate boy from his childhood;
+      they thought he had a tendency to consumption, and so he had been kept at
+      home and taught by his father, who had made a companion of him, and from
+      whom he had gained good scholarship, and a knowledge of and interest in
+      many subjects which boys in general never come across till they are many
+      years older.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as he reached his thirteenth year, and his father had settled that he
+      was strong enough to go to school, and, after much debating with himself,
+      had resolved to send him there, a desperate typhus fever broke out in the
+      town. Most of the other clergy, and almost all the doctors, ran away; the
+      work fell with tenfold weight on those who stood to their work. Arthur and
+      his wife both caught the fever, of which he died in a few days; and she
+      recovered, having been able to nurse him to the end, and store up his last
+      words. He was sensible to the last, and calm and happy, leaving his wife
+      and children with fearless trust for a few years in the hands of the Lord
+      and Friend who had lived and died for him, and for whom he, to the best of
+      his power, had lived and died. His widow's mourning was deep and gentle.
+      She was more affected by the request of the committee of a freethinking
+      club, established in the town by some of the factory hands (which he had
+      striven against with might and main, and nearly suppressed), that some of
+      their number might be allowed to help bear the coffin, than by anything
+      else. Two of them were chosen, who, with six other labouring men, his own
+      fellow-workmen and friends, bore him to his grave&mdash;a man who had
+      fought the Lord's fight even unto the death. The shops were closed and the
+      factories shut that day in the parish, yet no master stopped the day's
+      wages; but for many a year afterwards the townsfolk felt the want of that
+      brave, hopeful, loving parson and his wife, who had lived to teach them
+      mutual forbearance and helpfulness, and had almost at last given them a
+      glimpse of what this old world would be if people would live for God and
+      each other instead of for themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What has all this to do with our story? Well, my dear boys, let a fellow
+      go on his own way, or you won't get anything out of him worth having. I
+      must show you what sort of a man it was who had begotten and trained
+      little Arthur, or else you won't believe in him, which I am resolved you
+      shall do; and you won't see how he, the timid, weak boy, had points in him
+      from which the bravest and strongest recoiled, and made his presence and
+      example felt from the first on all sides, unconsciously to himself, and
+      without the least attempt at proselytizing. The spirit of his father was
+      in him, and the Friend to whom his father had left him did not neglect the
+      trust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After supper that night, and almost nightly for years afterwards, Tom and
+      Arthur, and by degrees East occasionally, and sometimes one, sometimes
+      another, of their friends, read a chapter of the Bible together, and
+      talked it over afterwards. Tom was at first utterly astonished, and almost
+      shocked, at the sort of way in which Arthur read the book and talked about
+      the men and women whose lives were there told. The first night they
+      happened to fall on the chapters about the famine in Egypt, and Arthur
+      began talking about Joseph as if he were a living statesman&mdash;just as
+      he might have talked about Lord Grey and the Reform Bill, only that they
+      were much more living realities to him. The book was to him, Tom saw, the
+      most vivid and delightful history of real people, who might do right or
+      wrong, just like any one who was walking about in Rugby&mdash;the Doctor,
+      or the masters, or the sixth-form boys. But the astonishment soon passed
+      off, the scales seemed to drop from his eyes, and the book became at once
+      and for ever to him the great human and divine book, and the men and
+      women, whom he had looked upon as something quite different from himself,
+      became his friends and counsellors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For our purposes, however, the history of one night's reading will be
+      sufficient, which must be told here, now we are on the subject, though it
+      didn't happen till a year afterwards, and long after the events recorded
+      in the next chapter of our story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur, Tom, and East were together one night, and read the story of
+      Naaman coming to Elisha to be cured of his leprosy. When the chapter was
+      finished, Tom shut his Bible with a slap.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0269m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0269m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0269.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't stand that fellow Naaman,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;after what he'd seen and
+      felt, going back and bowing himself down in the house of Rimmon, because
+      his effeminate scoundrel of a master did it. I wonder Elisha took the
+      trouble to heal him. How he must have despised him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; there you go off as usual, with a shell on your head,&rdquo; struck in
+      East, who always took the opposite side to Tom, half from love of
+      argument, half from conviction. &ldquo;How do you know he didn't think better of
+      it? How do you know his master was a scoundrel? His letter don't look like
+      it, and the book don't say so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't care,&rdquo; rejoined Tom; &ldquo;why did Naaman talk about bowing down,
+      then, if he didn't mean to do it? He wasn't likely to get more in earnest
+      when he got back to court, and away from the prophet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, but, Tom,&rdquo; said Arthur, &ldquo;look what Elisha says to him&mdash;'Go in
+      peace.' He wouldn't have said that if Naaman had been in the wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't see that that means more than saying, 'You're not the man I took
+      you for.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; that won't do at all,&rdquo; said East. &ldquo;Read the words fairly, and
+      take men as you find them. I like Naaman, and think he was a very fine
+      fellow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't,&rdquo; said Tom positively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I think East is right,&rdquo; said Arthur; &ldquo;I can't see but what it's
+      right to do the best you can, though it mayn't be the best absolutely.
+      Every man isn't born to be a martyr.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, of course,&rdquo; said East; &ldquo;but he's on one of his pet hobbies.&mdash;How
+      often have I told you, Tom, that you must drive a nail where it'll go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how often have I told you,&rdquo; rejoined Tom, &ldquo;that it'll always go where
+      you want, if you only stick to it and hit hard enough. I hate
+      half-measures and compromises.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he's a whole-hog man, is Tom. Must have the whole animal-hair and
+      teeth, claws and tail,&rdquo; laughed East. &ldquo;Sooner have no bread any day than
+      half the loaf.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know;&rdquo; said Arthur&mdash;&ldquo;it's rather puzzling; but ain't most
+      right things got by proper compromises&mdash;I mean where the principle
+      isn't given up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's just the point,&rdquo; said Tom; &ldquo;I don't object to a compromise, where
+      you don't give up your principle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not you,&rdquo; said East laughingly.&mdash;&ldquo;I know him of old, Arthur, and
+      you'll find him out some day. There isn't such a reasonable fellow in the
+      world, to hear him talk. He never wants anything but what's right and
+      fair; only when you come to settle what's right and fair, it's everything
+      that he wants, and nothing that you want. And that's his idea of a
+      compromise. Give me the Brown compromise when I'm on his side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Harry,&rdquo; said Tom, &ldquo;no more chaff. I'm serious. Look here. This is
+      what makes my blood tingle.&rdquo; And he turned over the pages of his Bible and
+      read, &ldquo;Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego answered and said to the king, O
+      Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be
+      so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery
+      furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be
+      it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship
+      the golden image which thou hast set up.&rdquo; He read the last verse twice,
+      emphasizing the nots, and dwelling on them as if they gave him actual
+      pleasure, and were hard to part with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were silent a minute, and then Arthur said, &ldquo;Yes, that's a glorious
+      story, but it don't prove your point, Tom, I think. There are times when
+      there is only one way, and that the highest, and then the men are found to
+      stand in the breach.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's always a highest way, and it's always the right one,&rdquo; said Tom.
+      &ldquo;How many times has the Doctor told us that in his sermons in the last
+      year, I should like to know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you ain't going to convince us&mdash;is he, Arthur? No Brown
+      compromise to-night,&rdquo; said East, looking at his watch. &ldquo;But it's past
+      eight, and we must go to first lesson. What a bore!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So they took down their books and fell to work; but Arthur didn't forget,
+      and thought long and often over the conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0274m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0274m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0274.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III&mdash;ARTHUR MAKES A FRIEND.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Let Nature be your teacher:
+     Sweet is the lore which Nature brings.
+     Our meddling intellect
+     Misshapes the beauteous forms of things.
+     We murder to dissect.
+     Enough of Science and of Art:
+     Close up those barren leaves;
+     Come forth, and bring with you a heart
+     That watches and receives.&rdquo;&mdash;WORDSWORTH.
+</pre>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+      <img src="images/9274m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="9274m " width="100%" />
+      <a href="images/9274.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      bout six weeks after the beginning of the half, as Tom and Arthur were
+      sitting one night before supper beginning their verses, Arthur suddenly
+      stopped, and looked up, and said, &ldquo;Tom, do you know anything of Martin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Tom, taking his hand out of his back hair, and delighted to
+      throw his Gradus ad Parnassum on to the sofa; &ldquo;I know him pretty well.
+      He's a very good fellow, but as mad as a hatter. He's called Madman, you
+      know. And never was such a fellow for getting all sorts of rum things
+      about him. He tamed two snakes last half, and used to carry them about in
+      his pocket; and I'll be bound he's got some hedgehogs and rats in his
+      cupboard now, and no one knows what besides.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like very much to know him,&rdquo; said Arthur; &ldquo;he was next to me in
+      the form to-day, and he'd lost his book and looked over mine, and he
+      seemed so kind and gentle that I liked him very much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, poor old Madman, he's always losing his books,&rdquo; said Tom, &ldquo;and
+      getting called up and floored because he hasn't got them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like him all the better,&rdquo; said Arthur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he's great fun, I can tell you,&rdquo; said Tom, throwing himself back on
+      the sofa, and chuckling at the remembrance. &ldquo;We had such a game with him
+      one day last half. He had been kicking up horrid stinks for some time in
+      his study, till I suppose some fellow told Mary, and she told the Doctor.
+      Anyhow, one day a little before dinner, when he came down from the
+      library, the Doctor, instead of going home, came striding into the hall.
+      East and I and five or six other fellows were at the fire, and preciously
+      we stared, for he don't come in like that once a year, unless it is a wet
+      day and there's a fight in the hall. 'East,' says he, 'just come and show
+      me Martin's study.' 'Oh, here's a game,' whispered the rest of us; and we
+      all cut upstairs after the Doctor, East leading. As we got into the New
+      Row, which was hardly wide enough to hold the Doctor and his gown, click,
+      click, click, we heard in the old Madman's den. Then that stopped all of a
+      sudden, and the bolts went to like fun. The Madman knew East's step, and
+      thought there was going to be a siege.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'It's the Doctor, Martin. He's here and wants to see you,' sings out
+      East.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then the bolts went back slowly, and the door opened, and there was the
+      old Madman standing, looking precious scared&mdash;his jacket off, his
+      shirt-sleeves up to his elbows, and his long skinny arms all covered with
+      anchors and arrows and letters, tattooed in with gunpowder like a
+      sailor-boy's, and a stink fit to knock you down coming out. 'Twas all the
+      Doctor could do to stand his ground, and East and I, who were looking in
+      under his arms, held our noses tight. The old magpie was standing on the
+      window-sill, all his feathers drooping, and looking disgusted and
+      half-poisoned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'What can you be about, Martin?' says the Doctor. 'You really mustn't go
+      on in this way; you're a nuisance to the whole passage.'
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0277m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0277m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0277.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Please, sir, I was only mixing up this powder; there isn't any harm in
+      it. And the Madman seized nervously on his pestle and mortar, to show the
+      Doctor the harmlessness of his pursuits, and went on pounding&mdash;click,
+      click, click. He hadn't given six clicks before, puff! up went the whole
+      into a great blaze, away went the pestle and mortar across the study, and
+      back we tumbled into the passage. The magpie fluttered down into the
+      court, swearing, and the Madman danced out, howling, with his fingers in
+      his mouth. The Doctor caught hold of him, and called to us to fetch some
+      water. 'There, you silly fellow,' said he, quite pleased, though, to find
+      he wasn't much hurt, 'you see you don't know the least what you're doing
+      with all these things; and now, mind, you must give up practising
+      chemistry by yourself.' Then he took hold of his arm and looked at it, and
+      I saw he had to bite his lip, and his eyes twinkled; but he said, quite
+      grave, 'Here, you see, you've been making all these foolish marks on
+      yourself, which you can never get out, and you'll be very sorry for it in
+      a year or two. Now come down to the housekeeper's room, and let us see if
+      you are hurt.' And away went the two, and we all stayed and had a regular
+      turn-out of the den, till Martin came back with his hand bandaged and
+      turned us out. However, I'll go and see what he's after, and tell him to
+      come in after prayers to supper.&rdquo; And away went Tom to find the boy in
+      question, who dwelt in a little study by himself, in New Row.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The aforesaid Martin, whom Arthur had taken such a fancy for, was one of
+      those unfortunates who were at that time of day (and are, I fear, still)
+      quite out of their places at a public school. If we knew how to use our
+      boys, Martin would have been seized upon and educated as a natural
+      philosopher. He had a passion for birds, beasts, and insects, and knew
+      more of them and their habits than any one in Rugby&mdash;except perhaps
+      the Doctor, who knew everything. He was also an experimental chemist on a
+      small scale, and had made unto himself an electric machine, from which it
+      was his greatest pleasure and glory to administer small shocks to any
+      small boys who were rash enough to venture into his study. And this was by
+      no means an adventure free from excitement; for besides the probability of
+      a snake dropping on to your head or twining lovingly up your leg, or a rat
+      getting into your breeches-pocket in search of food, there was the animal
+      and chemical odour to be faced, which always hung about the den, and the
+      chance of being blown up in some of the many experiments which Martin was
+      always trying, with the most wondrous results in the shape of explosions
+      and smells that mortal boy ever heard of. Of course, poor Martin, in
+      consequence of his pursuits, had become an Ishmaelite in the house. In the
+      first place, he half-poisoned all his neighbours, and they in turn were
+      always on the lookout to pounce upon any of his numerous live-stock, and
+      drive him frantic by enticing his pet old magpie out of his window into a
+      neighbouring study, and making the disreputable old bird drunk on toast
+      soaked in beer and sugar. Then Martin, for his sins, inhabited a study
+      looking into a small court some ten feet across, the window of which was
+      completely commanded by those of the studies opposite in the Sick-room
+      Row, these latter being at a slightly higher elevation. East, and another
+      boy of an equally tormenting and ingenious turn of mind, now lived exactly
+      opposite, and had expended huge pains and time in the preparation of
+      instruments of annoyance for the behoof of Martin and his live colony. One
+      morning an old basket made its appearance, suspended by a short cord
+      outside Martin's window, in which were deposited an amateur nest
+      containing four young hungry jackdaws, the pride and glory of Martin's
+      life, for the time being, and which he was currently asserted to have
+      hatched upon his own person. Early in the morning and late at night he was
+      to be seen half out of window, administering to the varied wants of his
+      callow brood. After deep cogitation, East and his chum had spliced a knife
+      on to the end of a fishing-rod; and having watched Martin out, had, after
+      half an hour's severe sawing, cut the string by which the basket was
+      suspended, and tumbled it on to the pavement below, with hideous
+      remonstrance from the occupants. Poor Martin, returning from his short
+      absence, collected the fragments and replaced his brood (except one whose
+      neck had been broken in the descent) in their old location, suspending
+      them this time by string and wire twisted together, defiant of any sharp
+      instrument which his persecutors could command. But, like the Russian
+      engineers at Sebastopol, East and his chum had an answer for every move of
+      the adversary, and the next day had mounted a gun in the shape of a
+      pea-shooter upon the ledge of their window, trained so as to bear exactly
+      upon the spot which Martin had to occupy while tending his nurslings. The
+      moment he began to feed they began to shoot. In vain did the enemy himself
+      invest in a pea-shooter, and endeavour to answer the fire while he fed the
+      young birds with his other hand; his attention was divided, and his shots
+      flew wild, while every one of theirs told on his face and hands, and drove
+      him into howlings and imprecations. He had been driven to ensconce the
+      nest in a corner of his already too-well-filled den.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His door was barricaded by a set of ingenious bolts of his own invention,
+      for the sieges were frequent by the neighbours when any unusually
+      ambrosial odour spread itself from the den to the neighbouring studies.
+      The door panels were in a normal state of smash, but the frame of the door
+      resisted all besiegers, and behind it the owner carried on his varied
+      pursuits&mdash;much in the same state of mind, I should fancy, as a
+      border-farmer lived in, in the days of the moss-troopers, when his hold
+      might be summoned or his cattle carried off at any minute of night or day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Open, Martin, old boy; it's only I, Tom Brown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, very well; stop a moment.&rdquo; One bolt went back. &ldquo;You're sure East
+      isn't there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; hang it, open.&rdquo; Tom gave a kick, the other bolt creaked, and he
+      entered the den.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Den indeed it was&mdash;about five feet six inches long by five wide, and
+      seven feet high. About six tattered school-books, and a few chemical
+      books, Taxidermy, Stanley on Birds, and an odd volume of Bewick, the
+      latter in much better preservation, occupied the top shelves. The other
+      shelves, where they had not been cut away and used by the owner for other
+      purposes, were fitted up for the abiding-places of birds, beasts, and
+      reptiles. There was no attempt at carpet or curtain. The table was
+      entirely occupied by the great work of Martin, the electric machine, which
+      was covered carefully with the remains of his table-cloth. The jackdaw
+      cage occupied one wall; and the other was adorned by a small hatchet, a
+      pair of climbing irons, and his tin candle-box, in which he was for the
+      time being endeavouring to raise a hopeful young family of field-mice. As
+      nothing should be let to lie useless, it was well that the candle-box was
+      thus occupied, for candles Martin never had. A pound was issued to him
+      weekly, as to the other boys; but as candles were available capital, and
+      easily exchangeable for birds' eggs or young birds, Martin's pound
+      invariably found its way in a few hours to Howlett's the bird-fancier's,
+      in the Bilton road, who would give a hawk's or nightingale's egg or young
+      linnet in exchange. Martin's ingenuity was therefore for ever on the rack
+      to supply himself with a light. Just now he had hit upon a grand
+      invention, and the den was lighted by a flaring cotton wick issuing from a
+      ginger-beer bottle full of some doleful composition. When light altogether
+      failed him, Martin would loaf about by the fires in the passages or hall,
+      after the manner of Diggs, and try to do his verses or learn his lines by
+      the firelight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, old boy, you haven't got any sweeter in the den this half. How that
+      stuff in the bottle stinks! Never mind; I ain't going to stop; but you
+      come up after prayers to our study. You know young Arthur. We've got
+      Gray's study. We'll have a good supper and talk about bird-nesting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin was evidently highly pleased at the invitation, and promised to be
+      up without fail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as prayers were over, and the sixth and fifth form boys had
+      withdrawn to the aristocratic seclusion of their own room, and the rest,
+      or democracy, had sat down to their supper in the hall, Tom and Arthur,
+      having secured their allowances of bread and cheese, started on their feet
+      to catch the eye of the praepostor of the week, who remained in charge
+      during supper, walking up and down the hall. He happened to be an
+      easy-going fellow, so they got a pleasant nod to their &ldquo;Please may I go
+      out?&rdquo; and away they scrambled to prepare for Martin a sumptuous banquet.
+      This Tom had insisted on, for he was in great delight on the occasion, the
+      reason of which delight must be expounded. The fact was that this was the
+      first attempt at a friendship of his own which Arthur had made, and Tom
+      hailed it as a grand step. The ease with which he himself became
+      hail-fellow-well-met with anybody, and blundered into and out of twenty
+      friendships a half-year, made him sometimes sorry and sometimes angry at
+      Arthur's reserve and loneliness. True, Arthur was always pleasant, and
+      even jolly, with any boys who came with Tom to their study; but Tom felt
+      that it was only through him, as it were, that his chum associated with
+      others, and that but for him Arthur would have been dwelling in a
+      wilderness. This increased his consciousness of responsibility; and though
+      he hadn't reasoned it out and made it clear to himself yet somehow he knew
+      that this responsibility, this trust which he had taken on him without
+      thinking about it, head over heels in fact, was the centre and
+      turning-point of his school-life, that which was to make him or mar him,
+      his appointed work and trial for the time being. And Tom was becoming a
+      new boy, though with frequent tumbles in the dirt and perpetual hard
+      battle with himself, and was daily growing in manfulness and
+      thoughtfulness, as every high-couraged and well-principled boy must, when
+      he finds himself for the first time consciously at grips with self and the
+      devil. Already he could turn almost without a sigh from the School-gates,
+      from which had just scampered off East and three or four others of his own
+      particular set, bound for some jolly lark not quite according to law, and
+      involving probably a row with louts, keepers, or farm-labourers, the
+      skipping dinner or calling-over, some of Phoebe Jennings's beer, and a
+      very possible flogging at the end of all as a relish. He had quite got
+      over the stage in which he would grumble to himself&mdash;&ldquo;Well, hang it,
+      it's very hard of the Doctor to have saddled me with Arthur. Why couldn't
+      he have chummed him with Fogey, or Thomkin, or any of the fellows who
+      never do anything but walk round the close, and finish their copies the
+      first day they're set?&rdquo; But although all this was past, he longed, and
+      felt that he was right in longing, for more time for the legitimate
+      pastimes of cricket, fives, bathing, and fishing, within bounds, in which
+      Arthur could not yet be his companion; and he felt that when the &ldquo;young
+      un&rdquo; (as he now generally called him) had found a pursuit and some other
+      friend for himself, he should be able to give more time to the education
+      of his own body with a clear conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now what he so wished for had come to pass; he almost hailed it as a
+      special providence (as indeed it was, but not for the reasons he gave for
+      it&mdash;what providences are?) that Arthur should have singled out Martin
+      of all fellows for a friend. &ldquo;The old Madman is the very fellow,&rdquo; thought
+      he; &ldquo;he will take him scrambling over half the country after birds' eggs
+      and flowers, make him run and swim and climb like an Indian, and not teach
+      him a word of anything bad, or keep him from his lessons. What luck!&rdquo; And
+      so, with more than his usual heartiness, he dived into his cupboard, and
+      hauled out an old knuckle-bone of ham, and two or three bottles of beer,
+      together with the solemn pewter only used on state occasions; while
+      Arthur, equally elated at the easy accomplishment of his first act of
+      volition in the joint establishment, produced from his side a bottle of
+      pickles and a pot of jam, and cleared the table. In a minute or two the
+      noise of the boys coming up from supper was heard, and Martin knocked and
+      was admitted, bearing his bread and cheese; and the three fell to with
+      hearty good-will upon the viands, talking faster than they ate, for all
+      shyness disappeared in a moment before Tom's bottled-beer and hospitable
+      ways. &ldquo;Here's Arthur, a regular young town-mouse, with a natural taste for
+      the woods, Martin, longing to break his neck climbing trees, and with a
+      passion for young snakes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I say,&rdquo; sputtered out Martin eagerly, &ldquo;will you come to-morrow,
+      both of you, to Caldecott's Spinney then? for I know of a kestrel's nest,
+      up a fir-tree. I can't get at it without help; and, Brown, you can climb
+      against any one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, do let us go,&rdquo; said Arthur; &ldquo;I never saw a hawk's nest nor a
+      hawk's egg.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You just come down to my study, then, and I'll show you five sorts,&rdquo; said
+      Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, the old Madman has got the best collection in the house, out and
+      out,&rdquo; said Tom; and then Martin, warming with unaccustomed good cheer and
+      the chance of a convert, launched out into a proposed bird-nesting
+      campaign, betraying all manner of important secrets&mdash;a golden-crested
+      wren's nest near Butlin's Mound, a moor-hen who was sitting on nine eggs
+      in a pond down the Barby road, and a kingfisher's nest in a corner of the
+      old canal above Brownsover Mill. He had heard, he said, that no one had
+      ever got a kingfisher's nest out perfect, and that the British Museum, or
+      the Government, or somebody, had offered 100 pounds to any one who could
+      bring them a nest and eggs not damaged. In the middle of which astounding
+      announcement, to which the others were listening with open ears, and
+      already considering the application of the 100 pounds, a knock came to the
+      door, and East's voice was heard craving admittance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's Harry,&rdquo; said Tom; &ldquo;we'll let him in. I'll keep him steady,
+      Martin. I thought the old boy would smell out the supper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact was, that Tom's heart had already smitten him for not asking his
+      fidus Achates to the feast, although only an extempore affair; and though
+      prudence and the desire to get Martin and Arthur together alone at first
+      had overcome his scruples, he was now heartily glad to open the door,
+      broach another bottle of beer, and hand over the old ham-knuckle to the
+      searching of his old friend's pocket-knife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you greedy vagabonds,&rdquo; said East, with his mouth full, &ldquo;I knew there
+      was something going on when I saw you cut off out of hall so quick with
+      your suppers. What a stunning tap, Tom! You are a wunner for bottling the
+      swipes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've had practice enough for the sixth in my time, and it's hard if I
+      haven't picked up a wrinkle or two for my own benefit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, old Madman, and how goes the bird-nesting campaign? How's Howlett?
+      I expect the young rooks'll be out in another fortnight, and then my turn
+      comes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There'll be no young rooks fit for pies for a month yet; shows how much
+      you know about it,&rdquo; rejoined Martin, who, though very good friends with
+      East, regarded him with considerable suspicion for his propensity to
+      practical jokes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scud knows nothing and cares for nothing but grub and mischief,&rdquo; said
+      Tom; &ldquo;but young rook pie, specially when you've had to climb for them, is
+      very pretty eating.&mdash;However, I say, Scud, we're all going after a
+      hawk's nest to-morrow, in Caldecott's Spinney; and if you'll come and
+      behave yourself, we'll have a stunning climb.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And a bathe in Aganippe. Hooray! I'm your man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; no bathing in Aganippe; that's where our betters go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well, never mind. I'm for the hawk's nest, and anything that turns
+      up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the bottled-beer being finished, and his hunger appeased, East
+      departed to his study, &ldquo;that sneak Jones,&rdquo; as he informed them, who had
+      just got into the sixth, and occupied the next study, having instituted a
+      nightly visitation upon East and his chum, to their no small discomfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he was gone Martin rose to follow, but Tom stopped him. &ldquo;No one goes
+      near New Row,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;so you may just as well stop here and do your
+      verses, and then we'll have some more talk. We'll be no end quiet.
+      Besides, no praepostor comes here now. We haven't been visited once this
+      half.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So the table was cleared, the cloth restored, and the three fell to work
+      with Gradus and dictionary upon the morning's vulgus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were three very fair examples of the way in which such tasks were
+      done at Rugby, in the consulship of Plancus. And doubtless the method is
+      little changed, for there is nothing new under the sun, especially at
+      schools.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now be it known unto all you boys who are at schools which do not rejoice
+      in the time-honoured institution of the vulgus (commonly supposed to have
+      been established by William of Wykeham at Winchester, and imported to
+      Rugby by Arnold more for the sake of the lines which were learnt by heart
+      with it than for its own intrinsic value, as I've always understood), that
+      it is a short exercise in Greek or Latin verse, on a given subject, the
+      minimum number of lines being fixed for each form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The master of the form gave out at fourth lesson on the previous day the
+      subject for next morning's vulgus, and at first lesson each boy had to
+      bring his vulgus ready to be looked over; and with the vulgus, a certain
+      number of lines from one of the Latin or Greek poets then being construed
+      in the form had to be got by heart. The master at first lesson called up
+      each boy in the form in order, and put him on in the lines. If he couldn't
+      say them, or seem to say them, by reading them off the master's or some
+      other boy's book who stood near, he was sent back, and went below all the
+      boys who did so say or seem to say them; but in either case his vulgus was
+      looked over by the master, who gave and entered in his book, to the credit
+      or discredit of the boy, so many marks as the composition merited. At
+      Rugby vulgus and lines were the first lesson every other day in the week,
+      on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays; and as there were thirty-eight
+      weeks in the school year, it is obvious to the meanest capacity that the
+      master of each form had to set one hundred and fourteen subjects every
+      year, two hundred and twenty-eight every two years, and so on. Now, to
+      persons of moderate invention this was a considerable task, and human
+      nature being prone to repeat itself, it will not be wondered that the
+      masters gave the same subjects sometimes over again after a certain lapse
+      of time. To meet and rebuke this bad habit of the masters, the schoolboy
+      mind, with its accustomed ingenuity, had invented an elaborate system of
+      tradition. Almost every boy kept his own vulgus written out in a book, and
+      these books were duly handed down from boy to boy, till (if the tradition
+      has gone on till now) I suppose the popular boys, in whose hands
+      bequeathed vulgus-books have accumulated, are prepared with three or four
+      vulguses on any subject in heaven or earth, or in &ldquo;more worlds than one,&rdquo;
+       which an unfortunate master can pitch upon. At any rate, such lucky
+      fellows had generally one for themselves and one for a friend in my time.
+      The only objection to the traditionary method of doing your vulguses was
+      the risk that the successions might have become confused, and so that you
+      and another follower of traditions should show up the same identical
+      vulgus some fine morning; in which case, when it happened, considerable
+      grief was the result. But when did such risk hinder boys or men from short
+      cuts and pleasant paths?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now in the study that night Tom was the upholder of the traditionary
+      method of vulgus doing. He carefully produced two large vulgus-books, and
+      began diving into them, and picking out a line here, and an ending there
+      (tags, as they were vulgarly called), till he had gotten all that he
+      thought he could make fit. He then proceeded to patch his tags together
+      with the help of his Gradus, producing an incongruous and feeble result of
+      eight elegiac lines, the minimum quantity for his form, and finishing up
+      with two highly moral lines extra, making ten in all, which he cribbed
+      entire from one of his books, beginning &ldquo;O genus humanum,&rdquo; and which he
+      himself must have used a dozen times before, whenever an unfortunate or
+      wicked hero, of whatever nation or language under the sun, was the
+      subject. Indeed he began to have great doubts whether the master wouldn't
+      remember them, and so only throw them in as extra lines, because in any
+      case they would call off attention from the other tags, and if detected,
+      being extra lines, he wouldn't be sent back to do more in their place,
+      while if they passed muster again he would get marks for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second method, pursued by Martin, may be called the dogged or prosaic
+      method. He, no more than Tom, took any pleasure in the task, but having no
+      old vulgus-books of his own, or any one's else, could not follow the
+      traditionary method, for which too, as Tom remarked, he hadn't the genius.
+      Martin then proceeded to write down eight lines in English, of the most
+      matter-of-fact kind, the first that came into his head; and to convert
+      these, line by line, by main force of Gradus and dictionary into Latin
+      that would scan. This was all he cared for&mdash;to produce eight lines
+      with no false quantities or concords: whether the words were apt, or what
+      the sense was, mattered nothing; and as the article was all new, not a
+      line beyond the minimum did the followers of the dogged method ever
+      produce.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third, or artistic method, was Arthur's. He considered first what
+      point in the character or event which was the subject could most neatly be
+      brought out within the limits of a vulgus, trying always to get his idea
+      into the eight lines, but not binding himself to ten or even twelve lines
+      if he couldn't do this. He then set to work as much as possible without
+      Gradus or other help, to clothe his idea in appropriate Latin or Greek,
+      and would not be satisfied till he had polished it well up with the aptest
+      and most poetic words and phrases he could get at.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fourth method, indeed, was used in the school, but of too simple a kind
+      to require a comment. It may be called the vicarious method, obtained
+      amongst big boys of lazy or bullying habits, and consisted simply in
+      making clever boys whom they could thrash do their whole vulgus for them,
+      and construe it to them afterwards; which latter is a method not to be
+      encouraged, and which I strongly advise you all not to practise. Of the
+      others, you will find the traditionary most troublesome, unless you can
+      steal your vulguses whole (experto crede), and that the artistic method
+      pays the best both in marks and other ways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The vulguses being finished by nine o'clock, and Martin having rejoiced
+      above measure in the abundance of light, and of Gradus and dictionary, and
+      other conveniences almost unknown to him for getting through the work, and
+      having been pressed by Arthur to come and do his verses there whenever he
+      liked, the three boys went down to Martin's den, and Arthur was initiated
+      into the lore of birds' eggs, to his great delight. The exquisite
+      colouring and forms astonished and charmed him, who had scarcely ever seen
+      any but a hen's egg or an ostrich's, and by the time he was lugged away to
+      bed he had learned the names of at least twenty sorts, and dreamed of the
+      glorious perils of tree-climbing, and that he had found a roc's egg in the
+      island as big as Sinbad's, and clouded like a tit-lark's, in blowing which
+      Martin and he had nearly been drowned in the yolk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0290m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0290m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0290.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV&mdash;THE BIRD-FANCIERS.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;I have found out a gift for my fair&mdash;
+     I have found where the wood-pigeons breed;
+     But let me the plunder forbear,
+     She would say 'twas a barbarous deed.&rdquo;&mdash;ROWE.
+
+     &ldquo;And now, my lad, take them five shilling,
+     And on my advice in future think;
+     So Billy pouched them all so willing,
+     And got that night disguised in drink.&rdquo;&mdash;MS. Ballad.
+</pre>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+      <img src="images/9290m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="9290m " width="100%" />
+      <a href="images/9290.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      he next morning, at first lesson, Tom was turned back in his lines, and
+      so had to wait till the second round; while Martin and Arthur said theirs
+      all right, and got out of school at once. When Tom got out and ran down to
+      breakfast at Harrowell's they were missing, and Stumps informed him that
+      they had swallowed down their breakfasts and gone off together&mdash;where,
+      he couldn't say. Tom hurried over his own breakfast, and went first to
+      Martin's study and then to his own; but no signs of the missing boys were
+      to be found. He felt half angry and jealous of Martin. Where could they be
+      gone?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He learnt second lesson with East and the rest in no very good temper, and
+      then went out into the quadrangle. About ten minutes before school Martin
+      and Arthur arrived in the quadrangle breathless; and catching sight of
+      him, Arthur rushed up, all excitement, and with a bright glow on his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Tom, look here!&rdquo; cried he, holding out three moor-hen's eggs; &ldquo;we've
+      been down the Barby road, to the pool Martin told us of last night, and
+      just see what we've got.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom wouldn't be pleased, and only looked out for something to find fault
+      with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, young un,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;what have you been after? You don't mean to say
+      you've been wading?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tone of reproach made poor little Arthur shrink up in a moment and
+      look piteous; and Tom with a shrug of his shoulders turned his anger on
+      Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I didn't think, Madman, that you'd have been such a muff as to let
+      him be getting wet through at this time of day. You might have done the
+      wading yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I did, of course; only he would come in too, to see the nest. We left
+      six eggs in. They'll be hatched in a day or two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hang the eggs!&rdquo; said Tom; &ldquo;a fellow can't turn his back for a moment but
+      all his work's undone. He'll be laid up for a week for this precious lark,
+      I'll be bound.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, Tom, now,&rdquo; pleaded Arthur, &ldquo;my feet ain't wet, for Martin made me
+      take off my shoes and stockings and trousers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But they are wet, and dirty too; can't I see?&rdquo; answered Tom; &ldquo;and you'll
+      be called up and floored when the master sees what a state you're in. You
+      haven't looked at second lesson, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      O Tom, you old humbug! you to be upbraiding any one with not learning
+      their lessons! If you hadn't been floored yourself now at first lesson, do
+      you mean to say you wouldn't have been with them? And you've taken away
+      all poor little Arthur's joy and pride in his first birds' eggs, and he
+      goes and puts them down in the study, and takes down his books with a
+      sigh, thinking he has done something horribly wrong, whereas he has learnt
+      on in advance much more than will be done at second lesson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the old Madman hasn't, and gets called up, and makes some frightful
+      shots, losing about ten places, and all but getting floored. This somewhat
+      appeases Tom's wrath, and by the end of the lesson he has regained his
+      temper. And afterwards in their study he begins to get right again, as he
+      watches Arthur's intense joy at seeing Martin blowing the eggs and gluing
+      them carefully on to bits of cardboard, and notes the anxious, loving
+      looks which the little fellow casts sidelong at him. And then he thinks,
+      &ldquo;What an ill-tempered beast I am! Here's just what I was wishing for last
+      night come about, and I'm spoiling it all,&rdquo; and in another five minutes
+      has swallowed the last mouthful of his bile, and is repaid by seeing his
+      little sensitive plant expand again and sun itself in his smiles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After dinner the Madman is busy with the preparations for their
+      expedition, fitting new straps on to his climbing-irons, filling large
+      pill-boxes with cotton-wool, and sharpening East's small axe. They carry
+      all their munitions into calling-overs and directly afterwards, having
+      dodged such praepostors as are on the lookout for fags at cricket, the four
+      set off at a smart trot down the Lawford footpath, straight for
+      Caldecott's Spinney and the hawk's nest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin leads the way in high feather; it is quite a new sensation to him,
+      getting companions, and he finds it very pleasant, and means to show them
+      all manner of proofs of his science and skill. Brown and East may be
+      better at cricket and football and games, thinks he, but out in the fields
+      and woods see if I can't teach them something. He has taken the leadership
+      already, and strides away in front with his climbing-irons strapped under
+      one arm, his pecking-bag under the other, and his pockets and hat full of
+      pill-boxes, cotton-wool, and other etceteras. Each of the others carries a
+      pecking-bag, and East his hatchet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they had crossed three or four fields without a check, Arthur began
+      to lag; and Tom seeing this shouted to Martin to pull up a bit. &ldquo;We ain't
+      out hare-and-hounds. What's the good of grinding on at this rate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's the Spinney,&rdquo; said Martin, pulling up on the brow of a slope at
+      the bottom of which lay Lawford brook, and pointing to the top of the
+      opposite slope; &ldquo;the nest is in one of those high fir-trees at this end.
+      And down by the brook there I know of a sedge-bird's nest. We'll go and
+      look at it coming back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come on, don't let us stop,&rdquo; said Arthur, who was getting excited at
+      the sight of the wood. So they broke into a trot again, and were soon
+      across the brook, up the slope, and into the Spinney. Here they advanced
+      as noiselessly as possible, lest keepers or other enemies should be about,
+      and stopped at the foot of a tall fir, at the top of which Martin pointed
+      out with pride the kestrel's nest, the object of their quest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, where? which is it?&rdquo; asks Arthur, gaping up in the air, and having
+      the most vague idea of what it would be like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, don't you see?&rdquo; said East, pointing to a lump of mistletoe in the
+      next tree, which was a beech. He saw that Martin and Tom were busy with
+      the climbing-irons, and couldn't resist the temptation of hoaxing. Arthur
+      stared and wondered more than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, how curious! It doesn't look a bit like what I expected,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very odd birds, kestrels,&rdquo; said East, looking waggishly at his victim,
+      who was still star-gazing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I thought it was in a fir-tree?&rdquo; objected Arthur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, don't you know? That's a new sort of fir which old Caldecott brought
+      from the Himalayas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really!&rdquo; said Arthur; &ldquo;I'm glad I know that. How unlike our firs they
+      are! They do very well too here, don't they? The Spinney's full of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that humbug he's telling you?&rdquo; cried Tom, looking up, having
+      caught the word Himalayas, and suspecting what East was after.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only about this fir,&rdquo; said Arthur, putting his hand on the stem of the
+      beech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fir!&rdquo; shouted Tom; &ldquo;why, you don't mean to say, young un, you don't know
+      a beech when you see one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor little Arthur looked terribly ashamed, and East exploded in laughter
+      which made the wood ring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've hardly ever seen any trees,&rdquo; faltered Arthur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a shame to hoax him, Scud!&rdquo; cried Martin.&mdash;&ldquo;Never mind, Arthur;
+      you shall know more about trees than he does in a week or two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And isn't that the kestrel's nest, then?&rdquo; asked Arthur. &ldquo;That! Why,
+      that's a piece of mistletoe. There's the nest, that lump of sticks up this
+      fir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't believe him, Arthur,&rdquo; struck in the incorrigible East; &ldquo;I just saw
+      an old magpie go out of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin did not deign to reply to this sally, except by a grunt, as he
+      buckled the last buckle of his climbing-irons, and Arthur looked
+      reproachfully at East without speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now came the tug of war. It was a very difficult tree to climb until
+      the branches were reached, the first of which was some fourteen feet up,
+      for the trunk was too large at the bottom to be swarmed; in fact, neither
+      of the boys could reach more than half round it with their arms. Martin
+      and Tom, both of whom had irons on, tried it without success at first; the
+      fir bark broke away where they stuck the irons in as soon as they leant
+      any weight on their feet, and the grip of their arms wasn't enough to keep
+      them up; so, after getting up three or four feet, down they came
+      slithering to the ground, barking their arms and faces. They were furious,
+      and East sat by laughing and shouting at each failure, &ldquo;Two to one on the
+      old magpie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must try a pyramid,&rdquo; said Tom at last. &ldquo;Now, Scud, you lazy rascal,
+      stick yourself against the tree!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0295m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0295m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0295.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say! and have you standing on my shoulders with the irons on. What
+      do you think my skin's made of?&rdquo; However, up he got, and leant against the
+      tree, putting his head down and clasping it with his arms as far as he
+      could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now then, Madman,&rdquo; said Tom, &ldquo;you next.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I'm lighter than you; you go next.&rdquo; So Tom got on East's shoulders,
+      and grasped the tree above, and then Martin scrambled up on to Tom's
+      shoulders, amidst the totterings and groanings of the pyramid, and, with a
+      spring which sent his supporters howling to the ground, clasped the stem
+      some ten feet up, and remained clinging. For a moment or two they thought
+      he couldn't get up; but then, holding on with arms and teeth, he worked
+      first one iron then the other firmly into the bark, got another grip with
+      his arms, and in another minute had hold of the lowest branch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All up with the old magpie now,&rdquo; said East; and after a minute's rest, up
+      went Martin, hand over hand, watched by Arthur with fearful eagerness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it very dangerous?&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit,&rdquo; answered Tom; &ldquo;you can't hurt if you only get good hand-hold.
+      Try every branch with a good pull before you trust it, and then up you
+      go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin was now amongst the small branches close to the nest, and away
+      dashed the old bird, and soared up above the trees, watching the intruder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right&mdash;four eggs!&rdquo; shouted he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take 'em all!&rdquo; shouted East; &ldquo;that'll be one a-piece.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; leave one, and then she won't care,&rdquo; said Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We boys had an idea that birds couldn't count, and were quite content as
+      long as you left one egg. I hope it is so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin carefully put one egg into each of his boxes and the third into his
+      mouth, the only other place of safety, and came down like a lamplighter.
+      All went well till he was within ten feet of the ground, when, as the
+      trunk enlarged, his hold got less and less firm, and at last down he came
+      with a run, tumbling on to his back on the turf, spluttering and spitting
+      out the remains of the great egg, which had broken by the jar of his fall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ugh, ugh! something to drink&mdash;ugh! it was addled,&rdquo; spluttered he,
+      while the wood rang again with the merry laughter of East and Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they examined the prizes, gathered up their things, and went off to
+      the brook, where Martin swallowed huge draughts of water to get rid of the
+      taste; and they visited the sedge-bird's nest, and from thence struck
+      across the country in high glee, beating the hedges and brakes as they
+      went along; and Arthur at last, to his intense delight, was allowed to
+      climb a small hedgerow oak for a magpie's nest with Tom, who kept all
+      round him like a mother, and showed him where to hold and how to throw his
+      weight; and though he was in a great fright, didn't show it, and was
+      applauded by all for his lissomness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They crossed a road soon afterwards, and there, close to them, lay a great
+      heap of charming pebbles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; shouted East; &ldquo;here's luck! I've been longing for some good,
+      honest pecking this half-hour. Let's fill the bags, and have no more of
+      this foozling bird-nesting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No one objected, so each boy filled the fustian bag he carried full of
+      stones. They crossed into the next field, Tom and East taking one side of
+      the hedges, and the other two the other side. Noise enough they made
+      certainly, but it was too early in the season for the young birds, and the
+      old birds were too strong on the wing for our young marksmen, and flew out
+      of shot after the first discharge. But it was great fun, rushing along the
+      hedgerows, and discharging stone after stone at blackbirds and
+      chaffinches, though no result in the shape of slaughtered birds was
+      obtained; and Arthur soon entered into it, and rushed to head back the
+      birds, and shouted, and threw, and tumbled into ditches, and over and
+      through hedges, as wild as the Madman himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently the party, in full cry after an old blackbird (who was evidently
+      used to the thing and enjoyed the fun, for he would wait till they came
+      close to him, and then fly on for forty yards or so, and, with an impudent
+      flicker of his tail, dart into the depths of the quickset), came beating
+      down a high double hedge, two on each side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There he is again,&rdquo; &ldquo;Head him,&rdquo; &ldquo;Let drive,&rdquo; &ldquo;I had him there,&rdquo; &ldquo;Take
+      care where you're throwing, Madman.&rdquo; The shouts might have been heard a
+      quarter of a mile off. They were heard some two hundred yards off by a
+      farmer and two of his shepherds, who were doctoring sheep in a fold in the
+      next field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, the farmer in question rented a house and yard situate at the end of
+      the field in which the young bird-fanciers had arrived, which house and
+      yard he didn't occupy or keep any one else in. Nevertheless, like a
+      brainless and unreasoning Briton, he persisted in maintaining on the
+      premises a large stock of cocks, hens, and other poultry. Of course, all
+      sorts of depredators visited the place from time to time: foxes and
+      gipsies wrought havoc in the night; while in the daytime, I regret to have
+      to confess that visits from the Rugby boys, and consequent disappearances
+      of ancient and respectable fowls were not unfrequent. Tom and East had
+      during the period of their outlawry visited the farm in question for
+      felonious purposes, and on one occasion had conquered and slain a duck
+      there, and borne away the carcass triumphantly, hidden in their
+      handkerchiefs. However, they were sickened of the practice by the trouble
+      and anxiety which the wretched duck's body caused them. They carried it to
+      Sally Harrowell's, in hopes of a good supper; but she, after examining it,
+      made a long face, and refused to dress or have anything to do with it.
+      Then they took it into their study, and began plucking it themselves; but
+      what to do with the feathers, where to hide them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good gracious, Tom, what a lot of feathers a duck has!&rdquo; groaned East,
+      holding a bagful in his hand, and looking disconsolately at the carcass,
+      not yet half plucked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I do think he's getting high, too, already,&rdquo; said Tom, smelling at
+      him cautiously, &ldquo;so we must finish him up soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, all very well; but how are we to cook him? I'm sure I ain't going to
+      try it on in the hall or passages; we can't afford to be roasting ducks
+      about&mdash;our character's too bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish we were rid of the brute,&rdquo; said Tom, throwing him on the table in
+      disgust. And after a day or two more it became clear that got rid of he
+      must be; so they packed him and sealed him up in brown paper, and put him
+      in the cupboard of an unoccupied study, where he was found in the holidays
+      by the matron, a gruesome body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had never been duck-hunting there since, but others had, and the bold
+      yeoman was very sore on the subject, and bent on making an example of the
+      first boys he could catch. So he and his shepherds crouched behind the
+      hurdles, and watched the party, who were approaching all unconscious. Why
+      should that old guinea-fowl be lying out in the hedge just at this
+      particular moment of all the year? Who can say? Guinea-fowls always are;
+      so are all other things, animals, and persons, requisite for getting one
+      into scrapes&mdash;always ready when any mischief can come of them. At any
+      rate, just under East's nose popped out the old guinea-hen, scuttling
+      along and shrieking, &ldquo;Come back, come back,&rdquo; at the top of her voice.
+      Either of the other three might perhaps have withstood the temptation, but
+      East first lets drive the stone he has in his hand at her, and then rushes
+      to turn her into the hedge again. He succeeds, and then they are all at it
+      for dear life, up and down the hedge in full cry, the &ldquo;Come back, come
+      back,&rdquo; getting shriller and fainter every minute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, the farmer and his men steal over the hurdles and creep down the
+      hedge towards the scene of action. They are almost within a stone's throw
+      of Martin, who is pressing the unlucky chase hard, when Tom catches sight
+      of them, and sings out, &ldquo;Louts, 'ware louts, your side! Madman, look
+      ahead!&rdquo; and then catching hold of Arthur, hurries him away across the
+      field towards Rugby as hard as they can tear. Had he been by himself, he
+      would have stayed to see it out with the others, but now his heart sinks
+      and all his pluck goes. The idea of being led up to the Doctor with Arthur
+      for bagging fowls quite unmans and takes half the run out of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, no boys are more able to take care of themselves than East and
+      Martin; they dodge the pursuers, slip through a gap, and come pelting
+      after Tom and Arthur, whom they catch up in no time. The farmer and his
+      men are making good running about a field behind. Tom wishes to himself
+      that they had made off in any other direction, but now they are all in for
+      it together, and must see it out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won't leave the young un, will you?&rdquo; says he, as they haul poor
+      little Arthur, already losing wind from the fright, through the next
+      hedge. &ldquo;Not we,&rdquo; is the answer from both. The next hedge is a stiff one;
+      the pursuers gain horribly on them, and they only just pull Arthur
+      through, with two great rents in his trousers, as the foremost shepherd
+      comes up on the other side. As they start into the next field, they are
+      aware of two figures walking down the footpath in the middle of it, and
+      recognize Holmes and Diggs taking a constitutional. Those good-natured
+      fellows immediately shout, &ldquo;On.&rdquo; &ldquo;Let's go to them and surrender,&rdquo; pants
+      Tom. Agreed. And in another minute the four boys, to the great
+      astonishment of those worthies, rush breathless up to Holmes and Diggs,
+      who pull up to see what is the matter; and then the whole is explained by
+      the appearance of the farmer and his men, who unite their forces and bear
+      down on the knot of boys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is no time to explain, and Tom's heart beats frightfully quick, as
+      he ponders, &ldquo;Will they stand by us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The farmer makes a rush at East and collars him; and that young gentleman,
+      with unusual discretion, instead of kicking his shins, looks appealingly
+      at Holmes, and stands still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo there; not so fast,&rdquo; says Holmes, who is bound to stand up for them
+      till they are proved in the wrong. &ldquo;Now what's all this about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got the young varmint at last, have I,&rdquo; pants the farmer; &ldquo;why,
+      they've been a-skulking about my yard and stealing my fowls&mdash;that's
+      where 'tis; and if I doan't have they flogged for it, every one on 'em, my
+      name ain't Thompson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Holmes looks grave and Diggs's face falls. They are quite ready to fight&mdash;no
+      boys in the school more so; but they are praepostors, and understand their
+      office, and can't uphold unrighteous causes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't been near his old barn this half,&rdquo; cries East. &ldquo;Nor I,&rdquo; &ldquo;Nor
+      I,&rdquo; chime in Tom and Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Willum, didn't you see 'em there last week?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ees, I seen 'em sure enough,&rdquo; says Willum, grasping a prong he carried,
+      and preparing for action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boys deny stoutly, and Willum is driven to admit that &ldquo;if it worn't
+      they 'twas chaps as like 'em as two peas'n;&rdquo; and &ldquo;leastways he'll swear he
+      see'd them two in the yard last Martinmas,&rdquo; indicating East and Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holmes has had time to meditate. &ldquo;Now, sir,&rdquo; says he to Willum, &ldquo;you see
+      you can't remember what you have seen, and I believe the boys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doan't care,&rdquo; blusters the farmer; &ldquo;they was arter my fowls to-day&mdash;that's
+      enough for I.&mdash;Willum, you catch hold o' t'other chap. They've been
+      a-sneaking about this two hours, I tells 'ee,&rdquo; shouted he, as Holmes
+      stands between Martin and Willum, &ldquo;and have druv a matter of a dozen young
+      pullets pretty nigh to death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there's a whacker!&rdquo; cried East; &ldquo;we haven't been within a hundred
+      yards of his barn; we haven't been up here above ten minutes, and we've
+      seen nothing but a tough old guinea-hen, who ran like a greyhound.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0303m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0303m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0303.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, that's all true, Holmes, upon my honour,&rdquo; added Tom; &ldquo;we weren't
+      after his fowls; guinea-hen ran out of the hedge under our feet, and we've
+      seen nothing else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drat their talk. Thee catch hold o' t'other, Willum, and come along wi'
+      un.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farmer Thompson,&rdquo; said Holmes, warning off Willum and the prong with his
+      stick, while Diggs faced the other shepherd, cracking his fingers like
+      pistol-shots, &ldquo;now listen to reason. The boys haven't been after your
+      fowls, that's plain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tells 'ee I see'd'em. Who be you, I should like to know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never you mind, farmer,&rdquo; answered Holmes. &ldquo;And now I'll just tell you
+      what it is: you ought to be ashamed of yourself for leaving all that
+      poultry about, with no one to watch it, so near the School. You deserve to
+      have it all stolen. So if you choose to come up to the Doctor with them, I
+      shall go with you, and tell him what I think of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The farmer began to take Holmes for a master; besides, he wanted to get
+      back to his flock. Corporal punishment was out of the question, the odds
+      were too great; so he began to hint at paying for the damage. Arthur
+      jumped at this, offering to pay anything, and the farmer immediately
+      valued the guinea-hen at half a sovereign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Half a sovereign!&rdquo; cried East, now released from the farmer's grip;
+      &ldquo;well, that is a good one! The old hen ain't hurt a bit, and she's seven
+      years old, I know, and as tough as whipcord; she couldn't lay another egg
+      to save her life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at last settled that they should pay the farmer two shillings, and
+      his man one shilling; and so the matter ended, to the unspeakable relief
+      of Tom, who hadn't been able to say a word, being sick at heart at the
+      idea of what the Doctor would think of him; and now the whole party of
+      boys marched off down the footpath towards Rugby. Holmes, who was one of
+      the best boys in the School, began to improve the occasion. &ldquo;Now, you
+      youngsters,&rdquo; said he, as he marched along in the middle of them, &ldquo;mind
+      this; you're very well out of this scrape. Don't you go near Thompson's
+      barn again; do you hear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Profuse promises from all, especially East.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mind, I don't ask questions,&rdquo; went on Mentor, &ldquo;but I rather think some of
+      you have been there before this after his chickens. Now, knocking over
+      other people's chickens, and running off with them, is stealing. It's a
+      nasty word, but that's the plain English of it. If the chickens were dead
+      and lying in a shop, you wouldn't take them, I know that, any more than
+      you would apples out of Griffith's basket; but there's no real difference
+      between chickens running about and apples on a tree, and the same articles
+      in a shop. I wish our morals were sounder in such matters. There's nothing
+      so mischievous as these school distinctions, which jumble up right and
+      wrong, and justify things in us for which poor boys would be sent to
+      prison.&rdquo; And good old Holmes delivered his soul on the walk home of many
+      wise sayings, and, as the song says,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Gee'd 'em a sight of good advice;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      which same sermon sank into them all, more or less, and very penitent they
+      were for several hours. But truth compels me to admit that East, at any
+      rate, forgot it all in a week, but remembered the insult which had been
+      put upon him by Farmer Thompson, and with the Tadpole and other
+      hair-brained youngsters committed a raid on the barn soon afterwards, in
+      which they were caught by the shepherds and severely handled, besides
+      having to pay eight shillings&mdash;all the money they had in the world&mdash;to
+      escape being taken up to the Doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin became a constant inmate in the joint study from this time, and
+      Arthur took to him so kindly that Tom couldn't resist slight fits of
+      jealousy, which, however, he managed to keep to himself. The kestrel's
+      eggs had not been broken, strange to say, and formed the nucleus of
+      Arthur's collection, at which Martin worked heart and soul, and introduced
+      Arthur to Howlett the bird-fancier, and instructed him in the rudiments of
+      the art of stuffing. In token of his gratitude, Arthur allowed Martin to
+      tattoo a small anchor on one of his wrists; which decoration, however, he
+      carefully concealed from Tom. Before the end of the half-year he had
+      trained into a bold climber and good runner, and, as Martin had foretold,
+      knew twice as much about trees, birds, flowers, and many other things, as
+      our good-hearted and facetious young friend Harry East.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0308m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0308m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0308.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V&mdash;THE FIGHT:
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Surgebat Macnevisius
+     Et mox jactabat ultro,
+     Pugnabo tua gratia
+     Feroci hoc Mactwoltro.&rdquo;&mdash;Etonian.
+</pre>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+      <img src="images/9308m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="9308m " width="100%" />
+      <a href="images/9308.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      here is a certain sort of fellow&mdash;we who are used to studying boys
+      all know him well enough&mdash;of whom you can predicate with almost
+      positive certainty, after he has been a month at school, that he is sure
+      to have a fight, and with almost equal certainty that he will have but
+      one. Tom Brown was one of these; and as it is our well-weighed intention
+      to give a full, true, and correct account of Tom's only single combat with
+      a school-fellow in the manner of our old friend Bell's Life, let those
+      young persons whose stomachs are not strong, or who think a good set-to
+      with the weapons which God has given us all an uncivilized, unchristian,
+      or ungentlemanly affair, just skip this chapter at once, for it won't be
+      to their taste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not at all usual in those days for two School-house boys to have a
+      fight. Of course there were exceptions, when some cross-grained,
+      hard-headed fellow came up who would never be happy unless he was
+      quarrelling with his nearest neighbours, or when there was some
+      class-dispute, between the fifth form and the fags, for instance, which
+      required blood-letting; and a champion was picked out on each side
+      tacitly, who settled the matter by a good hearty mill. But, for the most
+      part, the constant use of those surest keepers of the peace, the
+      boxing-gloves, kept the School-house boys from fighting one another. Two
+      or three nights in every week the gloves were brought out, either in the
+      hall or fifth-form room; and every boy who was ever likely to fight at all
+      knew all his neighbours' prowess perfectly well, and could tell to a
+      nicety what chance he would have in a stand-up fight with any other boy in
+      the house. But, of course, no such experience could be gotten as regarded
+      boys in other houses; and as most of the other houses were more or less
+      jealous of the School-house, collisions were frequent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all, what would life be without fighting, I should like to know?
+      From the cradle to the grave, fighting, rightly understood, is the
+      business, the real highest, honestest business of every son of man. Every
+      one who is worth his salt has his enemies, who must be beaten, be they
+      evil thoughts and habits in himself, or spiritual wickednesses in high
+      places, or Russians, or Border-ruffians, or Bill, Tom, or Harry, who will
+      not let him live his life in quiet till he has thrashed them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is no good for quakers, or any other body of men, to uplift their
+      voices against fighting. Human nature is too strong for them, and they
+      don't follow their own precepts. Every soul of them is doing his own piece
+      of fighting, somehow and somewhere. The world might be a better world
+      without fighting, for anything I know, but it wouldn't be our world; and
+      therefore I am dead against crying peace when there is no peace, and isn't
+      meant to be. I am as sorry as any man to see folk fighting the wrong
+      people and the wrong things, but I'd a deal sooner see them doing that
+      than that they should have no fight in them. So having recorded, and being
+      about to record, my hero's fights of all sorts, with all sorts of enemies,
+      I shall now proceed to give an account of his passage-at-arms with the
+      only one of his school-fellows whom he ever had to encounter in this
+      manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was drawing towards the close of Arthur's first half-year, and the May
+      evenings were lengthening out. Locking-up was not till eight o'clock, and
+      everybody was beginning to talk about what he would do in the holidays.
+      The shell, in which form all our dramatis personae now are, were reading,
+      amongst other things, the last book of Homer's &ldquo;Iliad,&rdquo; and had worked
+      through it as far as the speeches of the women over Hector's body. It is a
+      whole school-day, and four or five of the School-house boys (amongst whom
+      are Arthur, Tom, and East) are preparing third lesson together. They have
+      finished the regulation forty lines, and are for the most part getting
+      very tired, notwithstanding the exquisite pathos of Helen's lamentation.
+      And now several long four-syllabled words come together, and the boy with
+      the dictionary strikes work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not going to look out any more words,&rdquo; says he; &ldquo;we've done the
+      quantity. Ten to one we shan't get so far. Let's go out into the close.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, boys,&rdquo; cries East, always ready to leave &ldquo;the grind,&rdquo; as he
+      called it; &ldquo;our old coach is laid up, you know, and we shall have one of
+      the new masters, who's sure to go slow and let us down easy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So an adjournment to the close was carried nem. con., little Arthur not
+      daring to uplift his voice; but, being deeply interested in what they were
+      reading, stayed quietly behind, and learnt on for his own pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As East had said, the regular master of the form was unwell, and they were
+      to be heard by one of the new masters&mdash;quite a young man, who had
+      only just left the university. Certainly it would be hard lines if, by
+      dawdling as much as possible in coming in and taking their places,
+      entering into long-winded explanations of what was the usual course of the
+      regular master of the form, and others of the stock contrivances of boys
+      for wasting time in school, they could not spin out the lesson so that he
+      should not work them through more than the forty lines. As to which
+      quantity there was a perpetual fight going on between the master and his
+      form&mdash;the latter insisting, and enforcing by passive resistance, that
+      it was the prescribed quantity of Homer for a shell lesson; the former,
+      that there was no fixed quantity, but that they must always be ready to go
+      on to fifty or sixty lines if there were time within the hour. However,
+      notwithstanding all their efforts, the new master got on horribly quick.
+      He seemed to have the bad taste to be really interested in the lesson, and
+      to be trying to work them up into something like appreciation of it,
+      giving them good, spirited English words, instead of the wretched bald
+      stuff into which they rendered poor old Homer, and construing over each
+      piece himself to them, after each boy, to show them how it should be done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the clock strikes the three-quarters; there is only a quarter of an
+      hour more, but the forty lines are all but done. So the boys, one after
+      another, who are called up, stick more and more, and make balder and ever
+      more bald work of it. The poor young master is pretty near beat by this
+      time, and feels ready to knock his head against the wall, or his fingers
+      against somebody else's head. So he gives up altogether the lower and
+      middle parts of the form, and looks round in despair at the boys on the
+      top bench, to see if there is one out of whom he can strike a spark or
+      two, and who will be too chivalrous to murder the most beautiful
+      utterances of the most beautiful woman of the old world. His eye rests on
+      Arthur, and he calls him up to finish construing Helen's speech. Whereupon
+      all the other boys draw long breaths, and begin to stare about and take it
+      easy. They are all safe: Arthur is the head of the form, and sure to be
+      able to construe, and that will tide on safely till the hour strikes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur proceeds to read out the passage in Greek before construing it, as
+      the custom is. Tom, who isn't paying much attention, is suddenly caught by
+      the falter in his voice as he reads the two lines&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      [greek text deleted]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looks up at Arthur. &ldquo;Why, bless us,&rdquo; thinks he, &ldquo;what can be the matter
+      with the young un? He's never going to get floored. He's sure to have
+      learnt to the end.&rdquo; Next moment he is reassured by the spirited tone in
+      which Arthur begins construing, and betakes himself to drawing dogs' heads
+      in his notebook, while the master, evidently enjoying the change, turns
+      his back on the middle bench and stands before Arthur, beating a sort of
+      time with his hand and foot, and saying; &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; as
+      Arthur goes on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as he nears the fatal two lines, Tom catches that falter, and again
+      looks up. He sees that there is something the matter; Arthur can hardly
+      get on at all. What can it be?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly at this point Arthur breaks down altogether, and fairly bursts
+      out crying, and dashes the cuff of his jacket across his eyes, blushing up
+      to the roots of his hair, and feeling as if he should like to go down
+      suddenly through the floor. The whole form are taken aback; most of them
+      stare stupidly at him, while those who are gifted with presence of mind
+      find their places and look steadily at their books, in hopes of not
+      catching the master's eye and getting called up in Arthur's place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The master looks puzzled for a moment, and then seeing, as the fact is,
+      that the boy is really affected to tears by the most touching thing in
+      Homer, perhaps in all profane poetry put together, steps up to him and
+      lays his hand kindly on his shoulder, saying, &ldquo;Never mind, my little man,
+      you've construed very well. Stop a minute; there's no hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, as luck would have it, there sat next above Tom on that day, in the
+      middle bench of the form, a big boy, by name Williams, generally supposed
+      to be the cock of the shell, therefore of all the school below the fifths.
+      The small boys, who are great speculators on the prowess of their elders,
+      used to hold forth to one another about Williams's great strength, and to
+      discuss whether East or Brown would take a licking from him. He was called
+      Slogger Williams, from the force with which it was supposed he could hit.
+      In the main, he was a rough, goodnatured fellow enough, but very much
+      alive to his own dignity. He reckoned himself the king of the form, and
+      kept up his position with the strong hand, especially in the matter of
+      forcing boys not to construe more than the legitimate forty lines. He had
+      already grunted and grumbled to himself when Arthur went on reading beyond
+      the forty lines; but now that he had broken down just in the middle of all
+      the long words, the Slogger's wrath was fairly roused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sneaking little brute,&rdquo; muttered he, regardless of prudence&mdash;&ldquo;clapping
+      on the water-works just in the hardest place; see if I don't punch his
+      head after fourth lesson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whose?&rdquo; said Tom, to whom the remark seemed to be addressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that little sneak, Arthur's,&rdquo; replied Williams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you shan't,&rdquo; said Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo!&rdquo; exclaimed Williams, looking at Tom with great surprise for a
+      moment, and then giving him a sudden dig in the ribs with his elbow, which
+      sent Tom's books flying on to the floor, and called the attention of the
+      master, who turned suddenly round, and seeing the state of things, said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Williams, go down three places, and then go on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Slogger found his legs very slowly, and proceeded to go below Tom and
+      two other boys with great disgust; and then, turning round and facing the
+      master, said, &ldquo;I haven't learnt any more, sir; our lesson is only forty
+      lines.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that so?&rdquo; said the master, appealing generally to the top bench. No
+      answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is the head boy of the form?&rdquo; said he, waxing wroth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arthur, sir,&rdquo; answered three or four boys, indicating our friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, your name's Arthur. Well, now, what is the length of your regular
+      lesson?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur hesitated a moment, and then said, &ldquo;We call it only forty lines,
+      sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you mean&mdash;you call it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, Mr. Graham says we ain't to stop there when there's time to
+      construe more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; said the master.&mdash;&ldquo;Williams, go down three more
+      places, and write me out the lesson in Greek and English. And now, Arthur,
+      finish construing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! would I be in Arthur's shoes after fourth lesson?&rdquo; said the little
+      boys to one another; but Arthur finished Helen's speech without any
+      further catastrophe, and the clock struck four, which ended third lesson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another hour was occupied in preparing and saying fourth lesson, during
+      which Williams was bottling up his wrath; and when five struck, and the
+      lessons for the day were over, he prepared to take summary vengeance on
+      the innocent cause of his misfortune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom was detained in school a few minutes after the rest, and on coming out
+      into the quadrangle, the first thing he saw was a small ring of boys,
+      applauding Williams, who was holding Arthur by the collar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, you young sneak,&rdquo; said he, giving Arthur a cuff on the head with
+      his other hand; &ldquo;what made you say that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo!&rdquo; said Tom, shouldering into the crowd; &ldquo;you drop that, Williams;
+      you shan't touch him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who'll stop me?&rdquo; said the Slogger, raising his hand again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I,&rdquo; said Tom; and suiting the action to the word he struck the arm which
+      held Arthur's arm so sharply that the Slogger dropped it with a start, and
+      turned the full current of his wrath on Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you fight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huzza! There's going to be a fight between Slogger Williams and Tom
+      Brown!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The news ran like wildfire about, and many boys who were on their way to
+      tea at their several houses turned back, and sought the back of the
+      chapel, where the fights come off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just run and tell East to come and back me,&rdquo; said Tom to a small
+      School-house boy, who was off like a rocket to Harrowell's, just stopping
+      for a moment to poke his head into the School-house hall, where the lower
+      boys were already at tea, and sing out, &ldquo;Fight! Tom Brown and Slogger
+      Williams.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Up start half the boys at once, leaving bread, eggs, butter, sprats, and
+      all the rest to take care of themselves. The greater part of the remainder
+      follow in a minute, after swallowing their tea, carrying their food in
+      their hands to consume as they go. Three or four only remain, who steal
+      the butter of the more impetuous, and make to themselves an unctuous
+      feast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In another minute East and Martin tear through the quadrangle, carrying a
+      sponge, and arrive at the scene of action just as the combatants are
+      beginning to strip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom felt he had got his work cut out for him, as he stripped off his
+      jacket, waistcoat, and braces. East tied his handkerchief round his waist,
+      and rolled up his shirtsleeves for him. &ldquo;Now, old boy, don't you open your
+      mouth to say a word, or try to help yourself a bit&mdash;we'll do all
+      that; you keep all your breath and strength for the Slogger.&rdquo; Martin
+      meanwhile folded the clothes, and put them under the chapel rails; and now
+      Tom, with East to handle him, and Martin to give him a knee, steps out on
+      the turf, and is ready for all that may come; and here is the Slogger too,
+      all stripped, and thirsting for the fray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It doesn't look a fair match at first glance: Williams is nearly two
+      inches taller, and probably a long year older than his opponent, and he is
+      very strongly made about the arms and shoulders&mdash;&ldquo;peels well,&rdquo; as the
+      little knot of big fifth-form boys, the amateurs, say, who stand outside
+      the ring of little boys, looking complacently on, but taking no active
+      part in the proceedings. But down below he is not so good by any means&mdash;no
+      spring from the loins, and feeblish, not to say shipwrecky, about the
+      knees. Tom, on the contrary, though not half so strong in the arms, is
+      good all over, straight, hard, and springy, from neck to ankle, better
+      perhaps in his legs than anywhere. Besides, you can see by the clear white
+      of his eye, and fresh, bright look of his skin, that he is in tip-top
+      training, able to do all he knows; while the Slogger looks rather sodden,
+      as if he didn't take much exercise and ate too much tuck. The time-keeper
+      is chosen, a large ring made, and the two stand up opposite one another
+      for a moment, giving us time just to make our little observations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Tom'll only condescend to fight with his head and heels,&rdquo; as East
+      mutters to Martin, &ldquo;we shall do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But seemingly he won't, for there he goes in, making play with both hands.
+      Hard all is the word; the two stand to one another like men; rally follows
+      rally in quick succession, each fighting as if he thought to finish the
+      whole thing out of hand. &ldquo;Can't last at this rate,&rdquo; say the knowing ones,
+      while the partisans of each make the air ring with their shouts and
+      counter-shouts of encouragement, approval, and defiance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take it easy, take it easy; keep away; let him come after you,&rdquo; implores
+      East, as he wipes Tom's face after the first round with a wet sponge,
+      while he sits back on Martin's knee, supported by the Madman's long arms
+      which tremble a little from excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Time's up,&rdquo; calls the time-keeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There he goes again, hang it all!&rdquo; growls East, as his man is at it
+      again, as hard as ever. A very severe round follows, in which Tom gets out
+      and out the worst of it, and is at last hit clean off his legs, and
+      deposited on the grass by a right-hander from the Slogger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Loud shouts rise from the boys of Slogger's house, and the School-house
+      are silent and vicious, ready to pick quarrels anywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two to one in half-crowns on the big un,&rdquo; says Rattle, one of the
+      amateurs, a tall fellow, in thunder-and-lightning waistcoat, and puffy,
+      good-natured face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Done!&rdquo; says Groove, another amateur of quieter look, taking out his
+      notebook to enter it, for our friend Rattle sometimes forgets these little
+      things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime East is freshening up Tom with the sponges for next round, and
+      has set two other boys to rub his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tom, old boy,&rdquo; whispers he, &ldquo;this may be fun for you, but it's death to
+      me. He'll hit all the fight out of you in another five minutes, and then I
+      shall go and drown myself in the island ditch. Feint him; use your legs;
+      draw him about. He'll lose his wind then in no time, and you can go into
+      him. Hit at his body too; we'll take care of his frontispiece by-and-by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom felt the wisdom of the counsel, and saw already that he couldn't go in
+      and finish the Slogger off at mere hammer and tongs, so changed his
+      tactics completely in the third round. He now fights cautiously, getting
+      away from and parrying the Slogger's lunging hits, instead of trying to
+      counter, and leading his enemy a dance all round the ring after him. &ldquo;He's
+      funking; go in, Williams,&rdquo; &ldquo;Catch him up,&rdquo; &ldquo;Finish him off,&rdquo; scream the
+      small boys of the Slogger party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just what we want,&rdquo; thinks East, chuckling to himself, as he sees
+      Williams, excited by these shouts, and thinking the game in his own hands,
+      blowing himself in his exertions to get to close quarters again, while Tom
+      is keeping away with perfect ease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They quarter over the ground again and again, Tom always on the defensive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Slogger pulls up at last for a moment, fairly blown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then, Tom,&rdquo; sings out East, dancing with delight. Tom goes in in a
+      twinkling, and hits two heavy body blows, and gets away again before the
+      Slogger can catch his wind, which when he does he rushes with blind fury
+      at Tom, and being skilfully parried and avoided, overreaches himself and
+      falls on his face, amidst terrific cheers from the School-house boys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Double your two to one?&rdquo; says Groove to Rattle, notebook in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop a bit,&rdquo; says that hero, looking uncomfortably at Williams, who is
+      puffing away on his second's knee, winded enough, but little the worse in
+      any other way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After another round the Slogger too seems to see that he can't go in and
+      win right off, and has met his match or thereabouts. So he too begins to
+      use his head, and tries to make Tom lose his patience, and come in before
+      his time. And so the fight sways on, now one and now the other getting a
+      trifling pull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom's face begins to look very one-sided&mdash;there are little queer
+      bumps on his forehead, and his mouth is bleeding; but East keeps the wet
+      sponge going so scientifically that he comes up looking as fresh and
+      bright as ever. Williams is only slightly marked in the face, but by the
+      nervous movement of his elbows you can see that Tom's body blows are
+      telling. In fact, half the vice of the Slogger's hitting is neutralized,
+      for he daren't lunge out freely for fear of exposing his sides. It is too
+      interesting by this time for much shouting, and the whole ring is very
+      quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Tommy,&rdquo; whispers East; &ldquo;hold on's the horse that's to win.
+      We've got the last. Keep your head, old boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But where is Arthur all this time? Words cannot paint the poor little
+      fellow's distress. He couldn't muster courage to come up to the ring, but
+      wandered up and down from the great fives court to the corner of the
+      chapel rails, now trying to make up his mind to throw himself between
+      them, and try to stop them; then thinking of running in and telling his
+      friend Mary, who, he knew, would instantly report to the Doctor. The
+      stories he had heard of men being killed in prize-fights rose up horribly
+      before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once only, when the shouts of &ldquo;Well done, Brown!&rdquo; &ldquo;Huzza for the
+      School-house!&rdquo; rose higher than ever, he ventured up to the ring, thinking
+      the victory was won. Catching sight of Tom's face in the state I have
+      described, all fear of consequences vanishing out of his mind; he rushed
+      straight off to the matron's room, beseeching her to get the fight
+      stopped, or he should die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it's time for us to get back to the close. What is this fierce tumult
+      and confusion? The ring is broken, and high and angry words are being
+      bandied about. &ldquo;It's all fair&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;It isn't&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;No hugging!&rdquo; The
+      fight is stopped. The combatants, however, sit there quietly, tended by
+      their seconds, while their adherents wrangle in the middle. East can't
+      help shouting challenges to two or three of the other side, though he
+      never leaves Tom for a moment, and plies the sponges as fast as ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact is, that at the end of the last round, Tom, seeing a good
+      opening, had closed with his opponent, and after a moment's struggle, had
+      thrown him heavily, by help of the fall he had learnt from his village
+      rival in the Vale of White Horse. Williams hadn't the ghost of a chance
+      with Tom at wrestling; and the conviction broke at once on the Slogger
+      faction that if this were allowed their man must be licked. There was a
+      strong feeling in the School against catching hold and throwing, though it
+      was generally ruled all fair within limits; so the ring was broken and the
+      fight stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The School-house are overruled&mdash;the fight is on again, but there is
+      to be no throwing; and East, in high wrath, threatens to take his man away
+      after next round (which he don't mean to do, by the way), when suddenly
+      young Brooke comes through the small gate at the end of the chapel. The
+      School-house faction rush to him. &ldquo;Oh, hurrah! now we shall get fair
+      play.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please, Brooke, come up. They won't let Tom Brown throw him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Throw whom?&rdquo; says Brooke, coming up to the ring. &ldquo;Oh! Williams, I see.
+      Nonsense! Of course he may throw him, if he catches him fairly above the
+      waist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, young Brooke, you're in the sixth, you know, and you ought to stop
+      all fights. He looks hard at both boys. &ldquo;Anything wrong?&rdquo; says he to East,
+      nodding at Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not beat at all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless you, no! Heaps of fight in him.&mdash;Ain't there, Tom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom looks at Brooke and grins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How's he?&rdquo; nodding at Williams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So so; rather done, I think, since his last fall. He won't stand above
+      two more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Time's up!&rdquo; The boys rise again and face one another. Brooke can't find
+      it in his heart to stop them just yet, so the round goes on, the Slogger
+      waiting for Tom, and reserving all his strength to hit him out should he
+      come in for the wrestling dodge again, for he feels that that must be
+      stopped, or his sponge will soon go up in the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now another newcomer appears on the field, to wit, the under-porter,
+      with his long brush and great wooden receptacle for dust under his arm. He
+      has been sweeping out the schools.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd better stop, gentlemen,&rdquo; he says; &ldquo;the Doctor knows that Brown's
+      fighting&mdash;he'll be out in a minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You go to Bath, Bill,&rdquo; is all that that excellent servitor gets by his
+      advice; and being a man of his hands, and a stanch upholder of the
+      School-house, can't help stopping to look on for a bit, and see Tom Brown,
+      their pet craftsman, fight a round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is grim earnest now, and no mistake. Both boys feel this, and summon
+      every power of head, hand, and eye to their aid. A piece of luck on either
+      side, a foot slipping, a blow getting well home, or another fall, may
+      decide it. Tom works slowly round for an opening; he has all the legs, and
+      can choose his own time. The Slogger waits for the attack, and hopes to
+      finish it by some heavy right-handed blow. As they quarter slowly over the
+      ground, the evening sun comes out from behind a cloud and falls full on
+      Williams's face. Tom darts in; the heavy right hand is delivered, but only
+      grazes his head. A short rally at close quarters, and they close; in
+      another moment the Slogger is thrown again heavily for the third time.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0321m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0321m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0321.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll give you three or two on the little one in half-crowns,&rdquo; said Groove
+      to Rattle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, thank 'ee,&rdquo; answers the other, diving his hands farther into his
+      coat-tails.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just at this stage of the proceedings, the door of the turret which leads
+      to the Doctor's library suddenly opens, and he steps into the close, and
+      makes straight for the ring, in which Brown and the Slogger are both
+      seated on their seconds' knees for the last time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Doctor! the Doctor!&rdquo; shouts some small boy who catches sight of him,
+      and the ring melts away in a few seconds, the small boys tearing off, Tom
+      collaring his jacket and waistcoat, and slipping through the little gate
+      by the chapel, and round the corner to Harrowell's with his backers, as
+      lively as need be; Williams and his backers making off not quite so fast
+      across the close; Groove, Rattle, and the other bigger fellows trying to
+      combine dignity and prudence in a comical manner, and walking off fast
+      enough, they hope, not to be recognized, and not fast enough to look like
+      running away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Brooke alone remains on the ground by the time the Doctor gets
+      there, and touches his hat, not without a slight inward qualm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hah! Brooke. I am surprised to see you here. Don't you know that I expect
+      the sixth to stop fighting?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Brooke felt much more uncomfortable than he had expected, but he was
+      rather a favourite with the Doctor for his openness and plainness of
+      speech, so blurted out, as he walked by the Doctor's side, who had already
+      turned back,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir, generally. But I thought you wished us to exercise a discretion
+      in the matter too&mdash;not to interfere too soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But they have been fighting this half-hour and more,&rdquo; said the Doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir; but neither was hurt. And they're the sort of boys who'll be
+      all the better friends now, which they wouldn't have been if they had been
+      stopped, any earlier&mdash;before it was so equal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who was fighting with Brown?&rdquo; said the Doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Williams, sir, of Thompson's. He is bigger than Brown, and had the best
+      of it at first, but not when you came up, sir. There's a good deal of
+      jealousy between our house and Thompson's, and there would have been more
+      fights if this hadn't been let go on, or if either of them had had much
+      the worst of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well but, Brooke,&rdquo; said the Doctor, &ldquo;doesn't this look a little as if you
+      exercised your discretion by only stopping a fight when the School-house
+      boy is getting the worst of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Brooke, it must be confessed, felt rather gravelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now remember,&rdquo; added the Doctor, as he stopped at the turret-door, &ldquo;this
+      fight is not to go on; you'll see to that. And I expect you to stop all
+      fights in future at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0325m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0325m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0325.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, sir,&rdquo; said young Brooke, touching his hat, and not sorry to
+      see the turret-door close behind the Doctor's back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Tom and the stanchest of his adherents had reached Harrowell's,
+      and Sally was bustling about to get them a late tea, while Stumps had been
+      sent off to Tew, the butcher, to get a piece of raw beef for Tom's eye,
+      which was to be healed off-hand, so that he might show well in the
+      morning. He was not a bit the worse, except a slight difficulty in his
+      vision, a singing in his ears, and a sprained thumb, which he kept in a
+      cold-water bandage, while he drank lots of tea, and listened to the babel
+      of voices talking and speculating of nothing but the fight, and how
+      Williams would have given in after another fall (which he didn't in the
+      least believe), and how on earth the Doctor could have got to know of it&mdash;such
+      bad luck! He couldn't help thinking to himself that he was glad he hadn't
+      won; he liked it better as it was, and felt very friendly to the Slogger.
+      And then poor little Arthur crept in and sat down quietly near him, and
+      kept looking at him and the raw beef with such plaintive looks that Tom at
+      last burst out laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't make such eyes, young un,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;there's nothing the matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but, Tom, are you much hurt? I can't bear thinking it was all for
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit of it; don't flatter yourself. We were sure to have had it out
+      sooner or later.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, but you won't go on, will you? You'll promise me you won't go on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't tell about that&mdash;all depends on the houses. We're in the hands
+      of our countrymen, you know. Must fight for the School-house flag, if so
+      be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      However, the lovers of the science were doomed to disappointment this
+      time. Directly after locking-up, one of the night-fags knocked at Tom's
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brown, young Brooke wants you in the sixth-form room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Up went Tom to the summons, and found the magnates sitting at their
+      supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Brown,&rdquo; said young Brooke, nodding to him, &ldquo;how do you feel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, very well, thank you, only I've sprained my thumb, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure to do that in a fight. Well, you hadn't the worst of it, I could
+      see. Where did you learn that throw?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Down in the country when I was a boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo! why, what are you now? Well, never mind, you're a plucky fellow.
+      Sit down and have some supper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom obeyed, by no means loath. And the fifth-form boy next filled him a
+      tumbler of bottled beer, and he ate and drank, listening to the pleasant
+      talk, and wondering how soon he should be in the fifth, and one of that
+      much-envied society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he got up to leave, Brooke said, &ldquo;You must shake hands to-morrow
+      morning; I shall come and see that done after first lesson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so he did. And Tom and the Slogger shook hands with great satisfaction
+      and mutual respect. And for the next year or two, whenever fights were
+      being talked of, the small boys who had been present shook their heads
+      wisely, saying, &ldquo;Ah! but you should just have seen the fight between
+      Slogger Williams and Tom Brown!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, boys all, three words before we quit the subject. I have put in
+      this chapter on fighting of malice prepense, partly because I want to give
+      you a true picture of what everyday school life was in my time, and not a
+      kid-glove and go-to-meeting-coat picture, and partly because of the cant
+      and twaddle that's talked of boxing and fighting with fists nowadays. Even
+      Thackeray has given in to it; and only a few weeks ago there was some
+      rampant stuff in the Times on the subject, in an article on field sports.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Boys will quarrel, and when they quarrel will sometimes fight. Fighting
+      with fists is the natural and English way for English boys to settle their
+      quarrels. What substitute for it is there, or ever was there, amongst any
+      nation under the sun? What would you like to see take its place?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Learn to box, then, as you learn to play cricket and football. Not one of
+      you will be the worse, but very much the better, for learning to box well.
+      Should you never have to use it in earnest, there's no exercise in the
+      world so good for the temper and for the muscles of the back and legs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to fighting, keep out of it if you can, by all means. When the time
+      comes, if it ever should, that you have to say &ldquo;Yes&rdquo; or &ldquo;No&rdquo; to a
+      challenge to fight, say &ldquo;No&rdquo; if you can&mdash;only take care you make it
+      clear to yourselves why you say &ldquo;No.&rdquo; It's a proof of the highest courage,
+      if done from true Christian motives. It's quite right and justifiable, if
+      done from a simple aversion to physical pain and danger. But don't say
+      &ldquo;No&rdquo; because you fear a licking, and say or think it's because you fear
+      God, for that's neither Christian nor honest. And if you do fight, fight
+      it out; and don't give in while you can stand and see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0330m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0330m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0330.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI&mdash;FEVER IN THE SCHOOL.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;This our hope for all that's mortal
+     And we too shall burst the bond;
+     Death keeps watch beside the portal,
+     But 'tis life that dwells beyond.&rdquo;
+      &mdash;JOHN STERLING.
+</pre>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+      <img src="images/9330m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="9330m " width="100%" />
+      <a href="images/9330.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      wo years have passed since the events recorded in the last chapter, and
+      the end of the summer half-year is again drawing on. Martin has left and
+      gone on a cruise in the South Pacific, in one of his uncle's ships; the
+      old magpie, as disreputable as ever, his last bequest to Arthur, lives in
+      the joint study. Arthur is nearly sixteen, and at the head of the twenty,
+      having gone up the school at the rate of a form a half-year. East and Tom
+      have been much more deliberate in their progress, and are only a little
+      way up the fifth form. Great strapping boys they are, but still thorough
+      boys, filling about the same place in the house that young Brooke filled
+      when they were new boys, and much the same sort of fellows. Constant
+      intercourse with Arthur has done much for both of them, especially for
+      Tom; but much remains yet to be done, if they are to get all the good out
+      of Rugby which is to be got there in these times. Arthur is still frail
+      and delicate, with more spirit than body; but, thanks to his intimacy with
+      them and Martin, has learned to swim, and run, and play cricket, and has
+      never hurt himself by too much reading.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, as they were all sitting down to supper in the fifth-form
+      room, some one started a report that a fever had broken out at one of the
+      boarding-houses. &ldquo;They say,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;that Thompson is very ill, and
+      that Dr. Robertson has been sent for from Northampton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then we shall all be sent home,&rdquo; cried another. &ldquo;Hurrah! five weeks'
+      extra holidays, and no fifth-form examination!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not,&rdquo; said Tom; &ldquo;there'll be no Marylebone match then at the end
+      of the half.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Some thought one thing, some another, many didn't believe the report; but
+      the next day, Tuesday, Dr. Robertson arrived, and stayed all day, and had
+      long conferences with the Doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Wednesday morning, after prayers, the Doctor addressed the whole
+      school. There were several cases of fever in different houses, he said;
+      but Dr. Robertson, after the most careful examination, had assured him
+      that it was not infectious, and that if proper care were taken, there
+      could be no reason for stopping the school-work at present. The
+      examinations were just coming on, and it would be very unadvisable to
+      break up now. However, any boys who chose to do so were at liberty to
+      write home, and, if their parents wished it, to leave at once. He should
+      send the whole school home if the fever spread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day Arthur sickened, but there was no other case. Before the end
+      of the week thirty or forty boys had gone, but the rest stayed on. There
+      was a general wish to please the Doctor, and a feeling that it was
+      cowardly to run away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Saturday Thompson died, in the bright afternoon, while the
+      cricket-match was going on as usual on the big-side ground. The Doctor,
+      coming from his deathbed, passed along the gravel-walk at the side of the
+      close, but no one knew what had happened till the next day. At morning
+      lecture it began to be rumoured, and by afternoon chapel was known
+      generally; and a feeling of seriousness and awe at the actual presence of
+      death among them came over the whole school. In all the long years of his
+      ministry the Doctor perhaps never spoke words which sank deeper than some
+      of those in that day's sermon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I came yesterday from visiting all but the very death-bed of him who
+      has been taken from us, and looked around upon all the familiar objects
+      and scenes within our own ground, where your common amusements were going
+      on with your common cheerfulness and activity, I felt there was nothing
+      painful in witnessing that; it did not seem in any way shocking or out of
+      tune with those feelings which the sight of a dying Christian must be
+      supposed to awaken. The unsuitableness in point of natural feeling between
+      scenes of mourning and scenes of liveliness did not at all present itself.
+      But I did feel that if at that moment any of those faults had been brought
+      before me which sometimes occur amongst us; had I heard that any of you
+      had been guilty of falsehood, or of drunkenness, or of any other such sin;
+      had I heard from any quarter the language of profaneness, or of
+      unkindness, or of indecency; had I heard or seen any signs of that
+      wretched folly which courts the laugh of fools by affecting not to dread
+      evil and not to care for good, then the unsuitableness of any of these
+      things with the scene I had just quitted would indeed have been most
+      intensely painful. And why? Not because such things would really have been
+      worse than at any other time, but because at such a moment the eyes are
+      opened really to know good and evil, because we then feel what it is so to
+      live as that death becomes an infinite blessing, and what it is so to live
+      also that it were good for us if we had never been born.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom had gone into chapel in sickening anxiety about Arthur, but he came
+      out cheered and strengthened by those grand words, and walked up alone to
+      their study. And when he sat down and looked round, and saw Arthur's straw
+      hat and cricket-jacket hanging on their pegs, and marked all his little
+      neat arrangements, not one of which had been disturbed, the tears indeed
+      rolled down his cheeks; but they were calm and blessed tears, and he
+      repeated to himself, &ldquo;Yes, Geordie's eyes are opened; he knows what it is
+      so to live as that death becomes an infinite blessing. But do I? O God,
+      can I bear to lose him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The week passed mournfully away. No more boys sickened, but Arthur was
+      reported worse each day, and his mother arrived early in the week. Tom
+      made many appeals to be allowed to see him, and several times tried to get
+      up to the sick-room; but the housekeeper was always in the way, and at
+      last spoke to the Doctor, who kindly but peremptorily forbade him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thompson was buried on the Tuesday, and the burial service, so soothing
+      and grand always, but beyond all words solemn when read over a boy's grave
+      to his companions, brought him much comfort, and many strange new thoughts
+      and longings. He went back to his regular life, and played cricket and
+      bathed as usual. It seemed to him that this was the right thing to do, and
+      the new thoughts and longings became more brave and healthy for the
+      effort. The crisis came on Saturday; the day week that Thompson had died;
+      and during that long afternoon Tom sat in his study reading his Bible, and
+      going every half-hour to the housekeeper's room, expecting each time to
+      hear that the gentle and brave little spirit had gone home. But God had
+      work for Arthur to do. The crisis passed: on Sunday evening he was
+      declared out of danger; on Monday he sent a message to Tom that he was
+      almost well, had changed his room, and was to be allowed to see him the
+      next day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was evening when the housekeeper summoned him to the sick-room. Arthur
+      was lying on the sofa by the open window, through which the rays of the
+      western sun stole gently, lighting up his white face and golden hair. Tom
+      remembered a German picture of an angel which he knew; often had he
+      thought how transparent and golden and spirit-like it was; and he
+      shuddered, to think how like it Arthur looked, and felt a shock as if his
+      blood had all stopped short, as he realized how near the other world his
+      friend must have been to look like that. Never till that moment had he
+      felt how his little chum had twined himself round his heart-strings, and
+      as he stole gently across the room and knelt down, and put his arm round
+      Arthur's head on the pillow, felt ashamed and half-angry at his own red
+      and brown face, and the bounding sense of health and power which filled
+      every fibre of his body, and made every movement of mere living a joy to
+      him. He needn't have troubled himself: it was this very strength and power
+      so different from his own which drew Arthur so to him.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0335m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0335m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0335.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      Arthur laid his thin, white hand, on which the blue veins stood out so
+      plainly, on Tom's great brown fist, and smiled at him; and then looked out
+      of the window again, as if he couldn't bear to lose a moment of the
+      sunset, into the tops of the great feathery elms, round which the rooks
+      were circling and clanging, returning in flocks from their evening's
+      foraging parties. The elms rustled, the sparrows in the ivy just outside
+      the window chirped and fluttered about, quarrelling, and making it up
+      again; the rooks, young and old, talked in chorus, and the merry shouts of
+      the boys and the sweet click of the cricket-bats came up cheerily from
+      below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear George,&rdquo; said Tom, &ldquo;I am so glad to be let up to see you at last.
+      I've tried hard to come so often, but they wouldn't let me before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I know, Tom; Mary has told me every day about you, and how she was
+      obliged to make the Doctor speak to you to keep you away. I'm very glad
+      you didn't get up, for you might have caught it; and you couldn't stand
+      being ill, with all the matches going on. And you're in the eleven, too, I
+      hear. I'm so glad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; ain't it jolly?&rdquo; said Tom proudly. &ldquo;I'm ninth too. I made forty at
+      the last pie-match, and caught three fellows out. So I was put in above
+      Jones and Tucker. Tucker's so savage, for he was head of the twenty-two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I think you ought to be higher yet,&rdquo; said Arthur, who was as
+      jealous for the renown of Tom in games as Tom was for his as a scholar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind. I don't care about cricket or anything now you're getting
+      well, Geordie; and I shouldn't have hurt, I know, if they'd have let me
+      come up. Nothing hurts me. But you'll get about now directly, won't you?
+      You won't believe how clean I've kept the study. All your things are just
+      as you left them; and I feed the old magpie just when you used, though I
+      have to come in from big-side for him, the old rip. He won't look pleased
+      all I can do, and sticks his head first on one side and then on the other,
+      and blinks at me before he'll begin to eat, till I'm half inclined to box
+      his ears. And whenever East comes in, you should see him hop off to the
+      window, dot and go one, though Harry wouldn't touch a feather of him now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur laughed. &ldquo;Old Gravey has a good memory; he can't forget the sieges
+      of poor Martin's den in old times.&rdquo; He paused a moment, and then went on:
+      &ldquo;You can't think how often I've been thinking of old Martin since I've
+      been ill. I suppose one's mind gets restless, and likes to wander off to
+      strange, unknown places. I wonder what queer new pets the old boy has got.
+      How he must be revelling in the thousand new birds, beasts, and fishes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom felt a pang of jealousy, but kicked it out in a moment. &ldquo;Fancy him on
+      a South Sea island, with the Cherokees, or Patagonians, or some such wild
+      niggers!&rdquo; (Tom's ethnology and geography were faulty, but sufficient for
+      his needs.) &ldquo;They'll make the old Madman cock medicine-man, and tattoo him
+      all over. Perhaps he's cutting about now all blue, and has a squaw and a
+      wigwam. He'll improve their boomerangs, and be able to throw them too,
+      without having old Thomas sent after him by the Doctor to take them away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur laughed at the remembrance of the boomerang story, but then looked
+      grave again, and said, &ldquo;He'll convert all the island, I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, if he don't blow it up first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you remember, Tom, how you and East used to laugh at him and chaff
+      him, because he said he was sure the rooks all had calling-over or
+      prayers, or something of the sort, when the locking-up bell rang? Well, I
+      declare,&rdquo; said Arthur, looking up seriously into Tom's laughing eyes, &ldquo;I
+      do think he was right. Since I've been lying here, I've watched them every
+      night; and, do you know, they really do come and perch, all of them, just
+      about locking-up time; and then first there's a regular chorus of caws;
+      and then they stop a bit, and one old fellow, or perhaps two or three in
+      different trees, caw solos; and then off they all go again, fluttering
+      about and cawing anyhow till they roost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder if the old blackies do talk,&rdquo; said Tom, looking up at them. &ldquo;How
+      they must abuse me and East, and pray for the Doctor for stopping the
+      slinging!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There! look, look!&rdquo; cried Arthur; &ldquo;don't you see the old fellow without a
+      tail coming up? Martin used to call him the 'clerk.' He can't steer
+      himself. You never saw such fun as he is in a high wind, when he can't
+      steer himself home, and gets carried right past the trees, and has to bear
+      up again and again before he can perch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The locking-up bell began to toll, and the two boys were silent, and
+      listened to it. The sound soon carried Tom off to the river and the woods,
+      and he began to go over in his mind the many occasions on which he had
+      heard that toll coming faintly down the breeze, and had to pack his rod in
+      a hurry and make a run for it, to get in before the gates were shut. He
+      was roused with a start from his memories by Arthur's voice, gentle and
+      weak from his late illness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tom, will you be angry if I talk to you very seriously?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, dear old boy, not I. But ain't you faint, Arthur, or ill? What can I
+      get you? Don't say anything to hurt yourself now&mdash;you are very weak;
+      let me come up again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; I shan't hurt myself. I'd sooner speak to you now, if you don't
+      mind. I've asked Mary to tell the Doctor that you are with me, so you
+      needn't go down to calling-over; and I mayn't have another chance, for I
+      shall most likely have to go home for change of air to get well, and
+      mayn't come back this half.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, do you think you must go away before the end of the half? I'm so
+      sorry. It's more than five weeks yet to the holidays, and all the
+      fifth-form examination and half the cricket-matches to come yet. And what
+      shall I do all that time alone in our study? Why, Arthur, it will be more
+      than twelve weeks before I see you again. Oh, hang it, I can't stand that!
+      Besides who's to keep me up to working at the examination books? I shall
+      come out bottom of the form, as sure as eggs is eggs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom was rattling on, half in joke, half in earnest, for he wanted to get
+      Arthur out of his serious vein, thinking it would do him harm; but Arthur
+      broke in,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, please, Tom, stop, or you'll drive all I had to say out of my head.
+      And I'm already horribly afraid I'm going to make you angry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't gammon, young un,&rdquo; rejoined Tom (the use of the old name, dear to
+      him from old recollections, made Arthur start and smile and feel quite
+      happy); &ldquo;you know you ain't afraid, and you've never made me angry since
+      the first month we chummed together. Now I'm going to be quite sober for a
+      quarter of an hour, which is more than I am once in a year; so make the
+      most of it; heave ahead, and pitch into me right and left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Tom, I ain't going to pitch into you,&rdquo; said Arthur piteously; &ldquo;and
+      it seems so cocky in me to be advising you, who've been my backbone ever
+      since I've been at Rugby, and have made the school a paradise to me. Ah, I
+      see I shall never do it, unless I go head over heels at once, as you said
+      when you taught me to swim. Tom, I want you to give up using vulgus-books
+      and cribs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur sank back on to his pillow with a sigh, as if the effort had been
+      great; but the worst was now over, and he looked straight at Tom, who was
+      evidently taken aback. He leant his elbows on his knees, and stuck his
+      hands into his hair, whistled a verse of &ldquo;Billy Taylor,&rdquo; and then was
+      quite silent for another minute. Not a shade crossed his face, but he was
+      clearly puzzled. At last he looked up, and caught Arthur's anxious look,
+      took his hand, and said simply,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, young un?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you're the honestest boy in Rugby, and that ain't honest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't see that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What were you sent to Rugby for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't know exactly&mdash;nobody ever told me. I suppose because
+      all boys are sent to a public school in England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what do you think yourself? What do you want to do here, and to carry
+      away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom thought a minute. &ldquo;I want to be A1 at cricket and football, and all
+      the other games, and to make my hands keep my head against any fellow,
+      lout or gentleman. I want to get into the sixth before I leave, and to
+      please the Doctor; and I want to carry away just as much Latin and Greek
+      as will take me through Oxford respectably. There, now, young un; I never
+      thought of it before, but that's pretty much about my figure. Ain't it all
+      on the square? What have you got to say to that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that you are pretty sure to do all that you want, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I hope so. But you've forgot one thing&mdash;what I want to leave
+      behind me. I want to leave behind me,&rdquo; said Tom, speaking slow, and
+      looking much moved, &ldquo;the name of a fellow who never bullied a little boy,
+      or turned his back on a big one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur pressed his hand, and after a moment's silence went on, &ldquo;You say,
+      Tom, you want to please the Doctor. Now, do you want to please him by what
+      he thinks you do, or by what you really do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By what I really do, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he think you use cribs and vulgus-books?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom felt at once that his flank was turned, but he couldn't give in. &ldquo;He
+      was at Winchester himself,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;he knows all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but does he think you use them? Do you think he approves of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You young villain!&rdquo; said Tom, shaking his fist at Arthur, half vexed and
+      half pleased, &ldquo;I never think about it. Hang it! there, perhaps he don't.
+      Well, I suppose he don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur saw that he had got his point; he knew his friend well, and was
+      wise in silence as in speech. He only said, &ldquo;I would sooner have the
+      doctor's good opinion of me as I really am than any man's in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After another minute, Tom began again, &ldquo;Look here, young un. How on earth
+      am I to get time to play the matches this half if I give up cribs? We're
+      in the middle of that long crabbed chorus in the Agamemnon. I can only
+      just make head or tail of it with the crib. Then there's Pericles's speech
+      coming on in Thucydides, and 'The Birds' to get up for the examination,
+      besides the Tacitus.&rdquo; Tom groaned at the thought of his accumulated
+      labours. &ldquo;I say, young un, there's only five weeks or so left to holidays.
+      Mayn't I go on as usual for this half? I'll tell the Doctor about it some
+      day, or you may.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur looked out of the window. The twilight had come on, and all was
+      silent. He repeated in a low voice: &ldquo;In this thing the Lord pardon thy
+      servant, that when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship
+      there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow down myself in the house of
+      Rimmon, when I bow down myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon thy
+      servant in this thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Not a word more was said on the subject, and the boys were again silent&mdash;one
+      of those blessed, short silences in which the resolves which colour a life
+      are so often taken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom was the first to break it. &ldquo;You've been very ill indeed, haven't you,
+      Geordie?&rdquo; said he, with a mixture of awe and curiosity, feeling as if his
+      friend had been in some strange place or scene, of which he could form no
+      idea, and full of the memory of his own thoughts during the last week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, very. I'm sure the Doctor thought I was going to die. He gave me the
+      Sacrament last Sunday, and you can't think what he is when one is ill. He
+      said such brave, and tender, and gentle things to me, I felt quite light
+      and strong after it, and never had any more fear. My mother brought our
+      old medical man, who attended me when I was a poor sickly child. He said
+      my constitution was quite changed, and that I'm fit for anything now. If
+      it hadn't, I couldn't have stood three days of this illness. That's all
+      thanks to you, and the games you've made me fond of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More thanks to old Martin,&rdquo; said Tom; &ldquo;he's been your real friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense, Tom; he never could have done for me what you have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't know; I did little enough. Did they tell you&mdash;you
+      won't mind hearing it now, I know&mdash;that poor Thompson died last week?
+      The other three boys are getting quite round, like you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, I heard of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Tom, who was quite full of it, told Arthur of the burial-service in
+      the chapel, and how it had impressed him, and, he believed, all the other
+      boys. &ldquo;And though the Doctor never said a word about it,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;and it
+      was a half-holiday and match-day, there wasn't a game played in the close
+      all the afternoon, and the boys all went about as if it were Sunday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm very glad of it,&rdquo; said Arthur. &ldquo;But, Tom, I've had such strange
+      thoughts about death lately. I've never told a soul of them, not even my
+      mother. Sometimes I think they're wrong, but, do you know, I don't think
+      in my heart I could be sorry at the death of any of my friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom was taken quite aback. &ldquo;What in the world is the young un after now?&rdquo;
+       thought he; &ldquo;I've swallowed a good many of his crotchets, but this
+      altogether beats me. He can't be quite right in his head.&rdquo; He didn't want
+      to say a word, and shifted about uneasily in the dark; however, Arthur
+      seemed to be waiting for an answer, so at last he said, &ldquo;I don't think I
+      quite see what you mean, Geordie. One's told so often to think about death
+      that I've tried it on sometimes, especially this last week. But we won't
+      talk of it now. I'd better go. You're getting tired, and I shall do you
+      harm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; indeed I ain't, Tom. You must stop till nine; there's only twenty
+      minutes. I've settled you shall stop till nine. And oh! do let me talk to
+      you&mdash;I must talk to you. I see it's just as I feared. You think I'm
+      half mad. Don't you, now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I did think it odd what you said, Geordie, as you ask me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur paused a moment, and then said quickly, &ldquo;I'll tell you how it all
+      happened. At first, when I was sent to the sick-room, and found I had
+      really got the fever, I was terribly frightened. I thought I should die,
+      and I could not face it for a moment. I don't think it was sheer cowardice
+      at first, but I thought how hard it was to be taken away from my mother
+      and sisters and you all, just as I was beginning to see my way to many
+      things, and to feel that I might be a man and do a man's work. To die
+      without having fought, and worked, and given one's life away, was too hard
+      to bear. I got terribly impatient, and accused God of injustice, and
+      strove to justify myself. And the harder I strove the deeper I sank. Then
+      the image of my dear father often came across me, but I turned from it.
+      Whenever it came, a heavy, numbing throb seemed to take hold of my heart,
+      and say, 'Dead-dead-dead.' And I cried out, 'The living, the living shall
+      praise Thee, O God; the dead cannot praise thee. There is no work in the
+      grave; in the night no man can work. But I can work. I can do great
+      things. I will do great things. Why wilt thou slay me?' And so I struggled
+      and plunged, deeper and deeper, and went down into a living black tomb. I
+      was alone there, with no power to stir or think; alone with myself; beyond
+      the reach of all human fellowship; beyond Christ's reach, I thought, in my
+      nightmare. You, who are brave and bright and strong, can have no idea of
+      that agony. Pray to God you never may. Pray as for your life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur stopped&mdash;from exhaustion, Tom thought; but what between his
+      fear lest Arthur should hurt himself, his awe, and his longing for him to
+      go on, he couldn't ask, or stir to help him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently he went on, but quite calm and slow. &ldquo;I don't know how long I
+      was in that state&mdash;for more than a day, I know; for I was quite
+      conscious, and lived my outer life all the time, and took my medicines,
+      and spoke to my mother, and heard what they said. But I didn't take much
+      note of time. I thought time was over for me, and that that tomb was what
+      was beyond. Well, on last Sunday morning, as I seemed to lie in that tomb,
+      alone, as I thought, for ever and ever, the black, dead wall was cleft in
+      two, and I was caught up and borne through into the light by some great
+      power, some living, mighty spirit. Tom, do you remember the living
+      creatures and the wheels in Ezekiel? It was just like that. 'When they
+      went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as
+      the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of an host;
+      when they stood, they let down their wings.' 'And they went every one
+      straight forward: whither the spirit was to go, they went; and they turned
+      not when they went.' And we rushed through the bright air, which was full
+      of myriads of living creatures, and paused on the brink of a great river.
+      And the power held me up, and I knew that that great river was the grave,
+      and death dwelt there, but not the death I had met in the black tomb.
+      That, I felt, was gone for ever. For on the other bank of the great river
+      I saw men and women and children rising up pure and bright, and the tears
+      were wiped from their eyes, and they put on glory and strength, and all
+      weariness and pain fell away. And beyond were a multitude which no man
+      could number, and they worked at some great work; and they who rose from
+      the river went on and joined in the work. They all worked, and each worked
+      in a different way, but all at the same work. And I saw there my father,
+      and the men in the old town whom I knew when I was a child&mdash;many a
+      hard, stern man, who never came to church, and whom they called atheist
+      and infidel. There they were, side by side with my father, whom I had seen
+      toil and die for them, and women and little children, and the seal was on
+      the foreheads of all. And I longed to see what the work was, and could
+      not; so I tried to plunge in the river, for I thought I would join them,
+      but I could not. Then I looked about to see how they got into the river.
+      And this I could not see, but I saw myriads on this side, and they too
+      worked, and I knew that it was the same work, and the same seal was on
+      their foreheads. And though I saw that there was toil and anguish in the
+      work of these, and that most that were working were blind and feeble, yet
+      I longed no more to plunge into the river, but more and more to know what
+      the work was. And as I looked I saw my mother and my sisters, and I saw
+      the Doctor, and you, Tom, and hundreds more whom I knew; and at last I saw
+      myself too, and I was toiling and doing ever so little a piece of the
+      great work. Then it all melted away, and the power left me, and as it left
+      me I thought I heard a voice say, 'The vision is for an appointed time;
+      though it tarry, wait for it, for in the end it shall speak and not lie,
+      it shall surely come, it shall not tarry.' It was early morning I know,
+      then&mdash;it was so quiet and cool, and my mother was fast asleep in the
+      chair by my bedside; but it wasn't only a dream of mine. I know it wasn't
+      a dream. Then I fell into a deep sleep, and only woke after afternoon
+      chapel; and the Doctor came and gave me the Sacrament, as I told you. I
+      told him and my mother I should get well&mdash;I knew I should; but I
+      couldn't tell them why. Tom,&rdquo; said Arthur gently, after another minute,
+      &ldquo;do you see why I could not grieve now to see my dearest friend die? It
+      can't be&mdash;it isn't&mdash;all fever or illness. God would never have
+      let me see it so clear if it wasn't true. I don't understand it all yet;
+      it will take me my life and longer to do that&mdash;to find out what the
+      work is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Arthur stopped there was a long pause. Tom could not speak; he was
+      almost afraid to breathe, lest he should break the train of Arthur's
+      thoughts. He longed to hear more, and to ask questions. In another minute
+      nine o'clock struck, and a gentle tap at the door called them both back
+      into the world again. They did not answer, however, for a moment; and so
+      the door opened, and a lady came in carrying a candle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went straight to the sofa, and took hold of Arthur's hand, and then
+      stooped down and kissed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dearest boy, you feel a little feverish again. Why didn't you have
+      lights? You've talked too much, and excited yourself in the dark.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh no, mother; you can't think how well I feel. I shall start with you
+      to-morrow for Devonshire. But, mother, here's my friend&mdash;here's Tom
+      Brown. You know him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0347m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0347m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0347.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, indeed; I've known him for years,&rdquo; she said, and held out her hand
+      to Tom, who was now standing up behind the sofa. This was Arthur's mother:
+      tall and slight and fair, with masses of golden hair drawn back from the
+      broad, white forehead, and the calm blue eye meeting his so deep and open&mdash;the
+      eye that he knew so well, for it was his friend's over again, and the
+      lovely, tender mouth that trembled while he looked&mdash;she stood there,
+      a woman of thirty-eight, old enough to be his mother, and one whose face
+      showed the lines which must be written on the faces of good men's wives
+      and widows, but he thought he had never seen anything so beautiful. He
+      couldn't help wondering if Arthur's sisters were like her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom held her hand, and looked on straight in her face; he could neither
+      let it go nor speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Tom,&rdquo; said Arthur, laughing, &ldquo;where are your manners? You'll stare
+      my mother out of countenance.&rdquo; Tom dropped the little hand with a sigh.
+      &ldquo;There, sit down, both of you.&mdash;Here, dearest mother; there's room
+      here.&rdquo; And he made a place on the sofa for her.&mdash;&ldquo;Tom, you needn't
+      go; I'm sure you won't be called up at first lesson.&rdquo; Tom felt that he
+      would risk being floored at every lesson for the rest of his natural
+      school-life sooner than go, so sat down. &ldquo;And now,&rdquo; said Arthur, &ldquo;I have
+      realized one of the dearest wishes of my life&mdash;to see you two
+      together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then he led away the talk to their home in Devonshire, and the red,
+      bright earth, and the deep green combes, and the peat streams like
+      cairngorm pebbles, and the wild moor with its high, cloudy tors for a
+      giant background to the picture, till Tom got jealous, and stood up for
+      the clear chalk streams, and the emerald water meadows and great elms and
+      willows of the dear old royal county, as he gloried to call it. And the
+      mother sat on quiet and loving, rejoicing in their life. The quarter to
+      ten struck, and the bell rang for bed, before they had well begun their
+      talk, as it seemed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Tom rose with a sigh to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I see you in the morning, Geordie?&rdquo; said he, as he shook his
+      friend's hand. &ldquo;Never mind, though; you'll be back next half. And I shan't
+      forget the house of Rimmon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur's mother got up and walked with him to the door, and there gave him
+      her hand again; and again his eyes met that deep, loving look, which was
+      like a spell upon him. Her voice trembled slightly as she said,
+      &ldquo;Good-night. You are one who knows what our Father has promised to the
+      friend of the widow and the fatherless. May He deal with you as you have
+      dealt with me and mine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom was quite upset; he mumbled something about owing everything good in
+      him to Geordie, looked in her face again, pressed her hand to his lips,
+      and rushed downstairs to his study, where he sat till old Thomas came
+      kicking at the door, to tell him his allowance would be stopped if he
+      didn't go off to bed. (It would have been stopped anyhow, but that he was
+      a great favourite with the old gentleman, who loved to come out in the
+      afternoons into the close to Tom's wicket, and bowl slow twisters to him,
+      and talk of the glories of bygone Surrey heroes, with whom he had played
+      former generations.) So Tom roused himself, and took up his candle to go
+      to bed; and then for the first time was aware of a beautiful new
+      fishing-rod, with old Eton's mark on it, and a splendidly-bound Bible,
+      which lay on his table, on the title-page of which was written&mdash;&ldquo;TOM
+      BROWN, from his affectionate and grateful friends, Frances Jane Arthur;
+      George Arthur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I leave you all to guess how he slept, and what he dreamt of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0351m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0351m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0351.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII&mdash;HARRY EAST'S DILEMMAS AND DELIVERANCES.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;The Holy Supper is kept indeed,
+     In whatso we share with another's need
+     Not that which we give, but what we share,
+     For the gift without the giver is bare.
+     Who bestows himself with his alms feeds three,
+     Himself, his hungering neighbour and Me.&rdquo;
+      &mdash;LOWELL, The Vision of Sir Launfal.
+</pre>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+      <img src="images/9351m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="9351m " width="100%" />
+      <a href="images/9351.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      he next morning, after breakfast, Tom, East, and Gower met as usual to
+      learn their second lesson together. Tom had been considering how to break
+      his proposal of giving up the crib to the others, and having found no
+      better way (as indeed none better can ever be found by man or boy), told
+      them simply what had happened; how he had been to see Arthur, who had
+      talked to him upon the subject, and what he had said, and for his part he
+      had made up his mind, and wasn't going to use cribs any more; and not
+      being quite sure of his ground, took the high and pathetic tone, and was
+      proceeding to say &ldquo;how that, having learnt his lessons with them for so
+      many years, it would grieve him much to put an end to the arrangement, and
+      he hoped, at any rate, that if they wouldn't go on with him, they should
+      still be just as good friends, and respect one another's motives; but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the other boys, who had been listening with open eyes and ears, burst
+      in,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stuff and nonsense!&rdquo; cried Gower. &ldquo;Here, East, get down the crib and find
+      the place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Tommy, Tommy!&rdquo; said East, proceeding to do as he was bidden, &ldquo;that it
+      should ever have come to this! I knew Arthur'd be the ruin of you some
+      day, and you of me. And now the time's come.&rdquo; And he made a doleful face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know about ruin,&rdquo; answered Tom; &ldquo;I know that you and I would have
+      had the sack long ago if it hadn't been for him. And you know it as well
+      as I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we were in a baddish way before he came, I own; but this new
+      crotchet of his is past a joke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's give it a trial, Harry; come. You know how often he has been right
+      and we wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, don't you two be jawing away about young Square-toes,&rdquo; struck in
+      Gower. &ldquo;He's no end of a sucking wiseacre, I dare say; but we've no time
+      to lose, and I've got the fives court at half-past nine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Gower,&rdquo; said Tom appealingly, &ldquo;be a good fellow, and let's try if
+      we can't get on without the crib.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! in this chorus? Why, we shan't get through ten lines.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Tom,&rdquo; cried East, having hit on a new idea, &ldquo;don't you remember,
+      when we were in the upper fourth, and old Momus caught me construing off
+      the leaf of a crib which I'd torn out and put in my book, and which would
+      float out on to the floor, he sent me up to be flogged for it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I remember it very well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the Doctor, after he'd flogged me, told me himself that he didn't
+      flog me for using a translation, but for taking it in to lesson, and using
+      it there when I hadn't learnt a word before I came in. He said there was
+      no harm in using a translation to get a clue to hard passages, if you
+      tried all you could first to make them out without.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he, though?&rdquo; said Tom; &ldquo;then Arthur must be wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course he is,&rdquo; said Gower&mdash;&ldquo;the little prig. We'll only use the
+      crib when we can't construe without it.&mdash;Go ahead, East.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And on this agreement they started&mdash;Tom, satisfied with having made
+      his confession, and not sorry to have a locus penitentiae, and not to be
+      deprived altogether of the use of his old and faithful friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boys went on as usual, each taking a sentence in turn, and the crib
+      being handed to the one whose turn it was to construe. Of course Tom
+      couldn't object to this, as, was it not simply lying there to be appealed
+      to in case the sentence should prove too hard altogether for the
+      construer? But it must be owned that Gower and East did not make very
+      tremendous exertions to conquer their sentences before having recourse to
+      its help. Tom, however, with the most heroic virtue and gallantry, rushed
+      into his sentence, searching in a high-minded manner for nominative and
+      verb, and turning over his dictionary frantically for the first hard word
+      that stopped him. But in the meantime Gower, who was bent on getting to
+      fives, would peep quietly into the crib, and then suggest, &ldquo;Don't you
+      think this is the meaning?&rdquo; &ldquo;I think you must take it this way, Brown.&rdquo;
+       And as Tom didn't see his way to not profiting by these suggestions, the
+      lesson went on about as quickly as usual, and Gower was able to start for
+      the fives court within five minutes of the half-hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Tom and East were left face to face, they looked at one another for a
+      minute, Tom puzzled, and East chokefull of fun, and then burst into a roar
+      of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Tom,&rdquo; said East, recovering himself, &ldquo;I don t see any objection to
+      the new way. It's about as good as the old one, I think, besides the
+      advantage it gives one of feeling virtuous, and looking down on one's
+      neighbours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom shoved his hand into his back hair. &ldquo;I ain't so sure,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;you
+      two fellows carried me off my legs. I don't think we really tried one
+      sentence fairly. Are you sure you remember what the Doctor said to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. And I'll swear I couldn't make out one of my sentences to-day&mdash;no,
+      nor ever could. I really don't remember,&rdquo; said East, speaking slowly and
+      impressively, &ldquo;to have come across one Latin or Greek sentence this half
+      that I could go and construe by the light of nature. Whereby I am sure
+      Providence intended cribs to be used.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The thing to find out,&rdquo; said Tom meditatively, &ldquo;is how long one ought to
+      grind at a sentence without looking at the crib. Now I think if one fairly
+      looks out all the words one don't know, and then can't hit it, that's
+      enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be sure, Tommy,&rdquo; said East demurely, but with a merry twinkle in his
+      eye. &ldquo;Your new doctrine too, old fellow,&rdquo; added he, &ldquo;when one comes to
+      think of it, is a cutting at the root of all school morality. You'll take
+      away mutual help, brotherly love, or, in the vulgar tongue, giving
+      construes, which I hold to be one of our highest virtues. For how can you
+      distinguish between getting a construe from another boy and using a crib?
+      Hang it, Tom, if you're going to deprive all our school-fellows of the
+      chance of exercising Christian benevolence and being good Samaritans, I
+      shall cut the concern.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you wouldn't joke about it, Harry; it's hard enough to see one's
+      way&mdash;a precious sight harder than I thought last night. But I suppose
+      there's a use and an abuse of both, and one'll get straight enough
+      somehow. But you can't make out, anyhow, that one has a right to use old
+      vulgus-books and copy-books.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo, more heresy! How fast a fellow goes downhill when he once gets his
+      head before his legs. Listen to me, Tom. Not use old vulgus-books! Why,
+      you Goth, ain't we to take the benefit of the wisdom and admire and use
+      the work of past generations? Not use old copy-books! Why, you might as
+      well say we ought to pull down Westminster Abbey, and put up a
+      go-to-meeting shop with churchwarden windows; or never read Shakespeare,
+      but only Sheridan Knowles. Think of all the work and labour that our
+      predecessors have bestowed on these very books; and are we to make their
+      work of no value?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Harry, please don't chaff; I'm really serious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then, is it not our duty to consult the pleasure of others rather
+      than our own, and above all, that of our masters? Fancy, then, the
+      difference to them in looking over a vulgus which has been carefully
+      touched and retouched by themselves and others, and which must bring them
+      a sort of dreamy pleasure, as if they'd met the thought or expression of
+      it somewhere or another&mdash;before they were born perhaps&mdash;and that
+      of cutting up, and making picture-frames round all your and my false
+      quantities, and other monstrosities. Why, Tom, you wouldn't be so cruel as
+      never to let old Momus hum over the 'O genus humanum' again, and then look
+      up doubtingly through his spectacles, and end by smiling and giving three
+      extra marks for it&mdash;just for old sake's sake, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Tom, getting up in something as like a huff as he was capable
+      of, &ldquo;it's deuced hard that when a fellow's really trying to do what he
+      ought, his best friends'll do nothing but chaff him and try to put him
+      down.&rdquo; And he stuck his books under his arm and his hat on his head,
+      preparatory to rushing out into the quadrangle, to testify with his own
+      soul of the faithlessness of friendships.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now don't be an ass, Tom,&rdquo; said East, catching hold of him; &ldquo;you know me
+      well enough by this time; my bark's worse than my bite. You can't expect
+      to ride your new crotchet without anybody's trying to stick a nettle under
+      his tail and make him kick you off&mdash;especially as we shall all have
+      to go on foot still. But now sit down, and let's go over it again. I'll be
+      as serious as a judge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Tom sat himself down on the table, and waxed eloquent about all the
+      righteousnesses and advantages of the new plan, as was his wont whenever
+      he took up anything, going into it as if his life depended upon it, and
+      sparing no abuse which he could think of, of the opposite method, which he
+      denounced as ungentlemanly, cowardly, mean, lying, and no one knows what
+      besides. &ldquo;Very cool of Tom,&rdquo; as East thought, but didn't say, &ldquo;seeing as
+      how he only came out of Egypt himself last night at bedtime.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Tom,&rdquo; said he at last, &ldquo;you see, when you and I came to school
+      there were none of these sort of notions. You may be right&mdash;I dare
+      say you are. Only what one has always felt about the masters is, that it's
+      a fair trial of skill and last between us and them&mdash;like a match at
+      football or a battle. We're natural enemies in school&mdash;that's the
+      fact. We've got to learn so much Latin and Greek, and do so many verses,
+      and they've got to see that we do it. If we can slip the collar and do so
+      much less without getting caught, that's one to us. If they can get more
+      out of us, or catch us shirking, that's one to them. All's fair in war but
+      lying. If I run my luck against theirs, and go into school without looking
+      at my lessons, and don't get called up, why am I a snob or a sneak? I
+      don't tell the master I've learnt it. He's got to find out whether I have
+      or not. What's he paid for? If he calls me up and I get floored, he makes
+      me write it out in Greek and English. Very good. He's caught me, and I
+      don't grumble. I grant you, if I go and snivel to him, and tell him I've
+      really tried to learn it, but found it so hard without a translation, or
+      say I've had a toothache, or any humbug of that kind, I'm a snob. That's
+      my school morality; it's served me, and you too, Tom, for the matter of
+      that, these five years. And it's all clear and fair, no mistake about it.
+      We understand it, and they understand it, and I don't know what we're to
+      come to with any other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom looked at him pleased and a little puzzled. He had never heard East
+      speak his mind seriously before, and couldn't help feeling how completely
+      he had hit his own theory and practice up to that time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, old fellow,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;You're a good old brick to be serious,
+      and not put out with me. I said more than I meant, I dare say, only you
+      see I know I'm right. Whatever you and Gower and the rest do, I shall hold
+      on. I must. And as it's all new and an uphill game, you see, one must hit
+      hard and hold on tight at first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; said East; &ldquo;hold on and hit away, only don't hit under the
+      line.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I must bring you over, Harry, or I shan't be comfortable. Now, I'll
+      allow all you've said. We've always been honourable enemies with the
+      masters. We found a state of war when we came, and went into it of course.
+      Only don't you think things are altered a good deal? I don't feel as I
+      used to the masters. They seem to me to treat one quite differently.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, perhaps they do,&rdquo; said East; &ldquo;there's a new set you see, mostly, who
+      don't feel sure of themselves yet. They don't want to fight till they know
+      the ground.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think it's only that,&rdquo; said Tom. &ldquo;And then the Doctor, he does
+      treat one so openly, and like a gentleman, and as if one was working with
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, so he does,&rdquo; said East; &ldquo;he's a splendid fellow, and when I get
+      into the sixth I shall act accordingly. Only you know he has nothing to do
+      with our lessons now, except examining us. I say, though,&rdquo; looking at his
+      watch, &ldquo;it's just the quarter. Come along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As they walked out they got a message, to say that Arthur was just
+      starting, and would like to say goodbye. So they went down to the private
+      entrance of the School-house, and found an open carriage, with Arthur
+      propped up with pillows in it, looking already better, Tom thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They jumped up on to the steps to shake hands with him, and Tom mumbled
+      thanks for the presents he had found in his study, and looked round
+      anxiously for Arthur's mother.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0359m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0359m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0359.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      East, who had fallen back into his usual humour, looked quaintly at
+      Arthur, and said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you've been at it again, through that hot-headed convert of yours
+      there. He's been making our lives a burden to us all the morning about
+      using cribs. I shall get floored to a certainty at second lesson, if I'm
+      called up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur blushed and looked down. Tom struck in,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it's all right. He's converted already; he always comes through the
+      mud after us, grumbling and sputtering.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The clock struck, and they had to go off to school, wishing Arthur a
+      pleasant holiday, Tom, lingering behind a moment to send his thanks and
+      love to Arthur's mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom renewed the discussion after second lesson, and succeeded so far as to
+      get East to promise to give the new plan a fair trial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Encouraged by his success, in the evening, when they were sitting alone in
+      the large study, where East lived now almost, &ldquo;vice Arthur on leave,&rdquo;
+       after examining the new fishing-rod, which both pronounced to be the
+      genuine article (&ldquo;play enough to throw a midge tied on a single hair
+      against the wind, and strength enough to hold a grampus&rdquo;), they naturally
+      began talking about Arthur. Tom, who was still bubbling over with last
+      night's scene and all the thoughts of the last week, and wanting to clinch
+      and fix the whole in his own mind, which he could never do without first
+      going through the process of belabouring somebody else with it all,
+      suddenly rushed into the subject of Arthur's illness, and what he had said
+      about death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      East had given him the desired opening. After a serio-comic grumble, &ldquo;that
+      life wasn't worth having, now they were tied to a young beggar who was
+      always 'raising his standard;' and that he, East, was like a prophet's
+      donkey, who was obliged to struggle on after the donkey-man who went after
+      the prophet; that he had none of the pleasure of starting the new
+      crotchets, and didn't half understand them, but had to take the kicks and
+      carry the luggage as if he had all the fun,&rdquo; he threw his legs up on to
+      the sofa, and put his hands behind his head, and said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, after all, he's the most wonderful little fellow I ever came
+      across. There ain't such a meek, humble boy in the school. Hanged if I
+      don't think now, really, Tom, that he believes himself a much worse fellow
+      than you or I, and that he don't think he has more influence in the house
+      than Dot Bowles, who came last quarter, and isn't ten yet. But he turns
+      you and me round his little finger, old boy&mdash;there's no mistake about
+      that.&rdquo; And East nodded at Tom sagaciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now or never!&rdquo; thought Tom; so, shutting his eyes and hardening his
+      heart, he went straight at it, repeating all that Arthur had said, as near
+      as he could remember it, in the very words, and all he had himself
+      thought. The life seemed to ooze out of it as he went on, and several
+      times he felt inclined to stop, give it all up, and change the subject.
+      But somehow he was borne on; he had a necessity upon him to speak it all
+      out, and did so. At the end he looked at East with some anxiety, and was
+      delighted to see that that young gentleman was thoughtful and attentive.
+      The fact is, that in the stage of his inner life at which Tom had lately
+      arrived, his intimacy with and friendship for East could not have lasted
+      if he had not made him aware of, and a sharer in, the thoughts that were
+      beginning to exercise him. Nor indeed could the friendship have lasted if
+      East had shown no sympathy with these thoughts; so that it was a great
+      relief to have unbosomed himself, and to have found that his friend could
+      listen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom had always had a sort of instinct that East's levity was only
+      skin-deep, and this instinct was a true one. East had no want of reverence
+      for anything he felt to be real; but his was one of those natures that
+      burst into what is generally called recklessness and impiety the moment
+      they feel that anything is being poured upon them for their good which
+      does not come home to their inborn sense of right, or which appeals to
+      anything like self-interest in them. Daring and honest by nature, and
+      outspoken to an extent which alarmed all respectabilities, with a constant
+      fund of animal health and spirits which he did not feel bound to curb in
+      any way, he had gained for himself with the steady part of the school
+      (including as well those who wished to appear steady as those who really
+      were so) the character of a boy with whom it would be dangerous to be
+      intimate; while his own hatred of everything cruel, or underhand, or
+      false, and his hearty respect for what he would see to be good and true,
+      kept off the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom, besides being very like East in many points of character, had largely
+      developed in his composition the capacity for taking the weakest side.
+      This is not putting it strongly enough: it was a necessity with him; he
+      couldn't help it any more than he could eating or drinking. He could never
+      play on the strongest side with any heart at football or cricket, and was
+      sure to make friends with any boy who was unpopular, or down on his luck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, though East was not what is generally called unpopular, Tom felt more
+      and more every day, as their characters developed, that he stood alone,
+      and did not make friends among their contemporaries, and therefore sought
+      him out. Tom was himself much more popular, for his power of detecting
+      humbug was much less acute, and his instincts were much more sociable. He
+      was at this period of his life, too, largely given to taking people for
+      what they gave themselves out to be; but his singleness of heart,
+      fearlessness, and honesty were just what East appreciated, and thus the
+      two had been drawn into great intimacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This intimacy had not been interrupted by Tom's guardianship of Arthur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      East had often, as has been said, joined them in reading the Bible; but
+      their discussions had almost always turned upon the characters of the men
+      and women of whom they read, and not become personal to themselves. In
+      fact, the two had shrunk from personal religious discussion, not knowing
+      how it might end, and fearful of risking a friendship very dear to both,
+      and which they felt somehow, without quite knowing why, would never be the
+      same, but either tenfold stronger or sapped at its foundation, after such
+      a communing together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a bother all this explaining is! I wish we could get on without it.
+      But we can't. However, you'll all find, if you haven't found it out
+      already, that a time comes in every human friendship when you must go down
+      into the depths of yourself, and lay bare what is there to your friend,
+      and wait in fear for his answer. A few moments may do it; and it may be
+      (most likely will be, as you are English boys) that you will never do it
+      but once. But done it must be, if the friendship is to be worth the name.
+      You must find what is there, at the very root and bottom of one another's
+      hearts; and if you are at one there, nothing on earth can or at least
+      ought to sunder you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      East had remained lying down until Tom finished speaking, as if fearing to
+      interrupt him; he now sat up at the table, and leant his head on one hand,
+      taking up a pencil with the other, and working little holes with it in the
+      table-cover. After a bit he looked up, stopped the pencil, and said,
+      &ldquo;Thank you very much, old fellow. There's no other boy in the house would
+      have done it for me but you or Arthur. I can see well enough,&rdquo; he went on,
+      after a pause, &ldquo;all the best big fellows look on me with suspicion; they
+      think I'm a devil-may-care, reckless young scamp. So I am&mdash;eleven
+      hours out of twelve, but not the twelfth. Then all of our contemporaries
+      worth knowing follow suit, of course: we're very good friends at games and
+      all that, but not a soul of them but you and Arthur ever tried to break
+      through the crust, and see whether there was anything at the bottom of me;
+      and then the bad ones I won't stand and they know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you think that's half fancy, Harry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit of it,&rdquo; said East bitterly, pegging away with his pencil. &ldquo;I
+      see it all plain enough. Bless you, you think everybody's as
+      straightforward and kindhearted as you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, but what's the reason of it? There must be a reason. You can play
+      all the games as well as any one and sing the best song, and are the best
+      company in the house. You fancy you're not liked, Harry. It's all fancy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only wish it was, Tom. I know I could be popular enough with all the
+      bad ones, but that I won't have, and the good ones won't have me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; persisted Tom; &ldquo;you don't drink or swear, or get out at night;
+      you never bully, or cheat at lessons. If you only showed you liked it,
+      you'd have all the best fellows in the house running after you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not I,&rdquo; said East. Then with an effort he went on, &ldquo;I'll tell you what it
+      is. I never stop the Sacrament. I can see, from the Doctor downwards, how
+      that tells against me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I've seen that,&rdquo; said Tom, &ldquo;and I've been very sorry for it, and
+      Arthur and I have talked about it. I've often thought of speaking to you,
+      but it's so hard to begin on such subjects. I'm very glad you've opened
+      it. Now, why don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've never been confirmed,&rdquo; said East.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not been confirmed!&rdquo; said Tom, in astonishment. &ldquo;I never thought of that.
+      Why weren't you confirmed with the rest of us nearly three years ago? I
+      always thought you'd been confirmed at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered East sorrowfully; &ldquo;you see this was how it happened. Last
+      Confirmation was soon after Arthur came, and you were so taken up with him
+      I hardly saw either of you. Well, when the Doctor sent round for us about
+      it, I was living mostly with Green's set. You know the sort. They all went
+      in. I dare say it was all right, and they got good by it; I don't want to
+      judge them. Only all I could see of their reasons drove me just the other
+      way. 'Twas 'because the Doctor liked it;' 'no boy got on who didn't stay
+      the Sacrament;' it was the 'correct thing,' in fact, like having a good
+      hat to wear on Sundays. I couldn't stand it. I didn't feel that I wanted
+      to lead a different life. I was very well content as I was, and I wasn't
+      going to sham religious to curry favour with the Doctor, or any one else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      East stopped speaking, and pegged away more diligently than ever with his
+      pencil. Tom was ready to cry. He felt half sorry at first that he had been
+      confirmed himself. He seemed to have deserted his earliest friend&mdash;to
+      have left him by himself at his worst need for those long years. He got up
+      and went and sat by East, and put his arm over his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear old boy,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;how careless and selfish I've been. But why
+      didn't you come and talk to Arthur and me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish to Heaven I had,&rdquo; said East, &ldquo;but I was a fool. It's too late
+      talking of it now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why too late? You want to be confirmed now, don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think so,&rdquo; said East. &ldquo;I've thought about it a good deal; only, often I
+      fancy I must be changing, because I see it's to do me good here&mdash;just
+      what stopped me last time. And then I go back again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you now how 'twas with me,&rdquo; said Tom warmly. &ldquo;If it hadn't been
+      for Arthur, I should have done just as you did. I hope I should. I honour
+      you for it. But then he made it out just as if it was taking the weak side
+      before all the world&mdash;going in once for all against everything that's
+      strong and rich, and proud and respectable, a little band of brothers
+      against the whole world. And the Doctor seemed to say so too, only he said
+      a great deal more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; groaned East, &ldquo;but there again, that's just another of my
+      difficulties whenever I think about the matter. I don't want to be one of
+      your saints, one of your elect, whatever the right phrase is. My
+      sympathies are all the other way&mdash;with the many, the poor devils who
+      run about the streets and don't go to church. Don't stare, Tom; mind, I'm
+      telling you all that's in my heart&mdash;as far as I know it&mdash;but
+      it's all a muddle. You must be gentle with me if you want to land me. Now
+      I've seen a deal of this sort of religion; I was bred up in it, and I
+      can't stand it. If nineteen-twentieths of the world are to be left to
+      uncovenanted mercies, and that sort of thing, which means in plain English
+      to go to hell, and the other twentieth are to rejoice at it all, why&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! but, Harry, they ain't, they don't,&rdquo; broke in Tom, really shocked.
+      &ldquo;Oh, how I wish Arthur hadn't gone! I'm such a fool about these things.
+      But it's all you want too, East; it is indeed. It cuts both ways somehow,
+      being confirmed and taking the Sacrament. It makes you feel on the side of
+      all the good and all the bad too, of everybody in the world. Only there's
+      some great dark strong power, which is crushing you and everybody else.
+      That's what Christ conquered, and we've got to fight. What a fool I am! I
+      can't explain. If Arthur were only here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I begin to get a glimmering of what you mean,&rdquo; said East.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, now,&rdquo; said Tom eagerly, &ldquo;do you remember how we both hated
+      Flashman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I do,&rdquo; said East; &ldquo;I hate him still. What then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, when I came to take the Sacrament, I had a great struggle about
+      that. I tried to put him out of my head; and when I couldn't do that, I
+      tried to think of him as evil&mdash;as something that the Lord who was
+      loving me hated, and which I might hate too. But it wouldn't do. I broke
+      down; I believe Christ Himself broke me down. And when the Doctor gave me
+      the bread and wine, and leant over me praying, I prayed for poor Flashman,
+      as if it had been you or Arthur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      East buried his face in his hands on the table. Tom could feel the table
+      tremble. At last he looked up. &ldquo;Thank you again, Tom,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;you don't
+      know what you may have done for me to-night. I think I see now how the
+      right sort of sympathy with poor devils is got at.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you'll stop the Sacrament next time, won't you?&rdquo; said Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can I, before I'm confirmed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and ask the Doctor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That very night, after prayers, East followed the Doctor, and the old
+      verger bearing the candle, upstairs. Tom watched, and saw the Doctor turn
+      round when he heard footsteps following him closer than usual, and say,
+      &ldquo;Hah, East! Do you want to speak to me, my man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0367m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0367m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0367.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you please, sir.&rdquo; And the private door closed, and Tom went to his
+      study in a state of great trouble of mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was almost an hour before East came back. Then he rushed in breathless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it's all right,&rdquo; he shouted, seizing Tom by the hand. &ldquo;I feel as if
+      a ton weight were off my mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hurrah,&rdquo; said Tom. &ldquo;I knew it would be; but tell us all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I just told him all about it. You can't think how kind and gentle
+      he was, the great grim man, whom I've feared more than anybody on earth.
+      When I stuck, he lifted me just as if I'd been a little child. And he
+      seemed to know all I'd felt, and to have gone through it all. And I burst
+      out crying&mdash;more than I've done this five years; and he sat down by
+      me, and stroked my head; and I went blundering on, and told him all&mdash;much
+      worse things than I've told you. And he wasn't shocked a bit, and didn't
+      snub me, or tell me I was a fool, and it was all nothing but pride or
+      wickedness, though I dare say it was. And he didn't tell me not to follow
+      out my thoughts, and he didn't give me any cut-and-dried explanation. But
+      when I'd done he just talked a bit. I can hardly remember what he said
+      yet; but it seemed to spread round me like healing, and strength, and
+      light, and to bear me up, and plant me on a rock, where I could hold my
+      footing and fight for myself. I don't know what to do, I feel so happy.
+      And it's all owing to you, dear old boy!&rdquo; And he seized Tom's hand again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you're to come to the Communion?&rdquo; said Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and to be confirmed in the holidays.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom's delight was as great as his friend's. But he hadn't yet had out all
+      his own talk, and was bent on improving the occasion: so he proceeded to
+      propound Arthur's theory about not being sorry for his friends' deaths,
+      which he had hitherto kept in the background, and by which he was much
+      exercised; for he didn't feel it honest to take what pleased him, and
+      throw over the rest, and was trying vigorously to persuade himself that he
+      should like all his best friends to die off-hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But East's powers of remaining serious were exhausted, and in five minutes
+      he was saying the most ridiculous things he could think of, till Tom was
+      almost getting angry again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Despite of himself, however, he couldn't help laughing and giving it up,
+      when East appealed to him with, &ldquo;Well, Tom, you ain't going to punch my
+      head, I hope, because I insist upon being sorry when you got to earth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so their talk finished for that time, and they tried to learn first
+      lesson, with very poor success, as appeared next morning, when they were
+      called up and narrowly escaped being floored, which ill-luck, however, did
+      not sit heavily on either of their souls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0371m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0371m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0371.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII&mdash;TOM BROWN'S LAST MATCH.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Heaven grant the manlier heart, that timely ere
+     Youth fly, with life's real tempest would be coping;
+     The fruit of dreamy hoping
+     Is, waking, blank despair.&rdquo;&mdash;CLOUGH, Ambarvalia.
+</pre>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+      <img src="images/9371m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="9371m " width="100%" />
+      <a href="images/9371.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      he curtain now rises upon the last act of our little drama, for
+      hard-hearted publishers warn me that a single volume must of necessity
+      have an end. Well, well! the pleasantest things must come to an end. I
+      little thought last long vacation, when I began these pages to help while
+      away some spare time at a watering-place, how vividly many an old scene
+      which had lain hid away for years in some dusty old corner of my brain,
+      would come back again, and stand before me as clear and bright as if it
+      had happened yesterday. The book has been a most grateful task to me, and
+      I only hope that all you, my dear young friends, who read it (friends
+      assuredly you must be, if you get as far as this), will be half as sorry
+      to come to the last stage as I am.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not but what there has been a solemn and a sad side to it. As the old
+      scenes became living, and the actors in them became living too, many a
+      grave in the Crimea and distant India, as well as in the quiet churchyards
+      of our dear old country, seemed to open and send forth their dead, and
+      their voices and looks and ways were again in one's ears and eyes, as in
+      the old School-days. But this was not sad. How should it be, if we believe
+      as our Lord has taught us? How should it be, when one more turn of the
+      wheel, and we shall be by their sides again, learning from them again,
+      perhaps, as we did when we were new boys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there were others of the old faces so dear to us once who had somehow
+      or another just gone clean out of sight. Are they dead or living? We know
+      not, but the thought of them brings no sadness with it. Wherever they are,
+      we can well believe they are doing God's work and getting His wages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But are there not some, whom we still see sometimes in the streets, whose
+      haunts and homes we know, whom we could probably find almost any day in
+      the week if we were set to do it, yet from whom we are really farther than
+      we are from the dead, and from those who have gone out of our ken? Yes,
+      there are and must be such; and therein lies the sadness of old School
+      memories. Yet of these our old comrades, from whom more than time and
+      space separate us, there are some by whose sides we can feel sure that we
+      shall stand again when time shall be no more. We may think of one another
+      now as dangerous fanatics or narrow bigots, with whom no truce is
+      possible, from whom we shall only sever more and more to the end of our
+      lives, whom it would be our respective duties to imprison or hang, if we
+      had the power. We must go our way, and they theirs, as long as flesh and
+      spirit hold together; but let our own Rugby poet speak words of healing
+      for this trial:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;To veer how vain! on, onward strain,
+     Brave barks, in light, in darkness too;
+     Through winds and tides one compass guides,&mdash;
+     To that, and your own selves, be true.
+
+     &ldquo;But, O blithe breeze, and O great seas,
+     Though ne'er that earliest parting past,
+     On your wide plain they join again;
+     Together lead them home at last.
+
+     &ldquo;One port, methought, alike they sought,
+     One purpose hold where'er they fare.
+     O bounding breeze, O rushing seas,
+     At last, at last, unite them there!&rdquo; *
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Clough, Ambarvalia.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      This is not mere longing; it is prophecy. So over these too, our old
+      friends, who are friends no more, we sorrow not as men without hope. It is
+      only for those who seem to us to have lost compass and purpose, and to be
+      driven helplessly on rocks and quicksands, whose lives are spent in the
+      service of the world, the flesh, and the devil, for self alone, and not
+      for their fellow-men, their country, or their God, that we must mourn and
+      pray without sure hope and without light, trusting only that He, in whose
+      hands they as well as we are, who has died for them as well as for us, who
+      sees all His creatures
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;With larger other eyes than ours,
+     To make allowance for us all,&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      will, in His own way and at His own time, lead them also home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another two years have passed, and it is again the end of the summer
+      half-year at Rugby; in fact, the School has broken up. The fifth-form
+      examinations were over last week, and upon them have followed the
+      speeches, and the sixth-form examinations for exhibitions; and they too
+      are over now. The boys have gone to all the winds of heaven, except the
+      town boys and the eleven, and the few enthusiasts besides who have asked
+      leave to stay in their houses to see the result of the cricket matches.
+      For this year the Wellesburn return match and the Marylebone match are
+      played at Rugby, to the great delight of the town and neighbourhood, and
+      the sorrow of those aspiring young cricketers who have been reckoning for
+      the last three months on showing off at Lord's ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Doctor started for the Lakes yesterday morning, after an interview
+      with the captain of the eleven, in the presence of Thomas, at which he
+      arranged in what school the cricket dinners were to be, and all other
+      matters necessary for the satisfactory carrying out of the festivities,
+      and warned them as to keeping all spirituous liquors out of the close, and
+      having the gates closed by nine o'clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Wellesburn match was played out with great success yesterday, the
+      School winning by three wickets; and to-day the great event of the
+      cricketing year, the Marylebone match, is being played. What a match it
+      has been! The London eleven came down by an afternoon train yesterday, in
+      time to see the end of the Wellesburn match; and as soon as it was over,
+      their leading men and umpire inspected the ground, criticising it rather
+      unmercifully. The captain of the School eleven, and one or two others, who
+      had played the Lord's match before, and knew old Mr. Aislabie and several
+      of the Lord's men, accompanied them; while the rest of the eleven looked
+      on from under the Three Trees with admiring eyes, and asked one another
+      the names of the illustrious strangers, and recounted how many runs each
+      of them had made in the late matches in Bell's Life. They looked such
+      hard-bitten, wiry, whiskered fellows that their young adversaries felt
+      rather desponding as to the result of the morrow's match. The ground was
+      at last chosen, and two men set to work upon it to water and roll; and
+      then, there being yet some half-hour of daylight, some one had suggested a
+      dance on the turf. The close was half full of citizens and their families,
+      and the idea was hailed with enthusiasm. The cornopean player was still on
+      the ground. In five minutes the eleven and half a dozen of the Wellesburn
+      and Marylebone men got partners somehow or another, and a merry
+      country-dance was going on, to which every one flocked, and new couples
+      joined in every minute, till there were a hundred of them going down the
+      middle and up again; and the long line of school buildings looked gravely
+      down on them, every window glowing with the last rays of the western sun;
+      and the rooks clanged about in the tops of the old elms, greatly excited,
+      and resolved on having their country-dance too; and the great flag flapped
+      lazily in the gentle western breeze. Altogether it was a sight which would
+      have made glad the heart of our brave old founder, Lawrence Sheriff, if he
+      were half as good a fellow as I take him to have been. It was a cheerful
+      sight to see. But what made it so valuable in the sight of the captain of
+      the School eleven was that he there saw his young hands shaking off their
+      shyness and awe of the Lord's men, as they crossed hands and capered about
+      on the grass together; for the strangers entered into it all, and threw
+      away their cigars, and danced and shouted like boys; while old Mr.
+      Aislabie stood by looking on in his white hat, leaning on a bat, in
+      benevolent enjoyment. &ldquo;This hop will be worth thirty runs to us to-morrow,
+      and will be the making of Raggles and Johnson,&rdquo; thinks the young leader,
+      as he revolves many things in his mind, standing by the side of Mr.
+      Aislabie, whom he will not leave for a minute, for he feels that the
+      character of the School for courtesy is resting on his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when a quarter to nine struck, and he saw old Thomas beginning to
+      fidget about with the keys in his hand, he thought of the Doctor's parting
+      monition, and stopped the cornopean at once, notwithstanding the
+      loud-voiced remonstrances from all sides; and the crowd scattered away
+      from the close, the eleven all going into the School-house, where supper
+      and beds were provided for them by the Doctor's orders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deep had been the consultations at supper as to the order of going in, who
+      should bowl the first over, whether it would be best to play steady or
+      freely; and the youngest hands declared that they shouldn't be a bit
+      nervous, and praised their opponents as the jolliest fellows in the world,
+      except perhaps their old friends the Wellesburn men. How far a little
+      good-nature from their elders will go with the right sort of boys!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The morning had dawned bright and warm, to the intense relief of many an
+      anxious youngster, up betimes to mark the signs of the weather. The eleven
+      went down in a body before breakfast, for a plunge in the cold bath in a
+      corner of the close. The ground was in splendid order, and soon after ten
+      o'clock, before spectators had arrived, all was ready, and two of the
+      Lord's men took their places at the wickets&mdash;the School, with the
+      usual liberality of young hands, having put their adversaries in first.
+      Old Bailey stepped up to the wicket, and called play, and the match has
+      begun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well bowled! well bowled, Johnson!&rdquo; cries the captain, catching up
+      the ball and sending it high above the rook trees, while the third
+      Marylebone man walks away from the wicket, and old Bailey gravely sets up
+      the middle stump again and puts the bails on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many runs?&rdquo; Away scamper three boys to the scoring table, and are
+      back again in a minute amongst the rest of the eleven, who are collected
+      together in a knot between wicket. &ldquo;Only eighteen runs, and three wickets
+      down!&rdquo; &ldquo;Huzza for old Rugby!&rdquo; sings out Jack Raggles, the long-stop,
+      toughest and burliest of boys, commonly called &ldquo;Swiper Jack,&rdquo; and
+      forthwith stands on his head, and brandishes his legs in the air in
+      triumph, till the next boy catches hold of his heels, and throws him over
+      on to his back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Steady there; don't be such an ass, Jack,&rdquo; says the captain; &ldquo;we haven't
+      got the best wicket yet. Ah, look out now at cover-point,&rdquo; adds he, as he
+      sees a long-armed bare-headed, slashing-looking player coming to the
+      wicket. &ldquo;And, Jack, mind your hits. He steals more runs than any man in
+      England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And they all find that they have got their work to do now. The newcomer's
+      off-hitting is tremendous, and his running like a flash of lightning. He
+      is never in his ground except when his wicket is down. Nothing in the
+      whole game so trying to boys. He has stolen three byes in the first ten
+      minutes, and Jack Raggles is furious, and begins throwing over savagely to
+      the farther wicket, until he is sternly stopped by the captain. It is all
+      that young gentlemen can do to keep his team steady, but he knows that
+      everything depends on it, and faces his work bravely. The score creeps up
+      to fifty; the boys begin to look blank; and the spectators, who are now
+      mustering strong, are very silent. The ball flies off his bat to all parts
+      of the field, and he gives no rest and no catches to any one. But cricket
+      is full of glorious chances, and the goddess who presides over it loves to
+      bring down the most skilful players. Johnson, the young bowler, is getting
+      wild, and bowls a ball almost wide to the off; the batter steps out and
+      cuts it beautifully to where cover-point is standing very deep&mdash;in
+      fact almost off the ground. The ball comes skimming and twisting along
+      about three feet from the ground; he rushes at it, and it sticks somehow
+      or other in the fingers of his left hand, to the utter astonishment of
+      himself and the whole field. Such a catch hasn't been made in the close
+      for years, and the cheering is maddening. &ldquo;Pretty cricket,&rdquo; says the
+      captain, throwing himself on the ground by the deserted wicket with a long
+      breath. He feels that a crisis has passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wish I had space to describe the match&mdash;how the captain stumped the
+      next man off a leg-shooter, and bowled small cobs to old Mr. Aislabie, who
+      came in for the last wicket; how the Lord's men were out by half-past
+      twelve o'clock for ninety-eight runs; how the captain of the School eleven
+      went in first to give his men pluck, and scored twenty-five in beautiful
+      style; how Rugby was only four behind in the first innings; what a
+      glorious dinner they had in the fourth-form school; and how the
+      cover-point hitter sang the most topping comic songs, and old Mr. Aislabie
+      made the best speeches that ever were heard, afterwards. But I haven't
+      space&mdash;that's the fact; and so you must fancy it all, and carry
+      yourselves on to half-past seven o'clock, when the School are again in,
+      with five wickets down, and only thirty-two runs to make to win. The
+      Marylebone men played carelessly in their second innings, but they are
+      working like horses now to save the match.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is much healthy, hearty, happy life scattered up and down the close;
+      but the group to which I beg to call your especial attention is there, on
+      the slope of the island, which looks towards the cricket-ground. It
+      consists of three figures; two are seated on a bench, and one on the
+      ground at their feet. The first, a tall, slight and rather gaunt man, with
+      a bushy eyebrow and a dry, humorous smile, is evidently a clergyman. He is
+      carelessly dressed, and looks rather used up, which isn't much to be
+      wondered at, seeing that he has just finished six weeks of examination
+      work; but there he basks, and spreads himself out in the evening sun, bent
+      on enjoying life, though he doesn't quite know what to do with his arms
+      and legs. Surely it is our friend the young master, whom we have had
+      glimpses of before, but his face has gained a great deal since we last
+      came across him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And by his side, in white flannel shirt and trousers, straw hat, the
+      captain's belt, and the untanned yellow cricket shoes which all the eleven
+      wear, sits a strapping figure, near six feet high, with ruddy, tanned face
+      and whiskers, curly brown hair, and a laughing, dancing eye. He is leaning
+      forward with his elbows resting on his knees, and dandling his favourite
+      bat, with which he has made thirty or forty runs to-day, in his strong
+      brown hands. It is Tom Brown, grown into a young man nineteen years old, a
+      praepostor and captain of the eleven, spending his last day as a Rugby boy,
+      and, let us hope, as much wiser as he is bigger, since we last had the
+      pleasure of coming across him.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0379m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0379m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0379.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      And at their feet on the warm, dry ground, similarly dressed, sits Arthur,
+      Turkish fashion, with his bat across his knees. He too is no longer a boy&mdash;less
+      of a boy, in fact, than Tom, if one may judge from the thoughtfulness of
+      his face, which is somewhat paler, too, than one could wish; but his
+      figure, though slight, is well knit and active, and all his old timidity
+      has disappeared, and is replaced by silent, quaint fun, with which his
+      face twinkles all over, as he listens to the broken talk between the other
+      two, in which he joins every now and then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All three are watching the game eagerly, and joining in the cheering which
+      follows every good hit. It is pleasing to see the easy, friendly footing
+      which the pupils are on with their master, perfectly respectful, yet with
+      no reserve and nothing forced in their intercourse. Tom has clearly
+      abandoned the old theory of &ldquo;natural enemies&rdquo; in this case at any rate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it is time to listen to what they are saying, and see what we can
+      gather out of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't object to your theory,&rdquo; says the master, &ldquo;and I allow you have
+      made a fair case for yourself. But now, in such books as Aristophanes, for
+      instance, you've been reading a play this half with the Doctor, haven't
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, the Knights,&rdquo; answered Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm sure you would have enjoyed the wonderful humour of it twice as
+      much if you had taken more pains with your scholarship.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, I don't believe any boy in the form enjoyed the sets-to
+      between Cleon and the Sausage-seller more than I did&mdash;eh, Arthur?&rdquo;
+       said Tom, giving him a stir with his foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I must say he did,&rdquo; said Arthur. &ldquo;I think, sir, you've hit upon the
+      wrong book there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit of it,&rdquo; said the master. &ldquo;Why, in those very passages of arms,
+      how can you thoroughly appreciate them unless you are master of the
+      weapons? and the weapons are the language, which you, Brown, have never
+      half worked at; and so, as I say, you must have lost all the delicate
+      shades of meaning which make the best part of the fun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well played! bravo, Johnson!&rdquo; shouted Arthur, dropping his bat and
+      clapping furiously, and Tom joined in with a &ldquo;Bravo, Johnson!&rdquo; which might
+      have been heard at the chapel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh! what was it? I didn't see,&rdquo; inquired the master. &ldquo;They only got one
+      run, I thought?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but such a ball, three-quarters length, and coming straight for his
+      leg bail. Nothing but that turn of the wrist could have saved him, and he
+      drew it away to leg for a safe one.&mdash;Bravo, Johnson!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How well they are bowling, though,&rdquo; said Arthur; &ldquo;they don't mean to be
+      beat, I can see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There now,&rdquo; struck in the master; &ldquo;you see that's just what I have been
+      preaching this half-hour. The delicate play is the true thing. I don't
+      understand cricket, so I don't enjoy those fine draws which you tell me
+      are the best play, though when you or Raggles hit a ball hard away for six
+      I am as delighted as any one. Don't you see the analogy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; answered Tom, looking up roguishly, &ldquo;I see; only the question
+      remains whether I should have got most good by understanding Greek
+      particles or cricket thoroughly. I'm such a thick, I never should have had
+      time for both.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see you are an incorrigible,&rdquo; said the master, with a chuckle; &ldquo;but I
+      refute you by an example. Arthur there has taken in Greek and cricket
+      too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but no thanks to him; Greek came natural to him. Why, when he first
+      came I remember he used to read Herodotus for pleasure as I did Don
+      Quixote, and couldn't have made a false concord if he'd tried ever so
+      hard; and then I looked after his cricket.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Out! Bailey has given him out. Do you see, Tom?&rdquo; cries Arthur. &ldquo;How
+      foolish of them to run so hard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it can't be helped; he has played very well. Whose turn is it to go
+      in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know; they've got your list in the tent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's go and see,&rdquo; said Tom, rising; but at this moment Jack Raggles and
+      two or three more came running to the island moat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Brown, mayn't I go in next?&rdquo; shouts the Swiper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whose name is next on the list?&rdquo; says the captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Winter's, and then Arthur's,&rdquo; answers the boy who carries it; &ldquo;but there
+      are only twenty-six runs to get, and no time to lose. I heard Mr. Aislabie
+      say that the stumps must be drawn at a quarter past eight exactly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, do let the Swiper go in,&rdquo; chorus the boys; so Tom yields against his
+      better judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say now I've lost the match by this nonsense,&rdquo; he says, as he sits
+      down again; &ldquo;they'll be sure to get Jack's wicket in three or four
+      minutes; however, you'll have the chance, sir, of seeing a hard hit or
+      two,&rdquo; adds he, smiling, and turning to the master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, none of your irony, Brown,&rdquo; answers the master. &ldquo;I'm beginning to
+      understand the game scientifically. What a noble game it is, too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it? But it's more than a game. It's an institution,&rdquo; said Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Arthur&mdash;&ldquo;the birthright of British boys old and young, as
+      habeas corpus and trial by jury are of British men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The discipline and reliance on one another which it teaches is so
+      valuable, I think,&rdquo; went on the master, &ldquo;it ought to be such an unselfish
+      game. It merges the individual in the eleven; he doesn't play that he may
+      win, but that his side may.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's very true,&rdquo; said Tom, &ldquo;and that's why football and cricket, now
+      one comes to think of it, are such much better games than fives or
+      hare-and-hounds, or any others where the object is to come in first or to
+      win for oneself, and not that one's side may win.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then the captain of the eleven!&rdquo; said the master; &ldquo;what a post is his
+      in our School-world! almost as hard as the Doctor's&mdash;requiring skill
+      and gentleness and firmness, and I know not what other rare qualities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which don't he may wish he may get!&rdquo; said Tom, laughing; &ldquo;at any rate he
+      hasn't got them yet, or he wouldn't have been such a flat to-night as to
+      let Jack Raggles go in out of his turn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, the Doctor never would have done that,&rdquo; said Arthur demurely. &ldquo;Tom,
+      you've a great deal to learn yet in the art of ruling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I wish you'd tell the Doctor so then, and get him to let me stop
+      till I'm twenty. I don't want to leave, I'm sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a sight it is,&rdquo; broke in the master, &ldquo;the Doctor as a ruler! Perhaps
+      ours is the only little corner of the British Empire which is thoroughly,
+      wisely, and strongly ruled just now. I'm more and more thankful every day
+      of my life that I came here to be under him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So am I, I'm sure,&rdquo; said Tom, &ldquo;and more and more sorry that I've got to
+      leave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every place and thing one sees here reminds one of some wise act of his,&rdquo;
+       went on the master. &ldquo;This island now&mdash;you remember the time, Brown,
+      when it was laid out in small gardens, and cultivated by frost-bitten fags
+      in February and March?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I do,&rdquo; said Tom; &ldquo;didn't I hate spending two hours in the
+      afternoon grubbing in the tough dirt with the stump of a fives bat? But
+      turf-cart was good fun enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say it was, but it was always leading to fights with the
+      townspeople; and then the stealing flowers out of all the gardens in Rugby
+      for the Easter show was abominable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, so it was,&rdquo; said Tom, looking down, &ldquo;but we fags couldn't help
+      ourselves. But what has that to do with the Doctor's ruling?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A great deal, I think,&rdquo; said the master; &ldquo;what brought island-fagging to
+      an end?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the Easter speeches were put off till midsummer,&rdquo; said Tom, &ldquo;and the
+      sixth had the gymnastic poles put up here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and who changed the time of the speeches, and put the idea of
+      gymnastic poles into the heads of their worships the sixth form?&rdquo; said the
+      master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Doctor, I suppose,&rdquo; said Tom. &ldquo;I never thought of that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you didn't,&rdquo; said the master, &ldquo;or else, fag as you were, you
+      would have shouted with the whole school against putting down old customs.
+      And that's the way that all the Doctor's reforms have been carried out
+      when he has been left to himself&mdash;quietly and naturally, putting a
+      good thing in the place of a bad, and letting the bad die out; no
+      wavering, and no hurry&mdash;the best thing that could be done for the
+      time being, and patience for the rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just Tom's own way,&rdquo; chimed in Arthur, nudging Tom with his elbow&mdash;&ldquo;driving
+      a nail where it will go;&rdquo; to which allusion Tom answered by a sly kick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly so,&rdquo; said the master, innocent of the allusion and by-play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Jack Raggles, with his sleeves tucked up above his great brown
+      elbows, scorning pads and gloves, has presented himself at the wicket; and
+      having run one for a forward drive of Johnson's, is about to receive his
+      first ball. There are only twenty-four runs to make, and four wickets to
+      go down&mdash;a winning match if they play decently steady. The ball is a
+      very swift one, and rises fast, catching Jack on the outside of the thigh,
+      and bounding away as if from india-rubber, while they run two for a
+      leg-bye amidst great applause and shouts from Jack's many admirers. The
+      next ball is a beautifully-pitched ball for the outer stump, which the
+      reckless and unfeeling Jack catches hold of, and hits right round to leg
+      for five, while the applause becomes deafening. Only seventeen runs to get
+      with four wickets! The game is all but ours!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is over now, and Jack walks swaggering about his wicket, with his bat
+      over his shoulder, while Mr. Aislabie holds a short parley with his men.
+      Then the cover-point hitter, that cunning man, goes on to bowl slow
+      twisters. Jack waves his hand triumphantly towards the tent, as much as to
+      say, &ldquo;See if I don't finish it all off now in three hits.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Alas, my son Jack, the enemy is too old for thee. The first ball of the
+      over Jack steps out and meets, swiping with all his force. If he had only
+      allowed for the twist! But he hasn't, and so the ball goes spinning up
+      straight in the air, as if it would never come down again. Away runs Jack,
+      shouting and trusting to the chapter of accidents; but the bowler runs
+      steadily under it, judging every spin, and calling out, &ldquo;I have it,&rdquo;
+       catches it, and playfully pitches it on to the back of the stalwart Jack,
+      who is departing with a rueful countenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew how it would be,&rdquo; says Tom, rising. &ldquo;Come along; the game's
+      getting very serious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So they leave the island and go to the tent; and after deep consultation,
+      Arthur is sent in, and goes off to the wicket with a last exhortation from
+      Tom to play steady and keep his bat straight. To the suggestions that
+      Winter is the best bat left, Tom only replies, &ldquo;Arthur is the steadiest,
+      and Johnson will make the runs if the wicket is only kept up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am surprised to see Arthur in the eleven,&rdquo; said the master, as they
+      stood together in front of the dense crowd, which was now closing in round
+      the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm not quite sure that he ought to be in for his play,&rdquo; said Tom,
+      &ldquo;but I couldn't help putting him in. It will do him so much good, and you
+      can't think what I owe him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The master smiled. The clock strikes eight, and the whole field becomes
+      fevered with excitement. Arthur, after two narrow escapes, scores one, and
+      Johnson gets the ball. The bowling and fielding are superb, and Johnson's
+      batting worthy the occasion. He makes here a two, and there a one,
+      managing to keep the ball to himself, and Arthur backs up and runs
+      perfectly. Only eleven runs to make now, and the crowd scarcely breathe.
+      At last Arthur gets the ball again, and actually drives it forward for
+      two, and feels prouder than when he got the three best prizes, at hearing
+      Tom's shout of joy, &ldquo;Well played, well played, young un!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the next ball is too much for the young hand, and his bails fly
+      different ways. Nine runs to make, and two wickets to go down: it is too
+      much for human nerves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Winter can get in, the omnibus which is to take the Lord's men to
+      the train pulls up at the side of the close, and Mr. Aislabie and Tom
+      consult, and give out that the stumps will be drawn after the next over.
+      And so ends the great match. Winter and Johnson carry out their bats, and,
+      it being a one day's match, the Lord's men are declared the winners, they
+      having scored the most in the first innings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But such a defeat is a victory: so think Tom and all the School eleven, as
+      they accompany their conquerors to the omnibus, and send them off with
+      three ringing cheers, after Mr. Aislabie has shaken hands all round,
+      saying to Tom, &ldquo;I must compliment you, sir, on your eleven, and I hope we
+      shall have you for a member if you come up to town.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Tom and the rest of the eleven were turning back into the close, and
+      everybody was beginning to cry out for another country-dance, encouraged
+      by the success of the night before, the young master, who was just leaving
+      the close, stopped him, and asked him to come up to tea at half-past
+      eight, adding, &ldquo;I won't keep you more than half an hour, and ask Arthur to
+      come up too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll come up with you directly, if you'll let me,&rdquo; said Tom, &ldquo;for I feel
+      rather melancholy, and not quite up to the country-dance and supper with
+      the rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do, by all means,&rdquo; said the master; &ldquo;I'll wait here for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Tom went off to get his boots and things from the tent, to tell Arthur
+      of the invitation, and to speak to his second in command about stopping
+      the dancing and shutting up the close as soon as it grew dusk. Arthur
+      promised to follow as soon as he had had a dance. So Tom handed his things
+      over to the man in charge of the tent, and walked quietly away to the gate
+      where the master was waiting, and the two took their way together up the
+      Hillmorton road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course they found the master's house locked up, and all the servants
+      away in the close&mdash;about this time, no doubt, footing it away on the
+      grass, with extreme delight to themselves, and in utter oblivion of the
+      unfortunate bachelor their master, whose one enjoyment in the shape of
+      meals was his &ldquo;dish of tea&rdquo; (as our grandmothers called it) in the
+      evening; and the phrase was apt in his case, for he always poured his out
+      into the saucer before drinking. Great was the good man's horror at
+      finding himself shut out of his own house. Had he been alone he would have
+      treated it as a matter of course, and would have strolled contentedly up
+      and down his gravel walk until some one came home; but he was hurt at the
+      stain on his character of host, especially as the guest was a pupil.
+      However, the guest seemed to think it a great joke, and presently, as they
+      poked about round the house, mounted a wall, from which he could reach a
+      passage window. The window, as it turned out, was not bolted, so in
+      another minute Tom was in the house and down at the front door, which he
+      opened from inside. The master chuckled grimly at this burglarious entry,
+      and insisted on leaving the hall-door and two of the front windows open,
+      to frighten the truants on their return; and then the two set about
+      foraging for tea, in which operation the master was much at fault, having
+      the faintest possible idea of where to find anything, and being, moreover,
+      wondrously short-sighted; but Tom, by a sort of instinct, knew the right
+      cupboards in the kitchen and pantry, and soon managed to place on the
+      snuggery table better materials for a meal than had appeared there
+      probably during the reign of his tutor, who was then and there initiated,
+      amongst other things, into the excellence of that mysterious condiment, a
+      dripping-cake. The cake was newly baked, and all rich and flaky; Tom had
+      found it reposing in the cook's private cupboard, awaiting her return; and
+      as a warning to her they finished it to the last crumb. The kettle sang
+      away merrily on the hob of the snuggery, for, notwithstanding the time of
+      year, they lighted a fire, throwing both the windows wide open at the same
+      time; the heaps of books and papers were pushed away to the other end of
+      the table, and the great solitary engraving of King's College Chapel over
+      the mantelpiece looked less stiff than usual, as they settled themselves
+      down in the twilight to the serious drinking of tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After some talk on the match, and other indifferent subjects, the
+      conversation came naturally back to Tom's approaching departure, over
+      which he began again to make his moan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we shall all miss you quite as much as you will miss us,&rdquo; said the
+      master. &ldquo;You are the Nestor of the School now, are you not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, ever since East left,&rdquo; answered Tom. &ldquo;By-the-bye, have you heard
+      from him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I had a letter in February, just before he started for India to join
+      his regiment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will make a capital officer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, won't he!&rdquo; said Tom, brightening. &ldquo;No fellow could handle boys
+      better, and I suppose soldiers are very like boys. And he'll never tell
+      them to go where he won't go himself. No mistake about that. A braver
+      fellow never walked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His year in the sixth will have taught him a good deal that will be
+      useful to him now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So it will,&rdquo;' said Tom, staring into the fire. &ldquo;Poor dear Harry,&rdquo; he went
+      on&mdash;&ldquo;how well I remember the day we were put out of the twenty! How
+      he rose to the situation, and burnt his cigar-cases, and gave away his
+      pistols, and pondered on the constitutional authority of the sixth, and
+      his new duties to the Doctor, and the fifth form, and the fags! Ay, and no
+      fellow ever acted up to them better, though he was always a people's man&mdash;for
+      the fags, and against constituted authorities. He couldn't help that, you
+      know. I'm sure the Doctor must have liked him?&rdquo; said Tom, looking up
+      inquiringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Doctor sees the good in every one, and appreciates it,&rdquo; said the
+      master dogmatically; &ldquo;but I hope East will get a good colonel. He won't do
+      if he can't respect those above him. How long it took him, even here, to
+      learn the lesson of obeying!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I wish I were alongside of him,&rdquo; said Tom. &ldquo;If I can't be at Rugby,
+      I want to be at work in the world, and not dawdling away three years at
+      Oxford.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by 'at work in the world'?&rdquo; said the master, pausing
+      with his lips close to his saucerful of tea, and peering at Tom over it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I mean real work&mdash;one's profession&mdash;whatever one will
+      have really to do and make one's living by. I want to be doing some real
+      good, feeling that I am not only at play in the world,&rdquo; answered Tom,
+      rather puzzled to find out himself what he really did mean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are mixing up two very different things in your head, I think,
+      Brown,&rdquo; said the master, putting down the empty saucer, &ldquo;and you ought to
+      get clear about them. You talk of 'working to get your living,' and 'doing
+      some real good in the world,' in the same breath. Now, you may be getting
+      a very good living in a profession, and yet doing no good at all in the
+      world, but quite the contrary, at the same time. Keep the latter before
+      you as your one object, and you will be right, whether you make a living
+      or not; but if you dwell on the other, you'll very likely drop into mere
+      money-making, and let the world take care of itself for good or evil.
+      Don't be in a hurry about finding your work in the world for yourself&mdash;you
+      are not old enough to judge for yourself yet; but just look about you in
+      the place you find yourself in, and try to make things a little better and
+      honester there. You'll find plenty to keep your hand in at Oxford, or
+      wherever else you go. And don't be led away to think this part of the
+      world important and that unimportant. Every corner of the world is
+      important. No man knows whether this part or that is most so, but every
+      man may do some honest work in his own corner.&rdquo; And then the good man went
+      on to talk wisely to Tom of the sort of work which he might take up as an
+      undergraduate, and warned him of the prevalent university sins, and
+      explained to him the many and great differences between university and
+      school life, till the twilight changed into darkness, and they heard the
+      truant servants stealing in by the back entrance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder where Arthur can be,&rdquo; said Tom at last, looking at his watch;
+      &ldquo;why, it's nearly half-past nine already.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he is comfortably at supper with the eleven, forgetful of his oldest
+      friends,&rdquo; said the master. &ldquo;Nothing has given me greater pleasure,&rdquo; he
+      went on, &ldquo;than your friendship for him; it has been the making of you
+      both.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of me, at any rate,&rdquo; answered Tom; &ldquo;I should never have been here now but
+      for him. It was the luckiest chance in the world that sent him to Rugby
+      and made him my chum.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you talk of lucky chances?&rdquo; said the master. &ldquo;I don't know that
+      there are any such things in the world; at any rate, there was neither
+      luck nor chance in that matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom looked at him inquiringly, and he went on. &ldquo;Do you remember when the
+      Doctor lectured you and East at the end of one half-year, when you were in
+      the shell, and had been getting into all sorts of scrapes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, well enough,&rdquo; said Tom; &ldquo;it was the half-year before Arthur came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly so,&rdquo; answered the master. &ldquo;Now, I was with him a few minutes
+      afterwards, and he was in great distress about you two. And after some
+      talk, we both agreed that you in particular wanted some object in the
+      School beyond games and mischief; for it was quite clear that you never
+      would make the regular school work your first object. And so the Doctor,
+      at the beginning of the next half-year, looked out the best of the new
+      boys, and separated you and East, and put the young boy into your study,
+      in the hope that when you had somebody to lean on you, you would begin to
+      stand a little steadier yourself, and get manliness and thoughtfulness.
+      And I can assure you he has watched the experiment ever since with great
+      satisfaction. Ah! not one of you boys will ever know the anxiety you have
+      given him, or the care with which he has watched over every step in your
+      school lives.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Up to this time Tom had never given wholly in to or understood the Doctor.
+      At first he had thoroughly feared him. For some years, as I have tried to
+      show, he had learnt to regard him with love and respect, and to think him
+      a very great and wise and good man. But as regarded his own position in
+      the School, of which he was no little proud, Tom had no idea of giving any
+      one credit for it but himself, and, truth to tell, was a very
+      self-conceited young gentleman on the subject. He was wont to boast that
+      he had fought his own way fairly up the School, and had never made up to
+      or been taken up by any big fellow or master, and that it was now quite a
+      different place from what it was when he first came. And, indeed, though
+      he didn't actually boast of it, yet in his secret soul he did to a great
+      extent believe that the great reform in the School had been owing quite as
+      much to himself as to any one else. Arthur, he acknowledged, had done him
+      good, and taught him a good deal; so had other boys in different ways, but
+      they had not had the same means of influence on the School in general. And
+      as for the Doctor, why, he was a splendid master; but every one knew that
+      masters could do very little out of school hours. In short, he felt on
+      terms of equality with his chief, so far as the social state of the School
+      was concerned, and thought that the Doctor would find it no easy matter to
+      get on without him. Moreover, his School Toryism was still strong, and he
+      looked still with some jealousy on the Doctor, as somewhat of a fanatic in
+      the matter of change, and thought it very desirable for the School that he
+      should have some wise person (such as himself) to look sharply after
+      vested School-rights, and see that nothing was done to the injury of the
+      republic without due protest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a new light to him to find that, besides teaching the sixth, and
+      governing and guiding the whole School, editing classics, and writing
+      histories, the great headmaster had found time in those busy years to
+      watch over the career even of him, Tom Brown, and his particular friends,
+      and, no doubt, of fifty other boys at the same time, and all this without
+      taking the least credit to himself, or seeming to know, or let any one
+      else know, that he ever thought particularly of any boy at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, the Doctor's victory was complete from that moment over Tom Brown
+      at any rate. He gave way at all points, and the enemy marched right over
+      him&mdash;cavalry, infantry, and artillery, and the land transport corps,
+      and the camp followers. It had taken eight long years to do it; but now it
+      was done thoroughly, and there wasn't a corner of him left which didn't
+      believe in the Doctor. Had he returned to School again, and the Doctor
+      begun the half-year by abolishing fagging, and football, and the Saturday
+      half-holiday, or all or any of the most cherished School institutions, Tom
+      would have supported him with the blindest faith. And so, after a half
+      confession of his previous shortcomings, and sorrowful adieus to his
+      tutor, from whom he received two beautifully-bound volumes of the Doctor's
+      sermons, as a parting present, he marched down to the Schoolhouse, a
+      hero-worshipper, who would have satisfied the soul of Thomas Carlyle
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There he found the eleven at high jinks after supper, Jack Raggles
+      shouting comic songs and performing feats of strength, and was greeted by
+      a chorus of mingled remonstrance at his desertion and joy at his
+      reappearance. And falling in with the humour of the evening, he was soon
+      as great a boy as all the rest; and at ten o'clock was chaired round the
+      quadrangle, on one of the hall benches, borne aloft by the eleven,
+      shouting in chorus, &ldquo;For he's a jolly good fellow,&rdquo; while old Thomas, in a
+      melting mood, and the other School-house servants, stood looking on.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0393m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0393m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0393.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      And the next morning after breakfast he squared up all the cricketing
+      accounts, went round to his tradesmen and other acquaintance, and said his
+      hearty good-byes; and by twelve o'clock was in the train, and away for
+      London, no longer a school-boy, and divided in his thoughts between
+      hero-worship, honest regrets over the long stage of his life which was now
+      slipping out of sight behind him, and hopes and resolves for the next
+      stage upon which he was entering with all the confidence of a young
+      traveller.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0397m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0397m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0397.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX&mdash;FINIS.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Strange friend, past, present, and to be;
+     Loved deeplier, darklier understood;
+     Behold I dream a dream of good,
+     And mingle all the world with thee.&rdquo;&mdash;TENNYSON.
+</pre>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+      <img src="images/9397m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="9397m " width="100%" />
+      <a href="images/9397.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      n the summer of 1842, our hero stopped once again at the well-known
+      station; and leaving his bag and fishing-rod with a porter, walked slowly
+      and sadly up towards the town. It was now July. He had rushed away from
+      Oxford the moment that term was over, for a fishing ramble in Scotland
+      with two college friends, and had been for three weeks living on oatcake,
+      mutton-hams, and whisky, in the wildest parts of Skye. They had descended
+      one sultry evening on the little inn at Kyle Rhea ferry; and while Tom and
+      another of the party put their tackle together and began exploring the
+      stream for a sea-trout for supper, the third strolled into the house to
+      arrange for their entertainment. Presently he came out in a loose blouse
+      and slippers, a short pipe in his mouth, and an old newspaper in his hand,
+      and threw himself on the heathery scrub which met the shingle, within easy
+      hail of the fishermen. There he lay, the picture of free-and-easy,
+      loafing, hand-to-mouth young England, &ldquo;improving his mind,&rdquo; as he shouted
+      to them, by the perusal of the fortnight-old weekly paper, soiled with the
+      marks of toddy-glasses and tobacco-ashes, the legacy of the last
+      traveller, which he had hunted out from the kitchen of the little
+      hostelry, and, being a youth of a communicative turn of mind, began
+      imparting the contents to the fishermen as he went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a bother they are making about these wretched corn-laws! Here's
+      three or four columns full of nothing but sliding scales and fixed duties.
+      Hang this tobacco, it's always going out! Ah, here's something better&mdash;a
+      splendid match between Kent and England, Brown, Kent winning by three
+      wickets. Felix fifty-six runs without a chance, and not out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom, intent on a fish which had risen at him twice, answered only with a
+      grunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anything about the Goodwood?&rdquo; called out the third man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rory O'More drawn. Butterfly colt amiss,&rdquo; shouted the student.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just my luck,&rdquo; grumbled the inquirer, jerking his flies off the water,
+      and throwing again with a heavy, sullen splash, and frightening Tom's
+      fish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, can't you throw lighter over there? We ain't fishing for
+      grampuses,&rdquo; shouted Tom across the stream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo, Brown! here's something for you,&rdquo; called out the reading man next
+      moment. &ldquo;Why, your old master, Arnold of Rugby, is dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0399m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0399m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0399.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      Tom's hand stopped half-way in his cast, and his line and flies went all
+      tangling round and round his rod; you might have knocked him over with a
+      feather. Neither of his companions took any notice of him, luckily; and
+      with a violent effort he set to work mechanically to disentangle his line.
+      He felt completely carried off his moral and intellectual legs, as if he
+      had lost his standing-point in the invisible world. Besides which, the
+      deep, loving loyalty which he felt for his old leader made the shock
+      intensely painful. It was the first great wrench of his life, the first
+      gap which the angel Death had made in his circle, and he felt numbed, and
+      beaten down, and spiritless. Well, well! I believe it was good for him and
+      for many others in like case, who had to learn by that loss that the soul
+      of man cannot stand or lean upon any human prop, however strong, and wise,
+      and good; but that He upon whom alone it can stand and lean will knock
+      away all such props in His own wise and merciful way, until there is no
+      ground or stay left but Himself, the Rock of Ages, upon whom alone a sure
+      foundation for every soul of man is laid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he wearily laboured at his line, the thought struck him, &ldquo;It may be all
+      false&mdash;a mere newspaper lie.&rdquo; And he strode up to the recumbent
+      smoker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me look at the paper,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing else in it,&rdquo; answered the other, handing it up to him listlessly.
+      &ldquo;Hullo, Brown! what's the matter, old fellow? Ain't you well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is it?&rdquo; said Tom, turning over the leaves, his hands trembling, and
+      his eyes swimming, so that he could not read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What? What are you looking for?&rdquo; said his friend, jumping up and looking
+      over his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&mdash;about Arnold,&rdquo; said Tom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, here,&rdquo; said the other, putting his finger on the paragraph. Tom read
+      it over and over again. There could be no mistake of identity, though the
+      account was short enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said he at last, dropping the paper. &ldquo;I shall go for a walk.
+      Don't you and Herbert wait supper for me.&rdquo; And away he strode, up over the
+      moor at the back of the house, to be alone, and master his grief if
+      possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His friend looked after him, sympathizing and wondering, and, knocking the
+      ashes out of his pipe, walked over to Herbert. After a short parley they
+      walked together up to the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid that confounded newspaper has spoiled Brown's fun for this
+      trip.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How odd that he should be so fond of his old master,&rdquo; said Herbert. Yet
+      they also were both public-school men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two, however, notwithstanding Tom's prohibition, waited supper for
+      him, and had everything ready when he came back some half an hour
+      afterwards. But he could not join in their cheerful talk, and the party
+      was soon silent, notwithstanding the efforts of all three. One thing only
+      had Tom resolved, and that was, that he couldn't stay in Scotland any
+      longer: he felt an irresistible longing to get to Rugby, and then home,
+      and soon broke it to the others, who had too much tact to oppose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So by daylight the next morning he was marching through Ross-shire, and in
+      the evening hit the Caledonian Canal, took the next steamer, and travelled
+      as fast as boat and railway could carry him to the Rugby station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he walked up to the town, he felt shy and afraid of being seen, and
+      took the back streets&mdash;why, he didn't know, but he followed his
+      instinct. At the School-gates he made a dead pause; there was not a soul
+      in the quadrangle&mdash;all was lonely, and silent, and sad. So with
+      another effort he strode through the quadrangle, and into the School-house
+      offices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found the little matron in her room in deep mourning; shook her hand,
+      tried to talk, and moved nervously about. She was evidently thinking of
+      the same subject as he, but he couldn't begin talking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where shall I find Thomas?&rdquo; said he at last, getting desperate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the servants' hall, I think, sir. But won't you take anything?&rdquo; said
+      the matron, looking rather disappointed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, thank you,&rdquo; said he, and strode off again to find the old verger, who
+      was sitting in his little den, as of old, puzzling over hieroglyphics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked up through his spectacles as Tom seized his hand and wrung it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! you've heard all about it, sir, I see,&rdquo; said he. Tom nodded, and then
+      sat down on the shoe-board, while the old man told his tale, and wiped his
+      spectacles, and fairly flowed over with quaint, homely, honest sorrow.
+    </p>
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+      <img src="images/0403m.jpg" style="width:100%;"  alt="0403m " /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0403.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original</i></a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      By the time he had done Tom felt much better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is he buried, Thomas?&rdquo; said he at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Under the altar in the chapel, sir,&rdquo; answered Thomas. &ldquo;You'd like to have
+      the key, I dare say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Thomas&mdash;yes, I should, very much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the old man fumbled among his bunch, and then got up, as though he
+      would go with him; but after a few steps stopped short, and said, &ldquo;Perhaps
+      you'd like to go by yourself, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom nodded, and the bunch of keys were handed to him, with an injunction
+      to be sure and lock the door after him, and bring them back before eight
+      o'clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked quickly through the quadrangle and out into the close. The
+      longing which had been upon him and driven him thus far, like the gad-fly
+      in the Greek legends, giving him no rest in mind or body, seemed all of a
+      sudden not to be satisfied, but to shrivel up and pall. &ldquo;Why should I go
+      on? It's no use,&rdquo; he thought, and threw himself at full length on the
+      turf, and looked vaguely and listlessly at all the well-known objects.
+      There were a few of the town boys playing cricket, their wicket pitched on
+      the best piece in the middle of the big-side ground&mdash;a sin about
+      equal to sacrilege in the eyes of a captain of the eleven. He was very
+      nearly getting up to go and send them off. &ldquo;Pshaw! they won't remember me.
+      They've more right there than I,&rdquo; he muttered. And the thought that his
+      sceptre had departed, and his mark was wearing out, came home to him for
+      the first time, and bitterly enough. He was lying on the very spot where
+      the fights came off&mdash;where he himself had fought six years ago his
+      first and last battle. He conjured up the scene till he could almost hear
+      the shouts of the ring, and East's whisper in his ear; and looking across
+      the close to the Doctor's private door, half expected to see it open, and
+      the tall figure in cap and gown come striding under the elm-trees towards
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, no; that sight could never be seen again. There was no flag flying on
+      the round tower; the School-house windows were all shuttered up; and when
+      the flag went up again, and the shutters came down, it would be to welcome
+      a stranger. All that was left on earth of him whom he had honoured was
+      lying cold and still under the chapel floor. He would go in and see the
+      place once more, and then leave it once for all. New men and new methods
+      might do for other people; let those who would, worship the rising star;
+      he, at least, would be faithful to the sun which had set. And so he got
+      up, and walked to the chapel door, and unlocked it, fancying himself the
+      only mourner in all the broad land, and feeding on his own selfish sorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed through the vestibule, and then paused for a moment to glance
+      over the empty benches. His heart was still proud and high, and he walked
+      up to the seat which he had last occupied as a sixth-form boy, and sat
+      himself down there to collect his thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, truth to tell, they needed collecting and setting in order not a
+      little. The memories of eight years were all dancing through his brain,
+      and carrying him about whither they would; while, beneath them all, his
+      heart was throbbing with the dull sense of a loss that could never be made
+      up to him. The rays of the evening sun came solemnly through the painted
+      windows above his head, and fell in gorgeous colours on the opposite wall,
+      and the perfect stillness soothed his spirit by little and little. And he
+      turned to the pulpit, and looked at it, and then, leaning forward with his
+      head on his hands, groaned aloud. If he could only have seen the Doctor
+      again for one five minutes&mdash;have told him all that was in his heart,
+      what he owed to him, how he loved and reverenced him, and would, by God's
+      help, follow his steps in life and death&mdash;he could have borne it all
+      without a murmur. But that he should have gone away for ever without
+      knowing it all, was too much to bear. &ldquo;But am I sure that he does not know
+      it all?&rdquo; The thought made him start. &ldquo;May he not even now be near me, in
+      this very chapel? If he be, am I sorrowing as he would have me sorrow, as
+      I should wish to have sorrowed when I shall meet him again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He raised himself up and looked round, and after a minute rose and walked
+      humbly down to the lowest bench, and sat down on the very seat which he
+      had occupied on his first Sunday at Rugby. And then the old memories
+      rushed back again, but softened and subdued, and soothing him as he let
+      himself be carried away by them. And he looked up at the great painted
+      window above the altar, and remembered how, when a little boy, he used to
+      try not to look through it at the elm-trees and the rooks, before the
+      painted glass came; and the subscription for the painted glass, and the
+      letter he wrote home for money to give to it. And there, down below, was
+      the very name of the boy who sat on his right hand on that first day,
+      scratched rudely in the oak panelling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then came the thought of all his old schoolfellows; and form after
+      form of boys nobler, and braver, and purer than he rose up and seemed to
+      rebuke him. Could he not think of them, and what they had felt and were
+      feeling&mdash;they who had honoured and loved from the first the man whom
+      he had taken years to know and love? Could he not think of those yet
+      dearer to him who was gone, who bore his name and shared his blood, and
+      were now without a husband or a father? Then the grief which he began to
+      share with others became gentle and holy, and he rose up once more, and
+      walked up the steps to the altar, and while the tears flowed freely down
+      his cheeks, knelt down humbly and hopefully, to lay down there his share
+      of a burden which had proved itself too heavy for him to bear in his own
+      strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here let us leave him. Where better could we leave him than at the altar
+      before which he had first caught a glimpse of the glory of his birthright,
+      and felt the drawing of the bond which links all living souls together in
+      one brotherhood&mdash;at the grave beneath the altar of him who had opened
+      his eyes to see that glory, and softened his heart till it could feel that
+      bond?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And let us not be hard on him, if at that moment his soul is fuller of the
+      tomb and him who lies there than of the altar and Him of whom it speaks.
+      Such stages have to be gone through, I believe, by all young and brave
+      souls, who must win their way through hero-worship to the worship of Him
+      who is the King and Lord of heroes. For it is only through our mysterious
+      human relationships&mdash;through the love and tenderness and purity of
+      mothers and sisters and wives, through the strength and courage and wisdom
+      of fathers and brothers and teachers&mdash;that we can come to the
+      knowledge of Him in whom alone the love, and the tenderness, and the
+      purity, and the strength, and the courage, and the wisdom of all these
+      dwell for ever and ever in perfect fullness.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
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+  </body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tom Brown's Schooldays, by Thomas Hughes
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Tom Brown's Schooldays
+
+Author: Thomas Hughes
+
+Release Date: February 15, 2006 [EBook #1480]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Gil Jaysmith and David Widger
+
+
+This etext was prepared from the 1905 Thomas Nelson and Sons edition
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS
+
+By Thomas Hughes
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--THE BROWN FAMILY
+
+     "I'm the Poet of White Horse Vale, sir,
+     With liberal notions under my cap."--Ballad
+
+The Browns have become illustrious by the pen of Thackeray and the
+pencil of Doyle, within the memory of the young gentlemen who are now
+matriculating at the universities. Notwithstanding the well-merited but
+late fame which has now fallen upon them, any one at all acquainted with
+the family must feel that much has yet to be written and said before the
+British nation will be properly sensible of how much of its greatness it
+owes to the Browns. For centuries, in their quiet, dogged, homespun way,
+they have been subduing the earth in most English counties, and leaving
+their mark in American forests and Australian uplands. Wherever the
+fleets and armies of England have won renown, there stalwart sons of the
+Browns have done yeomen's work. With the yew bow and cloth-yard shaft at
+Cressy and Agincourt--with the brown bill and pike under the brave
+Lord Willoughby--with culverin and demi-culverin against Spaniards and
+Dutchmen--with hand-grenade and sabre, and musket and bayonet, under
+Rodney and St. Vincent, Wolfe and Moore, Nelson and Wellington, they
+have carried their lives in their hands, getting hard knocks and hard
+work in plenty--which was on the whole what they looked for, and the
+best thing for them--and little praise or pudding, which indeed they,
+and most of us, are better without. Talbots and Stanleys, St. Maurs,
+and such-like folk, have led armies and made laws time out of mind; but
+those noble families would be somewhat astounded--if the accounts ever
+came to be fairly taken--to find how small their work for England has
+been by the side of that of the Browns.
+
+These latter, indeed, have, until the present generation, rarely been
+sung by poet, or chronicled by sage. They have wanted their sacer vates,
+having been too solid to rise to the top by themselves, and not having
+been largely gifted with the talent of catching hold of, and holding on
+tight to, whatever good things happened to be going--the foundation of
+the fortunes of so many noble families. But the world goes on its way,
+and the wheel turns, and the wrongs of the Browns, like other wrongs,
+seem in a fair way to get righted. And this present writer, having for
+many years of his life been a devout Brown-worshipper, and, moreover,
+having the honour of being nearly connected with an eminently
+respectable branch of the great Brown family, is anxious, so far as in
+him lies, to help the wheel over, and throw his stone on to the pile.
+
+However, gentle reader, or simple reader, whichever you may be, lest you
+should be led to waste your precious time upon these pages, I make so
+bold as at once to tell you the sort of folk you'll have to meet and put
+up with, if you and I are to jog on comfortably together. You shall hear
+at once what sort of folk the Browns are--at least my branch of them;
+and then, if you don't like the sort, why, cut the concern at once, and
+let you and I cry quits before either of us can grumble at the other.
+
+In the first place, the Browns are a fighting family. One may question
+their wisdom, or wit, or beauty, but about their fight there can be no
+question. Wherever hard knocks of any kind, visible or invisible, are
+going; there the Brown who is nearest must shove in his carcass.
+And these carcasses, for the most part, answer very well to the
+characteristic propensity: they are a squareheaded and snake-necked
+generation, broad in the shoulder, deep in the chest, and thin in
+the flank, carrying no lumber. Then for clanship, they are as bad as
+Highlanders; it is amazing the belief they have in one another.
+With them there is nothing like the Browns, to the third and fourth
+generation. "Blood is thicker than water," is one of their pet sayings.
+They can't be happy unless they are always meeting one another. Never
+were such people for family gatherings; which, were you a stranger, or
+sensitive, you might think had better not have been gathered together.
+For during the whole time of their being together they luxuriate in
+telling one another their minds on whatever subject turns up; and their
+minds are wonderfully antagonistic, and all their opinions are downright
+beliefs. Till you've been among them some time and understand them, you
+can't think but that they are quarrelling. Not a bit of it. They love
+and respect one another ten times the more after a good set family
+arguing bout, and go back, one to his curacy, another to his chambers,
+and another to his regiment, freshened for work, and more than ever
+convinced that the Browns are the height of company.
+
+This family training, too, combined with their turn for combativeness,
+makes them eminently quixotic. They can't let anything alone which they
+think going wrong. They must speak their mind about it, annoying all
+easy-going folk, and spend their time and money in having a tinker at
+it, however hopeless the job. It is an impossibility to a Brown to leave
+the most disreputable lame dog on the other side of a stile. Most other
+folk get tired of such work. The old Browns, with red faces, white
+whiskers, and bald heads, go on believing and fighting to a green old
+age. They have always a crotchet going, till the old man with the scythe
+reaps and garners them away for troublesome old boys as they are.
+
+And the most provoking thing is, that no failures knock them up, or make
+them hold their hands, or think you, or me, or other sane people in
+the right. Failures slide off them like July rain off a duck's back
+feathers. Jem and his whole family turn out bad, and cheat them one
+week, and the next they are doing the same thing for Jack; and when he
+goes to the treadmill, and his wife and children to the workhouse, they
+will be on the lookout for Bill to take his place.
+
+However, it is time for us to get from the general to the particular;
+so, leaving the great army of Browns, who are scattered over the whole
+empire on which the sun never sets, and whose general diffusion I take
+to be the chief cause of that empire's stability; let us at once fix our
+attention upon the small nest of Browns in which our hero was hatched,
+and which dwelt in that portion of the royal county of Berks which is
+called the Vale of White Horse.
+
+Most of you have probably travelled down the Great Western Railway as
+far as Swindon. Those of you who did so with their eyes open have been
+aware, soon after leaving the Didcot station, of a fine range of chalk
+hills running parallel with the railway on the left-hand side as you go
+down, and distant some two or three miles, more or less, from the line.
+The highest point in the range is the White Horse Hill, which you come
+in front of just before you stop at the Shrivenham station. If you love
+English scenery, and have a few hours to spare, you can't do better,
+the next time you pass, than stop at the Farringdon Road or Shrivenham
+station, and make your way to that highest point. And those who care for
+the vague old stories that haunt country-sides all about England, will
+not, if they are wise, be content with only a few hours' stay; for,
+glorious as the view is, the neighbourhood is yet more interesting
+for its relics of bygone times. I only know two English neighbourhoods
+thoroughly, and in each, within a circle of five miles, there is enough
+of interest and beauty to last any reasonable man his life. I believe
+this to be the case almost throughout the country, but each has a
+special attraction, and none can be richer than the one I am speaking of
+and going to introduce you to very particularly, for on this subject I
+must be prosy; so those that don't care for England in detail may skip
+the chapter.
+
+O young England! young England! you who are born into these racing
+railroad times, when there's a Great Exhibition, or some monster sight,
+every year, and you can get over a couple of thousand miles of ground
+for three pound ten in a five-weeks' holiday, why don't you know more of
+your own birthplaces? You're all in the ends of the earth, it seems to
+me, as soon as you get your necks out of the educational collar, for
+midsummer holidays, long vacations, or what not--going round Ireland,
+with a return ticket, in a fortnight; dropping your copies of Tennyson
+on the tops of Swiss mountains; or pulling down the Danube in Oxford
+racing boats. And when you get home for a quiet fortnight, you turn the
+steam off, and lie on your backs in the paternal garden, surrounded by
+the last batch of books from Mudie's library, and half bored to death.
+Well, well! I know it has its good side. You all patter French more or
+less, and perhaps German; you have seen men and cities, no doubt, and
+have your opinions, such as they are, about schools of painting, high
+art, and all that; have seen the pictures of Dresden and the Louvre,
+and know the taste of sour krout. All I say is, you don't know your own
+lanes and woods and fields. Though you may be choke-full of science, not
+one in twenty of you knows where to find the wood-sorrel, or bee-orchis,
+which grow in the next wood, or on the down three miles off, or what the
+bog-bean and wood-sage are good for. And as for the country legends,
+the stories of the old gable-ended farmhouses, the place where the last
+skirmish was fought in the civil wars, where the parish butts stood,
+where the last highwayman turned to bay, where the last ghost was laid
+by the parson, they're gone out of date altogether.
+
+Now, in my time, when we got home by the old coach, which put us down at
+the cross-roads with our boxes, the first day of the holidays, and had
+been driven off by the family coachman, singing "Dulce Domum" at the top
+of our voices, there we were, fixtures, till black Monday came round. We
+had to cut out our own amusements within a walk or a ride of home. And
+so we got to know all the country folk and their ways and songs and
+stories by heart, and went over the fields and woods and hills, again
+and again, till we made friends of them all. We were Berkshire, or
+Gloucestershire, or Yorkshire boys; and you're young cosmopolites,
+belonging to all countries and no countries. No doubt it's all right; I
+dare say it is. This is the day of large views, and glorious humanity,
+and all that; but I wish back-sword play hadn't gone out in the Vale of
+White Horse, and that that confounded Great Western hadn't carried away
+Alfred's Hill to make an embankment.
+
+But to return to the said Vale of White Horse, the country in which the
+first scenes of this true and interesting story are laid. As I said, the
+Great Western now runs right through it, and it is a land of large, rich
+pastures bounded by ox-fences, and covered with fine hedgerow timber,
+with here and there a nice little gorse or spinney, where abideth poor
+Charley, having no other cover to which to betake himself for miles and
+miles, when pushed out some fine November morning by the old Berkshire.
+Those who have been there, and well mounted, only know how he and the
+stanch little pack who dash after him--heads high and sterns low, with
+a breast-high scent--can consume the ground at such times. There being
+little ploughland, and few woods, the Vale is only an average sporting
+country, except for hunting. The villages are straggling, queer,
+old-fashioned places, the houses being dropped down without the least
+regularity, in nooks and out-of-the-way corners, by the sides of shadowy
+lanes and footpaths, each with its patch of garden. They are built
+chiefly of good gray stone, and thatched; though I see that within the
+last year or two the red-brick cottages are multiplying, for the Vale is
+beginning to manufacture largely both bricks and tiles. There are lots
+of waste ground by the side of the roads in every village, amounting
+often to village greens, where feed the pigs and ganders of the people;
+and these roads are old-fashioned, homely roads, very dirty and badly
+made, and hardly endurable in winter, but still pleasant jog-trot roads
+running through the great pasture-lands, dotted here and there with
+little clumps of thorns, where the sleek kine are feeding, with no fence
+on either side of them, and a gate at the end of each field, which makes
+you get out of your gig (if you keep one), and gives you a chance of
+looking about you every quarter of a mile.
+
+One of the moralists whom we sat under in our youth--was it the great
+Richard Swiveller, or Mr. Stiggins--says, "We are born in a vale, and
+must take the consequences of being found in such a situation." These
+consequences I, for one, am ready to encounter. I pity people who
+weren't born in a vale. I don't mean a flat country; but a vale--that
+is, a flat country bounded by hills. The having your hill always in view
+if you choose to turn towards him--that's the essence of a vale. There
+he is for ever in the distance, your friend and companion. You never
+lose him as you do in hilly districts.
+
+And then what a hill is the White Horse Hill! There it stands right up
+above all the rest, nine hundred feet above the sea, and the boldest,
+bravest shape for a chalk hill that you ever saw. Let us go up to the
+top of him, and see what is to be found there. Ay, you may well wonder
+and think it odd you never heard of this before; but wonder or not, as
+you please, there are hundreds of such things lying about England, which
+wiser folk than you know nothing of, and care nothing for. Yes, it's a
+magnificent Roman camp, and no mistake, with gates and ditch and mounds,
+all as complete as it was twenty years after the strong old rogues left
+it. Here, right up on the highest point, from which they say you can see
+eleven counties, they trenched round all the table-land, some twelve or
+fourteen acres, as was their custom, for they couldn't bear anybody to
+overlook them, and made their eyrie. The ground falls away rapidly on
+all sides. Was there ever such turf in the whole world? You sink up to
+your ankles at every step, and yet the spring of it is delicious. There
+is always a breeze in the "camp," as it is called; and here it lies,
+just as the Romans left it, except that cairn on the east side, left by
+her Majesty's corps of sappers and miners the other day, when they and
+the engineer officer had finished their sojourn there, and their surveys
+for the ordnance map of Berkshire. It is altogether a place that you
+won't forget, a place to open a man's soul, and make him prophesy, as
+he looks down on that great Vale spread out as the garden of the Lord
+before him, and wave on wave of the mysterious downs behind, and to the
+right and left the chalk hills running away into the distance, along
+which he can trace for miles the old Roman road, "the Ridgeway" ("the
+Rudge," as the country folk call it), keeping straight along the highest
+back of the hills--such a place as Balak brought Balaam to, and told him
+to prophesy against the people in the valley beneath. And he could not,
+neither shall you, for they are a people of the Lord who abide there.
+
+And now we leave the camp, and descend towards the west, and are on
+the Ashdown. We are treading on heroes. It is sacred ground for
+Englishmen--more sacred than all but one or two fields where their bones
+lie whitening. For this is the actual place where our Alfred won his
+great battle, the battle of Ashdown ("Aescendum" in the chroniclers),
+which broke the Danish power, and made England a Christian land. The
+Danes held the camp and the slope where we are standing--the whole crown
+of the hill, in fact. "The heathen had beforehand seized the higher
+ground," as old Asser says, having wasted everything behind them from
+London, and being just ready to burst down on the fair Vale, Alfred's
+own birthplace and heritage. And up the heights came the Saxons, as
+they did at the Alma. "The Christians led up their line from the
+lower ground. There stood also on that same spot a single thorn-tree,
+marvellous stumpy (which we ourselves with our very own eyes have
+seen)." Bless the old chronicler! Does he think nobody ever saw the
+"single thorn-tree" but himself? Why, there it stands to this very day,
+just on the edge of the slope, and I saw it not three weeks since--an
+old single thorn-tree, "marvellous stumpy." At least, if it isn't the
+same tree it ought to have been, for it's just in the place where the
+battle must have been won or lost--"around which, as I was saying, the
+two lines of foemen came together in battle with a huge shout. And in
+this place one of the two kings of the heathen and five of his earls
+fell down and died, and many thousands of the heathen side in the same
+place." * After which crowning mercy, the pious king, that there might
+never be wanting a sign and a memorial to the country-side, carved out
+on the northern side of the chalk hill, under the camp, where it is
+almost precipitous, the great Saxon White Horse, which he who will may
+see from the railway, and which gives its name to the Vale, over which
+it has looked these thousand years and more.
+
+     * "Pagani editiorem Iocum praeoccupaverant.  Christiani ab
+     inferiori loco aciem dirigebant.  Erat quoque in eodem loco
+     unica spinosa arbor, brevis admodum (quam nos ipsi nostris
+     propriis oculis vidimus).  Circa quam ergo hostiles inter se
+     acies cum ingenti clamore hostiliter conveniunt.  Quo in
+     loco alter de duobus Paganorum regibus et quinque comites
+     occisi occubuerunt, et multa millia Paganae partis in eodem
+     loco. Cecidit illic ergo Boegsceg Rex, et Sidroc ille senex
+     comes, et Sidroc Junior comes, et Obsbern comes," etc.--
+     Annales Rerum Gestarum AElfredi Magni, Auctore Asserio.
+     Recensuit Franciscus Wise. Oxford, 1722, p.23.
+
+Right down below the White Horse is a curious deep and broad gully
+called "the Manger," into one side of which the hills fall with a series
+of the most lovely sweeping curves, known as "the Giant's Stairs." They
+are not a bit like stairs, but I never saw anything like them anywhere
+else, with their short green turf, and tender bluebells, and gossamer
+and thistle-down gleaming in the sun and the sheep-paths running along
+their sides like ruled lines.
+
+The other side of the Manger is formed by the Dragon's Hill, a curious
+little round self-confident fellow, thrown forward from the range,
+utterly unlike everything round him. On this hill some deliverer of
+mankind--St. George, the country folk used to tell me--killed a dragon.
+Whether it were St. George, I cannot say; but surely a dragon was killed
+there, for you may see the marks yet where his blood ran down, and more
+by token the place where it ran down is the easiest way up the hillside.
+
+Passing along the Ridgeway to the west for about a mile, we come to a
+little clump of young beech and firs, with a growth of thorn and privet
+underwood. Here you may find nests of the strong down partridge and
+peewit, but take care that the keeper isn't down upon you; and in the
+middle of it is an old cromlech, a huge flat stone raised on seven or
+eight others, and led up to by a path, with large single stones set up
+on each side. This is Wayland Smith's cave, a place of classic fame now;
+but as Sir Walter has touched it, I may as well let it alone, and refer
+you to "Kenilworth" for the legend.
+
+The thick, deep wood which you see in the hollow, about a mile off,
+surrounds Ashdown Park, built by Inigo Jones. Four broad alleys are cut
+through the wood from circumference to centre, and each leads to one
+face of the house. The mystery of the downs hangs about house and wood,
+as they stand there alone, so unlike all around, with the green slopes
+studded with great stones just about this part, stretching away on all
+sides. It was a wise Lord Craven, I think, who pitched his tent there.
+
+Passing along the Ridgeway to the east, we soon come to cultivated land.
+The downs, strictly so called, are no more. Lincolnshire farmers have
+been imported, and the long, fresh slopes are sheep-walks no more, but
+grow famous turnips and barley. One of these improvers lives over there
+at the "Seven Barrows" farm, another mystery of the great downs. There
+are the barrows still, solemn and silent, like ships in the calm sea,
+the sepulchres of some sons of men. But of whom? It is three miles from
+the White Horse--too far for the slain of Ashdown to be buried there.
+Who shall say what heroes are waiting there? But we must get down into
+the Vale again, and so away by the Great Western Railway to town,
+for time and the printer's devil press, and it is a terrible long and
+slippery descent, and a shocking bad road. At the bottom, however, there
+is a pleasant public; whereat we must really take a modest quencher, for
+the down air is provocative of thirst. So we pull up under an old oak
+which stands before the door.
+
+"What is the name of your hill, landlord?"
+
+"Blawing STWUN Hill, sir, to be sure."
+
+[READER. "Stuym?"
+
+AUTHOR: "Stone, stupid--the Blowing Stone."]
+
+"And of your house? I can't make out the sign."
+
+"Blawing Stwun, sir," says the landlord, pouring out his old ale from a
+Toby Philpot jug, with a melodious crash, into the long-necked glass.
+
+"What queer names!" say we, sighing at the end of our draught, and
+holding out the glass to be replenished.
+
+"Bean't queer at all, as I can see, sir," says mine host, handing back
+our glass, "seeing as this here is the Blawing Stwun, his self," putting
+his hand on a square lump of stone, some three feet and a half high,
+perforated with two or three queer holes, like petrified antediluvian
+rat-holes, which lies there close under the oak, under our very nose. We
+are more than ever puzzled, and drink our second glass of ale, wondering
+what will come next. "Like to hear un, sir?" says mine host, setting
+down Toby Philpot on the tray, and resting both hands on the "Stwun." We
+are ready for anything; and he, without waiting for a reply, applies his
+mouth to one of the ratholes. Something must come of it, if he doesn't
+burst. Good heavens! I hope he has no apoplectic tendencies. Yes, here
+it comes, sure enough, a gruesome sound between a moan and a roar, and
+spreads itself away over the valley, and up the hillside, and into the
+woods at the back of the house, a ghost-like, awful voice. "Um do say,
+sir," says mine host, rising purple-faced, while the moan is still
+coming out of the Stwun, "as they used in old times to warn the
+country-side by blawing the Stwun when the enemy was a-comin', and as
+how folks could make un heered then for seven mile round; leastways, so
+I've heered Lawyer Smith say, and he knows a smart sight about them old
+times." We can hardly swallow Lawyer Smith's seven miles; but could the
+blowing of the stone have been a summons, a sort of sending the fiery
+cross round the neighbourhood in the old times? What old times? Who
+knows? We pay for our beer, and are thankful.
+
+"And what's the name of the village just below, landlord?"
+
+"Kingstone Lisle, sir."
+
+"Fine plantations you've got here?"
+
+"Yes, sir; the Squire's 'mazing fond of trees and such like."
+
+"No wonder. He's got some real beauties to be fond of. Good-day,
+landlord."
+
+"Good-day, sir, and a pleasant ride to 'ee."
+
+And now, my boys, you whom I want to get for readers, have you had
+enough? Will you give in at once, and say you're convinced, and let me
+begin my story, or will you have more of it? Remember, I've only been
+over a little bit of the hillside yet--what you could ride round easily
+on your ponies in an hour. I'm only just come down into the Vale, by
+Blowing Stone Hill; and if I once begin about the Vale, what's to stop
+me? You'll have to hear all about Wantage, the birthplace of Alfred, and
+Farringdon, which held out so long for Charles the First (the Vale was
+near Oxford, and dreadfully malignant--full of Throgmortons, Puseys,
+and Pyes, and such like; and their brawny retainers). Did you ever read
+Thomas Ingoldsby's "Legend of Hamilton Tighe"? If you haven't, you ought
+to have. Well, Farringdon is where he lived, before he went to sea;
+his real name was Hamden Pye, and the Pyes were the great folk at
+Farringdon. Then there's Pusey. You've heard of the Pusey horn, which
+King Canute gave to the Puseys of that day, and which the gallant old
+squire, lately gone to his rest (whom Berkshire freeholders turned out
+of last Parliament, to their eternal disgrace, for voting according to
+his conscience), used to bring out on high days, holidays, and bonfire
+nights. And the splendid old cross church at Uffington, the Uffingas
+town. How the whole countryside teems with Saxon names and memories!
+And the old moated grange at Compton, nestled close under the hillside,
+where twenty Marianas may have lived, with its bright water-lilies
+in the moat, and its yew walk, "the cloister walk," and its peerless
+terraced gardens. There they all are, and twenty things beside, for
+those who care about them, and have eyes. And these are the sort of
+things you may find, I believe, every one of you, in any common English
+country neighbourhood.
+
+Will you look for them under your own noses, or will you not? Well,
+well, I've done what I can to make you; and if you will go gadding over
+half Europe now, every holidays, I can't help it. I was born and bred
+a west-country man, thank God! a Wessex man, a citizen of the noblest
+Saxon kingdom of Wessex, a regular "Angular Saxon," the very soul of me
+adscriptus glebae. There's nothing like the old country-side for me,
+and no music like the twang of the real old Saxon tongue, as one gets
+it fresh from the veritable chaw in the White Horse Vale; and I say with
+"Gaarge Ridler," the old west-country yeoman,--
+
+     "Throo aall the waarld owld Gaarge would bwoast,
+     Commend me to merry owld England mwoast;
+     While vools gwoes prating vur and nigh,
+     We stwops at whum, my dog and I."
+
+Here, at any rate, lived and stopped at home Squire Brown, J.P. for the
+county of Berks, in a village near the foot of the White Horse range.
+And here he dealt out justice and mercy in a rough way, and begat sons
+and daughters, and hunted the fox, and grumbled at the badness of
+the roads and the times. And his wife dealt out stockings, and calico
+shirts, and smock frocks, and comforting drinks to the old folks with
+the "rheumatiz," and good counsel to all; and kept the coal and clothes'
+clubs going, for yule-tide, when the bands of mummers came round,
+dressed out in ribbons and coloured paper caps, and stamped round the
+Squire's kitchen, repeating in true sing-song vernacular the legend of
+St. George and his fight, and the ten-pound doctor, who plays his
+part at healing the Saint--a relic, I believe, of the old Middle-age
+mysteries. It was the first dramatic representation which greeted the
+eyes of little Tom, who was brought down into the kitchen by his nurse
+to witness it, at the mature age of three years. Tom was the eldest
+child of his parents, and from his earliest babyhood exhibited the
+family characteristics in great strength. He was a hearty, strong boy
+from the first, given to fighting with and escaping from his nurse, and
+fraternizing with all the village boys, with whom he made expeditions
+all round the neighbourhood. And here, in the quiet old-fashioned
+country village, under the shadow of the everlasting hills, Tom Brown
+was reared, and never left it till he went first to school, when nearly
+eight years of age, for in those days change of air twice a year was not
+thought absolutely necessary for the health of all her Majesty's lieges.
+
+I have been credibly informed, and am inclined to believe, that the
+various boards of directors of railway companies, those gigantic jobbers
+and bribers, while quarrelling about everything else, agreed together
+some ten years back to buy up the learned profession of medicine, body
+and soul. To this end they set apart several millions of money, which
+they continually distribute judiciously among the doctors, stipulating
+only this one thing, that they shall prescribe change of air to every
+patient who can pay, or borrow money to pay, a railway fare, and see
+their prescription carried out. If it be not for this, why is it that
+none of us can be well at home for a year together? It wasn't so twenty
+years ago, not a bit of it. The Browns didn't go out of the country once
+in five years. A visit to Reading or Abingdon twice a year, at assizes
+or quarter sessions, which the Squire made on his horse with a pair
+of saddle-bags containing his wardrobe, a stay of a day or two at some
+country neighbour's, or an expedition to a county ball or the yeomanry
+review, made up the sum of the Brown locomotion in most years. A stray
+Brown from some distant county dropped in every now and then; or from
+Oxford, on grave nag, an old don, contemporary of the Squire; and were
+looked upon by the Brown household and the villagers with the same sort
+of feeling with which we now regard a man who has crossed the Rocky
+Mountains, or launched a boat on the Great Lake in Central Africa. The
+White Horse Vale, remember, was traversed by no great road--nothing but
+country parish roads, and these very bad. Only one coach ran there, and
+this one only from Wantage to London, so that the western part of the
+Vale was without regular means of moving on, and certainly didn't
+seem to want them. There was the canal, by the way, which supplied the
+country-side with coal, and up and down which continually went the long
+barges, with the big black men lounging by the side of the horses along
+the towing-path, and the women in bright-coloured handkerchiefs standing
+in the sterns steering. Standing I say, but you could never see whether
+they were standing or sitting, all but their heads and shoulders being
+out of sight in the cozy little cabins which occupied some eight feet of
+the stern, and which Tom Brown pictured to himself as the most desirable
+of residences. His nurse told him that those good-natured-looking women
+were in the constant habit of enticing children into the barges, and
+taking them up to London and selling them, which Tom wouldn't
+believe, and which made him resolve as soon as possible to accept the
+oft-proffered invitation of these sirens to "young master" to come in
+and have a ride. But as yet the nurse was too much for Tom.
+
+Yet why should I, after all, abuse the gadabout propensities of my
+countrymen? We are a vagabond nation now, that's certain, for better
+for worse. I am a vagabond; I have been away from home no less than five
+distinct times in the last year. The Queen sets us the example: we are
+moving on from top to bottom. Little dirty Jack, who abides in Clement's
+Inn gateway, and blacks my boots for a penny, takes his month's
+hop-picking every year as a matter of course. Why shouldn't he? I'm
+delighted at it. I love vagabonds, only I prefer poor to rich ones.
+Couriers and ladies'-maids, imperials and travelling carriages, are an
+abomination unto me; I cannot away with them. But for dirty Jack, and
+every good fellow who, in the words of the capital French song, moves
+about,
+
+     "Comme le limacon,
+     Portant tout son bagage,
+     Ses meubles, sa maison,"
+
+on his own back, why, good luck to them, and many a merry roadside
+adventure, and steaming supper in the chimney corners of roadside inns,
+Swiss chalets, Hottentot kraals, or wherever else they like to go. So,
+having succeeded in contradicting myself in my first chapter (which
+gives me great hopes that you will all go on, and think me a good fellow
+notwithstanding my crotchets), I shall here shut up for the present,
+and consider my ways; having resolved to "sar' it out," as we say in the
+Vale, "holus bolus" just as it comes, and then you'll probably get the
+truth out of me.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--THE "VEAST."
+
+     "And the King commandeth and forbiddeth, that from
+     henceforth neither fairs nor markets be kept in Churchyards,
+     for the honour of the Church."--STATUTES : 13 Edw. I. Stat.
+     II. cap. vi.
+
+As that venerable and learned poet (whose voluminous works we all think
+it the correct thing to admire and talk about, but don't read often)
+most truly says, "The child is father to the man;" a fortiori,
+therefore, he must be father to the boy. So as we are going at any rate
+to see Tom Brown through his boyhood, supposing we never get any farther
+(which, if you show a proper sense of the value of this history, there
+is no knowing but what we may), let us have a look at the life and
+environments of the child in the quiet country village to which we were
+introduced in the last chapter.
+
+Tom, as has been already said, was a robust and combative urchin, and at
+the age of four began to struggle against the yoke and authority of his
+nurse. That functionary was a good-hearted, tearful, scatter-brained
+girl, lately taken by Tom's mother, Madam Brown, as she was called, from
+the village school to be trained as nurserymaid. Madam Brown was a rare
+trainer of servants, and spent herself freely in the profession; for
+profession it was, and gave her more trouble by half than many people
+take to earn a good income. Her servants were known and sought after for
+miles round. Almost all the girls who attained a certain place in the
+village school were taken by her, one or two at a time, as housemaids,
+laundrymaids, nurserymaids, or kitchenmaids, and after a year or two's
+training were started in life amongst the neighbouring families, with
+good principles and wardrobes. One of the results of this system was the
+perpetual despair of Mrs. Brown's cook and own maid, who no sooner had
+a notable girl made to their hands than missus was sure to find a good
+place for her and send her off, taking in fresh importations from the
+school. Another was, that the house was always full of young girls, with
+clean, shining faces, who broke plates and scorched linen, but made an
+atmosphere of cheerful, homely life about the place, good for every one
+who came within its influence. Mrs. Brown loved young people, and in
+fact human creatures in general, above plates and linen. They were more
+like a lot of elder children than servants, and felt to her more as a
+mother or aunt than as a mistress.
+
+Tom's nurse was one who took in her instruction very slowly--she seemed
+to have two left hands and no head; and so Mrs. Brown kept her on longer
+than usual, that she might expend her awkwardness and forgetfulness upon
+those who would not judge and punish her too strictly for them.
+
+Charity Lamb was her name. It had been the immemorial habit of the
+village to christen children either by Bible names, or by those of the
+cardinal and other virtues; so that one was for ever hearing in the
+village street or on the green, shrill sounds of "Prudence! Prudence!
+thee cum' out o' the gutter;" or, "Mercy! drat the girl, what bist thee
+a-doin' wi' little Faith?" and there were Ruths, Rachels, Keziahs,
+in every corner. The same with the boys: they were Benjamins, Jacobs,
+Noahs, Enochs. I suppose the custom has come down from Puritan times.
+There it is, at any rate, very strong still in the Vale.
+
+Well, from early morning till dewy eve, when she had it out of him in
+the cold tub before putting him to bed, Charity and Tom were pitted
+against one another. Physical power was as yet on the side of Charity,
+but she hadn't a chance with him wherever headwork was wanted. This
+war of independence began every morning before breakfast, when Charity
+escorted her charge to a neighbouring farmhouse, which supplied the
+Browns, and where, by his mother's wish, Master Tom went to drink whey
+before breakfast. Tom had no sort of objection to whey, but he had a
+decided liking for curds, which were forbidden as unwholesome; and there
+was seldom a morning that he did not manage to secure a handful of hard
+curds, in defiance of Charity and of the farmer's wife. The latter good
+soul was a gaunt, angular woman, who, with an old black bonnet on the
+top of her head, the strings dangling about her shoulders, and her
+gown tucked through her pocket-holes, went clattering about the dairy,
+cheese-room, and yard, in high pattens. Charity was some sort of niece
+of the old lady's, and was consequently free of the farmhouse and
+garden, into which she could not resist going for the purposes of gossip
+and flirtation with the heir-apparent, who was a dawdling fellow, never
+out at work as he ought to have been. The moment Charity had found her
+cousin, or any other occupation, Tom would slip away; and in a minute
+shrill cries would be heard from the dairy, "Charity, Charity, thee lazy
+huzzy, where bist?" and Tom would break cover, hands and mouth full of
+curds, and take refuge on the shaky surface of the great muck reservoir
+in the middle of the yard, disturbing the repose of the great pigs. Here
+he was in safety, as no grown person could follow without getting over
+their knees; and the luckless Charity, while her aunt scolded her from
+the dairy door, for being "allus hankering about arter our Willum,
+instead of minding Master Tom," would descend from threats to coaxing,
+to lure Tom out of the muck, which was rising over his shoes, and would
+soon tell a tale on his stockings, for which she would be sure to catch
+it from missus's maid.
+
+Tom had two abettors, in the shape of a couple of old boys, Noah and
+Benjamin by name, who defended him from Charity, and expended much time
+upon his education. They were both of them retired servants of former
+generations of the Browns. Noah Crooke was a keen, dry old man of almost
+ninety, but still able to totter about. He talked to Tom quite as if he
+were one of his own family, and indeed had long completely identified
+the Browns with himself. In some remote age he had been the attendant
+of a Miss Brown, and had conveyed her about the country on a pillion. He
+had a little round picture of the identical gray horse, caparisoned
+with the identical pillion, before which he used to do a sort of
+fetish worship, and abuse turnpike-roads and carriages. He wore an old
+full-bottomed wig, the gift of some dandy old Brown whom he had valeted
+in the middle of last century, which habiliment Master Tom looked upon
+with considerable respect, not to say fear; and indeed his whole feeling
+towards Noah was strongly tainted with awe. And when the old gentleman
+was gathered to his fathers, Tom's lamentation over him was not
+unaccompanied by a certain joy at having seen the last of the wig. "Poor
+old Noah, dead and gone," said he; "Tom Brown so sorry. Put him in the
+coffin, wig and all."
+
+But old Benjy was young master's real delight and refuge. He was a
+youth by the side of Noah, scarce seventy years old--a cheery, humorous,
+kind-hearted old man, full of sixty years of Vale gossip, and of all
+sorts of helpful ways for young and old, but above all for children.
+It was he who bent the first pin with which Tom extracted his first
+stickleback out of "Pebbly Brook," the little stream which ran through
+the village. The first stickleback was a splendid fellow, with fabulous
+red and blue gills. Tom kept him in a small basin till the day of his
+death, and became a fisherman from that day. Within a month from the
+taking of the first stickleback, Benjy had carried off our hero to
+the canal, in defiance of Charity; and between them, after a whole
+afternoon's popjoying, they had caught three or four small, coarse fish
+and a perch, averaging perhaps two and a half ounces each, which Tom
+bore home in rapture to his mother as a precious gift, and which she
+received like a true mother with equal rapture, instructing the cook
+nevertheless, in a private interview, not to prepare the same for the
+Squire's dinner. Charity had appealed against old Benjy in the meantime,
+representing the dangers of the canal banks; but Mrs. Brown, seeing the
+boy's inaptitude for female guidance, had decided in Benjy's favour, and
+from thenceforth the old man was Tom's dry nurse. And as they sat by the
+canal watching their little green-and-white float, Benjy would instruct
+him in the doings of deceased Browns. How his grandfather, in the early
+days of the great war, when there was much distress and crime in the
+Vale, and the magistrates had been threatened by the mob, had ridden in
+with a big stick in his hand, and held the petty sessions by himself.
+How his great-uncle, the rector, had encountered and laid the last
+ghost, who had frightened the old women, male and female, of the
+parish out of their senses, and who turned out to be the blacksmith's
+apprentice disguised in drink and a white sheet. It was Benjy, too,
+who saddled Tom's first pony, and instructed him in the mysteries of
+horsemanship, teaching him to throw his weight back and keep his hand
+low, and who stood chuckling outside the door of the girls' school when
+Tom rode his little Shetland into the cottage and round the table, where
+the old dame and her pupils were seated at their work.
+
+Benjy himself was come of a family distinguished in the Vale for their
+prowess in all athletic games. Some half-dozen of his brothers and
+kinsmen had gone to the wars, of whom only one had survived to come
+home, with a small pension, and three bullets in different parts of his
+body; he had shared Benjy's cottage till his death, and had left him his
+old dragoon's sword and pistol, which hung over the mantelpiece, flanked
+by a pair of heavy single-sticks with which Benjy himself had won renown
+long ago as an old gamester, against the picked men of Wiltshire and
+Somersetshire, in many a good bout at the revels and pastimes of the
+country-side. For he had been a famous back-swordman in his young days,
+and a good wrestler at elbow and collar.
+
+Back-swording and wrestling were the most serious holiday pursuits of
+the Vale--those by which men attained fame--and each village had its
+champion. I suppose that, on the whole, people were less worked then
+than they are now; at any rate, they seemed to have more time and energy
+for the old pastimes. The great times for back-swording came round once
+a year in each village; at the feast. The Vale "veasts" were not
+the common statute feasts, but much more ancient business. They are
+literally, so far as one can ascertain, feasts of the dedication--that
+is, they were first established in the churchyard on the day on which
+the village church was opened for public worship, which was on the wake
+or festival of the patron saint, and have been held on the same day in
+every year since that time.
+
+There was no longer any remembrance of why the "veast" had been
+instituted, but nevertheless it had a pleasant and almost sacred
+character of its own; for it was then that all the children of the
+village, wherever they were scattered, tried to get home for a holiday
+to visit their fathers and mothers and friends, bringing with them their
+wages or some little gift from up the country for the old folk. Perhaps
+for a day or two before, but at any rate on "veast day" and the day
+after, in our village, you might see strapping, healthy young men and
+women from all parts of the country going round from house to house in
+their best clothes, and finishing up with a call on Madam Brown,
+whom they would consult as to putting out their earnings to the best
+advantage, or how best to expend the same for the benefit of the old
+folk. Every household, however poor, managed to raise a "feast-cake"
+and a bottle of ginger or raisin wine, which stood on the cottage table
+ready for all comers, and not unlikely to make them remember feast-time,
+for feast-cake is very solid, and full of huge raisins. Moreover,
+feast-time was the day of reconciliation for the parish. If Job Higgins
+and Noah Freeman hadn't spoken for the last six months, their "old
+women" would be sure to get it patched up by that day. And though there
+was a good deal of drinking and low vice in the booths of an evening,
+it was pretty well confined to those who would have been doing the like,
+"veast or no veast;" and on the whole, the effect was humanising and
+Christian. In fact, the only reason why this is not the case still is
+that gentlefolk and farmers have taken to other amusements, and have, as
+usual, forgotten the poor. They don't attend the feasts themselves, and
+call them disreputable; whereupon the steadiest of the poor leave them
+also, and they become what they are called. Class amusements, be
+they for dukes or ploughboys, always become nuisances and curses to a
+country. The true charm of cricket and hunting is that they are still
+more or less sociable and universal; there's a place for every man who
+will come and take his part.
+
+No one in the village enjoyed the approach of "veast day" more than Tom,
+in the year in which he was taken under old Benjy's tutelage. The feast
+was held in a large green field at the lower end of the village. The
+road to Farringdon ran along one side of it, and the brook by the side
+of the road; and above the brook was another large, gentle, sloping
+pasture-land, with a footpath running down it from the churchyard; and
+the old church, the originator of all the mirth, towered up with its
+gray walls and lancet windows, overlooking and sanctioning the whole,
+though its own share therein had been forgotten. At the point where the
+footpath crossed the brook and road, and entered on the field where the
+feast was held, was a long, low roadside inn; and on the opposite side
+of the field was a large white thatched farmhouse, where dwelt an old
+sporting farmer, a great promoter of the revels.
+
+Past the old church, and down the footpath, pottered the old man and the
+child hand-in-hand early on the afternoon of the day before the feast,
+and wandered all round the ground, which was already being occupied
+by the "cheap Jacks," with their green-covered carts and marvellous
+assortment of wares; and the booths of more legitimate small traders,
+with their tempting arrays of fairings and eatables; and penny
+peep-shows and other shows, containing pink-eyed ladies, and dwarfs, and
+boa-constrictors, and wild Indians. But the object of most interest to
+Benjy, and of course to his pupil also, was the stage of rough planks
+some four feet high, which was being put up by the village carpenter for
+the back-swording and wrestling. And after surveying the whole tenderly,
+old Benjy led his charge away to the roadside inn, where he ordered a
+glass of ale and a long pipe for himself, and discussed these unwonted
+luxuries on the bench outside in the soft autumn evening with mine
+host, another old servant of the Browns, and speculated with him on the
+likelihood of a good show of old gamesters to contend for the morrow's
+prizes, and told tales of the gallant bouts of forty years back, to
+which Tom listened with all his ears and eyes.
+
+But who shall tell the joy of the next morning, when the church bells
+were ringing a merry peal, and old Benjy appeared in the servants' hall,
+resplendent in a long blue coat and brass buttons, and a pair of old
+yellow buckskins and top-boots which he had cleaned for and inherited
+from Tom's grandfather, a stout thorn stick in his hand, and a nosegay
+of pinks and lavender in his buttonhole, and led away Tom in his best
+clothes, and two new shillings in his breeches-pockets? Those two, at
+any rate, look like enjoying the day's revel.
+
+They quicken their pace when they get into the churchyard, for already
+they see the field thronged with country folk; the men in clean, white
+smocks or velveteen or fustian coats, with rough plush waistcoats of
+many colours, and the women in the beautiful, long scarlet cloak--the
+usual out-door dress of west-country women in those days, and which
+often descended in families from mother to daughter--or in new-fashioned
+stuff shawls, which, if they would but believe it, don't become them
+half so well. The air resounds with the pipe and tabor, and the drums
+and trumpets of the showmen shouting at the doors of their caravans,
+over which tremendous pictures of the wonders to be seen within hang
+temptingly; while through all rises the shrill "root-too-too-too" of Mr.
+Punch, and the unceasing pan-pipe of his satellite.
+
+"Lawk a' massey, Mr. Benjamin," cries a stout, motherly woman in a red
+cloak, as they enter the field, "be that you? Well, I never! You do look
+purely. And how's the Squire, and madam, and the family?"
+
+Benjy graciously shakes hands with the speaker, who has left our village
+for some years, but has come over for "veast" day on a visit to an old
+gossip, and gently indicates the heir-apparent of the Browns.
+
+"Bless his little heart! I must gi' un a kiss.--Here, Susannah,
+Susannah!" cries she, raising herself from the embrace, "come and see
+Mr. Benjamin and young Master Tom.--You minds our Sukey, Mr. Benjamin;
+she be growed a rare slip of a wench since you seen her, though her'll
+be sixteen come Martinmas. I do aim to take her to see madam to get her
+a place."
+
+And Sukey comes bouncing away from a knot of old school-fellows, and
+drops a curtsey to Mr. Benjamin. And elders come up from all parts to
+salute Benjy, and girls who have been madam's pupils to kiss Master
+Tom. And they carry him off to load him with fairings; and he returns
+to Benjy, his hat and coat covered with ribbons, and his pockets crammed
+with wonderful boxes which open upon ever new boxes, and popguns, and
+trumpets, and apples, and gilt gingerbread from the stall of Angel
+Heavens, sole vender thereof, whose booth groans with kings and queens,
+and elephants and prancing steeds, all gleaming with gold. There
+was more gold on Angel's cakes than there is ginger in those of
+this degenerate age. Skilled diggers might yet make a fortune in the
+churchyards of the Vale, by carefully washing the dust of the consumers
+of Angel's gingerbread. Alas! he is with his namesakes, and his receipts
+have, I fear, died with him.
+
+And then they inspect the penny peep-show--at least Tom does--while old
+Benjy stands outside and gossips and walks up the steps, and enters the
+mysterious doors of the pink-eyed lady and the Irish giant, who do not
+by any means come up to their pictures; and the boa will not swallow his
+rabbit, but there the rabbit is waiting to be swallowed; and what can
+you expect for tuppence? We are easily pleased in the Vale. Now there
+is a rush of the crowd, and a tinkling bell is heard, and shouts of
+laughter; and Master Tom mounts on Benjy's shoulders, and beholds a
+jingling match in all its glory. The games are begun, and this is the
+opening of them. It is a quaint game, immensely amusing to look at;
+and as I don't know whether it is used in your counties, I had better
+describe it. A large roped ring is made, into which are introduced
+a dozen or so of big boys and young men who mean to play; these are
+carefully blinded and turned loose into the ring, and then a man is
+introduced not blindfolded; with a bell hung round his neck, and his two
+hands tied behind him. Of course every time he moves the bell must ring,
+as he has no hand to hold it; and so the dozen blindfolded men have to
+catch him. This they cannot always manage if he is a lively fellow, but
+half of them always rush into the arms of the other half, or drive their
+heads together, or tumble over; and then the crowd laughs vehemently,
+and invents nicknames for them on the spur of the moment; and they, if
+they be choleric, tear off the handkerchiefs which blind them, and not
+unfrequently pitch into one another, each thinking that the other must
+have run against him on purpose. It is great fun to look at a jingling
+match certainly, and Tom shouts and jumps on old Benjy's shoulders at
+the sight, until the old man feels weary, and shifts him to the strong
+young shoulders of the groom, who has just got down to the fun.
+
+And now, while they are climbing the pole in another part of the field,
+and muzzling in a flour-tub in another, the old farmer whose house, as
+has been said, overlooks the field, and who is master of the revels,
+gets up the steps on to the stage, and announces to all whom it may
+concern that a half-sovereign in money will be forthcoming to the old
+gamester who breaks most heads; to which the Squire and he have added a
+new hat.
+
+The amount of the prize is sufficient to stimulate the men of the
+immediate neighbourhood, but not enough to bring any very high talent
+from a distance; so, after a glance or two round, a tall fellow, who is
+a down shepherd, chucks his hat on to the stage and climbs up the steps,
+looking rather sheepish. The crowd, of course, first cheer, and then
+chaff as usual, as he picks up his hat and begins handling the sticks to
+see which will suit him.
+
+"Wooy, Willum Smith, thee canst plaay wi' he arra daay," says his
+companion to the blacksmith's apprentice, a stout young fellow of
+nineteen or twenty. Willum's sweetheart is in the "veast" somewhere, and
+has strictly enjoined him not to get his head broke at back-swording, on
+pain of her highest displeasure; but as she is not to be seen (the women
+pretend not to like to see the backsword play, and keep away from the
+stage), and as his hat is decidedly getting old, he chucks it on to the
+stage, and follows himself, hoping that he will only have to break other
+people's heads, or that, after all, Rachel won't really mind.
+
+Then follows the greasy cap lined with fur of a half-gipsy, poaching,
+loafing fellow, who travels the Vale not for much good, I fancy:
+
+     "For twenty times was Peter feared
+     For once that Peter was respected,"
+
+in fact. And then three or four other hats, including the glossy
+castor of Joe Willis, the self-elected and would-be champion of
+the neighbourhood, a well-to-do young butcher of twenty-eight or
+thereabouts, and a great strapping fellow, with his full allowance of
+bluster. This is a capital show of gamesters, considering the amount
+of the prize; so, while they are picking their sticks and drawing their
+lots, I think I must tell you, as shortly as I can, how the noble old
+game of back-sword is played; for it is sadly gone out of late, even in
+the Vale, and maybe you have never seen it.
+
+The weapon is a good stout ash stick with a large basket handle, heavier
+and somewhat shorter than a common single-stick. The players are called
+"old gamesters"--why, I can't tell you--and their object is simply
+to break one another's heads; for the moment that blood runs an inch
+anywhere above the eyebrow, the old gamester to whom it belongs is
+beaten, and has to stop. A very slight blow with the sticks will fetch
+blood, so that it is by no means a punishing pastime, if the men don't
+play on purpose and savagely at the body and arms of their adversaries.
+The old gamester going into action only takes off his hat and coat, and
+arms himself with a stick; he then loops the fingers of his left hand in
+a handkerchief or strap, which he fastens round his left leg, measuring
+the length, so that when he draws it tight with his left elbow in the
+air, that elbow shall just reach as high as his crown. Thus you see, so
+long as he chooses to keep his left elbow up, regardless of cuts, he
+has a perfect guard for the left side of his head. Then he advances his
+right hand above and in front of his head, holding his stick across, so
+that its point projects an inch or two over his left elbow; and thus
+his whole head is completely guarded, and he faces his man armed in like
+manner; and they stand some three feet apart, often nearer, and feint,
+and strike, and return at one another's heads, until one cries "hold,"
+or blood flows. In the first case they are allowed a minute's time; and
+go on again; in the latter another pair of gamesters are called on. If
+good men are playing, the quickness of the returns is marvellous: you
+hear the rattle like that a boy makes drawing his stick along palings,
+only heavier; and the closeness of the men in action to one another
+gives it a strange interest, and makes a spell at back-swording a very
+noble sight.
+
+They are all suited now with sticks, and Joe Willis and the gipsy man
+have drawn the first lot. So the rest lean against the rails of the
+stage, and Joe and the dark man meet in the middle, the boards having
+been strewed with sawdust, Joe's white shirt and spotless drab breeches
+and boots contrasting with the gipsy's coarse blue shirt and dirty green
+velveteen breeches and leather gaiters. Joe is evidently turning up his
+nose at the other, and half insulted at having to break his head.
+
+The gipsy is a tough, active fellow, but not very skilful with his
+weapon, so that Joe's weight and strength tell in a minute; he is too
+heavy metal for him. Whack, whack, whack, come his blows, breaking down
+the gipsy's guard, and threatening to reach his head every moment. There
+it is at last. "Blood, blood!" shout the spectators, as a thin stream
+oozes out slowly from the roots of his hair, and the umpire calls to
+them to stop. The gipsy scowls at Joe under his brows in no pleasant
+manner, while Master Joe swaggers about, and makes attitudes, and thinks
+himself, and shows that he thinks himself, the greatest man in the
+field.
+
+Then follow several stout sets-to between the other candidates for the
+new hat, and at last come the shepherd and Willum Smith. This is the
+crack set-to of the day. They are both in famous wind, and there is no
+crying "hold." The shepherd is an old hand, and up to all the dodges. He
+tries them one after another, and very nearly gets at Willum's head
+by coming in near, and playing over his guard at the half-stick; but
+somehow Willum blunders through, catching the stick on his shoulders,
+neck, sides, every now and then, anywhere but on his head, and his
+returns are heavy and straight, and he is the youngest gamester and a
+favourite in the parish, and his gallant stand brings down shouts and
+cheers, and the knowing ones think he'll win if he keeps steady; and
+Tom, on the groom's shoulder, holds his hands together, and can hardly
+breathe for excitement.
+
+Alas for Willum! His sweetheart, getting tired of female companionship,
+has been hunting the booths to see where he can have got to, and now
+catches sight of him on the stage in full combat. She flushes and turns
+pale; her old aunt catches hold of her, saying, "Bless 'ee, child,
+doan't 'ee go a'nigst it;" but she breaks away and runs towards the
+stage calling his name. Willum keeps up his guard stoutly, but glances
+for a moment towards the voice. No guard will do it, Willum, without the
+eye. The shepherd steps round and strikes, and the point of his stick
+just grazes Willum's forehead, fetching off the skin, and the blood
+flows, and the umpire cries, "Hold!" and poor Willum's chance is up for
+the day. But he takes it very well, and puts on his old hat and coat,
+and goes down to be scolded by his sweetheart, and led away out of
+mischief. Tom hears him say coaxingly, as he walks off,--
+
+"Now doan't 'ee, Rachel! I wouldn't ha' done it, only I wanted summut
+to buy 'ee a fairing wi', and I be as vlush o' money as a twod o'
+feathers."
+
+"Thee mind what I tells 'ee," rejoins Rachel saucily, "and doan't 'ee
+kep blethering about fairings."
+
+Tom resolves in his heart to give Willum the remainder of his two
+shillings after the back-swording.
+
+Joe Willis has all the luck to-day. His next bout ends in an easy
+victory, while the shepherd has a tough job to break his second head;
+and when Joe and the shepherd meet, and the whole circle expect and hope
+to see him get a broken crown, the shepherd slips in the first round and
+falls against the rails, hurting himself so that the old farmer will not
+let him go on, much as he wishes to try; and that impostor Joe (for he
+is certainly not the best man) struts and swaggers about the stage the
+conquering gamester, though he hasn't had five minutes' really trying
+play.
+
+Joe takes the new hat in his hand, and puts the money into it, and then,
+as if a thought strikes him, and he doesn't think his victory quite
+acknowledged down below, walks to each face of the stage, and looks
+down, shaking the money, and chaffing, as how he'll stake hat and money
+and another half-sovereign "agin any gamester as hasn't played already."
+Cunning Joe! he thus gets rid of Willum and the shepherd, who is quite
+fresh again.
+
+No one seems to like the offer, and the umpire is just coming down,
+when a queer old hat, something like a doctor of divinity's shovel, is
+chucked on to the stage and an elderly, quiet man steps out, who has
+been watching the play, saying he should like to cross a stick wi' the
+prodigalish young chap.
+
+The crowd cheer, and begin to chaff Joe, who turns up his nose and
+swaggers across to the sticks. "Imp'dent old wosbird!" says he; "I'll
+break the bald head on un to the truth."
+
+The old boy is very bald, certainly, and the blood will show fast enough
+if you can touch him, Joe.
+
+He takes off his long-flapped coat, and stands up in a long-flapped
+waistcoat, which Sir Roger de Coverley might have worn when it was new,
+picks out a stick, and is ready for Master Joe, who loses no time, but
+begins his old game, whack, whack, whack, trying to break down the old
+man's guard by sheer strength. But it won't do; he catches every blow
+close by the basket, and though he is rather stiff in his returns,
+after a minute walks Joe about the stage, and is clearly a stanch old
+gamester. Joe now comes in, and making the most of his height, tries to
+get over the old man's guard at half-stick, by which he takes a smart
+blow in the ribs and another on the elbow, and nothing more. And now he
+loses wind and begins to puff, and the crowd laugh. "Cry 'hold,' Joe;
+thee'st met thy match!" Instead of taking good advice and getting his
+wind, Joe loses his temper, and strikes at the old man's body.
+
+"Blood, blood!" shout the crowd; "Joe's head's broke!"
+
+Who'd have thought it? How did it come? That body-blow left Joe's head
+unguarded for a moment; and with one turn of the wrist the old gentleman
+has picked a neat little bit of skin off the middle of his forehead; and
+though he won't believe it, and hammers on for three more blows despite
+of the shouts, is then convinced by the blood trickling into his eye.
+Poor Joe is sadly crestfallen, and fumbles in his pocket for the other
+half-sovereign, but the old gamester won't have it. "Keep thy money,
+man, and gi's thy hand," says he; and they shake hands. But the old
+gamester gives the new hat to the shepherd, and, soon after, the
+half-sovereign to Willum, who thereout decorates his sweetheart with
+ribbons to his heart's content.
+
+"Who can a be?" "Wur do a cum from?" ask the crowd. And it soon flies
+about that the old west-country champion, who played a tie with Shaw the
+Lifeguardsman at "Vizes" twenty years before, has broken Joe Willis's
+crown for him.
+
+How my country fair is spinning out! I see I must skip the wrestling;
+and the boys jumping in sacks, and rolling wheelbarrows blindfolded;
+and the donkey-race, and the fight which arose thereout, marring the
+otherwise peaceful "veast;" and the frightened scurrying away of the
+female feast-goers, and descent of Squire Brown, summoned by the wife of
+one of the combatants to stop it; which he wouldn't start to do till he
+had got on his top-boots. Tom is carried away by old Benjy, dog-tired
+and surfeited with pleasure, as the evening comes on and the dancing
+begins in the booths; and though Willum, and Rachel in her new ribbons,
+and many another good lad and lass don't come away just yet, but have
+a good step out, and enjoy it, and get no harm thereby, yet we, being
+sober folk, will just stroll away up through the churchyard, and by the
+old yew-tree, and get a quiet dish of tea and a parley with our gossips,
+as the steady ones of our village do, and so to bed.
+
+That's the fair, true sketch, as far as it goes, of one of the larger
+village feasts in the Vale of Berks, when I was a little boy. They
+are much altered for the worse, I am told. I haven't been at one these
+twenty years, but I have been at the statute fairs in some west-country
+towns, where servants are hired, and greater abominations cannot be
+found. What village feasts have come to, I fear, in many cases, may
+be read in the pages of "Yeast" (though I never saw one so bad--thank
+God!).
+
+Do you want to know why? It is because, as I said before, gentlefolk and
+farmers have left off joining or taking an interest in them. They don't
+either subscribe to the prizes, or go down and enjoy the fun.
+
+Is this a good or a bad sign? I hardly know. Bad, sure enough, if it
+only arises from the further separation of classes consequent on twenty
+years of buying cheap and selling dear, and its accompanying overwork;
+or because our sons and daughters have their hearts in London club-life,
+or so-called "society," instead of in the old English home-duties;
+because farmers' sons are apeing fine gentlemen, and farmers' daughters
+caring more to make bad foreign music than good English cheeses. Good,
+perhaps, if it be that the time for the old "veast" has gone by; that
+it is no longer the healthy, sound expression of English country
+holiday-making; that, in fact, we, as a nation, have got beyond it,
+and are in a transition state, feeling for and soon likely to find some
+better substitute.
+
+Only I have just got this to say before I quit the text. Don't let
+reformers of any sort think that they are going really to lay hold of
+the working boys and young men of England by any educational grapnel
+whatever, which isn't some bona fide equivalent for the games of the
+old country "veast" in it; something to put in the place of the
+back-swording and wrestling and racing; something to try the muscles
+of men's bodies, and the endurance of their hearts, and to make them
+rejoice in their strength. In all the new-fangled comprehensive plans
+which I see, this is all left out; and the consequence is, that your
+great mechanics' institutes end in intellectual priggism, and your
+Christian young men's societies in religious Pharisaism.
+
+Well, well, we must bide our time. Life isn't all beer and skittles;
+but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form
+a good part of every Englishman's education. If I could only drive this
+into the heads of you rising parliamentary lords, and young swells
+who "have your ways made for you," as the saying is, you, who frequent
+palaver houses and West-end clubs, waiting always ready to strap
+yourselves on to the back of poor dear old John, as soon as the present
+used-up lot (your fathers and uncles), who sit there on the great
+parliamentary-majorities' pack-saddle, and make believe they're guiding
+him with their red-tape bridle, tumble, or have to be lifted off!
+
+I don't think much of you yet--I wish I could--though you do go talking
+and lecturing up and down the country to crowded audiences, and are
+busy with all sorts of philanthropic intellectualism, and circulating
+libraries and museums, and Heaven only knows what besides, and try to
+make us think, through newspaper reports, that you are, even as we, of
+the working classes. But bless your hearts, we "ain't so green," though
+lots of us of all sorts toady you enough certainly, and try to make you
+think so.
+
+I'll tell you what to do now: instead of all this trumpeting and fuss,
+which is only the old parliamentary-majority dodge over again, just you
+go, each of you (you've plenty of time for it, if you'll only give
+up t'other line), and quietly make three or four friends--real
+friends--among us. You'll find a little trouble in getting at the right
+sort, because such birds don't come lightly to your lure; but found
+they may be. Take, say, two out of the professions, lawyer, parson,
+doctor--which you will; one out of trade; and three or four out of the
+working classes--tailors, engineers, carpenters, engravers. There's
+plenty of choice. Let them be men of your own ages, mind, and ask
+them to your homes; introduce them to your wives and sisters, and get
+introduced to theirs; give them good dinners, and talk to them about
+what is really at the bottom of your hearts; and box, and run, and row
+with them, when you have a chance. Do all this honestly as man to
+man, and by the time you come to ride old John, you'll be able to do
+something more than sit on his back, and may feel his mouth with some
+stronger bridle than a red-tape one.
+
+Ah, if you only would! But you have got too far out of the right rut, I
+fear. Too much over-civilization, and the deceitfulness of riches. It is
+easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. More's the pity. I
+never came across but two of you who could value a man wholly and solely
+for what was in him--who thought themselves verily and indeed of the
+same flesh and blood as John Jones the attorney's clerk, and Bill Smith
+the costermonger, and could act as if they thought so.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--SUNDRY WARS AND ALLIANCES.
+
+
+Poor old Benjy! The "rheumatiz" has much to answer for all through
+English country-sides, but it never played a scurvier trick than in
+laying thee by the heels, when thou wast yet in a green old age. The
+enemy, which had long been carrying on a sort of border warfare, and
+trying his strength against Benjy's on the battlefield of his hands and
+legs, now, mustering all his forces, began laying siege to the citadel,
+and overrunning the whole country. Benjy was seized in the back and
+loins; and though he made strong and brave fight, it was soon clear
+enough that all which could be beaten of poor old Benjy would have to
+give in before long.
+
+It was as much as he could do now, with the help of his big stick and
+frequent stops, to hobble down to the canal with Master Tom, and bait
+his hook for him, and sit and watch his angling, telling him quaint old
+country stories; and when Tom had no sport, and detecting a rat some
+hundred yards or so off along the bank, would rush off with Toby the
+turnspit terrier, his other faithful companion, in bootless pursuit, he
+might have tumbled in and been drowned twenty times over before Benjy
+could have got near him.
+
+Cheery and unmindful of himself, as Benjy was, this loss of locomotive
+power bothered him greatly. He had got a new object in his old age, and
+was just beginning to think himself useful again in the world. He feared
+much, too, lest Master Tom should fall back again into the hands of
+Charity and the women. So he tried everything he could think of to get
+set up. He even went an expedition to the dwelling of one of those queer
+mortals, who--say what we will, and reason how we will--do cure simple
+people of diseases of one kind or another without the aid of physic,
+and so get to themselves the reputation of using charms, and inspire for
+themselves and their dwellings great respect, not to say fear, amongst a
+simple folk such as the dwellers in the Vale of White Horse. Where this
+power, or whatever else it may be, descends upon the shoulders of a
+man whose ways are not straight, he becomes a nuisance to the
+neighbourhood--a receiver of stolen goods, giver of love-potions, and
+deceiver of silly women--the avowed enemy of law and order, of justices
+of the peace, head-boroughs, and gamekeepers,--such a man, in fact, as
+was recently caught tripping, and deservedly dealt with by the Leeds
+justices, for seducing a girl who had come to him to get back a
+faithless lover, and has been convicted of bigamy since then. Sometimes,
+however, they are of quite a different stamp--men who pretend to
+nothing, and are with difficulty persuaded to exercise their occult arts
+in the simplest cases.
+
+Of this latter sort was old Farmer Ives, as he was called, the "wise
+man" to whom Benjy resorted (taking Tom with him as usual), in the early
+spring of the year next after the feast described in the last chapter.
+Why he was called "farmer" I cannot say, unless it be that he was the
+owner of a cow, a pig or two, and some poultry, which he maintained
+on about an acre of land inclosed from the middle of a wild common, on
+which probably his father had squatted before lords of manors looked as
+keenly after their rights as they do now. Here he had lived no one knew
+how long, a solitary man. It was often rumoured that he was to be turned
+out and his cottage pulled down, but somehow it never came to pass; and
+his pigs and cow went grazing on the common, and his geese hissed at the
+passing children and at the heels of the horse of my lord's steward, who
+often rode by with a covetous eye on the inclosure still unmolested. His
+dwelling was some miles from our village; so Benjy, who was half ashamed
+of his errand, and wholly unable to walk there, had to exercise much
+ingenuity to get the means of transporting himself and Tom thither
+without exciting suspicion. However, one fine May morning he managed to
+borrow the old blind pony of our friend the publican, and Tom persuaded
+Madam Brown to give him a holiday to spend with old Benjy, and to lend
+them the Squire's light cart, stored with bread and cold meat and a
+bottle of ale. And so the two in high glee started behind old Dobbin,
+and jogged along the deep-rutted plashy roads, which had not been mended
+after their winter's wear, towards the dwelling of the wizard. About
+noon they passed the gate which opened on to the large common, and old
+Dobbin toiled slowly up the hill, while Benjy pointed out a little deep
+dingle on the left, out of which welled a tiny stream. As they crept
+up the hill the tops of a few birch-trees came in sight, and blue smoke
+curling up through their delicate light boughs; and then the little
+white thatched home and inclosed ground of Farmer Ives, lying cradled in
+the dingle, with the gay gorse common rising behind and on both sides;
+while in front, after traversing a gentle slope, the eye might travel
+for miles and miles over the rich vale. They now left the main road and
+struck into a green track over the common marked lightly with wheel and
+horse-shoe, which led down into the dingle and stopped at the rough gate
+of Farmer Ives. Here they found the farmer, an iron-gray old man, with a
+bushy eyebrow and strong aquiline nose, busied in one of his vocations.
+He was a horse and cow doctor, and was tending a sick beast which had
+been sent up to be cured. Benjy hailed him as an old friend, and he
+returned the greeting cordially enough, looking however hard for a
+moment both at Benjy and Tom, to see whether there was more in their
+visit than appeared at first sight. It was a work of some difficulty and
+danger for Benjy to reach the ground, which, however, he managed to do
+without mishap; and then he devoted himself to unharnessing Dobbin and
+turning him out for a graze ("a run" one could not say of that virtuous
+steed) on the common. This done, he extricated the cold provisions from
+the cart, and they entered the farmer's wicket; and he, shutting up the
+knife with which he was taking maggots out of the cow's back and sides,
+accompanied them towards the cottage. A big old lurcher got up slowly
+from the door-stone, stretching first one hind leg and then the other,
+and taking Tom's caresses and the presence of Toby, who kept, however,
+at a respectful distance, with equal indifference.
+
+"Us be cum to pay 'ee a visit. I've a been long minded to do't for old
+sake's sake, only I vinds I dwon't get about now as I'd used to't. I be
+so plaguy bad wi' th' rheumatiz in my back." Benjy paused, in hopes
+of drawing the farmer at once on the subject of his ailments without
+further direct application.
+
+"Ah, I see as you bean't quite so lissom as you was," replied the
+farmer, with a grim smile, as he lifted the latch of his door; "we
+bean't so young as we was, nother on us, wuss luck."
+
+The farmer's cottage was very like those of the better class of
+peasantry in general. A snug chimney corner with two seats, and a small
+carpet on the hearth, an old flint gun and a pair of spurs over the
+fireplace, a dresser with shelves on which some bright pewter plates
+and crockeryware were arranged, an old walnut table, a few chairs and
+settles, some framed samplers, and an old print or two, and a bookcase
+with some dozen volumes on the walls, a rack with flitches of bacon, and
+other stores fastened to the ceiling, and you have the best part of the
+furniture. No sign of occult art is to be seen, unless the bundles of
+dried herbs hanging to the rack and in the ingle and the row of labelled
+phials on one of the shelves betoken it.
+
+Tom played about with some kittens who occupied the hearth, and with a
+goat who walked demurely in at the open door--while their host and Benjy
+spread the table for dinner--and was soon engaged in conflict with the
+cold meat, to which he did much honour. The two old men's talk was of
+old comrades and their deeds, mute inglorious Miltons of the Vale, and
+of the doings thirty years back, which didn't interest him much, except
+when they spoke of the making of the canal; and then indeed he began to
+listen with all his ears, and learned, to his no small wonder, that his
+dear and wonderful canal had not been there always--was not, in fact,
+so old as Benjy or Farmer Ives, which caused a strange commotion in his
+small brain.
+
+After dinner Benjy called attention to a wart which Tom had on the
+knuckles of his hand, and which the family doctor had been trying his
+skill on without success, and begged the farmer to charm it away. Farmer
+Ives looked at it, muttered something or another over it, and cut
+some notches in a short stick, which he handed to Benjy, giving him
+instructions for cutting it down on certain days, and cautioning Tom not
+to meddle with the wart for a fortnight. And then they strolled out and
+sat on a bench in the sun with their pipes, and the pigs came up and
+grunted sociably and let Tom scratch them; and the farmer, seeing how he
+liked animals, stood up and held his arms in the air, and gave a call,
+which brought a flock of pigeons wheeling and dashing through the
+birch-trees. They settled down in clusters on the farmer's arms and
+shoulders, making love to him and scrambling over one another's backs
+to get to his face; and then he threw them all off, and they fluttered
+about close by, and lighted on him again and again when he held up his
+arms. All the creatures about the place were clean and fearless, quite
+unlike their relations elsewhere; and Tom begged to be taught how to
+make all the pigs and cows and poultry in our village tame, at which the
+farmer only gave one of his grim chuckles.
+
+It wasn't till they were just ready to go, and old Dobbin was harnessed,
+that Benjy broached the subject of his rheumatism again, detailing his
+symptoms one by one. Poor old boy! He hoped the farmer could charm it
+away as easily as he could Tom's wart, and was ready with equal faith to
+put another notched stick into his other pocket, for the cure of his
+own ailments. The physician shook his head, but nevertheless produced a
+bottle, and handed it to Benjy, with instructions for use. "Not as 't'll
+do 'ee much good--leastways I be afeard not," shading his eyes with his
+hand, and looking up at them in the cart. "There's only one thing as I
+knows on as'll cure old folks like you and I o' th' rheumatiz."
+
+"Wot be that then, farmer?" inquired Benjy.
+
+"Churchyard mould," said the old iron-gray man, with another chuckle.
+And so they said their good-byes and went their ways home. Tom's wart
+was gone in a fortnight, but not so Benjy's rheumatism, which laid him
+by the heels more and more. And though Tom still spent many an hour with
+him, as he sat on a bench in the sunshine, or by the chimney corner when
+it was cold, he soon had to seek elsewhere for his regular companions.
+
+Tom had been accustomed often to accompany his mother in her visits to
+the cottages, and had thereby made acquaintance with many of the village
+boys of his own age. There was Job Rudkin, son of widow Rudkin, the most
+bustling woman in the parish. How she could ever have had such a stolid
+boy as Job for a child must always remain a mystery. The first time
+Tom went to their cottage with his mother, Job was not indoors; but he
+entered soon after, and stood with both hands in his pockets, staring
+at Tom. Widow Rudkin, who would have had to cross madam to get at
+young Hopeful--a breach of good manners of which she was wholly
+incapable--began a series of pantomime signs, which only puzzled him;
+and at last, unable to contain herself longer, burst out with, "Job!
+Job! where's thy cap?"
+
+"What! bean't 'ee on ma head, mother?" replied Job, slowly extricating
+one hand from a pocket, and feeling for the article in question; which
+he found on his head sure enough, and left there, to his mother's horror
+and Tom's great delight.
+
+Then there was poor Jacob Dodson, the half-witted boy, who ambled about
+cheerfully, undertaking messages and little helpful odds and ends for
+every one, which, however, poor Jacob managed always hopelessly to
+imbrangle. Everything came to pieces in his hands, and nothing would
+stop in his head. They nicknamed him Jacob Doodle-calf.
+
+But above all there was Harry Winburn, the quickest and best boy in the
+parish. He might be a year older than Tom, but was very little bigger,
+and he was the Crichton of our village boys. He could wrestle and climb
+and run better than all the rest, and learned all that the schoolmaster
+could teach him faster than that worthy at all liked. He was a boy to
+be proud of, with his curly brown hair, keen gray eye, straight active
+figure, and little ears and hands and feet, "as fine as a lord's," as
+Charity remarked to Tom one day, talking, as usual, great nonsense.
+Lords' hands and ears and feet are just as ugly as other folk's when
+they are children, as any one may convince himself if he likes to look.
+Tight boots and gloves, and doing nothing with them, I allow make a
+difference by the time they are twenty.
+
+Now that Benjy was laid on the shelf, and his young brothers were still
+under petticoat government, Tom, in search of companions, began to
+cultivate the village boys generally more and more. Squire Brown, be it
+said, was a true-blue Tory to the backbone, and believed honestly that
+the powers which be were ordained of God, and that loyalty and steadfast
+obedience were men's first duties. Whether it were in consequence or in
+spite of his political creed, I do not mean to give an opinion, though
+I have one; but certain it is that he held therewith divers social
+principles not generally supposed to be true blue in colour. Foremost of
+these, and the one which the Squire loved to propound above all others,
+was the belief that a man is to be valued wholly and solely for that
+which he is in himself, for that which stands up in the four fleshly
+walls of him, apart from clothes, rank, fortune, and all externals
+whatsoever. Which belief I take to be a wholesome corrective of all
+political opinions, and, if held sincerely, to make all opinions equally
+harmless, whether they be blue, red, or green. As a necessary corollary
+to this belief, Squire Brown held further that it didn't matter a
+straw whether his son associated with lords' sons or ploughmen's sons,
+provided they were brave and honest. He himself had played football
+and gone bird-nesting with the farmers whom he met at vestry and
+the labourers who tilled their fields, and so had his father and
+grandfather, with their progenitors. So he encouraged Tom in his
+intimacy with the boys of the village, and forwarded it by all means
+in his power, and gave them the run of a close for a playground, and
+provided bats and balls and a football for their sports.
+
+Our village was blessed amongst other things with a well-endowed school.
+The building stood by itself, apart from the master's house, on an angle
+of ground where three roads met--an old gray stone building with a steep
+roof and mullioned windows. On one of the opposite angles stood Squire
+Brown's stables and kennel, with their backs to the road, over which
+towered a great elm-tree; on the third stood the village carpenter and
+wheelwright's large open shop, and his house and the schoolmaster's,
+with long low eaves, under which the swallows built by scores.
+
+The moment Tom's lessons were over, he would now get him down to this
+corner by the stables, and watch till the boys came out of school. He
+prevailed on the groom to cut notches for him in the bark of the elm
+so that he could climb into the lower branches; and there he would sit
+watching the school door, and speculating on the possibility of turning
+the elm into a dwelling-place for himself and friends, after the manner
+of the Swiss Family Robinson. But the school hours were long and Tom's
+patience short, so that he soon began to descend into the street, and go
+and peep in at the school door and the wheelwright's shop, and look out
+for something to while away the time. Now the wheelwright was a choleric
+man, and one fine afternoon, returning from a short absence, found Tom
+occupied with one of his pet adzes, the edge of which was fast vanishing
+under our hero's care. A speedy flight saved Tom from all but one sound
+cuff on the ears; but he resented this unjustifiable interruption of his
+first essays at carpentering, and still more the further proceedings
+of the wheelwright, who cut a switch, and hung it over the door of his
+workshop, threatening to use it upon Tom if he came within twenty yards
+of his gate. So Tom, to retaliate, commenced a war upon the swallows who
+dwelt under the wheelwright's eaves, whom he harassed with sticks
+and stones; and being fleeter of foot than his enemy, escaped all
+punishment, and kept him in perpetual anger. Moreover, his presence
+about the school door began to incense the master, as the boys in that
+neighbourhood neglected their lessons in consequence; and more than once
+he issued into the porch, rod in hand, just as Tom beat a hasty retreat.
+And he and the wheelwright, laying their heads together, resolved to
+acquaint the Squire with Tom's afternoon occupations; but in order to
+do it with effect, determined to take him captive and lead him away to
+judgment fresh from his evil doings. This they would have found some
+difficulty in doing, had Tom continued the war single-handed, or rather
+single-footed, for he would have taken to the deepest part of Pebbly
+Brook to escape them; but, like other active powers, he was ruined by
+his alliances. Poor Jacob Doodle-calf could not go to the school with
+the other boys, and one fine afternoon, about three o'clock (the school
+broke up at four), Tom found him ambling about the street, and pressed
+him into a visit to the school-porch. Jacob, always ready to do what he
+was asked, consented, and the two stole down to the school together.
+Tom first reconnoitred the wheelwright's shop; and seeing no signs
+of activity, thought all safe in that quarter, and ordered at once an
+advance of all his troops upon the schoolporch. The door of the school
+was ajar, and the boys seated on the nearest bench at once recognized
+and opened a correspondence with the invaders. Tom, waxing bold, kept
+putting his head into the school and making faces at the master when
+his back was turned. Poor Jacob, not in the least comprehending the
+situation, and in high glee at finding himself so near the school, which
+he had never been allowed to enter, suddenly, in a fit of enthusiasm,
+pushed by Tom, and ambling three steps into the school, stood there,
+looking round him and nodding with a self-approving smile. The master,
+who was stooping over a boy's slate, with his back to the door, became
+aware of something unusual, and turned quickly round. Tom rushed at
+Jacob, and began dragging him back by his smock-frock, and the master
+made at them, scattering forms and boys in his career. Even now they
+might have escaped, but that in the porch, barring retreat, appeared the
+crafty wheelwright, who had been watching all their proceedings. So they
+were seized, the school dismissed, and Tom and Jacob led away to Squire
+Brown as lawful prize, the boys following to the gate in groups, and
+speculating on the result.
+
+The Squire was very angry at first, but the interview, by Tom's
+pleading, ended in a compromise. Tom was not to go near the school till
+three o'clock, and only then if he had done his own lessons well, in
+which case he was to be the bearer of a note to the master from Squire
+Brown; and the master agreed in such case to release ten or twelve of
+the best boys an hour before the time of breaking up, to go off and play
+in the close. The wheelwright's adzes and swallows were to be for ever
+respected; and that hero and the master withdrew to the servants' hall
+to drink the Squire's health, well satisfied with their day's work.
+
+The second act of Tom's life may now be said to have begun. The war of
+independence had been over for some time: none of the women now--not
+even his mother's maid--dared offer to help him in dressing or
+washing. Between ourselves, he had often at first to run to Benjy in an
+unfinished state of toilet. Charity and the rest of them seemed to take
+a delight in putting impossible buttons and ties in the middle of his
+back; but he would have gone without nether integuments altogether,
+sooner than have had recourse to female valeting. He had a room to
+himself, and his father gave him sixpence a week pocket-money. All
+this he had achieved by Benjy's advice and assistance. But now he had
+conquered another step in life--the step which all real boys so long
+to make: he had got amongst his equals in age and strength, and could
+measure himself with other boys; he lived with those whose pursuits and
+wishes and ways were the same in kind as his own.
+
+The little governess who had lately been installed in the house found
+her work grow wondrously easy, for Tom slaved at his lessons, in order
+to make sure of his note to the schoolmaster. So there were very few
+days in the week in which Tom and the village boys were not playing
+in their close by three o'clock. Prisoner's base, rounders,
+high-cock-a-lorum, cricket, football--he was soon initiated into the
+delights of them all; and though most of the boys were older than
+himself, he managed to hold his own very well. He was naturally active
+and strong, and quick of eye and hand, and had the advantage of light
+shoes and well-fitting dress, so that in a short time he could run and
+jump and climb with any of them.
+
+They generally finished their regular games half an hour or so before
+tea-time, and then began trials of skill and strength in many ways. Some
+of them would catch the Shetland pony who was turned out in the field,
+and get two or three together on his back, and the little rogue,
+enjoying the fun, would gallop off for fifty yards, and then turn round,
+or stop short and shoot them on to the turf, and then graze quietly on
+till he felt another load; others played at peg-top or marbles, while
+a few of the bigger ones stood up for a bout at wrestling. Tom at first
+only looked on at this pastime, but it had peculiar attractions for him,
+and he could not long keep out of it. Elbow and collar wrestling, as
+practised in the western counties, was, next to back-swording, the way
+to fame for the youth of the Vale; and all the boys knew the rules of
+it, and were more or less expert. But Job Rudkin and Harry Winburn were
+the stars--the former stiff and sturdy, with legs like small towers; the
+latter pliant as indiarubber and quick as lightning. Day after day they
+stood foot to foot, and offered first one hand and then the other, and
+grappled and closed, and swayed and strained, till a well-aimed crook of
+the heel or thrust of the loin took effect, and a fair back-fall ended
+the matter. And Tom watched with all his eyes, and first challenged one
+of the less scientific, and threw him; and so one by one wrestled his
+way up to the leaders.
+
+Then indeed for months he had a poor time of it; it was not long indeed
+before he could manage to keep his legs against Job, for that hero was
+slow of offence, and gained his victories chiefly by allowing others to
+throw themselves against his immovable legs and loins. But Harry Winburn
+was undeniably his master; from the first clutch of hands when they
+stood up, down to the last trip which sent him on to his back on the
+turf, he felt that Harry knew more and could do more than he. Luckily
+Harry's bright unconsciousness and Tom's natural good temper kept them
+from quarrelling; and so Tom worked on and on, and trod more and more
+nearly on Harry's heels, and at last mastered all the dodges and falls
+except one. This one was Harry's own particular invention and pet; he
+scarcely ever used it except when hard pressed, but then out it came,
+and as sure as it did, over went poor Tom. He thought about that fall
+at his meals, in his walks, when he lay awake in bed, in his dreams, but
+all to no purpose, until Harry one day in his open way suggested to him
+how he thought it should be met; and in a week from that time the boys
+were equal, save only the slight difference of strength in Harry's
+favour, which some extra ten months of age gave. Tom had often
+afterwards reason to be thankful for that early drilling, and above all,
+for having mastered Harry Winburn's fall.
+
+Besides their home games, on Saturdays the boys would wander all over
+the neighbourhood; sometimes to the downs, or up to the camp, where
+they cut their initials out in the springy turf, and watched the hawks
+soaring, and the "peert" bird, as Harry Winburn called the gray plover,
+gorgeous in his wedding feathers; and so home, racing down the Manger
+with many a roll among the thistles, or through Uffington Wood to watch
+the fox cubs playing in the green rides; sometimes to Rosy Brook, to cut
+long whispering reeds which grew there, to make pan-pipes of; sometimes
+to Moor Mills, where was a piece of old forest land, with short browsed
+turf and tufted brambly thickets stretching under the oaks, amongst
+which rumour declared that a raven, last of his race, still lingered;
+or to the sand-hills, in vain quest of rabbits; and bird-nesting in the
+season, anywhere and everywhere.
+
+The few neighbours of the Squire's own rank every now and then would
+shrug their shoulders as they drove or rode by a party of boys with Tom
+in the middle, carrying along bulrushes or whispering reeds, or great
+bundles of cowslip and meadow-sweet, or young starlings or magpies, or
+other spoil of wood, brook, or meadow; and Lawyer Red-tape might mutter
+to Squire Straight-back at the Board that no good would come of the
+young Browns, if they were let run wild with all the dirty village boys,
+whom the best farmers' sons even would not play with. And the squire
+might reply with a shake of his head that his sons only mixed with
+their equals, and never went into the village without the governess or
+a footman. But, luckily, Squire Brown was full as stiffbacked as
+his neighbours, and so went on his own way; and Tom and his younger
+brothers, as they grew up, went on playing with the village boys,
+without the idea of equality or inequality (except in wrestling,
+running, and climbing) ever entering their heads; as it doesn't till
+it's put there by Jack Nastys or fine ladies' maids.
+
+I don't mean to say it would be the case in all villages, but it
+certainly was so in this one: the village boys were full as manly and
+honest, and certainly purer, than those in a higher rank; and Tom got
+more harm from his equals in his first fortnight at a private school,
+where he went when he was nine years old, than he had from his village
+friends from the day he left Charity's apron-strings.
+
+Great was the grief amongst the village school-boys when Tom drove off
+with the Squire, one August morning, to meet the coach on his way to
+school. Each of them had given him some little present of the best that
+he had, and his small private box was full of peg-taps, white marbles
+(called "alley-taws" in the Vale), screws, birds' eggs, whip-cord,
+jews-harps, and other miscellaneous boys' wealth. Poor Jacob
+Doodle-calf, in floods of tears, had pressed upon him with spluttering
+earnestness his lame pet hedgehog (he had always some poor broken-down
+beast or bird by him); but this Tom had been obliged to refuse, by the
+Squire's order. He had given them all a great tea under the big elm in
+their playground, for which Madam Brown had supplied the biggest cake
+ever seen in our village; and Tom was really as sorry to leave them
+as they to lose him, but his sorrow was not unmixed with the pride and
+excitement of making a new step in life.
+
+And this feeling carried him through his first parting with his mother
+better than could have been expected. Their love was as fair and whole
+as human love can be--perfect self-sacrifice on the one side meeting
+a young and true heart on the other. It is not within the scope of my
+book, however, to speak of family relations, or I should have much to
+say on the subject of English mothers--ay, and of English fathers, and
+sisters, and brothers too. Neither have I room to speak of our private
+schools. What I have to say is about public schools--those much-abused
+and much-belauded institutions peculiar to England. So we must hurry
+through Master Tom's year at a private school as fast as we can.
+
+It was a fair average specimen, kept by a gentleman, with another
+gentleman as second master; but it was little enough of the real work
+they did--merely coming into school when lessons were prepared and all
+ready to be heard. The whole discipline of the school out of lesson
+hours was in the hands of the two ushers, one of whom was always with
+the boys in their playground, in the school, at meals--in fact, at all
+times and every where, till they were fairly in bed at night.
+
+Now the theory of private schools is (or was) constant supervision out
+of school--therein differing fundamentally from that of public schools.
+
+It may be right or wrong; but if right, this supervision surely ought
+to be the especial work of the head-master, the responsible person. The
+object of all schools is not to ram Latin and Greek into boys, but to
+make them good English boys, good future citizens; and by far the most
+important part of that work must be done, or not done, out of school
+hours. To leave it, therefore, in the hands of inferior men, is just
+giving up the highest and hardest part of the work of education. Were I
+a private school-master, I should say, Let who will hear the boys their
+lessons, but let me live with them when they are at play and rest.
+
+The two ushers at Tom's first school were not gentlemen, and very poorly
+educated, and were only driving their poor trade of usher to get such
+living as they could out of it. They were not bad men, but had little
+heart for their work, and of course were bent on making it as easy as
+possible. One of the methods by which they endeavoured to accomplish
+this was by encouraging tale-bearing, which had become a frightfully
+common vice in the school in consequence, and had sapped all the
+foundations of school morality. Another was, by favouring grossly the
+biggest boys, who alone could have given them much trouble; whereby
+those young gentlemen became most abominable tyrants, oppressing the
+little boys in all the small mean ways which prevail in private schools.
+
+Poor little Tom was made dreadfully unhappy in his first week by a
+catastrophe which happened to his first letter home. With huge labour he
+had, on the very evening of his arrival, managed to fill two sides of
+a sheet of letter-paper with assurances of his love for dear mamma, his
+happiness at school, and his resolves to do all she would wish. This
+missive, with the help of the boy who sat at the desk next him, also a
+new arrival, he managed to fold successfully; but this done, they were
+sadly put to it for means of sealing. Envelopes were then unknown;
+they had no wax, and dared not disturb the stillness of the evening
+school-room by getting up and going to ask the usher for some. At length
+Tom's friend, being of an ingenious turn of mind, suggested sealing with
+ink; and the letter was accordingly stuck down with a blob of ink, and
+duly handed by Tom, on his way to bed, to the housekeeper to be posted.
+It was not till four days afterwards that the good dame sent for him,
+and produced the precious letter and some wax, saying, "O Master Brown,
+I forgot to tell you before, but your letter isn't sealed." Poor Tom
+took the wax in silence and sealed his letter, with a huge lump rising
+in his throat during the process, and then ran away to a quiet corner of
+the playground, and burst into an agony of tears. The idea of his mother
+waiting day after day for the letter he had promised her at once, and
+perhaps thinking him forgetful of her, when he had done all in his power
+to make good his promise, was as bitter a grief as any which he had
+to undergo for many a long year. His wrath, then, was proportionately
+violent when he was aware of two boys, who stopped close by him, and one
+of whom, a fat gaby of a fellow, pointed at him and called him "Young
+mammy-sick!" Whereupon Tom arose, and giving vent thus to his grief and
+shame and rage, smote his derider on the nose; and made it bleed;
+which sent that young worthy howling to the usher, who reported Tom for
+violent and unprovoked assault and battery. Hitting in the face was a
+felony punishable with flogging, other hitting only a misdemeanour--a
+distinction not altogether clear in principle. Tom, however, escaped the
+penalty by pleading primum tempus; and having written a second letter
+to his mother, inclosing some forget-me-nots, which he picked on their
+first half-holiday walk, felt quite happy again, and began to enjoy
+vastly a good deal of his new life.
+
+These half-holiday walks were the great events of the week. The whole
+fifty boys started after dinner with one of the ushers for Hazeldown,
+which was distant some mile or so from the school. Hazeldown measured
+some three miles round, and in the neighbourhood were several woods full
+of all manner of birds and butterflies. The usher walked slowly round
+the down with such boys as liked to accompany him; the rest scattered
+in all directions, being only bound to appear again when the usher
+had completed his round, and accompany him home. They were forbidden,
+however, to go anywhere except on the down and into the woods; the
+village had been especially prohibited, where huge bull's-eyes and
+unctuous toffy might be procured in exchange for coin of the realm.
+
+Various were the amusements to which the boys then betook themselves. At
+the entrance of the down there was a steep hillock, like the barrows of
+Tom's own downs. This mound was the weekly scene of terrific combats,
+at a game called by the queer name of "mud-patties." The boys who played
+divided into sides under different leaders, and one side occupied the
+mound. Then, all parties having provided themselves with many sods of
+turf, cut with their bread-and-cheese knives, the side which remained
+at the bottom proceeded to assault the mound, advancing up on all sides
+under cover of a heavy fire of turfs, and then struggling for victory
+with the occupants, which was theirs as soon as they could, even for a
+moment, clear the summit, when they in turn became the besieged. It
+was a good, rough, dirty game, and of great use in counteracting the
+sneaking tendencies of the school. Then others of the boys spread over
+the downs, looking for the holes of humble-bees and mice, which they
+dug up without mercy, often (I regret to say) killing and skinning the
+unlucky mice, and (I do not regret to say) getting well stung by the
+bumble-bees. Others went after butterflies and birds' eggs in their
+seasons; and Tom found on Hazeldown, for the first time, the beautiful
+little blue butterfly with golden spots on his wings, which he had never
+seen on his own downs, and dug out his first sand-martin's nest. This
+latter achievement resulted in a flogging, for the sand-martins built in
+a high bank close to the village, consequently out of bounds; but one of
+the bolder spirits of the school, who never could be happy unless he
+was doing something to which risk was attached, easily persuaded Tom to
+break bounds and visit the martins' bank. From whence it being only a
+step to the toffy shop, what could be more simple than to go on there
+and fill their pockets; or what more certain than that on their return,
+a distribution of treasure having been made, the usher should shortly
+detect the forbidden smell of bull's-eyes, and, a search ensuing,
+discover the state of the breeches-pockets of Tom and his ally?
+
+This ally of Tom's was indeed a desperate hero in the sight of the boys,
+and feared as one who dealt in magic, or something approaching thereto.
+Which reputation came to him in this wise. The boys went to bed at
+eight, and, of course, consequently lay awake in the dark for an hour or
+two, telling ghost-stories by turns. One night when it came to his turn,
+and he had dried up their souls by his story, he suddenly declared that
+he would make a fiery hand appear on the door; and to the astonishment
+and terror of the boys in his room, a hand, or something like it, in
+pale light, did then and there appear. The fame of this exploit having
+spread to the other rooms, and being discredited there, the young
+necromancer declared that the same wonder would appear in all the rooms
+in turn, which it accordingly did; and the whole circumstances having
+been privately reported to one of the ushers as usual, that functionary,
+after listening about at the doors of the rooms, by a sudden descent
+caught the performer in his night-shirt, with a box of phosphorus in his
+guilty hand. Lucifer-matches and all the present facilities for getting
+acquainted with fire were then unknown--the very name of phosphorus had
+something diabolic in it to the boy-mind; so Tom's ally, at the cost
+of a sound flogging, earned what many older folk covet much--the very
+decided fear of most of his companions.
+
+He was a remarkable boy, and by no means a bad one. Tom stuck to him
+till he left, and got into many scrapes by so doing. But he was the
+great opponent of the tale-bearing habits of the school, and the open
+enemy of the ushers; and so worthy of all support.
+
+Tom imbibed a fair amount of Latin and Greek at the school, but somehow,
+on the whole, it didn't suit him, or he it, and in the holidays he was
+constantly working the Squire to send him at once to a public school.
+Great was his joy then, when in the middle of his third half-year, in
+October 183-, a fever broke out in the village, and the master having
+himself slightly sickened of it, the whole of the boys were sent off at
+a day's notice to their respective homes.
+
+The Squire was not quite so pleased as Master Tom to see that young
+gentleman's brown, merry face appear at home, some two months before the
+proper time, for the Christmas holidays; and so, after putting on his
+thinking cap, he retired to his study and wrote several letters, the
+result of which was that, one morning at the breakfast-table, about a
+fortnight after Tom's return, he addressed his wife with--"My dear, I
+have arranged that Tom shall go to Rugby at once, for the last six weeks
+of this half-year, instead of wasting them in riding and loitering about
+home. It is very kind of the doctor to allow it. Will you see that his
+things are all ready by Friday, when I shall take him up to town, and
+send him down the next day by himself."
+
+Mrs. Brown was prepared for the announcement, and merely suggested a
+doubt whether Tom were yet old enough to travel by himself. However,
+finding both father and son against her on this point, she gave in, like
+a wise woman, and proceeded to prepare Tom's kit for his launch into a
+public school.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--THE STAGE COACH.
+
+
+     "Let the steam-pot hiss till it's hot;
+     Give me the speed of the Tantivy trot."
+     Coaching Song, by R.E.E. Warburton, Esq.
+
+"Now, sir, time to get up, if you please. Tally-ho coach for
+Leicester'll be round in half an hour, and don't wait for nobody." So
+spake the boots of the Peacock Inn Islington, at half-past two o'clock
+on the morning of a day in the early part of November 183-, giving
+Tom at the same time a shake by the shoulder, and then putting down a
+candle; and carrying off his shoes to clean.
+
+Tom and his father arrived in town from Berkshire the day before, and
+finding, on inquiry, that the Birmingham coaches which ran from the city
+did not pass through Rugby, but deposited their passengers at Dunchurch,
+a village three miles distant on the main road, where said passengers
+had to wait for the Oxford and Leicester coach in the evening, or to
+take a post-chaise, had resolved that Tom should travel down by the
+Tally-ho, which diverged from the main road and passed through Rugby
+itself. And as the Tally-ho was an early coach, they had driven out to
+the Peacock to be on the road.
+
+Tom had never been in London, and would have liked to have stopped at
+the Belle Savage, where they had been put down by the Star, just at
+dusk, that he might have gone roving about those endless, mysterious,
+gas-lit streets, which, with their glare and hum and moving crowds,
+excited him so that he couldn't talk even. But as soon as he found that
+the Peacock arrangement would get him to Rugby by twelve o'clock in the
+day, whereas otherwise he wouldn't be there till the evening, all
+other plans melted away, his one absorbing aim being to become a public
+school-boy as fast as possible, and six hours sooner or later seeming to
+him of the most alarming importance.
+
+Tom and his father had alighted at the Peacock at about seven in the
+evening; and having heard with unfeigned joy the paternal order, at the
+bar, of steaks and oyster-sauce for supper in half an hour, and seen
+his father seated cozily by the bright fire in the coffee-room with the
+paper in his hand, Tom had run out to see about him, had wondered at all
+the vehicles passing and repassing, and had fraternized with the boots
+and hostler, from whom he ascertained that the Tally-ho was a tip-top
+goer--ten miles an hour including stoppages--and so punctual that all
+the road set their clocks by her.
+
+Then being summoned to supper, he had regaled himself in one of the
+bright little boxes of the Peacock coffee-room, on the beef-steak
+and unlimited oyster-sauce and brown stout (tasted then for the first
+time--a day to be marked for ever by Tom with a white stone); had at
+first attended to the excellent advice which his father was bestowing
+on him from over his glass of steaming brandy-and-water, and then
+began nodding, from the united effects of the stout, the fire, and the
+lecture; till the Squire, observing Tom's state, and remembering that it
+was nearly nine o'clock, and that the Tally-ho left at three, sent the
+little fellow off to the chambermaid, with a shake of the hand (Tom
+having stipulated in the morning before starting that kissing should now
+cease between them), and a few parting words:
+
+"And now, Tom, my boy," said the Squire, "remember you are going, at
+your own earnest request, to be chucked into this great school, like a
+young bear, with all your troubles before you--earlier than we should
+have sent you perhaps. If schools are what they were in my time, you'll
+see a great many cruel blackguard things done, and hear a deal of foul,
+bad talk. But never fear. You tell the truth, keep a brave and kind
+heart, and never listen to or say anything you wouldn't have your mother
+and sister hear, and you'll never feel ashamed to come home, or we to
+see you."
+
+The allusion to his mother made Tom feel rather choky, and he would have
+liked to have hugged his father well, if it hadn't been for the recent
+stipulation.
+
+As it was, he only squeezed his father's hand, and looked bravely up and
+said, "I'll try, father."
+
+"I know you will, my boy. Is your money all safe?
+
+"Yes," said Tom, diving into one pocket to make sure.
+
+"And your keys?" said the Squire.
+
+"All right," said Tom, diving into the other pocket.
+
+"Well, then, good-night. God bless you! I'll tell boots to call you, and
+be up to see you off."
+
+Tom was carried off by the chambermaid in a brown study, from which he
+was roused in a clean little attic, by that buxom person calling him a
+little darling and kissing him as she left the room; which indignity
+he was too much surprised to resent. And still thinking of his father's
+last words, and the look with which they were spoken, he knelt down and
+prayed that, come what might, he might never bring shame or sorrow on
+the dear folk at home.
+
+Indeed, the Squire's last words deserved to have their effect, for they
+had been the result of much anxious thought. All the way up to London
+he had pondered what he should say to Tom by way of parting
+advice--something that the boy could keep in his head ready for use. By
+way of assisting meditation, he had even gone the length of taking out
+his flint and steel and tinder, and hammering away for a quarter of an
+hour till he had manufactured a light for a long Trichinopoli cheroot,
+which he silently puffed, to the no small wonder of coachee, who was an
+old friend, and an institution on the Bath road, and who always expected
+a talk on the prospects and doings, agricultural and social, of the
+whole country, when he carried the Squire.
+
+To condense the Squire's meditation, it was somewhat as follows: "I
+won't tell him to read his Bible, and love and serve God; if he don't do
+that for his mother's sake and teaching, he won't for mine. Shall I go
+into the sort of temptations he'll meet with? No, I can't do that.
+Never do for an old fellow to go into such things with a boy. He won't
+understand me. Do him more harm than good, ten to one. Shall I tell him
+to mind his work, and say he's sent to school to make himself a good
+scholar? Well, but he isn't sent to school for that--at any rate,
+not for that mainly. I don't care a straw for Greek particles, or the
+digamma; no more does his mother. What is he sent to school for? Well,
+partly because he wanted so to go. If he'll only turn out a brave,
+helpful, truth-telling Englishman, and a gentleman, and a Christian,
+that's all I want," thought the Squire; and upon this view of the case
+he framed his last words of advice to Tom, which were well enough suited
+to his purpose.
+
+For they were Tom's first thoughts as he tumbled out of bed at the
+summons of boots, and proceeded rapidly to wash and dress himself. At
+ten minutes to three he was down in the coffee-room in his stockings,
+carrying his hat-box, coat, and comforter in his hand; and there he
+found his father nursing a bright fire, and a cup of hot coffee and a
+hard biscuit on the table.
+
+"Now, then, Tom, give us your things here, and drink this. There's
+nothing like starting warm, old fellow."
+
+Tom addressed himself to the coffee, and prattled away while he worked
+himself into his shoes and his greatcoat, well warmed through--a
+Petersham coat with velvet collar, made tight after the abominable
+fashion of those days. And just as he is swallowing his last mouthful,
+winding his comforter round his throat, and tucking the ends into the
+breast of his coat, the horn sounds; boots looks in and says, "Tally-ho,
+sir;" and they hear the ring and the rattle of the four fast trotters
+and the town-made drag, as it dashes up to the Peacock.
+
+"Anything for us, Bob?" says the burly guard, dropping down from behind,
+and slapping himself across the chest.
+
+"Young gen'lm'n, Rugby; three parcels, Leicester; hamper o' game,
+Rugby," answers hostler.
+
+"Tell young gent to look alive," says guard, opening the hind-boot and
+shooting in the parcels after examining them by the lamps. "Here; shove
+the portmanteau up a-top. I'll fasten him presently.--Now then, sir,
+jump up behind."
+
+"Good-bye, father--my love at home." A last shake of the hand. Up goes
+Tom, the guard catching his hatbox and holding on with one hand, while
+with the other he claps the horn to his mouth. Toot, toot, toot! the
+hostlers let go their heads, the four bays plunge at the collar, and
+away goes the Tally-ho into the darkness, forty-five seconds from the
+time they pulled up. Hostler, boots, and the Squire stand looking after
+them under the Peacock lamp.
+
+"Sharp work!" says the Squire, and goes in again to his bed, the coach
+being well out of sight and hearing.
+
+Tom stands up on the coach and looks back at his father's figure as long
+as he can see it; and then the guard, having disposed of his luggage,
+comes to an anchor, and finishes his buttonings and other preparations
+for facing the three hours before dawn--no joke for those who minded
+cold, on a fast coach in November, in the reign of his late Majesty.
+
+I sometimes think that you boys of this generation are a deal tenderer
+fellows than we used to be. At any rate you're much more comfortable
+travellers, for I see every one of you with his rug or plaid, and other
+dodges for preserving the caloric, and most of you going in, those
+fuzzy, dusty, padded first-class carriages. It was another affair
+altogether, a dark ride on the top of the Tally-ho, I can tell you, in a
+tight Petersham coat, and your feet dangling six inches from the floor.
+Then you knew what cold was, and what it was to be without legs, for not
+a bit of feeling had you in them after the first half-hour. But it had
+its pleasures, the old dark ride. First there was the consciousness of
+silent endurance, so dear to every Englishman--of standing out against
+something, and not giving in. Then there was the music of the rattling
+harness, and the ring of the horses' feet on the hard road, and the
+glare of the two bright lamps through the steaming hoar frost, over the
+leaders' ears, into the darkness, and the cheery toot of the guard's
+horn, to warn some drowsy pikeman or the hostler at the next change; and
+the looking forward to daylight; and last, but not least, the delight of
+returning sensation in your toes.
+
+Then the break of dawn and the sunrise, where can they be ever seen in
+perfection but from a coach roof? You want motion and change and music
+to see them in their glory--not the music of singing men and singing
+women, but good, silent music, which sets itself in your own head, the
+accompaniment of work and getting over the ground.
+
+The Tally-ho is past St. Albans, and Tom is enjoying the ride, though
+half-frozen. The guard, who is alone with him on the back of the coach,
+is silent, but has muffled Tom's feet up in straw, and put the end of an
+oat-sack over his knees. The darkness has driven him inwards, and he
+has gone over his little past life, and thought of all his doings and
+promises, and of his mother and sister, and his father's last words; and
+has made fifty good resolutions, and means to bear himself like a brave
+Brown as he is, though a young one. Then he has been forward into the
+mysterious boy-future, speculating as to what sort of place Rugby is,
+and what they do there, and calling up all the stories of public schools
+which he has heard from big boys in the holidays. He is choke-full of
+hope and life, notwithstanding the cold, and kicks his heels against the
+back-board, and would like to sing, only he doesn't know how his friend
+the silent guard might take it.
+
+And now the dawn breaks at the end of the fourth stage, and the coach
+pulls up at a little roadside inn with huge stables behind. There is a
+bright fire gleaming through the red curtains of the bar window, and
+the door is open. The coachman catches his whip into a double thong, and
+throws it to the hostler; the steam of the horses rises straight up
+into the air. He has put them along over the last two miles, and is two
+minutes before his time. He rolls down from the box and into the inn.
+The guard rolls off behind. "Now, sir," says he to Tom, "you just jump
+down, and I'll give you a drop of something to keep the cold out."
+
+Tom finds a difficulty in jumping, or indeed in finding the top of the
+wheel with his feet, which may be in the next world for all he feels;
+so the guard picks him off the coach top, and sets him on his legs, and
+they stump off into the bar, and join the coachman and the other outside
+passengers.
+
+Here a fresh-looking barmaid serves them each with a glass of early purl
+as they stand before the fire, coachman and guard exchanging business
+remarks. The purl warms the cockles of Tom's heart, and makes him cough.
+
+"Rare tackle that, sir, of a cold morning," says the coachman, smiling.
+"Time's up." They are out again and up; coachee the last, gathering the
+reins into his hands and talking to Jem the hostler about the mare's
+shoulder, and then swinging himself up on to the box--the horses dashing
+off in a canter before he falls into his seat. Toot-toot-tootle-too goes
+the horn, and away they are again, five-and-thirty miles on their road
+(nearly half-way to Rugby, thinks Tom), and the prospect of breakfast at
+the end of the stage.
+
+And now they begin to see, and the early life of the country-side comes
+out--a market cart or two; men in smock-frocks going to their work, pipe
+in mouth, a whiff of which is no bad smell this bright morning. The sun
+gets up, and the mist shines like silver gauze. They pass the hounds
+jogging along to a distant meet, at the heels of the huntsman's back,
+whose face is about the colour of the tails of his old pink, as he
+exchanges greetings with coachman and guard. Now they pull up at a
+lodge, and take on board a well-muffled-up sportsman, with his gun-case
+and carpet-bag, An early up-coach meets them, and the coachmen gather
+up their horses, and pass one another with the accustomed lift of the
+elbow, each team doing eleven miles an hour, with a mile to spare behind
+if necessary. And here comes breakfast.
+
+"Twenty minutes here, gentlemen," says the coachman, as they pull up at
+half-past seven at the inn-door.
+
+Have we not endured nobly this morning? and is not this a worthy reward
+for much endurance? There is the low, dark wainscoted room hung with
+sporting prints; the hat-stand (with a whip or two standing up in it
+belonging to bagmen who are still snug in bed) by the door; the blazing
+fire, with the quaint old glass over the mantelpiece, in which is stuck
+a large card with the list of the meets for the week of the county
+hounds; the table covered with the whitest of cloths and of china, and
+bearing a pigeon-pie, ham, round of cold boiled beef cut from a mammoth
+ox, and the great loaf of household bread on a wooden trencher. And
+here comes in the stout head waiter, puffing under a tray of hot
+viands--kidneys and a steak, transparent rashers and poached eggs,
+buttered toast and muffins, coffee and tea, all smoking hot. The table
+can never hold it all. The cold meats are removed to the sideboard--they
+were only put on for show and to give us an appetite. And now fall on,
+gentlemen all. It is a well-known sporting-house, and the breakfasts are
+famous. Two or three men in pink, on their way to the meet, drop in, and
+are very jovial and sharp-set, as indeed we all are.
+
+"Tea or coffee, sir?" says head waiter, coming round to Tom.
+
+"Coffee, please," says Tom, with his mouth full of muffin and kidney.
+Coffee is a treat to him, tea is not.
+
+Our coachman, I perceive, who breakfasts with us, is a cold beef man.
+He also eschews hot potations, and addicts himself to a tankard of ale,
+which is brought him by the barmaid. Sportsman looks on approvingly, and
+orders a ditto for himself.
+
+Tom has eaten kidney and pigeon-pie, and imbibed coffee, till his little
+skin is as tight as a drum; and then has the further pleasure of paying
+head waiter out of his own purse, in a dignified manner, and walks out
+before the inn-door to see the horses put to. This is done leisurely and
+in a highly-finished manner by the hostlers, as if they enjoyed the not
+being hurried. Coachman comes out with his waybill, and puffing a fat
+cigar which the sportsman has given him. Guard emerges from the tap,
+where he prefers breakfasting, licking round a tough-looking doubtful
+cheroot, which you might tie round your finger, and three whiffs of
+which would knock any one else out of time.
+
+The pinks stand about the inn-door lighting cigars and waiting to see us
+start, while their hacks are led up and down the market-place, on which
+the inn looks. They all know our sportsman, and we feel a reflected
+credit when we see him chatting and laughing with them.
+
+"Now, sir, please," says the coachman. All the rest of the passengers
+are up; the guard is locking up the hind-boot.
+
+"A good run to you!" says the sportsman to the pinks, and is by the
+coachman's side in no time.
+
+"Let 'em go, Dick!" The hostlers fly back, drawing off the cloths from
+their glossy loins, and away we go through the market-place and down the
+High Street, looking in at the first-floor windows, and seeing several
+worthy burgesses shaving thereat; while all the shopboys who are
+cleaning the windows, and housemaids who are doing the steps, stop and
+look pleased as we rattle past, as if we were a part of their legitimate
+morning's amusement. We clear the town, and are well out between the
+hedgerows again as the town clock strikes eight.
+
+The sun shines almost warmly, and breakfast has oiled all springs
+and loosened all tongues. Tom is encouraged by a remark or two of the
+guard's between the puffs of his oily cheroot, and besides is getting
+tired of not talking. He is too full of his destination to talk about
+anything else, and so asks the guard if he knows Rugby.
+
+"Goes through it every day of my life. Twenty minutes afore twelve
+down--ten o'clock up."
+
+"What sort of place is it, please?" says Tom.
+
+Guard looks at him with a comical expression. "Werry out-o'-the-way
+place, sir; no paving to streets, nor no lighting. 'Mazin' big horse and
+cattle fair in autumn--lasts a week--just over now. Takes town a week to
+get clean after it. Fairish hunting country. But slow place, sir, slow
+place--off the main road, you see--only three coaches a day, and one on
+'em a two-oss wan, more like a hearse nor a coach--Regulator--comes from
+Oxford. Young genl'm'n at school calls her Pig and Whistle, and goes up
+to college by her (six miles an hour) when they goes to enter. Belong to
+school, sir?"
+
+"Yes," says Tom, not unwilling for a moment that the guard should think
+him an old boy. But then, having some qualms as to the truth of the
+assertion, and seeing that if he were to assume the character of an old
+boy he couldn't go on asking the questions he wanted, added--"That is to
+say, I'm on my way there. I'm a new boy."
+
+The guard looked as if he knew this quite as well as Tom.
+
+"You're werry late, sir," says the guard; "only six weeks to-day to the
+end of the half." Tom assented. "We takes up fine loads this day six
+weeks, and Monday and Tuesday arter. Hopes we shall have the pleasure of
+carrying you back."
+
+Tom said he hoped they would; but he thought within himself that his
+fate would probably be the Pig and Whistle.
+
+"It pays uncommon cert'nly," continues the guard. "Werry free with their
+cash is the young genl'm'n. But, Lor' bless you, we gets into such rows
+all 'long the road, what wi' their pea-shooters, and long whips, and
+hollering, and upsetting every one as comes by, I'd a sight sooner
+carry one or two on 'em, sir, as I may be a-carryin' of you now, than a
+coach-load."
+
+"What do they do with the pea-shooters?" inquires Tom.
+
+"Do wi' 'em! Why, peppers every one's faces as we comes near, 'cept the
+young gals, and breaks windows wi' them too, some on 'em shoots so hard.
+Now 'twas just here last June, as we was a-driving up the first-day
+boys, they was mendin' a quarter-mile of road, and there was a lot of
+Irish chaps, reg'lar roughs, a-breaking stones. As we comes up, 'Now,
+boys,' says young gent on the box (smart young fellow and desper't
+reckless), 'here's fun! Let the Pats have it about the ears.' 'God's
+sake sir!' says Bob (that's my mate the coachman); 'don't go for to
+shoot at 'em. They'll knock us off the coach.' 'Damme, coachee,' says
+young my lord, 'you ain't afraid.--Hoora, boys! let 'em have it.'
+'Hoora!' sings out the others, and fill their mouths choke-full of peas
+to last the whole line. Bob, seeing as 'twas to come, knocks his hat
+over his eyes, hollers to his osses, and shakes 'em up; and away we goes
+up to the line on 'em, twenty miles an hour. The Pats begin to hoora
+too, thinking it was a runaway; and first lot on 'em stands grinnin'
+and wavin' their old hats as we comes abreast on 'em; and then you'd ha'
+laughed to see how took aback and choking savage they looked, when they
+gets the peas a-stinging all over 'em. But bless you, the laugh weren't
+all of our side, sir, by a long way. We was going so fast, and they was
+so took aback, that they didn't take what was up till we was half-way
+up the line. Then 'twas, 'Look out all!' surely. They howls all down the
+line fit to frighten you; some on 'em runs arter us and tries to clamber
+up behind, only we hits 'em over the fingers and pulls their hands off;
+one as had had it very sharp act'ly runs right at the leaders, as though
+he'd ketch 'em by the heads, only luck'ly for him he misses his tip and
+comes over a heap o' stones first. The rest picks up stones, and gives
+it us right away till we gets out of shot, the young gents holding out
+werry manful with the pea-shooters and such stones as lodged on us, and
+a pretty many there was too. Then Bob picks hisself up again, and looks
+at young gent on box werry solemn. Bob'd had a rum un in the ribs,
+which'd like to ha' knocked him off the box, or made him drop the reins.
+Young gent on box picks hisself up, and so does we all, and looks round
+to count damage. Box's head cut open and his hat gone; 'nother young
+gent's hat gone; mine knocked in at the side, and not one on us as
+wasn't black and blue somewheres or another, most on 'em all over. Two
+pound ten to pay for damage to paint, which they subscribed for there
+and then, and give Bob and me a extra half-sovereign each; but I
+wouldn't go down that line again not for twenty half-sovereigns." And
+the guard shook his head slowly, and got up and blew a clear, brisk
+toot-toot.
+
+"What fun!" said Tom, who could scarcely contain his pride at this
+exploit of his future school-fellows. He longed already for the end of
+the half, that he might join them.
+
+"'Taint such good fun, though, sir, for the folk as meets the coach, nor
+for we who has to go back with it next day. Them Irishers last summer
+had all got stones ready for us, and was all but letting drive, and we'd
+got two reverend gents aboard too. We pulled up at the beginning of
+the line, and pacified them, and we're never going to carry no more
+pea-shooters, unless they promises not to fire where there's a line of
+Irish chaps a-stonebreaking." The guard stopped and pulled away at his
+cheroot, regarding Tom benignantly the while.
+
+"Oh, don't stop! Tell us something more about the pea-shooting."
+
+"Well, there'd like to have been a pretty piece of work over it at
+Bicester, a while back. We was six mile from the town, when we meets an
+old square-headed gray-haired yeoman chap, a-jogging along quite quiet.
+He looks up at the coach, and just then a pea hits him on the nose, and
+some catches his cob behind and makes him dance up on his hind legs. I
+see'd the old boy's face flush and look plaguy awkward, and I thought we
+was in for somethin' nasty.
+
+"He turns his cob's head and rides quietly after us just out of shot.
+How that 'ere cob did step! We never shook him off not a dozen yards
+in the six miles. At first the young gents was werry lively on him; but
+afore we got in, seeing how steady the old chap come on, they was quite
+quiet, and laid their heads together what they should do. Some was for
+fighting, some for axing his pardon. He rides into the town close after
+us, comes up when we stops, and says the two as shot at him must come
+before a magistrate; and a great crowd comes round, and we couldn't get
+the osses to. But the young uns they all stand by one another, and says
+all or none must go, and as how they'd fight it out, and have to be
+carried. Just as 'twas gettin' serious, and the old boy and the mob was
+going to pull 'em off the coach, one little fellow jumps up and says,
+'Here--I'll stay. I'm only going three miles farther. My father's name's
+Davis; he's known about here, and I'll go before the magistrate with
+this gentleman.' 'What! be thee parson Davis's son?' says the old boy.
+'Yes,' says the young un. 'Well, I be mortal sorry to meet thee in such
+company; but for thy father's sake and thine (for thee bist a brave
+young chap) I'll say no more about it.' Didn't the boys cheer him, and
+the mob cheered the young chap; and then one of the biggest gets down,
+and begs his pardon werry gentlemanly for all the rest, saying as they
+all had been plaguy vexed from the first, but didn't like to ax his
+pardon till then, 'cause they felt they hadn't ought to shirk the
+consequences of their joke. And then they all got down, and shook hands
+with the old boy, and asked him to all parts of the country, to their
+homes; and we drives off twenty minutes behind time, with cheering and
+hollering as if we was county 'members. But, Lor' bless you, sir," says
+the guard, smacking his hand down on his knee and looking full into
+Tom's face, "ten minutes arter they was all as bad as ever."
+
+Tom showed such undisguised and open-mouthed interest in his narrations
+that the old guard rubbed up his memory, and launched out into a graphic
+history of all the performances of the boys on the roads for the last
+twenty years. Off the road he couldn't go; the exploit must have been
+connected with horses or vehicles to hang in the old fellow's head. Tom
+tried him off his own ground once or twice, but found he knew nothing
+beyond, and so let him have his head, and the rest of the road bowled
+easily away; for old Blow-hard (as the boys called him) was a dry old
+file, with much kindness and humour, and a capital spinner of a yarn
+when he had broken the neck of his day's work, and got plenty of ale
+under his belt.
+
+What struck Tom's youthful imagination most was the desperate and
+lawless character of most of the stories. Was the guard hoaxing him? He
+couldn't help hoping that they were true. It's very odd how almost all
+English boys love danger. You can get ten to join a game, or climb a
+tree, or swim a stream, when there's a chance of breaking their limbs or
+getting drowned, for one who'll stay on level ground, or in his depth,
+or play quoits or bowls.
+
+The guard had just finished an account of a desperate fight which had
+happened at one of the fairs between the drovers and the farmers with
+their whips, and the boys with cricket-bats and wickets, which arose out
+of a playful but objectionable practice of the boys going round to the
+public-houses and taking the linch-pins out of the wheels of the gigs,
+and was moralizing upon the way in which the Doctor, "a terrible stern
+man he'd heard tell," had come down upon several of the performers,
+"sending three on 'em off next morning in a po-shay with a parish
+constable," when they turned a corner and neared the milestone, the
+third from Rugby. By the stone two boys stood, their jackets buttoned
+tight, waiting for the coach.
+
+"Look here, sir," says the guard, after giving a sharp toot-toot;
+"there's two on 'em; out-and-out runners they be. They comes out about
+twice or three times a week, and spirts a mile alongside of us."
+
+And as they came up, sure enough, away went two boys along the footpath,
+keeping up with the horses--the first a light, clean-made fellow going
+on springs; the other stout and round-shouldered, labouring in his pace,
+but going as dogged as a bull-terrier.
+
+Old Blow-hard looked on admiringly. "See how beautiful that there un
+holds hisself together, and goes from his hips, sir," said he; "he's a
+'mazin' fine runner. Now many coachmen as drives a first-rate team'd
+put it on, and try and pass 'em. But Bob, sir, bless you, he's
+tender-hearted; he'd sooner pull in a bit if he see'd 'em a-gettin'
+beat. I do b'lieve, too, as that there un'd sooner break his heart than
+let us go by him afore next milestone."
+
+At the second milestone the boys pulled up short, and waved their
+hats to the guard, who had his watch out and shouted "4.56," thereby
+indicating that the mile had been done in four seconds under the five
+minutes. They passed several more parties of boys, all of them objects
+of the deepest interest to Tom, and came in sight of the town at ten
+minutes before twelve. Tom fetched a long breath, and thought he had
+never spent a pleasanter day. Before he went to bed he had quite settled
+that it must be the greatest day he should ever spend, and didn't alter
+his opinion for many a long year--if he has yet.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--RUGBY AND FOOTBALL.
+
+
+     "Foot and eye opposed
+     In dubious strife."--Scott.
+
+"And so here's Rugby, sir, at last, and you'll be in plenty of time
+for dinner at the School-house, as I telled you," said the old guard,
+pulling his horn out of its case and tootle-tooing away, while the
+coachman shook up his horses, and carried them along the side of the
+school close, round Dead-man's corner, past the school-gates, and down
+the High Street to the Spread Eagle, the wheelers in a spanking trot,
+and leaders cantering, in a style which would not have disgraced "Cherry
+Bob," "ramping, stamping, tearing, swearing Billy Harwood," or any other
+of the old coaching heroes.
+
+Tom's heart beat quick as he passed the great schoolfield or close, with
+its noble elms, in which several games at football were going on, and
+tried to take in at once the long line of gray buildings, beginning
+with the chapel, and ending with the School-house, the residence of the
+head-master, where the great flag was lazily waving from the highest
+round tower. And he began already to be proud of being a Rugby boy, as
+he passed the schoolgates, with the oriel window above, and saw the boys
+standing there, looking as if the town belonged to them, and nodding in
+a familiar manner to the coachman, as if any one of them would be quite
+equal to getting on the box, and working the team down street as well as
+he.
+
+One of the young heroes, however, ran out from the rest, and scrambled
+up behind; where, having righted himself, and nodded to the guard, with
+"How do, Jem?" he turned short round to Tom, and after looking him over
+for a minute, began,--
+
+"I say, you fellow, is your name Brown?"
+
+"Yes," said Tom, in considerable astonishment, glad, however, to have
+lighted on some one already who seemed to know him.
+
+"Ah, I thought so. You know my old aunt, Miss East. She lives somewhere
+down your way in Berkshire. She wrote to me that you were coming to-day,
+and asked me to give you a lift."
+
+Tom was somewhat inclined to resent the patronizing air of his new
+friend, a boy of just about his own height and age, but gifted with
+the most transcendent coolness and assurance, which Tom felt to be
+aggravating and hard to bear, but couldn't for the life of him help
+admiring and envying--especially when young my lord begins hectoring
+two or three long loafing fellows, half porter, half stableman, with
+a strong touch of the blackguard, and in the end arranges with one of
+them, nicknamed Cooey, to carry Tom's luggage up to the School-house for
+sixpence.
+
+"And hark 'ee, Cooey; it must be up in ten minutes, or no more jobs from
+me. Come along, Brown." And away swaggers the young potentate, with his
+hands in his pockets, and Tom at his side.
+
+"All right, sir," says Cooey, touching his hat, with a leer and a wink
+at his companions.
+
+"Hullo though," says East, pulling up, and taking another look at Tom;
+"this'll never do. Haven't you got a hat? We never wear caps here. Only
+the louts wear caps. Bless you, if you were to go into the quadrangle
+with that thing on, I don't know what'd happen." The very idea was quite
+beyond young Master East, and he looked unutterable things.
+
+Tom thought his cap a very knowing affair, but confessed that he had
+a hat in his hat-box; which was accordingly at once extracted from the
+hind-boot, and Tom equipped in his go-to-meeting roof, as his new friend
+called it. But this didn't quite suit his fastidious taste in another
+minute, being too shiny; so, as they walk up the town, they dive into
+Nixon's the hatter's, and Tom is arrayed, to his utter astonishment, and
+without paying for it, in a regulation cat-skin at seven-and-sixpence,
+Nixon undertaking to send the best hat up to the matron's room,
+School-house, in half an hour.
+
+"You can send in a note for a tile on Monday, and make it all right, you
+know," said Mentor; "we're allowed two seven-and-sixers a half, besides
+what we bring from home."
+
+Tom by this time began to be conscious of his new social position and
+dignities, and to luxuriate in the realized ambition of being a public
+school-boy at last, with a vested right of spoiling two seven-and-sixers
+in half a year.
+
+"You see," said his friend, as they strolled up towards the
+school-gates, in explanation of his conduct, "a great deal depends on
+how a fellow cuts up at first. If he's got nothing odd about him, and
+answers straightforward, and holds his head up, he gets on. Now, you'll
+do very well as to rig, all but that cap. You see I'm doing the handsome
+thing by you, because my father knows yours; besides, I want to please
+the old lady. She gave me half a sov. this half, and perhaps'll double
+it next, if I keep in her good books."
+
+There's nothing for candour like a lower-school boy, and East was a
+genuine specimen--frank, hearty, and good-natured, well-satisfied with
+himself and his position, and choke-full of life and spirits, and
+all the Rugby prejudices and traditions which he had been able to get
+together in the long course of one half-year during which he had been at
+the School-house.
+
+And Tom, notwithstanding his bumptiousness, felt friends with him at
+once, and began sucking in all his ways and prejudices, as fast as he
+could understand them.
+
+East was great in the character of cicerone. He carried Tom through
+the great gates, where were only two or three boys. These satisfied
+themselves with the stock questions, "You fellow, what's your name?
+Where do you come from? How old are you? Where do you board?" and, "What
+form are you in?" And so they passed on through the quadrangle and
+a small courtyard, upon which looked down a lot of little windows
+(belonging, as his guide informed him, to some of the School-house
+studies), into the matron's room, where East introduced Tom to that
+dignitary; made him give up the key of his trunk, that the matron might
+unpack his linen, and told the story of the hat and of his own presence
+of mind: upon the relation whereof the matron laughingly scolded him for
+the coolest new boy in the house; and East, indignant at the accusation
+of newness, marched Tom off into the quadrangle, and began showing
+him the schools, and examining him as to his literary attainments; the
+result of which was a prophecy that they would be in the same form, and
+could do their lessons together.
+
+"And now come in and see my study--we shall have just time before
+dinner; and afterwards, before calling over, we'll do the close."
+
+Tom followed his guide through the School-house hall, which opens into
+the quadrangle. It is a great room, thirty feet long and eighteen high,
+or thereabouts, with two great tables running the whole length, and
+two large fireplaces at the side, with blazing fires in them, at one of
+which some dozen boys were standing and lounging, some of whom shouted
+to East to stop; but he shot through with his convoy, and landed him
+in the long, dark passages, with a large fire at the end of each, upon
+which the studies opened. Into one of these, in the bottom passage, East
+bolted with our hero, slamming and bolting the door behind them, in
+case of pursuit from the hall, and Tom was for the first time in a Rugby
+boy's citadel.
+
+He hadn't been prepared for separate studies, and was not a little
+astonished and delighted with the palace in question.
+
+It wasn't very large, certainly, being about six feet long by four
+broad. It couldn't be called light, as there were bars and a grating to
+the window; which little precautions were necessary in the studies on
+the ground-floor looking out into the close, to prevent the exit of
+small boys after locking up, and the entrance of contraband articles.
+But it was uncommonly comfortable to look at, Tom thought. The space
+under the window at the farther end was occupied by a square table
+covered with a reasonably clean and whole red and blue check tablecloth;
+a hard-seated sofa covered with red stuff occupied one side, running up
+to the end, and making a seat for one, or by sitting close, for two, at
+the table and a good stout wooden chair afforded a seat to another boy,
+so that three could sit and work together. The walls were wainscoted
+half-way up, the wainscot being covered with green baize, the remainder
+with a bright-patterned paper, on which hung three or four prints of
+dogs' heads; Grimaldi winning the Aylesbury steeple-chase; Amy Robsart,
+the reigning Waverley beauty of the day; and Tom Crib, in a posture
+of defence, which did no credit to the science of that hero, if truly
+represented. Over the door were a row of hat-pegs, and on each side
+bookcases with cupboards at the bottom, shelves and cupboards being
+filled indiscriminately with school-books, a cup or two, a
+mouse-trap and candlesticks, leather straps, a fustian bag, and some
+curious-looking articles which puzzled Tom not a little, until his
+friend explained that they were climbing-irons, and showed their use. A
+cricket-bat and small fishing-rod stood up in one corner.
+
+This was the residence of East and another boy in the same form, and had
+more interest for Tom than Windsor Castle, or any other residence in
+the British Isles. For was he not about to become the joint owner of a
+similar home, the first place he could call his own? One's own! What a
+charm there is in the words! How long it takes boy and man to find
+out their worth! How fast most of us hold on to them--faster and more
+jealously, the nearer we are to that general home into which we can
+take nothing, but must go naked as we came into the world! When shall we
+learn that he who multiplieth possessions multiplieth troubles, and that
+the one single use of things which we call our own is that they may be
+his who hath need of them?
+
+"And shall I have a study like this too?" said Tom.
+
+"Yes, of course; you'll be chummed with some fellow on Monday, and you
+can sit here till then."
+
+"What nice places!"
+
+"They're well enough," answered East, patronizingly, "only uncommon cold
+at nights sometimes. Gower--that's my chum--and I make a fire with paper
+on the floor after supper generally, only that makes it so smoky."
+
+"But there's a big fire out in the passage," said Tom.
+
+"Precious little we get out of that, though," said East. "Jones the
+praepostor has the study at the fire end, and he has rigged up an iron
+rod and green baize curtain across the passage, which he draws at night,
+and sits there with his door open; so he gets all the fire, and hears if
+we come out of our studies after eight, or make a noise. However, he's
+taken to sitting in the fifth-form room lately, so we do get a bit of
+fire now sometimes; only to keep a sharp lookout that he don't catch you
+behind his curtain when he comes down--that's all."
+
+A quarter past one now struck, and the bell began tolling for dinner; so
+they went into the hall and took their places, Tom at the very bottom
+of the second table, next to the praepostor (who sat at the end to keep
+order there), and East a few paces higher. And now Tom for the first
+time saw his future school-fellows in a body. In they came, some hot
+and ruddy from football or long walks, some pale and chilly from hard
+reading in their studies, some from loitering over the fire at
+the pastrycook's, dainty mortals, bringing with them pickles and
+saucebottles to help them with their dinners. And a great big-bearded
+man, whom Tom took for a master, began calling over the names, while the
+great joints were being rapidly carved on the third table in the
+corner by the old verger and the housekeeper. Tom's turn came last, and
+meanwhile he was all eyes, looking first with awe at the great man, who
+sat close to him, and was helped first, and who read a hard-looking book
+all the time he was eating; and when he got up and walked off to the
+fire, at the small boys round him, some of whom were reading, and the
+rest talking in whispers to one another, or stealing one another's
+bread, or shooting pellets, or digging their forks through the
+tablecloth. However, notwithstanding his curiosity, he managed to make
+a capital dinner by the time the big man called "Stand up!" and said
+grace.
+
+As soon as dinner was over, and Tom had been questioned by such of his
+neighbours as were curious as to his birth, parentage, education, and
+other like matters, East, who evidently enjoyed his new dignity of
+patron and mentor, proposed having a look at the close, which Tom,
+athirst for knowledge, gladly assented to; and they went out through the
+quadrangle and past the big fives court, into the great playground.
+
+"That's the chapel, you see," said East; "and there, just behind it, is
+the place for fights. You see it's most out of the way of the masters,
+who all live on the other side, and don't come by here after first
+lesson or callings-over. That's when the fights come off. And all this
+part where we are is the little-side ground, right up to the trees; and
+on the other side of the trees is the big-side ground, where the great
+matches are played. And there's the island in the farthest corner;
+you'll know that well enough next half, when there's island fagging. I
+say, it's horrid cold; let's have a run across." And away went East, Tom
+close behind him. East was evidently putting his best foot foremost; and
+Tom, who was mighty proud of his running, and not a little anxious
+to show his friend that, although a new boy, he was no milksop, laid
+himself down to work in his very best style. Right across the close they
+went, each doing all he knew, and there wasn't a yard between them when
+they pulled up at the island moat.
+
+"I say," said East, as soon as he got his wind, looking with much
+increased respect at Tom, "you ain't a bad scud, not by no means. Well,
+I'm as warm as a toast now."
+
+"But why do you wear white trousers in November?" said Tom. He had been
+struck by this peculiarity in the costume of almost all the School-house
+boys.
+
+"Why, bless us, don't you know? No; I forgot. Why, to-day's the
+School-house match. Our house plays the whole of the School at football.
+And we all wear white trousers, to show 'em we don't care for hacks.
+You're in luck to come to-day. You just will see a match; and Brooke's
+going to let me play in quarters. That's more than he'll do for any
+other lower-school boy, except James, and he's fourteen."
+
+"Who's Brooke?"
+
+"Why, that big fellow who called over at dinner, to be sure. He's cock
+of the school, and head of the School-house side, and the best kick and
+charger in Rugby."
+
+"Oh, but do show me where they play. And tell me about it. I love
+football so, and have played all my life. Won't Brooke let me play?"
+
+"Not he," said East, with some indignation. "Why, you don't know the
+rules; you'll be a month learning them. And then it's no joke playing-up
+in a match, I can tell you--quite another thing from your private school
+games. Why, there's been two collar-bones broken this half, and a dozen
+fellows lamed. And last year a fellow had his leg broken."
+
+Tom listened with the profoundest respect to this chapter of accidents,
+and followed East across the level ground till they came to a sort of
+gigantic gallows of two poles, eighteen feet high, fixed upright in the
+ground some fourteen feet apart, with a cross-bar running from one to
+the other at the height of ten feet or thereabouts.
+
+"This is one of the goals," said East, "and you see the other, across
+there, right opposite, under the Doctor's wall. Well, the match is for
+the best of three goals; whichever side kicks two goals wins: and it
+won't do, you see, just to kick the ball through these posts--it must go
+over the cross-bar; any height'll do, so long as it's between the posts.
+You'll have to stay in goal to touch the ball when it rolls behind the
+posts, because if the other side touch it they have a try at goal. Then
+we fellows in quarters, we play just about in front of goal here, and
+have to turn the ball and kick it back before the big fellows on the
+other side can follow it up. And in front of us all the big fellows
+play, and that's where the scrummages are mostly."
+
+Tom's respect increased as he struggled to make out his friend's
+technicalities, and the other set to work to explain the mysteries
+of "off your side," "drop-kicks," "punts," "places," and the other
+intricacies of the great science of football.
+
+"But how do you keep the ball between the goals?" said he; "I can't see
+why it mightn't go right down to the chapel."
+
+"Why; that's out of play," answered East. "You see this gravel-walk
+running down all along this side of the playing-ground, and the line
+of elms opposite on the other? Well, they're the bounds. As soon as the
+ball gets past them, it's in touch, and out of play. And then whoever
+first touches it has to knock it straight out amongst the players-up,
+who make two lines with a space between them, every fellow going on his
+own side. Ain't there just fine scrummages then! And the three trees you
+see there which come out into the play, that's a tremendous place when
+the ball hangs there, for you get thrown against the trees, and that's
+worse than any hack."
+
+Tom wondered within himself, as they strolled back again towards the
+fives court, whether the matches were really such break-neck affairs as
+East represented, and whether, if they were, he should ever get to like
+them and play up well.
+
+He hadn't long to wonder, however, for next minute East cried out,
+"Hurrah! here's the punt-about; come along and try your hand at a kick."
+The punt-about is the practice-ball, which is just brought out and
+kicked about anyhow from one boy to another before callings-over and
+dinner, and at other odd times. They joined the boys who had brought it
+out, all small School-house fellows, friends of East; and Tom had the
+pleasure of trying his skill, and performed very creditably, after first
+driving his foot three inches into the ground, and then nearly kicking
+his leg into the air, in vigorous efforts to accomplish a drop-kick
+after the manner of East.
+
+Presently more boys and bigger came out, and boys from other houses
+on their way to calling-over, and more balls were sent for. The crowd
+thickened as three o'clock approached; and when the hour struck, one
+hundred and fifty boys were hard at work. Then the balls were held, the
+master of the week came down in cap and gown to calling-over, and the
+whole school of three hundred boys swept into the big school to answer
+to their names.
+
+"I may come in, mayn't I?" said Tom, catching East by the arm, and
+longing to feel one of them.
+
+"Yes, come along; nobody'll say anything. You won't be so eager to get
+into calling-over after a month," replied his friend; and they marched
+into the big school together, and up to the farther end, where that
+illustrious form, the lower fourth, which had the honour of East's
+patronage for the time being, stood.
+
+The master mounted into the high desk by the door, and one of the
+praepostors of the week stood by him on the steps, the other three
+marching up and down the middle of the school with their canes, calling
+out, "Silence, silence!" The sixth form stood close by the door on the
+left, some thirty in number, mostly great big grown men, as Tom thought,
+surveying them from a distance with awe; the fifth form behind them,
+twice their number, and not quite so big. These on the left; and on the
+right the lower fifth, shell, and all the junior forms in order; while
+up the middle marched the three praepostors.
+
+Then the praepostor who stands by the master calls out the names,
+beginning with the sixth form; and as he calls each boy answers "here"
+to his name, and walks out. Some of the sixth stop at the door to turn
+the whole string of boys into the close. It is a great match-day, and
+every boy in the school, will he, nill he, must be there. The rest of
+the sixth go forwards into the close, to see that no one escapes by any
+of the side gates.
+
+To-day, however, being the School-house match, none of the School-house
+praepostors stay by the door to watch for truants of their side; there
+is carte blanche to the School-house fags to go where they like. "They
+trust to our honour," as East proudly informs Tom; "they know very well
+that no School-house boy would cut the match. If he did, we'd very soon
+cut him, I can tell you."
+
+The master of the week being short-sighted, and the praepostors of the
+week small and not well up to their work, the lower-school boys employ
+the ten minutes which elapse before their names are called in pelting
+one another vigorously with acorns, which fly about in all directions.
+The small praepostors dash in every now and then, and generally chastise
+some quiet, timid boy who is equally afraid of acorns and canes,
+while the principal performers get dexterously out of the way. And so
+calling-over rolls on somehow, much like the big world, punishments
+lighting on wrong shoulders, and matters going generally in a queer,
+cross-grained way, but the end coming somehow, which is, after all, the
+great point. And now the master of the week has finished, and locked up
+the big school; and the praepostors of the week come out, sweeping the
+last remnant of the school fags, who had been loafing about the corners
+by the fives court, in hopes of a chance of bolting, before them into
+the close.
+
+"Hold the punt-about!" "To the goals!" are the cries; and all stray
+balls are impounded by the authorities, and the whole mass of boys moves
+up towards the two goals, dividing as they go into three bodies. That
+little band on the left, consisting of from fifteen to twenty boys, Tom
+amongst them, who are making for the goal under the School-house wall,
+are the School-house boys who are not to play up, and have to stay in
+goal. The larger body moving to the island goal are the School boys in a
+like predicament. The great mass in the middle are the players-up, both
+sides mingled together; they are hanging their jackets (and all who mean
+real work), their hats, waistcoats, neck-handkerchiefs, and braces, on
+the railings round the small trees; and there they go by twos and
+threes up to their respective grounds. There is none of the colour and
+tastiness of get-up, you will perceive, which lends such a life to
+the present game at Rugby, making the dullest and worst-fought match a
+pretty sight. Now each house has its own uniform of cap and jersey, of
+some lively colour; but at the time we are speaking of plush caps have
+not yet come in, or uniforms of any sort, except the School-house
+white trousers, which are abominably cold to-day. Let us get to work,
+bare-headed, and girded with our plain leather straps. But we mean
+business, gentlemen.
+
+And now that the two sides have fairly sundered, and each occupies its
+own ground, and we get a good look at them, what absurdity is this? You
+don't mean to say that those fifty or sixty boys in white trousers, many
+of them quite small, are going to play that huge mass opposite? Indeed I
+do, gentlemen. They're going to try, at any rate, and won't make such
+a bad fight of it either, mark my word; for hasn't old Brooke won the
+toss, with his lucky halfpenny, and got choice of goals and kick-off?
+The new ball you may see lie there quite by itself, in the middle,
+pointing towards the School or island goal; in another minute it will be
+well on its way there. Use that minute in remarking how the Schoolhouse
+side is drilled. You will see, in the first place, that the sixth-form
+boy, who has the charge of goal, has spread his force (the goalkeepers)
+so as to occupy the whole space behind the goal-posts, at distances of
+about five yards apart. A safe and well-kept goal is the foundation of
+all good play. Old Brooke is talking to the captain of quarters, and
+now he moves away. See how that youngster spreads his men (the light
+brigade) carefully over the ground, half-way between their own goal and
+the body of their own players-up (the heavy brigade). These again play
+in several bodies. There is young Brooke and the bull-dogs. Mark them
+well. They are the "fighting brigade," the "die-hards," larking about
+at leap-frog to keep themselves warm, and playing tricks on one another.
+And on each side of old Brooke, who is now standing in the middle of
+the ground and just going to kick off, you see a separate wing of
+players-up, each with a boy of acknowledged prowess to look to--here
+Warner, and there Hedge; but over all is old Brooke, absolute as he
+of Russia, but wisely and bravely ruling over willing and worshipping
+subjects, a true football king. His face is earnest and careful as he
+glances a last time over his array, but full of pluck and hope--the sort
+of look I hope to see in my general when I go out to fight.
+
+The School side is not organized in the same way. The goal-keepers
+are all in lumps, anyhow and nohow; you can't distinguish between the
+players-up and the boys in quarters, and there is divided leadership.
+But with such odds in strength and weight it must take more than that to
+hinder them from winning; and so their leaders seem to think, for they
+let the players-up manage themselves.
+
+But now look! there is a slight move forward of the School-house wings,
+a shout of "Are you ready?" and loud affirmative reply. Old Brooke takes
+half a dozen quick steps, and away goes the ball spinning towards the
+School goal, seventy yards before it touches ground, and at no
+point above twelve or fifteen feet high, a model kick-off; and the
+School-house cheer and rush on. The ball is returned, and they meet it
+and drive it back amongst the masses of the School already in motion.
+Then the two sides close, and you can see nothing for minutes but a
+swaying crowd of boys, at one point violently agitated. That is where
+the ball is, and there are the keen players to be met, and the glory and
+the hard knocks to be got. You hear the dull thud, thud of the ball, and
+the shouts of "Off your side," "Down with him," "Put him over," "Bravo."
+This is what we call "a scrummage," gentlemen, and the first scrummage
+in a School-house match was no joke in the consulship of Plancus.
+
+But see! it has broken; the ball is driven out on the School-house side,
+and a rush of the School carries it past the School-house players-up.
+"Look out in quarters," Brooke's and twenty other voices ring out. No
+need to call, though: the School-house captain of quarters has caught it
+on the bound, dodges the foremost School boys, who are heading the rush,
+and sends it back with a good drop-kick well into the enemy's country.
+And then follows rush upon rush, and scrummage upon scrummage, the ball
+now driven through into the School-house quarters, and now into the
+School goal; for the School-house have not lost the advantage which the
+kick-off and a slight wind gave them at the outset, and are slightly
+"penning" their adversaries. You say you don't see much in it
+all--nothing but a struggling mass of boys, and a leather ball which
+seems to excite them all to great fury, as a red rag does a bull. My
+dear sir, a battle would look much the same to you, except that the
+boys would be men, and the balls iron; but a battle would be worth
+your looking at for all that, and so is a football match. You can't be
+expected to appreciate the delicate strokes of play, the turns by which
+a game is lost and won--it takes an old player to do that; but the broad
+philosophy of football you can understand if you will. Come along with
+me a little nearer, and let us consider it together.
+
+The ball has just fallen again where the two sides are thickest, and
+they close rapidly around it in a scrummage. It must be driven through
+now by force or skill, till it flies out on one side or the other.
+Look how differently the boys face it! Here come two of the bulldogs,
+bursting through the outsiders; in they go, straight to the heart of the
+scrummage, bent on driving that ball out on the opposite side. That is
+what they mean to do. My sons, my sons! you are too hot; you have gone
+past the ball, and must struggle now right through the scrummage, and
+get round and back again to your own side, before you can be of any
+further use. Here comes young Brooke; he goes in as straight as you, but
+keeps his head, and backs and bends, holding himself still behind the
+ball, and driving it furiously when he gets the chance. Take a leaf out
+of his book, you young chargers. Here comes Speedicut, and Flashman the
+School-house bully, with shouts and great action. Won't you two come up
+to young Brooke, after locking-up, by the School-house fire, with "Old
+fellow, wasn't that just a splendid scrummage by the three trees?" But
+he knows you, and so do we. You don't really want to drive that
+ball through that scrummage, chancing all hurt for the glory of the
+School-house, but to make us think that's what you want--a vastly
+different thing; and fellows of your kidney will never go through more
+than the skirts of a scrummage, where it's all push and no kicking. We
+respect boys who keep out of it, and don't sham going in; but you--we
+had rather not say what we think of you.
+
+Then the boys who are bending and watching on the outside, mark them:
+they are most useful players, the dodgers, who seize on the ball the
+moment it rolls out from amongst the chargers, and away with it across
+to the opposite goal. They seldom go into the scrummage, but must have
+more coolness than the chargers. As endless as are boys' characters, so
+are their ways of facing or not facing a scrummage at football.
+
+Three-quarters of an hour are gone; first winds are failing, and weight
+and numbers beginning to tell. Yard by yard the School-house have been
+driven back, contesting every inch of ground. The bull-dogs are the
+colour of mother earth from shoulder to ankle, except young Brooke, who
+has a marvellous knack of keeping his legs. The School-house are being
+penned in their turn, and now the ball is behind their goal, under the
+Doctor's wall. The Doctor and some of his family are there looking on,
+and seem as anxious as any boy for the success of the School-house. We
+get a minute's breathing-time before old Brooke kicks out, and he gives
+the word to play strongly for touch, by the three trees. Away goes the
+ball, and the bull-dogs after it, and in another minute there is shout
+of "In touch!" "Our ball!" Now's your time, old Brooke, while your men
+are still fresh. He stands with the ball in his hand, while the two
+sides form in deep lines opposite one another; he must strike it
+straight out between them. The lines are thickest close to him, but
+young Brooke and two or three of his men are shifting up farther,
+where the opposite line is weak. Old Brooke strikes it out straight and
+strong, and it falls opposite his brother. Hurrah! that rush has taken
+it right through the School line, and away past the three trees, far
+into their quarters, and young Brooke and the bull-dogs are close upon
+it. The School leaders rush back, shouting, "Look out in goal!" and
+strain every nerve to catch him, but they are after the fleetest foot
+in Rugby. There they go straight for the School goal-posts, quarters
+scattering before them. One after another the bull-dogs go down, but
+young Brooke holds on. "He is down." No! a long stagger, but the danger
+is past. That was the shock of Crew, the most dangerous of dodgers. And
+now he is close to the School goal, the ball not three yards before
+him. There is a hurried rush of the School fags to the spot, but no
+one throws himself on the ball, the only chance, and young Brooke has
+touched it right under the School goal-posts.
+
+The School leaders come up furious, and administer toco to the wretched
+fags nearest at hand. They may well be angry, for it is all Lombard
+Street to a china orange that the School-house kick a goal with the ball
+touched in such a good place. Old Brooke, of course, will kick it
+out, but who shall catch and place it? Call Crab Jones. Here he comes,
+sauntering along with a straw in his mouth, the queerest, coolest fish
+in Rugby. If he were tumbled into the moon this minute, he would just
+pick himself up without taking his hands out of his pockets or turning
+a hair. But it is a moment when the boldest charger's heart beats quick.
+Old Brooke stands with the ball under his arm motioning the School back;
+he will not kick out till they are all in goal, behind the posts. They
+are all edging forwards, inch by inch, to get nearer for the rush at
+Crab Jones, who stands there in front of old Brooke to catch the ball.
+If they can reach and destroy him before he catches, the danger is over;
+and with one and the same rush they will carry it right away to the
+School-house goal. Fond hope! it is kicked out and caught beautifully.
+Crab strikes his heel into the ground, to mark the spot where the ball
+was caught, beyond which the school line may not advance; but there they
+stand, five deep, ready to rush the moment the ball touches the ground.
+Take plenty of room. Don't give the rush a chance of reaching you. Place
+it true and steady. Trust Crab Jones. He has made a small hole with his
+heel for the ball to lie on, by which he is resting on one knee, with
+his eye on old Brooke. "Now!" Crab places the ball at the word, old
+Brooke kicks, and it rises slowly and truly as the School rush forward.
+
+Then a moment's pause, while both sides look up at the spinning ball.
+There it flies, straight between the two posts, some five feet above the
+cross-bar, an unquestioned goal; and a shout of real, genuine joy rings
+out from the School-house players-up, and a faint echo of it comes over
+the close from the goal-keepers under the Doctor's wall. A goal in the
+first hour--such a thing hasn't been done in the School-house match
+these five years.
+
+"Over!" is the cry. The two sides change goals, and the School-house
+goal-keepers come threading their way across through the masses of
+the School, the most openly triumphant of them--amongst whom is Tom, a
+School-house boy of two hours' standing--getting their ears boxed in
+the transit. Tom indeed is excited beyond measure, and it is all the
+sixth-form boy, kindest and safest of goal-keepers, has been able to do,
+to keep him from rushing out whenever the ball has been near their
+goal. So he holds him by his side, and instructs him in the science of
+touching.
+
+At this moment Griffith, the itinerant vender of oranges from Hill
+Morton, enters the close with his heavy baskets. There is a rush of
+small boys upon the little pale-faced man, the two sides mingling
+together, subdued by the great goddess Thirst, like the English and
+French by the streams in the Pyrenees. The leaders are past oranges and
+apples, but some of them visit their coats, and apply innocent-looking
+ginger-beer bottles to their mouths. It is no ginger-beer though, I
+fear, and will do you no good. One short mad rush, and then a stitch in
+the side, and no more honest play. That's what comes of those bottles.
+
+But now Griffith's baskets are empty, the ball is placed again midway,
+and the School are going to kick off. Their leaders have sent their
+lumber into goal, and rated the rest soundly, and one hundred and twenty
+picked players-up are there, bent on retrieving the game. They are to
+keep the ball in front of the School-house goal, and then to drive it in
+by sheer strength and weight. They mean heavy play and no mistake, and
+so old Brooke sees, and places Crab Jones in quarters just before the
+goal, with four or five picked players who are to keep the ball away to
+the sides, where a try at goal, if obtained, will be less dangerous than
+in front. He himself, and Warner and Hedge, who have saved themselves
+till now, will lead the charges.
+
+"Are you ready?" "Yes." And away comes the ball, kicked high in the air,
+to give the School time to rush on and catch it as it falls. And here
+they are amongst us. Meet them like Englishmen, you Schoolhouse boys,
+and charge them home. Now is the time to show what mettle is in you;
+and there shall be a warm seat by the hall fire, and honour, and lots of
+bottled beer to-night for him who does his duty in the next half-hour.
+And they are well met. Again and again the cloud of their players-up
+gathers before our goal, and comes threatening on, and Warner or Hedge,
+with young Brooke and the relics of the bull-dogs, break through
+and carry the ball back; and old Brooke ranges the field like Job's
+war-horse. The thickest scrummage parts asunder before his rush, like
+the waves before a clipper's bows; his cheery voice rings out over the
+field, and his eye is everywhere. And if these miss the ball, and it
+rolls dangerously in front of our goal, Crab Jones and his men
+have seized it and sent it away towards the sides with the unerring
+drop-kick. This is worth living for--the whole sum of school-boy
+existence gathered up into one straining, struggling half-hour, a
+half-hour worth a year of common life.
+
+The quarter to five has struck, and the play slackens for a minute
+before goal; but there is Crew, the artful dodger, driving the ball in
+behind our goal, on the island side, where our quarters are weakest. Is
+there no one to meet him? Yes; look at little East! The ball is just at
+equal distances between the two, and they rush together, the young man
+of seventeen and the boy of twelve, and kick it at the same moment. Crew
+passes on without a stagger; East is hurled forward by the shock, and
+plunges on his shoulder, as if he would bury himself in the ground;
+but the ball rises straight into the air, and falls behind Crew's back,
+while the "bravoes" of the School-house attest the pluckiest charge of
+all that hard-fought day. Warner picks East up lame and half stunned,
+and he hobbles back into goal, conscious of having played the man.
+
+And now the last minutes are come, and the School gather for their last
+rush, every boy of the hundred and twenty who has a run left in him.
+Reckless of the defence of their own goal, on they come across the level
+big-side ground, the ball well down amongst them, straight for our goal,
+like the column of the Old Guard up the slope at Waterloo. All former
+charges have been child's play to this. Warner and Hedge have met them,
+but still on they come. The bull-dogs rush in for the last time; they
+are hurled over or carried back, striving hand, foot, and eyelids. Old
+Brooke comes sweeping round the skirts of the play, and turning short
+round, picks out the very heart of the scrummage, and plunges in. It
+wavers for a moment; he has the ball. No, it has passed him, and his
+voice rings out clear over the advancing tide, "Look out in goal!" Crab
+Jones catches it for a moment; but before he can kick, the rush is upon
+him and passes over him; and he picks himself up behind them with his
+straw in his mouth, a little dirtier, but as cool as ever.
+
+The ball rolls slowly in behind the School-house goal, not three yards
+in front of a dozen of the biggest School players-up.
+
+There stands the School-house praepostor, safest of goal-keepers, and Tom
+Brown by his side, who has learned his trade by this time. Now is
+your time, Tom. The blood of all the Browns is up, and the two rush in
+together, and throw themselves on the ball, under the very feet of the
+advancing column--the praepostor on his hands and knees, arching his
+back, and Tom all along on his face. Over them topple the leaders of the
+rush, shooting over the back of the praepostor, but falling flat on Tom,
+and knocking all the wind out of his small carcass. "Our ball," says the
+praepostor, rising with his prize; "but get up there; there's a little
+fellow under you." They are hauled and roll off him, and Tom is
+discovered, a motionless body.
+
+Old Brooke picks him up. "Stand back, give him air," he says; and then
+feeling his limbs, adds, "No bones broken.--How do you feel, young un?"
+
+"Hah-hah!" gasps Tom, as his wind comes back; "pretty well, thank
+you--all right."
+
+"Who is he?" says Brooke.
+
+"Oh, it's Brown; he's a new boy; I know him," says East, coming up.
+
+"Well, he is a plucky youngster, and will make a player," says Brooke.
+
+And five o'clock strikes. "No side" is called, and the first day of the
+School-house match is over.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--AFTER THE MATCH.
+
+     "Some food we had."--Shakespeare.
+     [Greek text]--Theocr. Id.
+
+As the boys scattered away from the ground, and East, leaning on Tom's
+arm, and limping along, was beginning to consider what luxury they
+should go and buy for tea to celebrate that glorious victory, the two
+Brookes came striding by. Old Brooke caught sight of East, and stopped;
+put his hand kindly on his shoulder, and said, "Bravo, youngster; you
+played famously. Not much the matter, I hope?"
+
+"No, nothing at all," said East--"only a little twist from that
+charge."
+
+"Well, mind and get all right for next Saturday." And the leader passed
+on, leaving East better for those few words than all the opodeldoc in
+England would have made him, and Tom ready to give one of his ears for
+as much notice. Ah! light words of those whom we love and honour, what
+a power ye are, and how carelessly wielded by those who can use you!
+Surely for these things also God will ask an account.
+
+"Tea's directly after locking-up, you see," said East, hobbling along as
+fast as he could, "so you come along down to Sally Harrowell's; that's
+our School-house tuck-shop. She bakes such stunning murphies, we'll have
+a penn'orth each for tea. Come along, or they'll all be gone."
+
+Tom's new purse and money burnt in his pocket; he wondered, as they
+toddled through the quadrangle and along the street, whether East
+would be insulted if he suggested further extravagance, as he had not
+sufficient faith in a pennyworth of potatoes. At last he blurted out,--
+
+"I say, East, can't we get something else besides potatoes? I've got
+lots of money, you know."
+
+"Bless us, yes; I forgot," said East, "you've only just come. You see
+all my tin's been gone this twelve weeks--it hardly ever lasts beyond
+the first fortnight; and our allowances were all stopped this morning
+for broken windows, so I haven't got a penny. I've got a tick at
+Sally's, of course; but then I hate running it high, you see, towards
+the end of the half, 'cause one has to shell out for it all directly one
+comes back, and that's a bore."
+
+Tom didn't understand much of this talk, but seized on the fact that
+East had no money, and was denying himself some little pet luxury in
+consequence. "Well, what shall I buy?" said he, "I'm uncommon hungry."
+
+"I say," said East, stopping to look at him and rest his leg, "you're a
+trump, Brown. I'll do the same by you next half. Let's have a pound of
+sausages then. That's the best grub for tea I know of."
+
+"Very well," said Tom, as pleased as possible; "where do they sell
+them?"
+
+"Oh, over here, just opposite." And they crossed the street and walked
+into the cleanest little front room of a small house, half parlour,
+half shop, and bought a pound of most particular sausages, East talking
+pleasantly to Mrs. Porter while she put them in paper, and Tom doing the
+paying part.
+
+From Porter's they adjourned to Sally Harrowell's, where they found a
+lot of School-house boys waiting for the roast potatoes, and relating
+their own exploits in the day's match at the top of their voices. The
+street opened at once into Sally's kitchen, a low brick-floored room,
+with large recess for fire, and chimney-corner seats. Poor little Sally,
+the most good-natured and much-enduring of womankind, was bustling
+about, with a napkin in her hand, from her own oven to those of the
+neighbours' cottages up the yard at the back of the house. Stumps, her
+husband, a short, easy-going shoemaker, with a beery, humorous eye and
+ponderous calves, who lived mostly on his wife's earnings, stood in
+a corner of the room, exchanging shots of the roughest description of
+repartee with every boy in turn. "Stumps, you lout, you've had too
+much beer again to-day." "'Twasn't of your paying for, then." "Stumps's
+calves are running down into his ankles; they want to get to grass."
+"Better be doing that than gone altogether like yours," etc. Very poor
+stuff it was, but it served to make time pass; and every now and then
+Sally arrived in the middle with a smoking tin of potatoes, which was
+cleared off in a few seconds, each boy as he seized his lot running
+off to the house with "Put me down two-penn'orth, Sally;" "Put down
+three-penn'orth between me and Davis," etc. How she ever kept the
+accounts so straight as she did, in her head and on her slate, was a
+perfect wonder.
+
+East and Tom got served at last, and started back for the School-house,
+just as the locking-up bell began to ring, East on the way recounting
+the life and adventures of Stumps, who was a character. Amongst his
+other small avocations, he was the hind carrier of a sedan-chair, the
+last of its race, in which the Rugby ladies still went out to tea, and
+in which, when he was fairly harnessed and carrying a load, it was the
+delight of small and mischievous boys to follow him and whip his calves.
+This was too much for the temper even of Stumps, and he would pursue his
+tormentors in a vindictive and apoplectic manner when released, but was
+easily pacified by twopence to buy beer with.
+
+The lower-school boys of the School-house, some fifteen in number, had
+tea in the lower-fifth school, and were presided over by the old verger
+or head-porter. Each boy had a quarter of a loaf of bread and pat of
+butter, and as much tea as he pleased; and there was scarcely one
+who didn't add to this some further luxury, such as baked potatoes, a
+herring, sprats, or something of the sort. But few at this period of the
+half-year could live up to a pound of Porter's sausages, and East was
+in great magnificence upon the strength of theirs. He had produced a
+toasting-fork from his study, and set Tom to toast the sausages,
+while he mounted guard over their butter and potatoes. "'Cause," as he
+explained, "you're a new boy, and they'll play you some trick and get
+our butter; but you can toast just as well as I." So Tom, in the midst
+of three or four more urchins similarly employed, toasted his face and
+the sausages at the same time before the huge fire, till the latter
+cracked; when East from his watch-tower shouted that they were done, and
+then the feast proceeded, and the festive cups of tea were filled
+and emptied, and Tom imparted of the sausages in small bits to many
+neighbours, and thought he had never tasted such good potatoes or seen
+such jolly boys. They on their parts waived all ceremony, and pegged
+away at the sausages and potatoes, and remembering Tom's performance in
+goal, voted East's new crony a brick. After tea, and while the things
+were being cleared away, they gathered round the fire, and the talk on
+the match still went on; and those who had them to show pulled up their
+trousers and showed the hacks they had received in the good cause.
+
+They were soon, however, all turned out of the school; and East
+conducted Tom up to his bedroom, that he might get on clean things, and
+wash himself before singing.
+
+"What's singing?" said Tom, taking his head out of his basin, where he
+had been plunging it in cold water.
+
+"Well, you are jolly green," answered his friend, from a neighbouring
+basin. "Why, the last six Saturdays of every half we sing of course; and
+this is the first of them. No first lesson to do, you know, and lie in
+bed to-morrow morning."
+
+"But who sings?"
+
+"Why, everybody, of course; you'll see soon enough. We begin directly
+after supper, and sing till bed-time. It ain't such good fun now,
+though, as in the summer half; 'cause then we sing in the little fives
+court, under the library, you know. We take out tables, and the big boys
+sit round and drink beer--double allowance on Saturday nights; and we
+cut about the quadrangle between the songs, and it looks like a lot of
+robbers in a cave. And the louts come and pound at the great gates, and
+we pound back again, and shout at them. But this half we only sing in
+the hall. Come along down to my study."
+
+Their principal employment in the study was to clear out East's table;
+removing the drawers and ornaments and tablecloth; for he lived in the
+bottom passage, and his table was in requisition for the singing.
+
+Supper came in due course at seven o'clock, consisting of bread and
+cheese and beer, which was all saved for the singing; and directly
+afterwards the fags went to work to prepare the hall. The School-house
+hall, as has been said, is a great long high room, with two large fires
+on one side, and two large iron-bound tables, one running down the
+middle, and the other along the wall opposite the fireplaces. Around the
+upper fire the fags placed the tables in the form of a horse-shoe, and
+upon them the jugs with the Saturday night's allowance of beer. Then
+the big boys used to drop in and take their seats, bringing with them
+bottled beer and song books; for although they all knew the songs by
+heart, it was the thing to have an old manuscript book descended from
+some departed hero, in which they were all carefully written out.
+
+The sixth-form boys had not yet appeared; so, to fill up the gap, an
+interesting and time-honoured ceremony was gone through. Each new boy
+was placed on the table in turn, and made to sing a solo, under the
+penalty of drinking a large mug of salt and water if he resisted or
+broke down. However, the new boys all sing like nightingales to-night,
+and the salt water is not in requisition--Tom, as his part, performing
+the old west-country song of "The Leather Bottel" with considerable
+applause. And at the half-hour down come the sixth and fifth form boys,
+and take their places at the tables, which are filled up by the next
+biggest boys, the rest, for whom there is no room at the table, standing
+round outside.
+
+The glasses and mugs are filled, and then the fugleman strikes up the
+old sea-song,
+
+     "A wet sheet and a flowing sea,
+     And a wind that follows fast," etc.,
+
+which is the invariable first song in the School-house; and all the
+seventy voices join in, not mindful of harmony, but bent on noise, which
+they attain decidedly, but the general effect isn't bad. And then follow
+"The British Grenadiers," "Billy Taylor," "The Siege of Seringapatam,"
+"Three Jolly Postboys," and other vociferous songs in rapid succession,
+including "The Chesapeake and Shannon," a song lately introduced in
+honour of old Brooke; and when they come to the words,
+
+     "Brave Broke he waved his sword, crying, Now, my lads, aboard,
+     And we'll stop their playing Yankee-doodle-dandy oh!"
+
+you expect the roof to come down. The sixth and fifth know that "brave
+Broke" of the Shannon was no sort of relation to our old Brooke. The
+fourth form are uncertain in their belief, but for the most part hold
+that old Brooke was a midshipman then on board his uncle's ship. And the
+lower school never doubt for a moment that it was our old Brooke who led
+the boarders, in what capacity they care not a straw. During the pauses
+the bottled-beer corks fly rapidly, and the talk is fast and merry, and
+the big boys--at least all of them who have a fellow-feeling for dry
+throats--hand their mugs over their shoulders to be emptied by the small
+ones who stand round behind.
+
+Then Warner, the head of the house, gets up and wants to speak; but he
+can't, for every boy knows what's coming. And the big boys who sit at
+the tables pound them and cheer; and the small boys who stand behind
+pound one another, and cheer, and rush about the hall cheering. Then
+silence being made, Warner reminds them of the old School-house custom
+of drinking the healths, on the first night of singing, of those who are
+going to leave at the end of the half. "He sees that they know what he
+is going to say already" (loud cheers), "and so won't keep them, but
+only ask them to treat the toast as it deserves. It is the head of the
+eleven, the head of big-side football, their leader on this glorious
+day--Pater Brooke!"
+
+And away goes the pounding and cheering again, becoming deafening when
+old Brooke gets on his legs; till, a table having broken down, and a
+gallon or so of beer been upset, and all throats getting dry, silence
+ensues, and the hero speaks, leaning his hands on the table, and bending
+a little forwards. No action, no tricks of oratory--plain, strong, and
+straight, like his play.
+
+"Gentlemen of the School-house! I am very proud of the way in which
+you have received my name, and I wish I could say all I should like in
+return. But I know I shan't. However, I'll do the best I can to say what
+seems to me ought to be said by a fellow who's just going to leave,
+and who has spent a good slice of his life here. Eight years it is, and
+eight such years as I can never hope to have again. So now I hope you'll
+all listen to me" (loud cheers of "That we will"), "for I'm going to
+talk seriously. You're bound to listen to me for what's the use of
+calling me 'pater,' and all that, if you don't mind what I say? And
+I'm going to talk seriously, because I feel so. It's a jolly time,
+too, getting to the end of the half, and a goal kicked by us first day"
+(tremendous applause), "after one of the hardest and fiercest day's play
+I can remember in eight years." (Frantic shoutings.) "The School played
+splendidly, too, I will say, and kept it up to the last. That last
+charge of theirs would have carried away a house. I never thought to see
+anything again of old Crab there, except little pieces, when I saw him
+tumbled over by it." (Laughter and shouting, and great slapping on
+the back of Jones by the boys nearest him.) "Well, but we beat 'em."
+(Cheers.) "Ay, but why did we beat 'em? Answer me that." (Shouts of
+"Your play.") "Nonsense! 'Twasn't the wind and kick-off either--that
+wouldn't do it. 'Twasn't because we've half a dozen of the best players
+in the school, as we have. I wouldn't change Warner, and Hedge, and
+Crab, and the young un, for any six on their side." (Violent cheers.)
+"But half a dozen fellows can't keep it up for two hours against two
+hundred. Why is it, then? I'll tell you what I think. It's because we've
+more reliance on one another, more of a house feeling, more fellowship
+than the School can have. Each of us knows and can depend on his
+next-hand man better. That's why we beat 'em to-day. We've union,
+they've division--there's the secret." (Cheers.) "But how's this to be
+kept up? How's it to be improved? That's the question. For I take it
+we're all in earnest about beating the School, whatever else we care
+about. I know I'd sooner win two School-house matches running than get
+the Balliol scholarship any day." (Frantic cheers.)
+
+"Now, I'm as proud of the house as any one. I believe it's the best
+house in the school, out and out." (Cheers.) "But it's a long way from
+what I want to see it. First, there's a deal of bullying going on. I
+know it well. I don't pry about and interfere; that only makes it
+more underhand, and encourages the small boys to come to us with their
+fingers in their eyes telling tales, and so we should be worse off than
+ever. It's very little kindness for the sixth to meddle generally--you
+youngsters mind that. You'll be all the better football players for
+learning to stand it, and to take your own parts, and fight it through.
+But depend on it, there's nothing breaks up a house like bullying.
+Bullies are cowards, and one coward makes many; so good-bye to the
+School-house match if bullying gets ahead here." (Loud applause from
+the small boys, who look meaningly at Flashman and other boys at the
+tables.) "Then there's fuddling about in the public-house, and drinking
+bad spirits, and punch, and such rot-gut stuff. That won't make good
+drop-kicks or chargers of you, take my word for it. You get plenty of
+good beer here, and that's enough for you; and drinking isn't fine or
+manly, whatever some of you may think of it.
+
+"One other thing I must have a word about. A lot of you think and say,
+for I've heard you, 'There's this new Doctor hasn't been here so long
+as some of us, and he's changing all the old customs. Rugby, and the
+Schoolhouse especially, are going to the dogs. Stand up for the good old
+ways, and down with the Doctor!' Now I'm as fond of old Rugby customs
+and ways as any of you, and I've been here longer than any of you, and
+I'll give you a word of advice in time, for I shouldn't like to see any
+of you getting sacked. 'Down with the Doctor's' easier said than done.
+You'll find him pretty tight on his perch, I take it, and an awkwardish
+customer to handle in that line. Besides now, what customs has he put
+down? There was the good old custom of taking the linchpins out of the
+farmers' and bagmen's gigs at the fairs, and a cowardly, blackguard
+custom it was. We all know what came of it, and no wonder the Doctor
+objected to it. But come now, any of you, name a custom that he has put
+down."
+
+"The hounds," calls out a fifth-form boy, clad in a green cutaway with
+brass buttons and cord trousers, the leader of the sporting interest,
+and reputed a great rider and keen hand generally.
+
+"Well, we had six or seven mangy harriers and beagles belonging to the
+house, I'll allow, and had had them for years, and that the Doctor
+put them down. But what good ever came of them? Only rows with all the
+keepers for ten miles round; and big-side hare-and-hounds is better fun
+ten times over. What else?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Well, I won't go on. Think it over for yourselves. You'll find, I
+believe, that he don't meddle with any one that's worth keeping. And
+mind now, I say again, look out for squalls if you will go your own way,
+and that way ain't the Doctor's, for it'll lead to grief. You all know
+that I'm not the fellow to back a master through thick and thin. If I
+saw him stopping football, or cricket, or bathing, or sparring, I'd be
+as ready as any fellow to stand up about it. But he don't; he encourages
+them. Didn't you see him out to-day for half an hour watching us?" (loud
+cheers for the Doctor); "and he's a strong, true man, and a wise one
+too, and a public-school man too" (cheers), "and so let's stick to him,
+and talk no more rot, and drink his health as the head of the house."
+(Loud cheers.) "And now I've done blowing up, and very glad I am to have
+done. But it's a solemn thing to be thinking of leaving a place which
+one has lived in and loved for eight years; and if one can say a word
+for the good of the old house at such a time, why, it should be said,
+whether bitter or sweet. If I hadn't been proud of the house and
+you--ay, no one knows how proud--I shouldn't be blowing you up. And now
+let's get to singing. But before I sit down I must give you a toast to
+be drunk with three-times-three and all the honours. It's a toast which
+I hope every one of us, wherever he may go hereafter, will never fail
+to drink when he thinks of the brave, bright days of his boyhood. It's a
+toast which should bind us all together, and to those who've gone before
+and who'll come after us here. It is the dear old School-house--the best
+house of the best school in England!"
+
+My dear boys, old and young, you who have belonged, or do belong, to
+other schools and other houses, don't begin throwing my poor little book
+about the room, and abusing me and it, and vowing you'll read no more
+when you get to this point. I allow you've provocation for it. But come
+now--would you, any of you, give a fig for a fellow who didn't believe
+in and stand up for his own house and his own school? You know you
+wouldn't. Then don't object to me cracking up the old School house,
+Rugby. Haven't I a right to do it, when I'm taking all the trouble
+of writing this true history for all of your benefits? If you ain't
+satisfied, go and write the history of your own houses in your own
+times, and say all you know for your own schools and houses, provided
+it's true, and I'll read it without abusing you.
+
+The last few words hit the audience in their weakest place. They had
+been not altogether enthusiastic at several parts of old Brooke's
+speech; but "the best house of the best school in England" was too much
+for them all, and carried even the sporting and drinking interests off
+their legs into rapturous applause, and (it is to be hoped) resolutions
+to lead a new life and remember old Brooke's words--which, however, they
+didn't altogether do, as will appear hereafter.
+
+But it required all old Brooke's popularity to carry down parts of his
+speech--especially that relating to the Doctor. For there are no such
+bigoted holders by established forms and customs, be they never so
+foolish or meaningless, as English school-boys--at least, as the
+school-boys of our generation. We magnified into heroes every boy who
+had left, and looked upon him with awe and reverence when he revisited
+the place a year or so afterwards, on his way to or from Oxford or
+Cambridge; and happy was the boy who remembered him, and sure of an
+audience as he expounded what he used to do and say, though it were sad
+enough stuff to make angels, not to say head-masters, weep.
+
+We looked upon every trumpery little custom and habit which had obtained
+in the School as though it had been a law of the Medes and Persians, and
+regarded the infringement or variation of it as a sort of sacrilege. And
+the Doctor, than whom no man or boy had a stronger liking for old school
+customs which were good and sensible, had, as has already been hinted,
+come into most decided collision with several which were neither the one
+nor the other. And as old Brooke had said, when he came into collision
+with boys or customs, there was nothing for them but to give in or take
+themselves off; because what he said had to be done, and no mistake
+about it. And this was beginning to be pretty clearly understood. The
+boys felt that there was a strong man over them, who would have things
+his own way, and hadn't yet learnt that he was a wise and loving man
+also. His personal character and influence had not had time to make
+itself felt, except by a very few of the bigger boys with whom he came
+more directly into contact; and he was looked upon with great fear and
+dislike by the great majority even of his own house. For he had found
+School and School-house in a state of monstrous license and misrule,
+and was still employed in the necessary but unpopular work of setting up
+order with a strong hand.
+
+However, as has been said, old Brooke triumphed, and the boys cheered
+him and then the Doctor. And then more songs came, and the healths of
+the other boys about to leave, who each made a speech, one flowery,
+another maudlin, a third prosy, and so on, which are not necessary to be
+here recorded.
+
+Half-past nine struck in the middle of the performance of "Auld Lang
+Syne," a most obstreperous proceeding, during which there was an immense
+amount of standing with one foot on the table, knocking mugs together
+and shaking hands, without which accompaniments it seems impossible
+for the youths of Britain to take part in that famous old song. The
+under-porter of the School-house entered during the performance, bearing
+five or six long wooden candlesticks with lighted dips in them, which he
+proceeded to stick into their holes in such part of the great tables
+as he could get at; and then stood outside the ring till the end of the
+song, when he was hailed with shouts.
+
+"Bill you old muff, the half-hour hasn't struck." "Here, Bill, drink
+some cocktail." "Sing us a song, old boy." "Don't you wish you may
+get the table?" Bill drank the proffered cocktail not unwillingly, and
+putting down the empty glass, remonstrated. "Now gentlemen, there's only
+ten minutes to prayers, and we must get the hall straight."
+
+Shouts of "No, no!" and a violent effort to strike up "Billy Taylor" for
+the third time. Bill looked appealingly to old Brooke, who got up and
+stopped the noise. "Now then, lend a hand, you youngsters, and get the
+tables back; clear away the jugs and glasses. Bill's right. Open
+the windows, Warner." The boy addressed, who sat by the long ropes,
+proceeded to pull up the great windows, and let in a clear, fresh rush
+of night air, which made the candles flicker and gutter, and the fires
+roar. The circle broke up, each collaring his own jug, glass, and
+song-book; Bill pounced on the big table, and began to rattle it away to
+its place outside the buttery door. The lower-passage boys carried off
+their small tables, aided by their friends; while above all, standing
+on the great hall-table, a knot of untiring sons of harmony made night
+doleful by a prolonged performance of "God Save the King." His Majesty
+King William the Fourth then reigned over us, a monarch deservedly
+popular amongst the boys addicted to melody, to whom he was chiefly
+known from the beginning of that excellent if slightly vulgar song in
+which they much delighted,--
+
+     "Come, neighbours all, both great and small,
+     Perform your duties here,
+     And loudly sing, 'Live Billy, our king,'
+     For bating the tax upon beer."
+
+Others of the more learned in songs also celebrated his praises in
+a sort of ballad, which I take to have been written by some Irish
+loyalist. I have forgotten all but the chorus, which ran,--
+
+     "God save our good King William,
+     Be his name for ever blest;
+     He's the father of all his people,
+     And the guardian of all the rest."
+
+In troth we were loyal subjects in those days, in a rough way. I trust
+that our successors make as much of her present Majesty, and, having
+regard to the greater refinement of the times, have adopted or written
+other songs equally hearty, but more civilized, in her honour.
+
+Then the quarter to ten struck, and the prayer-bell rang. The sixth and
+fifth form boys ranged themselves in their school order along the wall,
+on either side of the great fires, the middle-fifth and upper-school
+boys round the long table in the middle of the hall, and the
+lower-school boys round the upper part of the second long table, which
+ran down the side of the hall farthest from the fires. Here Tom found
+himself at the bottom of all, in a state of mind and body not at all fit
+for prayers, as he thought; and so tried hard to make himself serious,
+but couldn't, for the life of him, do anything but repeat in his head
+the choruses of some of the songs, and stare at all the boys opposite,
+wondering at the brilliancy of their waistcoats, and speculating what
+sort of fellows they were. The steps of the head-porter are heard on the
+stairs, and a light gleams at the door. "Hush!" from the fifth-form boys
+who stand there, and then in strides the Doctor, cap on head, book
+in one hand, and gathering up his gown in the other. He walks up the
+middle, and takes his post by Warner, who begins calling over the names.
+The Doctor takes no notice of anything, but quietly turns over his book
+and finds the place, and then stands, cap in hand and finger in book,
+looking straight before his nose. He knows better than any one when to
+look, and when to see nothing. To-night is singing night, and there's
+been lots of noise and no harm done--nothing but beer drunk, and nobody
+the worse for it, though some of them do look hot and excited. So the
+Doctor sees nothing, but fascinates Tom in a horrible manner as he
+stands there, and reads out the psalm, in that deep, ringing, searching
+voice of his. Prayers are over, and Tom still stares open-mouthed after
+the Doctor's retiring figure, when he feels a pull at his sleeve, and
+turning round, sees East.
+
+"I say, were you ever tossed in a blanket?"
+
+"No," said Tom; "why?"
+
+"'Cause there'll be tossing to-night, most likely, before the sixth come
+up to bed. So if you funk, you just come along and hide, or else they'll
+catch you and toss you."
+
+"Were you ever tossed? Does it hurt?" inquired Tom.
+
+"Oh yes, bless you, a dozen times," said East, as he hobbled along by
+Tom's side upstairs. "It don't hurt unless you fall on the floor. But
+most fellows don't like it."
+
+They stopped at the fireplace in the top passage, where were a crowd of
+small boys whispering together, and evidently unwilling to go up
+into the bedrooms. In a minute, however, a study door opened, and a
+sixth-form boy came out, and off they all scuttled up the stairs, and
+then noiselessly dispersed to their different rooms. Tom's heart beat
+rather quick as he and East reached their room, but he had made up his
+mind. "I shan't hide, East," said he.
+
+"Very well, old fellow," replied East, evidently pleased; "no more shall
+I. They'll be here for us directly."
+
+The room was a great big one, with a dozen beds in it, but not a boy
+that Tom could see except East and himself. East pulled off his coat and
+waistcoat, and then sat on the bottom of his bed whistling and pulling
+off his boots. Tom followed his example.
+
+A noise and steps are heard in the passage, the door opens, and in rush
+four or five great fifth-form boys, headed by Flashman in his glory.
+
+Tom and East slept in the farther corner of the room, and were not seen
+at first.
+
+"Gone to ground, eh?" roared Flashman. "Push 'em out then, boys; look
+under the beds." And he pulled up the little white curtain of the one
+nearest him. "Who-o-op!" he roared, pulling away at the leg of a small
+boy, who held on tight to the leg of the bed, and sang out lustily for
+mercy.
+
+"Here, lend a hand, one of you, and help me pull out this young howling
+brute.--Hold your tongue, sir, or I'll kill you."
+
+"Oh, please, Flashman, please, Walker, don't toss me! I'll fag for
+you--I'll do anything--only don't toss me."
+
+"You be hanged," said Flashman, lugging the wretched boy along; "'twon't
+hurt you,--you!--Come along, boys; here he is."
+
+"I say, Flashey," sang out another of the big boys; "drop that; you
+heard what old Pater Brooke said to-night. I'll be hanged if we'll toss
+any one against their will. No more bullying. Let him go, I say."
+
+Flashman, with an oath and a kick, released his prey, who rushed
+headlong under his bed again, for fear they should change their minds,
+and crept along underneath the other beds, till he got under that of the
+sixth-form boy, which he knew they daren't disturb.
+
+"There's plenty of youngsters don't care about it," said Walker. "Here,
+here's Scud East--you'll be tossed, won't you, young un?" Scud was
+East's nickname, or Black, as we called it, gained by his fleetness of
+foot.
+
+"Yes," said East, "if you like, only mind my foot."
+
+"And here's another who didn't hide.--Hullo! new boy; what's your name,
+sir?"
+
+"Brown."
+
+"Well, Whitey Brown, you don't mind being tossed?"
+
+"No," said Tom, setting his teeth.
+
+"Come along then, boys," sang out Walker; and away they all went,
+carrying along Tom and East, to the intense relief of four or five other
+small boys, who crept out from under the beds and behind them.
+
+"What a trump Scud is!" said one. "They won't come back here now."
+
+"And that new boy, too; he must be a good-plucked one."
+
+"Ah! wait till he has been tossed on to the floor; see how he'll like it
+then!"
+
+Meantime the procession went down the passage to Number 7, the largest
+room, and the scene of the tossing, in the middle of which was a great
+open space. Here they joined other parties of the bigger boys, each
+with a captive or two, some willing to be tossed, some sullen, and some
+frightened to death. At Walker's suggestion all who were afraid were let
+off, in honour of Pater Brooke's speech.
+
+Then a dozen big boys seized hold of a blanket, dragged from one of the
+beds. "In with Scud; quick! there's no time to lose." East was chucked
+into the blanket. "Once, twice, thrice, and away!" Up he went like a
+shuttlecock, but not quite up to the ceiling.
+
+"Now, boys, with a will," cried Walker; "once, twice, thrice, and away!"
+This time he went clean up, and kept himself from touching the ceiling
+with his hand, and so again a third time, when he was turned out, and
+up went another boy. And then came Tom's turn. He lay quite still, by
+East's advice, and didn't dislike the "once, twice, thrice;" but the
+"away" wasn't so pleasant. They were in good wind now, and sent him
+slap up to the ceiling first time, against which his knees came rather
+sharply. But the moment's pause before descending was the rub--the
+feeling of utter helplessness and of leaving his whole inside behind him
+sticking to the ceiling. Tom was very near shouting to be set down when
+he found himself back in the blanket, but thought of East, and didn't;
+and so took his three tosses without a kick or a cry, and was called a
+young trump for his pains.
+
+He and East, having earned it, stood now looking on. No catastrophe
+happened, as all the captives were cool hands, and didn't struggle. This
+didn't suit Flashman. What your real bully likes in tossing is when the
+boys kick and struggle, or hold on to one side of the blanket, and so
+get pitched bodily on to the floor; it's no fun to him when no one is
+hurt or frightened.
+
+"Let's toss two of them together, Walker," suggested he.
+
+"What a cursed bully you are, Flashey!" rejoined the other. "Up with
+another one."
+
+And so now two boys were tossed together, the peculiar hardship of which
+is, that it's too much for human nature to lie still then and share
+troubles; and so the wretched pair of small boys struggle in the air
+which shall fall a-top in the descent, to the no small risk of both
+falling out of the blanket, and the huge delight of brutes like
+Flashman.
+
+But now there's a cry that the praepostor of the room is coming; so the
+tossing stops, and all scatter to their different rooms; and Tom is
+left to turn in, with the first day's experience of a public school to
+meditate upon.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--SETTLING TO THE COLLAR.
+
+     "Says Giles, ''Tis mortal hard to go,
+     But if so be's I must
+     I means to follow arter he
+     As goes hisself the fust.'"--Ballad.
+
+Everybody, I suppose, knows the dreamy, delicious state in which one
+lies, half asleep, half awake, while consciousness begins to return
+after a sound night's rest in a new place which we are glad to be in,
+following upon a day of unwonted excitement and exertion. There are
+few pleasanter pieces of life. The worst of it is that they last such
+a short time; for nurse them as you will, by lying perfectly passive
+in mind and body, you can't make more than five minutes or so of them.
+After which time the stupid, obtrusive, wakeful entity which we call
+"I", as impatient as he is stiff-necked, spite of our teeth will force
+himself back again, and take possession of us down to our very toes.
+
+It was in this state that Master Tom lay at half-past seven on the
+morning following the day of his arrival, and from his clean little
+white bed watched the movements of Bogle (the generic name by which the
+successive shoeblacks of the School-house were known), as he marched
+round from bed to bed, collecting the dirty shoes and boots, and
+depositing clean ones in their places.
+
+There he lay, half doubtful as to where exactly in the universe he was,
+but conscious that he had made a step in life which he had been anxious
+to make. It was only just light as he looked lazily out of the wide
+windows, and saw the tops of the great elms, and the rooks circling
+about and cawing remonstrances to the lazy ones of their commonwealth
+before starting in a body for the neighbouring ploughed fields. The
+noise of the room-door closing behind Bogle, as he made his exit with
+the shoebasket under his arm, roused him thoroughly, and he sat up in
+bed and looked round the room. What in the world could be the matter
+with his shoulders and loins? He felt as if he had been severely beaten
+all down his back--the natural results of his performance at his first
+match. He drew up his knees and rested his chin on them, and went over
+all the events of yesterday, rejoicing in his new life, what he had seen
+of it, and all that was to come.
+
+Presently one or two of the other boys roused themselves, and began to
+sit up and talk to one another in low tones. Then East, after a roll
+or two, came to an anchor also, and nodding to Tom, began examining his
+ankle.
+
+"What a pull," said he, "that it's lie-in-bed, for I shall be as lame as
+a tree, I think."
+
+It was Sunday morning, and Sunday lectures had not yet been established;
+so that nothing but breakfast intervened between bed and eleven o'clock
+chapel--a gap by no means easy to fill up: in fact, though received with
+the correct amount of grumbling, the first lecture instituted by
+the Doctor shortly afterwards was a great boon to the School. It was
+lie-in-bed, and no one was in a hurry to get up, especially in rooms
+where the sixth-form boy was a good-tempered fellow, as was the case in
+Tom's room, and allowed the small boys to talk and laugh and do pretty
+much what they pleased, so long as they didn't disturb him. His bed was
+a bigger one than the rest, standing in the corner by the fireplace,
+with a washing-stand and large basin by the side, where he lay in state
+with his white curtains tucked in so as to form a retiring place--an
+awful subject of contemplation to Tom, who slept nearly opposite, and
+watched the great man rouse himself and take a book from under his
+pillow, and begin reading, leaning his head on his hand, and turning his
+back to the room. Soon, however, a noise of striving urchins arose, and
+muttered encouragements from the neighbouring boys of "Go it, Tadpole!"
+"Now, young Green!" "Haul away his blanket!" "Slipper him on the hands!"
+Young Green and little Hall, commonly called Tadpole, from his great
+black head and thin legs, slept side by side far away by the door, and
+were for ever playing one another tricks, which usually ended, as on
+this morning, in open and violent collision; and now, unmindful of all
+order and authority, there they were, each hauling away at the other's
+bedclothes with one hand, and with the other, armed with a slipper,
+belabouring whatever portion of the body of his adversary came within
+reach.
+
+"Hold that noise up in the corner," called out the praepostor, sitting
+up and looking round his curtains; and the Tadpole and young Green sank
+down into their disordered beds; and then, looking at his watch, added,
+"Hullo! past eight. Whose turn for hot water?"
+
+(Where the praepostor was particular in his ablutions, the fags in his
+room had to descend in turn to the kitchen, and beg or steal hot water
+for him; and often the custom extended farther, and two boys went down
+every morning to get a supply for the whole room.)
+
+"East's and Tadpole's," answered the senior fag, who kept the rota.
+
+"I can't go," said East; "I'm dead lame."
+
+"Well, be quick some of you, that's all," said the great man, as he
+turned out of bed, and putting on his slippers, went out into the great
+passage, which runs the whole length of the bedrooms, to get his Sunday
+habiliments out of his portmanteau.
+
+"Let me go for you," said Tom to East; "I should like it."
+
+"Well, thank 'ee, that's a good fellow. Just pull on your trousers, and
+take your jug and mine. Tadpole will show you the way."
+
+And so Tom and the Tadpole, in nightshirts and trousers, started off
+downstairs, and through "Thos's hole," as the little buttery, where
+candles and beer and bread and cheese were served out at night, was
+called, across the School-house court, down a long passage, and into the
+kitchen; where, after some parley with the stalwart, handsome cook, who
+declared that she had filled a dozen jugs already, they got their hot
+water, and returned with all speed and great caution. As it was, they
+narrowly escaped capture by some privateers from the fifth-form rooms,
+who were on the lookout for the hot-water convoys, and pursued them up
+to the very door of their room, making them spill half their load in the
+passage.
+
+"Better than going down again though," as Tadpole remarked, "as we
+should have had to do if those beggars had caught us."
+
+By the time that the calling-over bell rang, Tom and his new
+comrades were all down, dressed in their best clothes, and he had the
+satisfaction of answering "here" to his name for the first time, the
+praepostor of the week having put it in at the bottom of his list. And
+then came breakfast and a saunter about the close and town with East,
+whose lameness only became severe when any fagging had to be done. And
+so they whiled away the time until morning chapel.
+
+It was a fine November morning, and the close soon became alive with
+boys of all ages, who sauntered about on the grass, or walked round the
+gravel walk, in parties of two or three. East, still doing the cicerone,
+pointed out all the remarkable characters to Tom as they passed: Osbert,
+who could throw a cricket-ball from the little-side ground over
+the rook-trees to the Doctor's wall; Gray, who had got the Balliol
+scholarship, and, what East evidently thought of much more importance,
+a half-holiday for the School by his success; Thorne, who had run ten
+miles in two minutes over the hour; Black, who had held his own against
+the cock of the town in the last row with the louts; and many more
+heroes, who then and there walked about and were worshipped, all trace
+of whom has long since vanished from the scene of their fame. And the
+fourth-form boy who reads their names rudely cut on the old hall tables,
+or painted upon the big-side cupboard (if hall tables and big-side
+cupboards still exist), wonders what manner of boys they were. It will
+be the same with you who wonder, my sons, whatever your prowess may be
+in cricket, or scholarship, or football. Two or three years, more or
+less, and then the steadily advancing, blessed wave will pass over your
+names as it has passed over ours. Nevertheless, play your games and do
+your work manfully--see only that that be done--and let the remembrance
+of it take care of itself.
+
+The chapel-bell began to ring at a quarter to eleven, and Tom got in
+early and took his place in the lowest row, and watched all the other
+boys come in and take their places, filling row after row; and tried
+to construe the Greek text which was inscribed over the door with the
+slightest possible success, and wondered which of the masters, who
+walked down the chapel and took their seats in the exalted boxes at the
+end, would be his lord. And then came the closing of the doors, and the
+Doctor in his robes, and the service, which, however, didn't impress him
+much, for his feeling of wonder and curiosity was too strong. And the
+boy on one side of him was scratching his name on the oak panelling
+in front, and he couldn't help watching to see what the name was, and
+whether it was well scratched; and the boy on the other side went to
+sleep, and kept falling against him; and on the whole, though many boys
+even in that part of the school were serious and attentive, the general
+atmosphere was by no means devotional; and when he got out into the
+close again, he didn't feel at all comfortable, or as if he had been to
+church.
+
+But at afternoon chapel it was quite another thing. He had spent the
+time after dinner in writing home to his mother, and so was in a better
+frame of mind; and his first curiosity was over, and he could attend
+more to the service. As the hymn after the prayers was being sung, and
+the chapel was getting a little dark, he was beginning to feel that he
+had been really worshipping. And then came that great event in his, as
+in every Rugby boy's life of that day--the first sermon from the Doctor.
+
+More worthy pens than mine have described that scene--the oak pulpit
+standing out by itself above the School seats; the tall, gallant form,
+the kindling eye, the voice, now soft as the low notes of a flute, now
+clear and stirring as the call of the light-infantry bugle, of him who
+stood there Sunday after Sunday, witnessing and pleading for his Lord,
+the King of righteousness and love and glory, with whose Spirit he was
+filled, and in whose power he spoke; the long lines of young faces,
+rising tier above tier down the whole length of the chapel, from the
+little boy's who had just left his mother to the young man's who was
+going out next week into the great world, rejoicing in his strength.
+It was a great and solemn sight, and never more so than at this time of
+year, when the only lights in the chapel were in the pulpit and at the
+seats of the praepostors of the week, and the soft twilight stole over
+the rest of the chapel, deepening into darkness in the high gallery
+behind the organ.
+
+But what was it, after all, which seized and held these three hundred
+boys, dragging them out of themselves, willing or unwilling, for twenty
+minutes, on Sunday afternoons? True, there always were boys scattered up
+and down the School, who in heart and head were worthy to hear and able
+to carry away the deepest and wisest words there spoken. But these were
+a minority always, generally a very small one, often so small a one as
+to be countable on the fingers of your hand. What was it that moved
+and held us, the rest of the three hundred reckless, childish boys, who
+feared the Doctor with all our hearts, and very little besides in heaven
+or earth; who thought more of our sets in the School than of the Church
+of Christ, and put the traditions of Rugby and the public opinion of
+boys in our daily life above the laws of God? We couldn't enter into
+half that we heard; we hadn't the knowledge of our own hearts or the
+knowledge of one another, and little enough of the faith, hope, and love
+needed to that end. But we listened, as all boys in their better moods
+will listen (ay, and men too for the matter of that), to a man whom we
+felt to be, with all his heart and soul and strength, striving against
+whatever was mean and unmanly and unrighteous in our little world. It
+was not the cold, clear voice of one giving advice and warning from
+serene heights to those who were struggling and sinning below, but the
+warm, living voice of one who was fighting for us and by our sides, and
+calling on us to help him and ourselves and one another. And so, wearily
+and little by little, but surely and steadily on the whole, was brought
+home to the young boy, for the first time, the meaning of his life--that
+it was no fool's or sluggard's paradise into which he had wandered
+by chance, but a battlefield ordained from of old, where there are no
+spectators, but the youngest must take his side, and the stakes are life
+and death. And he who roused this consciousness in them showed them at
+the same time, by every word he spoke in the pulpit, and by his whole
+daily life, how that battle was to be fought, and stood there before
+them their fellow-soldier and the captain of their band--the true sort
+of captain, too, for a boy's army--one who had no misgivings, and gave
+no uncertain word of command, and, let who would yield or make truce,
+would fight the fight out (so every boy felt) to the last gasp and the
+last drop of blood. Other sides of his character might take hold of
+and influence boys here and there; but it was this thoroughness and
+undaunted courage which, more than anything else, won his way to the
+hearts of the great mass of those on whom he left his mark, and made
+them believe first in him and then in his Master.
+
+It was this quality above all others which moved such boys as our
+hero, who had nothing whatever remarkable about him except excess of
+boyishness--by which I mean animal life in its fullest measure, good
+nature and honest impulses, hatred of injustice and meanness, and
+thoughtlessness enough to sink a three-decker. And so, during the next
+two years, in which it was more than doubtful whether he would get good
+or evil from the School, and before any steady purpose or principle grew
+up in him, whatever his week's sins and shortcomings might have been, he
+hardly ever left the chapel on Sunday evenings without a serious resolve
+to stand by and follow the Doctor, and a feeling that it was only
+cowardice (the incarnation of all other sins in such a boy's mind) which
+hindered him from doing so with all his heart.
+
+The next day Tom was duly placed in the third form, and began his
+lessons in a corner of the big School. He found the work very easy, as
+he had been well grounded, and knew his grammar by heart; and, as he had
+no intimate companions to make him idle (East and his other School-house
+friends being in the lower fourth, the form above him), soon gained
+golden opinions from his master, who said he was placed too low, and
+should be put out at the end of the half-year. So all went well with him
+in School, and he wrote the most flourishing letters home to his mother,
+full of his own success and the unspeakable delights of a public school.
+
+In the house, too, all went well. The end of the half-year was drawing
+near, which kept everybody in a good humour, and the house was ruled
+well and strongly by Warner and Brooke. True, the general system was
+rough and hard, and there was bullying in nooks and corners--bad signs
+for the future; but it never got farther, or dared show itself openly,
+stalking about the passages and hall and bedrooms, and making the life
+of the small boys a continual fear.
+
+Tom, as a new boy, was of right excused fagging for the first month, but
+in his enthusiasm for his new life this privilege hardly pleased him;
+and East and others of his young friends, discovering this, kindly
+allowed him to indulge his fancy, and take their turns at night fagging
+and cleaning studies. These were the principal duties of the fags in the
+house. From supper until nine o'clock three fags taken in order stood in
+the passages, and answered any praepostor who called "Fag," racing to the
+door, the last comer having to do the work. This consisted generally of
+going to the buttery for beer and bread and cheese (for the great men
+did not sup with the rest, but had each his own allowance in his study
+or the fifth-form room), cleaning candlesticks and putting in new
+candles, toasting cheese, bottling beer, and carrying messages about the
+house; and Tom, in the first blush of his hero-worship, felt it a high
+privilege to receive orders from and be the bearer of the supper of old
+Brooke. And besides this night-work, each praepostor had three or four
+fags specially allotted to him, of whom he was supposed to be the guide,
+philosopher, and friend, and who in return for these good offices had to
+clean out his study every morning by turns, directly after first lesson
+and before he returned from breakfast. And the pleasure of seeing the
+great men's studies, and looking at their pictures, and peeping into
+their books, made Tom a ready substitute for any boy who was too lazy to
+do his own work. And so he soon gained the character of a good-natured,
+willing fellow, who was ready to do a turn for any one.
+
+In all the games, too, he joined with all his heart, and soon became
+well versed in all the mysteries of football, by continual practice at
+the School-house little-side, which played daily.
+
+The only incident worth recording here, however, was his first run at
+hare-and-hounds. On the last Tuesday but one of the half-year he was
+passing through the hall after dinner, when he was hailed with shouts
+from Tadpole and several other fags seated at one of the long tables,
+the chorus of which was, "Come and help us tear up scent."
+
+Tom approached the table in obedience to the mysterious summons, always
+ready to help, and found the party engaged in tearing up old newspapers,
+copy-books, and magazines, into small pieces, with which they were
+filling four large canvas bags.
+
+"It's the turn of our house to find scent for big-side hare-and-hounds,"
+exclaimed Tadpole. "Tear away; there's no time to lose before
+calling-over."
+
+"I think it's a great shame," said another small boy, "to have such a
+hard run for the last day."
+
+"Which run is it?" said Tadpole.
+
+"Oh, the Barby run, I hear," answered the other; "nine miles at least,
+and hard ground; no chance of getting in at the finish, unless you're a
+first-rate scud."
+
+"Well, I'm going to have a try," said Tadpole; "it's the last run of the
+half, and if a fellow gets in at the end big-side stands ale and bread
+and cheese and a bowl of punch; and the Cock's such a famous place for
+ale."
+
+"I should like to try too," said Tom.
+
+"Well, then, leave your waistcoat behind, and listen at the door, after
+calling-over, and you'll hear where the meet is."
+
+After calling-over, sure enough there were two boys at the door, calling
+out, "Big-side hare-and-hounds meet at White Hall;" and Tom, having
+girded himself with leather strap, and left all superfluous clothing
+behind, set off for White Hall, an old gable-ended house some quarter
+of a mile from the town, with East, whom he had persuaded to join,
+notwithstanding his prophecy that they could never get in, as it was the
+hardest run of the year.
+
+At the meet they found some forty or fifty boys, and Tom felt sure, from
+having seen many of them run at football, that he and East were more
+likely to get in than they.
+
+After a few minutes' waiting, two well-known runners, chosen for the
+hares, buckled on the four bags filled with scent, compared their
+watches with those of young Brooke and Thorne, and started off at a
+long, slinging trot across the fields in the direction of Barby.
+
+Then the hounds clustered round Thorne, who explained shortly, "They're
+to have six minutes' law. We run into the Cock, and every one who comes
+in within a quarter of an hour of the hares'll be counted, if he has
+been round Barby church." Then came a minute's pause or so, and then the
+watches are pocketed, and the pack is led through the gateway into the
+field which the hares had first crossed. Here they break into a trot,
+scattering over the field to find the first traces of the scent which
+the hares throw out as they go along. The old hounds make straight for
+the likely points, and in a minute a cry of "Forward" comes from one
+of them, and the whole pack, quickening their pace, make for the spot,
+while the boy who hit the scent first, and the two or three nearest to
+him, are over the first fence, and making play along the hedgerow in the
+long grass-field beyond. The rest of the pack rush at the gap already
+made, and scramble through, jostling one another. "Forward" again,
+before they are half through. The pace quickens into a sharp run, the
+tail hounds all straining to get up to the lucky leaders. They are
+gallant hares, and the scent lies thick right across another meadow and
+into a ploughed field, where the pace begins to tell; then over a good
+wattle with a ditch on the other side, and down a large pasture studded
+with old thorns, which slopes down to the first brook. The great
+Leicestershire sheep charge away across the field as the pack comes
+racing down the slope. The brook is a small one, and the scent lies
+right ahead up the opposite slope, and as thick as ever--not a turn or
+a check to favour the tail hounds, who strain on, now trailing in a long
+line, many a youngster beginning to drag his legs heavily, and feel his
+heart beat like a hammer, and the bad-plucked ones thinking that after
+all it isn't worth while to keep it up.
+
+Tom, East, and the Tadpole had a good start, and are well up for such
+young hands, and after rising the slope and crossing the next field,
+find themselves up with the leading hounds, who have overrun the scent,
+and are trying back. They have come a mile and a half in about eleven
+minutes, a pace which shows that it is the last day. About twenty-five
+of the original starters only show here, the rest having already given
+in; the leaders are busy making casts into the fields on the left and
+right, and the others get their second winds.
+
+Then comes the cry of "Forward" again from young Brooke, from the
+extreme left, and the pack settles down to work again steadily and
+doggedly, the whole keeping pretty well together. The scent, though
+still good, is not so thick; there is no need of that, for in this part
+of the run every one knows the line which must be taken, and so there
+are no casts to be made, but good downright running and fencing to be
+done. All who are now up mean coming in, and they come to the foot of
+Barby Hill without losing more than two or three more of the pack. This
+last straight two miles and a half is always a vantage ground for the
+hounds, and the hares know it well; they are generally viewed on the
+side of Barby Hill, and all eyes are on the lookout for them to-day. But
+not a sign of them appears, so now will be the hard work for the hounds,
+and there is nothing for it but to cast about for the scent, for it is
+now the hares' turn, and they may baffle the pack dreadfully in the next
+two miles.
+
+Ill fares it now with our youngsters, that they are School-house boys,
+and so follow young Brooke, for he takes the wide casts round to the
+left, conscious of his own powers, and loving the hard work. For if you
+would consider for a moment, you small boys, you would remember that the
+Cock, where the run ends and the good ale will be going, lies far out to
+the right on the Dunchurch road, so that every cast you take to the left
+is so much extra work. And at this stage of the run, when the evening is
+closing in already, no one remarks whether you run a little cunning or
+not; so you should stick to those crafty hounds who keep edging away to
+the right, and not follow a prodigal like young Brooke, whose legs are
+twice as long as yours and of cast-iron, wholly indifferent to one or
+two miles more or less. However, they struggle after him, sobbing and
+plunging along, Tom and East pretty close, and Tadpole, whose big head
+begins to pull him down, some thirty yards behind.
+
+Now comes a brook, with stiff clay banks, from which they can hardly
+drag their legs, and they hear faint cries for help from the wretched
+Tadpole, who has fairly stuck fast. But they have too little run left
+in themselves to pull up for their own brothers. Three fields more, and
+another check, and then "Forward" called away to the extreme right.
+
+The two boys' souls die within them; they can never do it. Young Brooke
+thinks so too, and says kindly, "You'll cross a lane after next field;
+keep down it, and you'll hit the Dunchurch road below the Cock," and
+then steams away for the run in, in which he's sure to be first, as
+if he were just starting. They struggle on across the next field, the
+"forwards" getting fainter and fainter, and then ceasing. The whole hunt
+is out of ear-shot, and all hope of coming in is over.
+
+"Hang it all!" broke out East, as soon as he had got wind enough,
+pulling off his hat and mopping at his face, all spattered with dirt and
+lined with sweat, from which went up a thick steam into the still, cold
+air. "I told you how it would be. What a thick I was to come! Here we
+are, dead beat, and yet I know we're close to the run in, if we knew the
+country."
+
+"Well," said Tom, mopping away, and gulping down his disappointment,
+"it can't be helped. We did our best anyhow. Hadn't we better find this
+lane, and go down it, as young Brooke told us?"
+
+"I suppose so--nothing else for it," grunted East. "If ever I go out
+last day again." Growl, growl, growl.
+
+So they tried back slowly and sorrowfully, and found the lane, and went
+limping down it, plashing in the cold puddly ruts, and beginning to feel
+how the run had taken it out of them. The evening closed in fast, and
+clouded over, dark, cold, and dreary.
+
+"I say, it must be locking-up, I should think," remarked East, breaking
+the silence--"it's so dark."
+
+"What if we're late?" said Tom.
+
+"No tea, and sent up to the Doctor," answered East.
+
+The thought didn't add to their cheerfulness. Presently a faint halloo
+was heard from an adjoining field. They answered it and stopped, hoping
+for some competent rustic to guide them, when over a gate some twenty
+yards ahead crawled the wretched Tadpole, in a state of collapse. He had
+lost a shoe in the brook, and had been groping after it up to his elbows
+in the stiff, wet clay, and a more miserable creature in the shape of
+boy seldom has been seen.
+
+The sight of him, notwithstanding, cheered them, for he was some degrees
+more wretched than they. They also cheered him, as he was no longer
+under the dread of passing his night alone in the fields. And so, in
+better heart, the three plashed painfully down the never-ending lane. At
+last it widened, just as utter darkness set in, and they came out on
+a turnpike road, and there paused, bewildered, for they had lost all
+bearings, and knew not whether to turn to the right or left.
+
+Luckily for them they had not to decide, for lumbering along the road,
+with one lamp lighted and two spavined horses in the shafts, came a
+heavy coach, which after a moment's suspense they recognized as the
+Oxford coach, the redoubtable Pig and Whistle.
+
+It lumbered slowly up, and the boys, mustering their last run, caught
+it as it passed, and began clambering up behind, in which exploit East
+missed his footing and fell flat on his nose along the road. Then the
+others hailed the old scarecrow of a coachman, who pulled up and agreed
+to take them in for a shilling; so there they sat on the back seat,
+drubbing with their heels, and their teeth chattering with cold, and
+jogged into Rugby some forty minutes after locking-up.
+
+Five minutes afterwards three small, limping, shivering figures steal
+along through the Doctor's garden, and into the house by the servants'
+entrance (all the other gates have been closed long since), where the
+first thing they light upon in the passage is old Thomas, ambling along,
+candle in one hand and keys in the other.
+
+He stops and examines their condition with a grim smile. "Ah! East,
+Hall, and Brown, late for locking-up. Must go up to the Doctor's study
+at once."
+
+"Well but, Thomas, mayn't we go and wash first? You can put down the
+time, you know."
+
+"Doctor's study d'rectly you come in--that's the orders," replied old
+Thomas, motioning towards the stairs at the end of the passage which led
+up into the Doctor's house; and the boys turned ruefully down it, not
+cheered by the old verger's muttered remark, "What a pickle they boys be
+in!" Thomas referred to their faces and habiliments, but they construed
+it as indicating the Doctor's state of mind. Upon the short flight of
+stairs they paused to hold counsel.
+
+"Who'll go in first?" inquires Tadpole.
+
+"You--you're the senior," answered East.
+
+"Catch me. Look at the state I'm in," rejoined Hall, showing the arms of
+his jacket. "I must get behind you two."
+
+"Well, but look at me," said East, indicating the mass of clay behind
+which he was standing; "I'm worse than you, two to one. You might grow
+cabbages on my trousers."
+
+"That's all down below, and you can keep your legs behind the sofa,"
+said Hall.
+
+"Here, Brown; you're the show-figure. You must lead."
+
+"But my face is all muddy," argued Tom.
+
+"Oh, we're all in one boat for that matter; but come on; we're only
+making it worse, dawdling here."
+
+"Well, just give us a brush then," said Tom. And they began trying to
+rub off the superfluous dirt from each other's jackets; but it was not
+dry enough, and the rubbing made them worse; so in despair they pushed
+through the swing-door at the head of the stairs, and found themselves
+in the Doctor's hall.
+
+"That's the library door," said East in a whisper, pushing Tom forwards.
+The sound of merry voices and laughter came from within, and his first
+hesitating knock was unanswered. But at the second, the Doctor's voice
+said, "Come in;" and Tom turned the handle, and he, with the others
+behind him, sidled into the room.
+
+The Doctor looked up from his task; he was working away with a great
+chisel at the bottom of a boy's sailing boat, the lines of which he was
+no doubt fashioning on the model of one of Nicias's galleys. Round him
+stood three or four children; the candles burnt brightly on a large
+table at the farther end, covered with books and papers, and a great
+fire threw a ruddy glow over the rest of the room. All looked so kindly,
+and homely, and comfortable that the boys took heart in a moment, and
+Tom advanced from behind the shelter of the great sofa. The Doctor
+nodded to the children, who went out, casting curious and amused glances
+at the three young scarecrows.
+
+"Well, my little fellows," began the Doctor, drawing himself up with
+his back to the fire, the chisel in one hand and his coat-tails in the
+other, and his eyes twinkling as he looked them over; "what makes you so
+late?"
+
+"Please, sir, we've been out big-side hare-and-hounds, and lost our
+way."
+
+"Hah! you couldn't keep up, I suppose?"
+
+"Well, sir," said East, stepping out, and not liking that the Doctor
+should think lightly of his running powers, "we got round Barby all
+right; but then--"
+
+"Why, what a state you're in, my boy!" interrupted the Doctor, as the
+pitiful condition of East's garments was fully revealed to him.
+
+"That's the fall I got, sir, in the road," said East, looking down at
+himself; "the Old Pig came by--"
+
+"The what?" said the Doctor.
+
+"The Oxford coach, sir," explained Hall.
+
+"Hah! yes, the Regulator," said the Doctor.
+
+"And I tumbled on my face, trying to get up behind," went on East.
+
+"You're not hurt, I hope?" said the Doctor.
+
+"Oh no, sir."
+
+"Well now, run upstairs, all three of you, and get clean things on, and
+then tell the housekeeper to give you some tea. You're too young to try
+such long runs. Let Warner know I've seen you. Good-night."
+
+"Good-night, sir." And away scuttled the three boys in high glee.
+
+"What a brick, not to give us even twenty lines to learn!" said the
+Tadpole, as they reached their bedroom; and in half an hour afterwards
+they were sitting by the fire in the housekeeper's room at a sumptuous
+tea, with cold meat--"Twice as good a grub as we should have got in the
+hall," as the Tadpole remarked with a grin, his mouth full of buttered
+toast. All their grievances were forgotten, and they were resolving to
+go out the first big-side next half, and thinking hare-and-hounds the
+most delightful of games.
+
+A day or two afterwards the great passage outside the bedrooms was
+cleared of the boxes and portmanteaus, which went down to be packed by
+the matron, and great games of chariot-racing, and cock-fighting, and
+bolstering went on in the vacant space, the sure sign of a closing
+half-year.
+
+Then came the making up of parties for the journey home, and Tom joined
+a party who were to hire a coach, and post with four horses to Oxford.
+
+Then the last Saturday, on which the Doctor came round to each form to
+give out the prizes, and hear the master's last reports of how they
+and their charges had been conducting themselves; and Tom, to his huge
+delight, was praised, and got his remove into the lower fourth, in which
+all his School-house friends were.
+
+On the next Tuesday morning at four o'clock hot coffee was going on in
+the housekeeper's and matron's rooms; boys wrapped in great-coats and
+mufflers were swallowing hasty mouthfuls, rushing about, tumbling over
+luggage, and asking questions all at once of the matron; outside the
+School-gates were drawn up several chaises and the four-horse coach
+which Tom's party had chartered, the postboys in their best jackets and
+breeches, and a cornopean player, hired for the occasion, blowing away
+"A southerly wind and a cloudy sky," waking all peaceful inhabitants
+half-way down the High Street.
+
+Every minute the bustle and hubbub increased: porters staggered about
+with boxes and bags, the cornopean played louder. Old Thomas sat in
+his den with a great yellow bag by his side, out of which he was paying
+journey-money to each boy, comparing by the light of a solitary dip the
+dirty, crabbed little list in his own handwriting with the Doctor's list
+and the amount of his cash; his head was on one side, his mouth screwed
+up, and his spectacles dim from early toil. He had prudently locked the
+door, and carried on his operations solely through the window, or he
+would have been driven wild and lost all his money.
+
+"Thomas, do be quick; we shall never catch the Highflyer at Dunchurch."
+
+"That's your money all right, Green."
+
+"Hullo, Thomas, the Doctor said I was to have two pound ten; you've only
+given me two pound." (I fear that Master Green is not confining himself
+strictly to truth.) Thomas turns his head more on one side than ever,
+and spells away at the dirty list. Green is forced away from the window.
+
+"Here, Thomas--never mind him; mine's thirty shillings." "And mine too,"
+"And mine," shouted others.
+
+One way or another, the party to which Tom belonged all got packed and
+paid, and sallied out to the gates, the cornopean playing frantically
+"Drops of Brandy," in allusion, probably, to the slight potations in
+which the musician and postboys had been already indulging. All luggage
+was carefully stowed away inside the coach and in the front and hind
+boots, so that not a hat-box was visible outside. Five or six small
+boys, with pea-shooters, and the cornopean player, got up behind; in
+front the big boys, mostly smoking, not for pleasure, but because they
+are now gentlemen at large, and this is the most correct public method
+of notifying the fact.
+
+"Robinson's coach will be down the road in a minute; it has gone up to
+Bird's to pick up. We'll wait till they're close, and make a race of
+it," says the leader. "Now, boys, half a sovereign apiece if you beat
+'em into Dunchurch by one hundred yards."
+
+"All right, sir," shouted the grinning postboys.
+
+Down comes Robinson's coach in a minute or two, with a rival cornopean,
+and away go the two vehicles, horses galloping, boys cheering, horns
+playing loud. There is a special providence over school-boys as well
+as sailors, or they must have upset twenty times in the first five
+miles--sometimes actually abreast of one another, and the boys on the
+roofs exchanging volleys of peas; now nearly running over a post-chaise
+which had started before them; now half-way up a bank; now with a wheel
+and a half over a yawning ditch: and all this in a dark morning, with
+nothing but their own lamps to guide them. However, it's all over at
+last, and they have run over nothing but an old pig in Southam Street.
+The last peas are distributed in the Corn Market at Oxford, where they
+arrive between eleven and twelve, and sit down to a sumptuous breakfast
+at the Angel, which they are made to pay for accordingly. Here the party
+breaks up, all going now different ways; and Tom orders out a chaise and
+pair as grand as a lord, though he has scarcely five shillings left in
+his pocket, and more than twenty miles to get home.
+
+"Where to, sir?"
+
+"Red Lion, Farringdon," says Tom, giving hostler a shilling.
+
+"All right, sir.--Red Lion, Jem," to the postboy; and Tom rattles away
+towards home. At Farringdon, being known to the innkeeper, he gets that
+worthy to pay for the Oxford horses, and forward him in another chaise
+at once; and so the gorgeous young gentleman arrives at the paternal
+mansion, and Squire Brown looks rather blue at having to pay two pound
+ten shillings for the posting expenses from Oxford. But the boy's
+intense joy at getting home, and the wonderful health he is in, and the
+good character he brings, and the brave stories he tells of Rugby, its
+doings and delights, soon mollify the Squire, and three happier people
+didn't sit down to dinner that day in England (it is the boy's first
+dinner at six o'clock at home--great promotion already) than the Squire
+and his wife and Tom Brown, at the end of his first half-year at Rugby.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.
+
+     "They are slaves who will not choose
+     Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
+     Rather than in silence shrink
+     From the truth they needs must think;
+     They are slaves who dare not be
+     In the right with two or three."
+     --LOWELL, Stanzas on Freedom.
+
+The lower-fourth form, in which Tom found himself at the beginning
+of the next half-year, was the largest form in the lower school, and
+numbered upwards of forty boys. Young gentlemen of all ages from nine to
+fifteen were to be found there, who expended such part of their energies
+as was devoted to Latin and Greek upon a book of Livy, the "Bucolics"
+of Virgil, and the "Hecuba" of Euripides, which were ground out in small
+daily portions. The driving of this unlucky lower-fourth must have been
+grievous work to the unfortunate master, for it was the most unhappily
+constituted of any in the school. Here stuck the great stupid boys,
+who, for the life of them, could never master the accidence--the objects
+alternately of mirth and terror to the youngsters, who were daily taking
+them up and laughing at them in lesson, and getting kicked by them for
+so doing in play-hours. There were no less than three unhappy fellows in
+tail coats, with incipient down on their chins, whom the Doctor and
+the master of the form were always endeavouring to hoist into the upper
+school, but whose parsing and construing resisted the most well-meant
+shoves. Then came the mass of the form, boys of eleven and twelve, the
+most mischievous and reckless age of British youth, of whom East and Tom
+Brown were fair specimens. As full of tricks as monkeys, and of excuses
+as Irishwomen, making fun of their master, one another, and their
+lessons, Argus himself would have been puzzled to keep an eye on them;
+and as for making them steady or serious for half an hour together,
+it was simply hopeless. The remainder of the form consisted of young
+prodigies of nine and ten, who were going up the school at the rate of
+a form a half-year, all boys' hands and wits being against them in their
+progress. It would have been one man's work to see that the precocious
+youngsters had fair play; and as the master had a good deal besides
+to do, they hadn't, and were for ever being shoved down three or four
+places, their verses stolen, their books inked, their jackets whitened,
+and their lives otherwise made a burden to them.
+
+The lower-fourth, and all the forms below it, were heard in the great
+school, and were not trusted to prepare their lessons before coming in,
+but were whipped into school three-quarters of an hour before the lesson
+began by their respective masters, and there, scattered about on the
+benches, with dictionary and grammar, hammered out their twenty lines
+of Virgil and Euripides in the midst of babel. The masters of the
+lower school walked up and down the great school together during this
+three-quarters of an hour, or sat in their desks reading or looking over
+copies, and keeping such order as was possible. But the lower-fourth
+was just now an overgrown form, too large for any one man to attend
+to properly, and consequently the elysium or ideal form of the young
+scapegraces who formed the staple of it.
+
+Tom, as has been said, had come up from the third with a good character,
+but the temptations of the lower-fourth soon proved too strong for him,
+and he rapidly fell away, and became as unmanageable as the rest.
+For some weeks, indeed, he succeeded in maintaining the appearance of
+steadiness, and was looked upon favourably by his new master, whose eyes
+were first opened by the following little incident.
+
+Besides the desk which the master himself occupied, there was another
+large unoccupied desk in the corner of the great school, which was
+untenanted. To rush and seize upon this desk, which was ascended by
+three steps and held four boys, was the great object of ambition of the
+lower-fourthers; and the contentions for the occupation of it bred such
+disorder that at last the master forbade its use altogether. This, of
+course, was a challenge to the more adventurous spirits to occupy it;
+and as it was capacious enough for two boys to lie hid there completely,
+it was seldom that it remained empty, notwithstanding the veto. Small
+holes were cut in the front, through which the occupants watched the
+masters as they walked up and down; and as lesson time approached, one
+boy at a time stole out and down the steps, as the masters' backs were
+turned, and mingled with the general crowd on the forms below. Tom and
+East had successfully occupied the desk some half-dozen times, and were
+grown so reckless that they were in the habit of playing small games
+with fives balls inside when the masters were at the other end of the
+big school. One day, as ill-luck would have it, the game became more
+exciting than usual, and the ball slipped through East's fingers, and
+rolled slowly down the steps and out into the middle of the school, just
+as the masters turned in their walk and faced round upon the desk. The
+young delinquents watched their master, through the lookout holes, march
+slowly down the school straight upon their retreat, while all the boys
+in the neighbourhood, of course, stopped their work to look on; and not
+only were they ignominiously drawn out, and caned over the hand then
+and there, but their characters for steadiness were gone from that time.
+However, as they only shared the fate of some three-fourths of the rest
+of the form, this did not weigh heavily upon them.
+
+In fact, the only occasions on which they cared about the matter were
+the monthly examinations, when the Doctor came round to examine their
+form, for one long, awful hour, in the work which they had done in the
+preceding month. The second monthly examination came round soon after
+Tom's fall, and it was with anything but lively anticipations that he
+and the other lower-fourth boys came in to prayers on the morning of the
+examination day.
+
+Prayers and calling-over seemed twice as short as usual, and before they
+could get construes of a tithe of the hard passages marked in the margin
+of their books, they were all seated round, and the Doctor was standing
+in the middle, talking in whispers to the master. Tom couldn't hear a
+word which passed, and never lifted his eyes from his book; but he knew
+by a sort of magnetic instinct that the Doctor's under-lip was coming
+out, and his eye beginning to burn, and his gown getting gathered up
+more and more tightly in his left hand. The suspense was agonizing, and
+Tom knew that he was sure on such occasions to make an example of the
+School-house boys. "If he would only begin," thought Tom, "I shouldn't
+mind."
+
+At last the whispering ceased, and the name which was called out was not
+Brown. He looked up for a moment, but the Doctor's face was too awful;
+Tom wouldn't have met his eye for all he was worth, and buried himself
+in his book again.
+
+The boy who was called up first was a clever, merry School-house boy,
+one of their set; he was some connection of the Doctor's, and a great
+favourite, and ran in and out of his house as he liked, and so was
+selected for the first victim.
+
+"Triste lupus stabulis," began the luckless youngster, and stammered
+through some eight or ten lines.
+
+"There, that will do," said the Doctor; "now construe."
+
+On common occasions the boy could have construed the passage well enough
+probably, but now his head was gone.
+
+"Triste lupus, the sorrowful wolf," he began.
+
+A shudder ran through the whole form, and the Doctor's wrath fairly
+boiled over. He made three steps up to the construer, and gave him a
+good box on the ear. The blow was not a hard one, but the boy was so
+taken by surprise that he started back; the form caught the back of his
+knees, and over he went on to the floor behind. There was a dead silence
+over the whole school. Never before and never again while Tom was at
+school did the Doctor strike a boy in lesson. The provocation must have
+been great. However, the victim had saved his form for that occasion,
+for the Doctor turned to the top bench, and put on the best boys for the
+rest of the hour and though, at the end of the lesson, he gave them all
+such a rating as they did not forget, this terrible field-day passed
+over without any severe visitations in the shape of punishments or
+floggings. Forty young scapegraces expressed their thanks to the
+"sorrowful wolf" in their different ways before second lesson.
+
+But a character for steadiness once gone is not easily recovered, as Tom
+found; and for years afterwards he went up the school without it,
+and the masters' hands were against him, and his against them. And he
+regarded them, as a matter of course, as his natural enemies.
+
+Matters were not so comfortable, either, in the house as they had
+been; for old Brooke left at Christmas, and one or two others of the
+sixth-form boys at the following Easter. Their rule had been rough, but
+strong and just in the main, and a higher standard was beginning to be
+set up; in fact, there had been a short foretaste of the good time which
+followed some years later. Just now, however, all threatened to return
+into darkness and chaos again. For the new praepostors were either small
+young boys, whose cleverness had carried them up to the top of the
+school, while in strength of body and character they were not yet
+fit for a share in the government; or else big fellows of the wrong
+sort--boys whose friendships and tastes had a downward tendency, who had
+not caught the meaning of their position and work, and felt none of its
+responsibilities. So under this no-government the School-house began to
+see bad times. The big fifth-form boys, who were a sporting and drinking
+set, soon began to usurp power, and to fag the little boys as if they
+were praepostors, and to bully and oppress any who showed signs of
+resistance. The bigger sort of sixth-form boys just described soon made
+common cause with the fifth, while the smaller sort, hampered by their
+colleagues' desertion to the enemy, could not make head against them.
+So the fags were without their lawful masters and protectors, and ridden
+over rough-shod by a set of boys whom they were not bound to obey, and
+whose only right over them stood in their bodily powers; and, as old
+Brooke had prophesied, the house by degrees broke up into small sets and
+parties, and lost the strong feeling of fellowship which he set so much
+store by, and with it much of the prowess in games and the lead in all
+school matters which he had done so much to keep up.
+
+In no place in the world has individual character more weight than at
+a public school. Remember this, I beseech you, all you boys who are
+getting into the upper forms. Now is the time in all your lives,
+probably, when you may have more wide influence for good or evil on the
+society you live in than you ever can have again. Quit yourselves like
+men, then; speak up, and strike out if necessary, for whatsoever
+is true, and manly, and lovely, and of good report; never try to be
+popular, but only to do your duty and help others to do theirs, and you
+may leave the tone of feeling in the school higher than you found it,
+and so be doing good which no living soul can measure to generations of
+your countrymen yet unborn. For boys follow one another in herds like
+sheep, for good or evil; they hate thinking, and have rarely any settled
+principles. Every school, indeed, has its own traditionary standard of
+right and wrong, which cannot be transgressed with impunity, marking
+certain things as low and blackguard, and certain others as lawful and
+right. This standard is ever varying, though it changes only slowly and
+little by little; and, subject only to such standard, it is the leading
+boys for the time being who give the tone to all the rest, and make
+the School either a noble institution for the training of Christian
+Englishmen, or a place where a young boy will get more evil than he
+would if he were turned out to make his way in London streets, or
+anything between these two extremes.
+
+The change for the worse in the School-house, however, didn't press very
+heavily on our youngsters for some time. They were in a good bedroom,
+where slept the only praepostor left who was able to keep thorough order,
+and their study was in his passage. So, though they were fagged more or
+less, and occasionally kicked or cuffed by the bullies, they were, on
+the whole, well off; and the fresh, brave school-life, so full of games,
+adventures, and good-fellowship, so ready at forgetting, so capacious
+at enjoying, so bright at forecasting, outweighed a thousand-fold their
+troubles with the master of their form, and the occasional ill-usage
+of the big boys in the house. It wasn't till some year or so after the
+events recorded above that the praepostor of their room and passage left.
+None of the other sixth-form boys would move into their passage, and, to
+the disgust and indignation of Tom and East, one morning after breakfast
+they were seized upon by Flashman, and made to carry down his books and
+furniture into the unoccupied study, which he had taken. From this
+time they began to feel the weight of the tyranny of Flashman and his
+friends, and, now that trouble had come home to their own doors, began
+to look out for sympathizers and partners amongst the rest of the fags;
+and meetings of the oppressed began to be held, and murmurs to arise,
+and plots to be laid as to how they should free themselves and be
+avenged on their enemies.
+
+While matters were in this state, East and Tom were one evening sitting
+in their study. They had done their work for first lesson, and Tom was
+in a brown study, brooding, like a young William Tell, upon the wrongs
+of fags in general, and his own in particular.
+
+"I say, Scud," said he at last, rousing himself to snuff the candle,
+"what right have the fifth-form boys to fag us as they do?"
+
+"No more right than you have to fag them," answered East, without
+looking up from an early number of "Pickwick," which was just coming
+out, and which he was luxuriously devouring, stretched on his back on
+the sofa.
+
+Tom relapsed into his brown study, and East went on reading and
+chuckling. The contrast of the boys' faces would have given infinite
+amusement to a looker-on--the one so solemn and big with mighty purpose,
+the other radiant and bubbling over with fun.
+
+"Do you know, old fellow, I've been thinking it over a good deal," began
+Tom again.
+
+"Oh yes, I know--fagging you are thinking of. Hang it all! But listen
+here, Tom--here's fun. Mr. Winkle's horse--"
+
+"And I've made up my mind," broke in Tom, "that I won't fag except for
+the sixth."
+
+"Quite right too, my boy," cried East, putting his finger on the place
+and looking up; "but a pretty peck of troubles you'll get into, if
+you're going to play that game. However, I'm all for a strike myself, if
+we can get others to join. It's getting too bad."
+
+"Can't we get some sixth-form fellow to take it up?" asked Tom.
+
+"Well, perhaps we might. Morgan would interfere, I think. Only," added
+East, after a moment's pause, "you see, we should have to tell him about
+it, and that's against School principles. Don't you remember what old
+Brooke said about learning to take our own parts?"
+
+"Ah, I wish old Brooke were back again. It was all right in his time."
+
+"Why, yes, you see, then the strongest and best fellows were in the
+sixth, and the fifth-form fellows were afraid of them, and they kept
+good order; but now our sixth-form fellows are too small, and the fifth
+don't care for them, and do what they like in the house."
+
+"And so we get a double set of masters," cried Tom indignantly--"the
+lawful ones, who are responsible to the Doctor at any rate, and the
+unlawful, the tyrants, who are responsible to nobody."
+
+"Down with the tyrants!" cried East; "I'm all for law and order, and
+hurrah for a revolution."
+
+"I shouldn't mind if it were only for young Brooke now," said Tom; "he's
+such a good-hearted, gentlemanly fellow, and ought to be in the sixth.
+I'd do anything for him. But that blackguard Flashman, who never speaks
+to one without a kick or an oath--"
+
+"The cowardly brute," broke in East--"how I hate him! And he knows it
+too; he knows that you and I think him a coward. What a bore that he's
+got a study in this passage! Don't you hear them now at supper in his
+den? Brandy-punch going, I'll bet. I wish the Doctor would come out and
+catch him. We must change our study as soon as we can."
+
+"Change or no change, I'll never fag for him again," said Tom, thumping
+the table.
+
+"Fa-a-a-ag!" sounded along the passage from Flashman's study. The
+two boys looked at one another in silence. It had struck nine, so the
+regular night-fags had left duty, and they were the nearest to the
+supper-party. East sat up, and began to look comical, as he always did
+under difficulties.
+
+"Fa-a-a-ag!" again. No answer.
+
+"Here, Brown! East! you cursed young skulks," roared out Flashman,
+coming to his open door; "I know you're in; no shirking."
+
+Tom stole to their door, and drew the bolts as noiselessly as he could;
+East blew out the candle.
+
+"Barricade the first," whispered he. "Now, Tom, mind, no surrender."
+
+"Trust me for that," said Tom between his teeth.
+
+In another minute they heard the supper-party turn out and come down the
+passage to their door. They held their breaths, and heard whispering, of
+which they only made out Flashman's words, "I know the young brutes are
+in."
+
+Then came summonses to open, which being unanswered, the assault
+commenced. Luckily the door was a good strong oak one, and resisted the
+united weight of Flashman's party. A pause followed, and they heard a
+besieger remark, "They're in safe enough. Don't you see how the door
+holds at top and bottom? So the bolts must be drawn. We should have
+forced the lock long ago." East gave Tom a nudge, to call attention to
+this scientific remark.
+
+Then came attacks on particular panels, one of which at last gave way
+to the repeated kicks; but it broke inwards, and the broken pieces got
+jammed across (the door being lined with green baize), and couldn't
+easily be removed from outside: and the besieged, scorning further
+concealment, strengthened their defences by pressing the end of their
+sofa against the door. So, after one or two more ineffectual efforts,
+Flashman and Company retired, vowing vengeance in no mild terms.
+
+The first danger over, it only remained for the besieged to effect a
+safe retreat, as it was now near bed-time. They listened intently, and
+heard the supper-party resettle themselves, and then gently drew back
+first one bolt and then the other. Presently the convivial noises began
+again steadily. "Now then, stand by for a run," said East, throwing the
+door wide open and rushing into the passage, closely followed by Tom.
+They were too quick to be caught; but Flashman was on the lookout, and
+sent an empty pickle-jar whizzing after them, which narrowly missed
+Tom's head, and broke into twenty pieces at the end of the passage.
+"He wouldn't mind killing one, if he wasn't caught," said East, as they
+turned the corner.
+
+There was no pursuit, so the two turned into the hall, where they found
+a knot of small boys round the fire. Their story was told. The war of
+independence had broken out. Who would join the revolutionary forces?
+Several others present bound themselves not to fag for the fifth form
+at once. One or two only edged off, and left the rebels. What else could
+they do? "I've a good mind to go to the Doctor straight," said Tom.
+
+"That'll never do. Don't you remember the levy of the school last half?"
+put in another.
+
+In fact, the solemn assembly, a levy of the School, had been held, at
+which the captain of the School had got up, and after premising that
+several instances had occurred of matters having been reported to the
+masters; that this was against public morality and School tradition;
+that a levy of the sixth had been held on the subject, and they had
+resolved that the practice must be stopped at once; and given out that
+any boy, in whatever form, who should thenceforth appeal to a master,
+without having first gone to some praepostor and laid the case before
+him, should be thrashed publicly, and sent to Coventry.
+
+"Well, then, let's try the sixth. Try Morgan," suggested another. "No
+use"--"Blabbing won't do," was the general feeling.
+
+"I'll give you fellows a piece of advice," said a voice from the end
+of the hall. They all turned round with a start, and the speaker got up
+from a bench on which he had been lying unobserved, and gave himself a
+shake. He was a big, loose-made fellow, with huge limbs which had grown
+too far through his jacket and trousers. "Don't you go to anybody at
+all--you just stand out; say you won't fag. They'll soon get tired of
+licking you. I've tried it on years ago with their forerunners."
+
+"No! Did you? Tell us how it was?" cried a chorus of voices, as they
+clustered round him.
+
+"Well, just as it is with you. The fifth form would fag us, and I and
+some more struck, and we beat 'em. The good fellows left off directly,
+and the bullies who kept on soon got afraid."
+
+"Was Flashman here then?"
+
+"Yes; and a dirty, little, snivelling, sneaking fellow he was too. He
+never dared join us, and used to toady the bullies by offering to fag
+for them, and peaching against the rest of us."
+
+"Why wasn't he cut, then?" said East.
+
+"Oh, toadies never get cut; they're too useful. Besides, he has no end
+of great hampers from home, with wine and game in them; so he toadied
+and fed himself into favour."
+
+The quarter-to-ten bell now rang, and the small boys went off upstairs,
+still consulting together, and praising their new counsellor, who
+stretched himself out on the bench before the hall fire again. There
+he lay, a very queer specimen of boyhood, by name Diggs, and familiarly
+called "the Mucker." He was young for his size, and a very clever
+fellow, nearly at the top of the fifth. His friends at home, having
+regard, I suppose, to his age, and not to his size and place in the
+school, hadn't put him into tails; and even his jackets were always too
+small; and he had a talent for destroying clothes and making himself
+look shabby. He wasn't on terms with Flashman's set, who sneered at his
+dress and ways behind his back; which he knew, and revenged himself
+by asking Flashman the most disagreeable questions, and treating him
+familiarly whenever a crowd of boys were round him. Neither was he
+intimate with any of the other bigger boys, who were warned off by
+his oddnesses, for he was a very queer fellow; besides, amongst other
+failings, he had that of impecuniosity in a remarkable degree. He
+brought as much money as other boys to school, but got rid of it in no
+time, no one knew how; and then, being also reckless, borrowed from any
+one; and when his debts accumulated and creditors pressed, would have
+an auction in the hall of everything he possessed in the world, selling
+even his school-books, candlestick, and study table. For weeks after
+one of these auctions, having rendered his study uninhabitable, he would
+live about in the fifth-form room and hall, doing his verses on old
+letter-backs and odd scraps of paper, and learning his lessons no one
+knew how. He never meddled with any little boy, and was popular with
+them, though they all looked on him with a sort of compassion, and
+called him "Poor Diggs," not being able to resist appearances, or to
+disregard wholly even the sneers of their enemy Flashman. However, he
+seemed equally indifferent to the sneers of big boys and the pity of
+small ones, and lived his own queer life with much apparent enjoyment to
+himself. It is necessary to introduce Diggs thus particularly, as he not
+only did Tom and East good service in their present warfare, as is about
+to be told, but soon afterwards, when he got into the sixth, chose them
+for his fags, and excused them from study-fagging, thereby earning unto
+himself eternal gratitude from them and all who are interested in their
+history.
+
+And seldom had small boys more need of a friend, for the morning after
+the siege the storm burst upon the rebels in all its violence. Flashman
+laid wait, and caught Tom before second lesson, and receiving a
+point-blank "No" when told to fetch his hat, seized him and twisted his
+arm, and went through the other methods of torture in use. "He couldn't
+make me cry, though," as Tom said triumphantly to the rest of the
+rebels; "and I kicked his shins well, I know." And soon it crept
+out that a lot of the fags were in league, and Flashman excited his
+associates to join him in bringing the young vagabonds to their senses;
+and the house was filled with constant chasings, and sieges, and
+lickings of all sorts; and in return, the bullies' beds were pulled to
+pieces and drenched with water, and their names written up on the walls
+with every insulting epithet which the fag invention could furnish. The
+war, in short, raged fiercely; but soon, as Diggs had told them, all
+the better fellows in the fifth gave up trying to fag them, and public
+feeling began to set against Flashman and his two or three intimates,
+and they were obliged to keep their doings more secret, but being
+thorough bad fellows, missed no opportunity of torturing in private.
+Flashman was an adept in all ways, but above all in the power of saying
+cutting and cruel things, and could often bring tears to the eyes of
+boys in this way, which all the thrashings in the world wouldn't have
+wrung from them.
+
+And as his operations were being cut short in other directions, he now
+devoted himself chiefly to Tom and East, who lived at his own door, and
+would force himself into their study whenever he found a chance, and sit
+there, sometimes alone, and sometimes with a companion, interrupting all
+their work, and exulting in the evident pain which every now and then he
+could see he was inflicting on one or the other.
+
+The storm had cleared the air for the rest of the house, and a better
+state of things now began than there had been since old Brooke had left;
+but an angry, dark spot of thunder-cloud still hung over the end of the
+passage where Flashman's study and that of East and Tom lay.
+
+He felt that they had been the first rebels, and that the rebellion had
+been to a great extent successful; but what above all stirred the
+hatred and bitterness of his heart against them was that in the frequent
+collisions which there had been of late they had openly called him
+coward and sneak. The taunts were too true to be forgiven. While he
+was in the act of thrashing them, they would roar out instances of his
+funking at football, or shirking some encounter with a lout of half his
+own size. These things were all well enough known in the house, but
+to have his own disgrace shouted out by small boys, to feel that they
+despised him, to be unable to silence them by any amount of torture, and
+to see the open laugh and sneer of his own associates (who were looking
+on, and took no trouble to hide their scorn from him, though they
+neither interfered with his bullying nor lived a bit the less intimately
+with him), made him beside himself. Come what might, he would make those
+boys' lives miserable. So the strife settled down into a personal affair
+between Flashman and our youngsters--a war to the knife, to be fought
+out in the little cockpit at the end of the bottom passage.
+
+Flashman, be it said, was about seventeen years old, and big and strong
+of his age. He played well at all games where pluck wasn't much wanted,
+and managed generally to keep up appearances where it was; and having
+a bluff, off-hand manner, which passed for heartiness, and considerable
+powers of being pleasant when he liked, went down with the school in
+general for a good fellow enough. Even in the School-house, by dint of
+his command of money, the constant supply of good things which he kept
+up, and his adroit toadyism, he had managed to make himself not only
+tolerated, but rather popular amongst his own contemporaries; although
+young Brooke scarcely spoke to him, and one or two others of the right
+sort showed their opinions of him whenever a chance offered. But the
+wrong sort happened to be in the ascendant just now, and so Flashman
+was a formidable enemy for small boys. This soon became plain enough.
+Flashman left no slander unspoken, and no deed undone, which could in
+any way hurt his victims, or isolate them from the rest of the
+house. One by one most of the other rebels fell away from them, while
+Flashman's cause prospered, and several other fifth-form boys began to
+look black at them and ill-treat them as they passed about the house. By
+keeping out of bounds, or at all events out of the house and quadrangle,
+all day, and carefully barring themselves in at night, East and Tom
+managed to hold on without feeling very miserable; but it was as much as
+they could do. Greatly were they drawn then towards old Diggs, who, in
+an uncouth way, began to take a good deal of notice of them, and once
+or twice came to their study when Flashman was there, who immediately
+decamped in consequence. The boys thought that Diggs must have been
+watching.
+
+When therefore, about this time, an auction was one night announced to
+take place in the hall, at which, amongst the superfluities of other
+boys, all Diggs's penates for the time being were going to the hammer,
+East and Tom laid their heads together, and resolved to devote their
+ready cash (some four shillings sterling) to redeem such articles as
+that sum would cover. Accordingly, they duly attended to bid, and
+Tom became the owner of two lots of Diggs's things:--Lot 1, price
+one-and-threepence, consisting (as the auctioneer remarked) of a
+"valuable assortment of old metals," in the shape of a mouse-trap, a
+cheese-toaster without a handle, and a saucepan: Lot 2, of a
+villainous dirty table-cloth and green-baize curtain; while East, for
+one-and-sixpence, purchased a leather paper-case, with a lock but no
+key, once handsome, but now much the worse for wear. But they had still
+the point to settle of how to get Diggs to take the things without
+hurting his feelings. This they solved by leaving them in his study,
+which was never locked when he was out. Diggs, who had attended the
+auction, remembered who had bought the lots, and came to their study
+soon after, and sat silent for some time, cracking his great red
+finger-joints. Then he laid hold of their verses, and began looking over
+and altering them, and at last got up, and turning his back to them,
+said, "You're uncommon good-hearted little beggars, you two. I value
+that paper-case; my sister gave it to me last holidays. I won't
+forget." And so he tumbled out into the passage, leaving them somewhat
+embarrassed, but not sorry that he knew what they had done.
+
+The next morning was Saturday, the day on which the allowances of one
+shilling a week were paid--an important event to spendthrift youngsters;
+and great was the disgust amongst the small fry to hear that all the
+allowances had been impounded for the Derby lottery. That great event
+in the English year, the Derby, was celebrated at Rugby in those days
+by many lotteries. It was not an improving custom, I own, gentle reader,
+and led to making books, and betting, and other objectionable results;
+but when our great Houses of Palaver think it right to stop the nation's
+business on that day and many of the members bet heavily themselves, can
+you blame us boys for following the example of our betters? At any rate
+we did follow it. First there was the great school lottery, where the
+first prize was six or seven pounds; then each house had one or more
+separate lotteries. These were all nominally voluntary, no boy being
+compelled to put in his shilling who didn't choose to do so. But besides
+Flashman, there were three or four other fast, sporting young gentlemen
+in the Schoolhouse, who considered subscription a matter of duty and
+necessity; and so, to make their duty come easy to the small
+boys, quietly secured the allowances in a lump when given out for
+distribution, and kept them. It was no use grumbling--so many fewer
+tartlets and apples were eaten and fives balls bought on that Saturday;
+and after locking-up, when the money would otherwise have been spent,
+consolation was carried to many a small boy by the sound of the
+night-fags shouting along the passages, "Gentlemen sportsmen of the
+School-house; the lottery's going to be drawn in the hall." It was
+pleasant to be called a gentleman sportsman, also to have a chance of
+drawing a favourite horse.
+
+The hall was full of boys, and at the head of one of the long tables
+stood the sporting interest, with a hat before them, in which were the
+tickets folded up. One of them then began calling out the list of the
+house. Each boy as his name was called drew a ticket from the hat, and
+opened it; and most of the bigger boys, after drawing, left the hall
+directly to go back to their studies or the fifth-form room. The
+sporting interest had all drawn blanks, and they were sulky accordingly;
+neither of the favourites had yet been drawn, and it had come down to
+the upper-fourth. So now, as each small boy came up and drew his ticket,
+it was seized and opened by Flashman, or some other of the standers-by.
+But no great favourite is drawn until it comes to the Tadpole's turn,
+and he shuffles up and draws, and tries to make off, but is caught, and
+his ticket is opened like the rest.
+
+"Here you are! Wanderer--the third favourite!" shouts the opener.
+
+"I say, just give me my ticket, please," remonstrates Tadpole.
+
+"Hullo! don't be in a hurry," breaks in Flashman; "what'll you sell
+Wanderer for now?"
+
+"I don't want to sell," rejoins Tadpole.
+
+"Oh, don't you! Now listen, you young fool: you don't know anything
+about it; the horse is no use to you. He won't win, but I want him as a
+hedge. Now, I'll give you half a crown for him." Tadpole holds out, but
+between threats and cajoleries at length sells half for one shilling and
+sixpence--about a fifth of its fair market value; however, he is glad to
+realize anything, and, as he wisely remarks, "Wanderer mayn't win, and
+the tizzy is safe anyhow."
+
+East presently comes up and draws a blank. Soon after comes Tom's turn.
+His ticket, like the others, is seized and opened. "Here you are then,"
+shouts the opener, holding it up--"Harkaway!--By Jove, Flashey, your
+young friend's in luck."
+
+"Give me the ticket," says Flashman, with an oath, leaning across the
+table with open hand and his face black with rage.
+
+"Wouldn't you like it?" replies the opener, not a bad fellow at the
+bottom, and no admirer of Flashman. "Here, Brown, catch hold." And he
+hands the ticket to Tom, who pockets it. Whereupon Flashman makes for
+the door at once, that Tom and the ticket may not escape, and there
+keeps watch until the drawing is over and all the boys are gone, except
+the sporting set of five or six, who stay to compare books, make bets,
+and so on; Tom, who doesn't choose to move while Flashman is at the
+door; and East, who stays by his friend, anticipating trouble. The
+sporting set now gathered round Tom. Public opinion wouldn't allow them
+actually to rob him of his ticket, but any humbug or intimidation by
+which he could be driven to sell the whole or part at an undervalue was
+lawful.
+
+"Now, young Brown, come, what'll you sell me Harkaway for? I hear he
+isn't going to start. I'll give you five shillings for him," begins
+the boy who had opened the ticket. Tom, remembering his good deed, and
+moreover in his forlorn state wishing to make a friend, is about
+to accept the offer, when another cries out, "I'll give you seven
+shillings." Tom hesitated and looked from one to the other.
+
+"No, no!" said Flashman, pushing in, "leave me to deal with him; we'll
+draw lots for it afterwards. Now sir, you know me: you'll sell Harkaway
+to us for five shillings, or you'll repent it."
+
+"I won't sell a bit of him," answered Tom shortly.
+
+"You hear that now!" said Flashman, turning to the others. "He's the
+coxiest young blackguard in the house. I always told you so. We're
+to have all the trouble and risk of getting up the lotteries for the
+benefit of such fellows as he."
+
+Flashman forgets to explain what risk they ran, but he speaks to willing
+ears. Gambling makes boys selfish and cruel as well as men.
+
+"That's true. We always draw blanks," cried one.--"Now, sir, you shall
+sell half, at any rate."
+
+"I won't," said Tom, flushing up to his hair, and lumping them all in
+his mind with his sworn enemy.
+
+"Very well then; let's roast him," cried Flashman, and catches hold of
+Tom by the collar. One or two boys hesitate, but the rest join in. East
+seizes Tom's arm, and tries to pull him away, but is knocked back by
+one of the boys, and Tom is dragged along struggling. His shoulders are
+pushed against the mantelpiece, and he is held by main force before the
+fire, Flashman drawing his trousers tight by way of extra torture. Poor
+East, in more pain even than Tom, suddenly thinks of Diggs, and darts
+off to find him. "Will you sell now for ten shillings?" says one boy who
+is relenting.
+
+Tom only answers by groans and struggles.
+
+"I say, Flashey, he has had enough," says the same boy, dropping the arm
+he holds.
+
+"No, no; another turn'll do it," answers Flashman. But poor Tom is done
+already, turns deadly pale, and his head falls forward on his breast,
+just as Diggs, in frantic excitement, rushes into the hall with East at
+his heels.
+
+"You cowardly brutes!" is all he can say, as he catches Tom from them
+and supports him to the hall table. "Good God! he's dying. Here, get
+some cold water--run for the housekeeper."
+
+Flashman and one or two others slink away; the rest, ashamed and
+sorry, bend over Tom or run for water, while East darts off for the
+housekeeper. Water comes, and they throw it on his hands and face, and
+he begins to come to. "Mother!"--the words came feebly and slowly--"it's
+very cold to-night." Poor old Diggs is blubbering like a child. "Where
+am I?" goes on Tom, opening his eyes, "Ah! I remember now." And he shut
+his eyes again and groaned.
+
+"I say," is whispered, "we can't do any good, and the housekeeper will
+be here in a minute." And all but one steal away. He stays with Diggs,
+silent and sorrowful, and fans Tom's face.
+
+The housekeeper comes in with strong salts, and Tom soon recovers enough
+to sit up. There is a smell of burning. She examines his clothes, and
+looks up inquiringly. The boys are silent.
+
+"How did he come so?" No answer. "There's been some bad work here," she
+adds, looking very serious, "and I shall speak to the Doctor about it."
+Still no answer.
+
+"Hadn't we better carry him to the sick-room?" suggests Diggs.
+
+"Oh, I can walk now," says Tom; and, supported by East and the
+housekeeper, goes to the sick-room. The boy who held his ground is soon
+amongst the rest, who are all in fear of their lives. "Did he peach?"
+"Does she know about it?"
+
+"Not a word; he's a stanch little fellow." And pausing a moment, he
+adds, "I'm sick of this work; what brutes we've been!"
+
+Meantime Tom is stretched on the sofa in the housekeeper's room, with
+East by his side, while she gets wine and water and other restoratives.
+
+"Are you much hurt, dear old boy?" whispers East.
+
+"Only the back of my legs," answers Tom. They are indeed badly scorched,
+and part of his trousers burnt through. But soon he is in bed with
+cold bandages. At first he feels broken, and thinks of writing home and
+getting taken away; and the verse of a hymn he had learned years ago
+sings through his head, and he goes to sleep, murmuring,--
+
+
+"Where the wicked cease from troubling, And the weary are at rest."
+
+
+But after a sound night's rest, the old boy-spirit comes back again.
+East comes in, reporting that the whole house is with him; and he
+forgets everything, except their old resolve never to be beaten by that
+bully Flashman.
+
+Not a word could the housekeeper extract from either of them, and though
+the Doctor knew all that she knew that morning, he never knew any more.
+
+I trust and believe that such scenes are not possible now at school,
+and that lotteries and betting-books have gone out; but I am writing of
+schools as they were in our time, and must give the evil with the good.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS.
+
+     "Wherein I [speak] of most disastrous chances,
+     Of moving accidents by flood and field,
+     Of hair-breadth 'scapes."--SHAKESPEARE.
+
+When Tom came back into school after a couple of days in the sick-room,
+he found matters much changed for the better, as East had led him to
+expect. Flashman's brutality had disgusted most even of his intimate
+friends, and his cowardice had once more been made plain to the house;
+for Diggs had encountered him on the morning after the lottery, and
+after high words on both sides, had struck him, and the blow was not
+returned. However, Flashey was not unused to this sort of thing, and had
+lived through as awkward affairs before, and, as Diggs had said, fed and
+toadied himself back into favour again. Two or three of the boys who had
+helped to roast Tom came up and begged his pardon, and thanked him for
+not telling anything. Morgan sent for him, and was inclined to take the
+matter up warmly, but Tom begged him not to do it; to which he agreed,
+on Tom's promising to come to him at once in future--a promise which, I
+regret to say, he didn't keep. Tom kept Harkaway all to himself, and
+won the second prize in the lottery, some thirty shillings, which he and
+East contrived to spend in about three days in the purchase of pictures
+for their study, two new bats and a cricket-ball--all the best that
+could be got--and a supper of sausages, kidneys, and beef-steak pies
+to all the rebels. Light come, light go; they wouldn't have been
+comfortable with money in their pockets in the middle of the half.
+
+The embers of Flashman's wrath, however, were still smouldering, and
+burst out every now and then in sly blows and taunts, and they both
+felt that they hadn't quite done with him yet. It wasn't long, however,
+before the last act of that drama came, and with it the end of bullying
+for Tom and East at Rugby. They now often stole out into the hall at
+nights, incited thereto partly by the hope of finding Diggs there and
+having a talk with him, partly by the excitement of doing something
+which was against rules; for, sad to say, both of our youngsters, since
+their loss of character for steadiness in their form, had got into
+the habit of doing things which were forbidden, as a matter of
+adventure,--just in the same way, I should fancy, as men fall into
+smuggling, and for the same sort of reasons--thoughtlessness in the
+first place. It never occurred to them to consider why such and such
+rules were laid down: the reason was nothing to them, and they only
+looked upon rules as a sort of challenge from the rule-makers, which it
+would be rather bad pluck in them not to accept; and then again, in the
+lower parts of the school they hadn't enough to do. The work of the form
+they could manage to get through pretty easily, keeping a good enough
+place to get their regular yearly remove; and not having much ambition
+beyond this, their whole superfluous steam was available for games and
+scrapes. Now, one rule of the house which it was a daily pleasure of all
+such boys to break was that after supper all fags, except the three
+on duty in the passages, should remain in their own studies until nine
+o'clock; and if caught about the passages or hall, or in one another's
+studies, they were liable to punishments or caning. The rule was
+stricter than its observance; for most of the sixth spent their evenings
+in the fifth-form room, where the library was, and the lessons were
+learnt in common. Every now and then, however, a praepostor would be
+seized with a fit of district visiting, and would make a tour of
+the passages and hall and the fags' studies. Then, if the owner were
+entertaining a friend or two, the first kick at the door and ominous
+"Open here" had the effect of the shadow of a hawk over a chicken-yard:
+every one cut to cover--one small boy diving under the sofa, another
+under the table, while the owner would hastily pull down a book or
+two and open them, and cry out in a meek voice, "Hullo, who's there?"
+casting an anxious eye round to see that no protruding leg or elbow
+could betray the hidden boys. "Open, sir, directly; it's Snooks."
+"Oh, I'm very sorry; I didn't know it was you, Snooks." And then with
+well-feigned zeal the door would be opened, young hopeful praying that
+that beast Snooks mightn't have heard the scuffle caused by his coming.
+If a study was empty, Snooks proceeded to draw the passages and hall to
+find the truants.
+
+Well, one evening, in forbidden hours, Tom and East were in the hall.
+They occupied the seats before the fire nearest the door, while Diggs
+sprawled as usual before the farther fire. He was busy with a copy of
+verses, and East and Tom were chatting together in whispers by the light
+of the fire, and splicing a favourite old fives bat which had sprung.
+Presently a step came down the bottom passage. They listened a moment,
+assured themselves that it wasn't a praepostor, and then went on with
+their work, and the door swung open, and in walked Flashman. He didn't
+see Diggs, and thought it a good chance to keep his hand in; and as the
+boys didn't move for him, struck one of them, to make them get out of
+his way.
+
+"What's that for?" growled the assaulted one.
+
+"Because I choose. You've no business here. Go to your study."
+
+"You can't send us."
+
+"Can't I? Then I'll thrash you if you stay," said Flashman savagely.
+
+"I say, you two," said Diggs, from the end of the hall, rousing up and
+resting himself on his elbow--"you'll never get rid of that fellow till
+you lick him. Go in at him, both of you. I'll see fair play."
+
+Flashman was taken aback, and retreated two steps. East looked at
+Tom. "Shall we try!" said he. "Yes," said Tom desperately. So the two
+advanced on Flashman, with clenched fists and beating hearts. They were
+about up to his shoulder, but tough boys of their age, and in perfect
+training; while he, though strong and big, was in poor condition from
+his monstrous habit of stuffing and want of exercise. Coward as he was,
+however, Flashman couldn't swallow such an insult as this; besides, he
+was confident of having easy work, and so faced the boys, saying, "You
+impudent young blackguards!" Before he could finish his abuse, they
+rushed in on him, and began pummelling at all of him which they could
+reach. He hit out wildly and savagely; but the full force of his blows
+didn't tell--they were too near to him. It was long odds, though, in
+point of strength; and in another minute Tom went spinning backwards
+over a form, and Flashman turned to demolish East with a savage grin.
+But now Diggs jumped down from the table on which he had seated himself.
+"Stop there," shouted he; "the round's over--half-minute time allowed."
+
+"What the --- is it to you?" faltered Flashman, who began to lose heart.
+
+"I'm going to see fair, I tell you," said Diggs, with a grin, and
+snapping his great red fingers; "'taint fair for you to be fighting one
+of them at a time.--Are you ready, Brown? Time's up."
+
+The small boys rushed in again. Closing, they saw, was their best
+chance, and Flashman was wilder and more flurried than ever: he caught
+East by the throat, and tried to force him back on the iron-bound table.
+Tom grasped his waist, and remembering the old throw he had learned
+in the Vale from Harry Winburn, crooked his leg inside Flashman's, and
+threw his whole weight forward. The three tottered for a moment, and
+then over they went on to the floor, Flashman striking his head against
+a form in the hall.
+
+The two youngsters sprang to their legs, but he lay there still. They
+began to be frightened. Tom stooped down, and then cried out, scared
+out of his wits, "He's bleeding awfully. Come here, East! Diggs, he's
+dying!"
+
+"Not he," said Diggs, getting leisurely off the table; "it's all sham;
+he's only afraid to fight it out."
+
+East was as frightened as Tom. Diggs lifted Flashman's head, and he
+groaned.
+
+"What's the matter?" shouted Diggs.
+
+"My skull's fractured," sobbed Flashman.
+
+"Oh, let me run for the housekeeper!" cried Tom. "What shall we do?"
+
+"Fiddlesticks! It's nothing but the skin broken," said the relentless
+Diggs, feeling his head. "Cold water and a bit of rag's all he'll want."
+
+"Let me go," said Flashman surlily, sitting up; "I don't want your
+help."
+
+"We're really very sorry--" began East.
+
+"Hang your sorrow!" answered Flashman, holding his handkerchief to the
+place; "you shall pay for this, I can tell you, both of you." And he
+walked out of the hall.
+
+"He can't be very bad," said Tom, with a deep sigh, much relieved to see
+his enemy march so well.
+
+"Not he," said Diggs; "and you'll see you won't be troubled with him any
+more. But, I say, your head's broken too; your collar is covered with
+blood."
+
+"Is it though?" said Tom, putting up his hand; "I didn't know it."
+
+"Well, mop it up, or you'll have your jacket spoilt. And you have got a
+nasty eye, Scud. You'd better go and bathe it well in cold water."
+
+"Cheap enough too, if we're done with our old friend Flashey," said
+East, as they made off upstairs to bathe their wounds.
+
+They had done with Flashman in one sense, for he never laid finger on
+either of them again; but whatever harm a spiteful heart and venomous
+tongue could do them, he took care should be done. Only throw dirt
+enough, and some of it is sure to stick; and so it was with the fifth
+form and the bigger boys in general, with whom he associated more or
+less, and they not at all. Flashman managed to get Tom and East into
+disfavour, which did not wear off for some time after the author of it
+had disappeared from the School world. This event, much prayed for
+by the small fry in general, took place a few months after the above
+encounter. One fine summer evening Flashman had been regaling himself on
+gin-punch, at Brownsover; and, having exceeded his usual limits, started
+home uproarious. He fell in with a friend or two coming back from
+bathing, proposed a glass of beer, to which they assented, the weather
+being hot, and they thirsty souls, and unaware of the quantity of drink
+which Flashman had already on board. The short result was, that Flashey
+became beastly drunk. They tried to get him along, but couldn't; so they
+chartered a hurdle and two men to carry him. One of the masters came
+upon them, and they naturally enough fled. The flight of the rest raised
+the master's suspicions, and the good angel of the fags incited him
+to examine the freight, and, after examination, to convoy the hurdle
+himself up to the School-house; and the Doctor, who had long had his eye
+on Flashman, arranged for his withdrawal next morning.
+
+The evil that men and boys too do lives after them: Flashman was gone,
+but our boys, as hinted above, still felt the effects of his hate.
+Besides, they had been the movers of the strike against unlawful
+fagging. The cause was righteous--the result had been triumphant to a
+great extent; but the best of the fifth--even those who had never fagged
+the small boys, or had given up the practice cheerfully--couldn't help
+feeling a small grudge against the first rebels. After all, their form
+had been defied, on just grounds, no doubt--so just, indeed, that they
+had at once acknowledged the wrong, and remained passive in the strife.
+Had they sided with Flashman and his set, the rebels must have given way
+at once. They couldn't help, on the whole, being glad that they had so
+acted, and that the resistance had been successful against such of their
+own form as had shown fight; they felt that law and order had gained
+thereby, but the ringleaders they couldn't quite pardon at once.
+"Confoundedly coxy those young rascals will get, if we don't mind," was
+the general feeling.
+
+So it is, and must be always, my dear boys. If the angel Gabriel were
+to come down from heaven, and head a successful rise against the most
+abominable and unrighteous vested interest which this poor old world
+groans under, he would most certainly lose his character for many years,
+probably for centuries, not only with the upholders of said vested
+interest, but with the respectable mass of the people whom he had
+delivered. They wouldn't ask him to dinner, or let their names appear
+with his in the papers; they would be very careful how they spoke of
+him in the Palaver, or at their clubs. What can we expect, then, when we
+have only poor gallant blundering men like Kossuth, Garibaldi, Mazzini,
+and righteous causes which do not triumph in their hands--men who
+have holes enough in their armour, God knows, easy to be hit by
+respectabilities sitting in their lounging chairs, and having large
+balances at their bankers'? But you are brave, gallant boys, who hate
+easy-chairs, and have no balances or bankers. You only want to have
+your heads set straight, to take the right side; so bear in mind that
+majorities, especially respectable ones, are nine times out of ten in
+the wrong; and that if you see a man or boy striving earnestly on the
+weak side, however wrong-headed or blundering he may be, you are not to
+go and join the cry against him. If you can't join him and help him, and
+make him wiser, at any rate remember that he has found something in the
+world which he will fight and suffer for, which is just what you have
+got to do for yourselves; and so think and speak of him tenderly.
+
+So East and Tom, the Tadpole, and one or two more, became a sort of
+young Ishmaelites, their hands against every one, and every one's hand
+against them. It has been already told how they got to war with the
+masters and the fifth form, and with the sixth it was much the same.
+They saw the praepostors cowed by or joining with the fifth and shirking
+their own duties; so they didn't respect them, and rendered no willing
+obedience. It had been one thing to clean out studies for sons of heroes
+like old Brooke, but was quite another to do the like for Snooks and
+Green, who had never faced a good scrummage at football, and couldn't
+keep the passages in order at night. So they only slurred through their
+fagging just well enough to escape a licking, and not always that, and
+got the character of sulky, unwilling fags. In the fifth-form room,
+after supper, when such matters were often discussed and arranged, their
+names were for ever coming up.
+
+"I say, Green," Snooks began one night, "isn't that new boy, Harrison,
+your fag?"
+
+"Yes; why?"
+
+"Oh, I know something of him at home, and should like to excuse him.
+Will you swop?"
+
+"Who will you give me?"
+
+"Well, let's see. There's Willis, Johnson. No, that won't do. Yes, I
+have it. There's young East; I'll give you him."
+
+"Don't you wish you may get it?" replied Green. "I'll give you two for
+Willis, if you like."
+
+"Who, then?" asked Snooks. "Hall and Brown."
+
+"Wouldn't have 'em at a gift."
+
+"Better than East, though; for they ain't quite so sharp," said Green,
+getting up and leaning his back against the mantelpiece. He wasn't a bad
+fellow, and couldn't help not being able to put down the unruly fifth
+form. His eye twinkled as he went on, "Did I ever tell you how the young
+vagabond sold me last half?"
+
+"No; how?"
+
+"Well, he never half cleaned my study out--only just stuck the
+candlesticks in the cupboard, and swept the crumbs on to the floor. So
+at last I was mortal angry, and had him up, and made him go through the
+whole performance under my eyes. The dust the young scamp made nearly
+choked me, and showed that he hadn't swept the carpet before. Well, when
+it was all finished, 'Now, young gentleman,' says I, 'mind, I expect
+this to be done every morning--floor swept, table-cloth taken off and
+shaken, and everything dusted.' 'Very well,' grunts he. Not a bit of
+it though. I was quite sure, in a day or two, that he never took the
+table-cloth off even. So I laid a trap for him. I tore up some paper,
+and put half a dozen bits on my table one night, and the cloth over them
+as usual. Next morning after breakfast up I came, pulled off the cloth,
+and, sure enough, there was the paper, which fluttered down on to the
+floor. I was in a towering rage. 'I've got you now,' thought I, and sent
+for him, while I got out my cane. Up he came as cool as you please, with
+his hands in his pockets. 'Didn't I tell you to shake my table-cloth
+every morning?' roared I. 'Yes,' says he. 'Did you do it this morning?'
+'Yes.' 'You young liar! I put these pieces of paper on the table last
+night, and if you'd taken the table-cloth off you'd have seen them, so
+I'm going to give you a good licking.' Then my youngster takes one hand
+out of his pocket, and just stoops down and picks up two of the bits
+of paper, and holds them out to me. There was written on each, in great
+round text, 'Harry East, his mark.' The young rogue had found my
+trap out, taken away my paper, and put some of his there, every bit
+ear-marked. I'd a great mind to lick him for his impudence; but, after
+all, one has no right to be laying traps, so I didn't. Of course I was
+at his mercy till the end of the half, and in his weeks my study was so
+frowzy I couldn't sit in it."
+
+"They spoil one's things so, too," chimed in a third boy. "Hall and
+Brown were night-fags last week. I called 'fag,' and gave them my
+candlesticks to clean. Away they went, and didn't appear again. When
+they'd had time enough to clean them three times over, I went out to
+look after them. They weren't in the passages so down I went into the
+hall, where I heard music; and there I found them sitting on the table,
+listening to Johnson, who was playing the flute, and my candlesticks
+stuck between the bars well into the fire, red-hot, clean spoiled.
+They've never stood straight since, and I must get some more. However, I
+gave them a good licking; that's one comfort."
+
+Such were the sort of scrapes they were always getting into; and so,
+partly by their own faults, partly from circumstances, partly from the
+faults of others, they found themselves outlaws, ticket-of-leave men, or
+what you will in that line--in short, dangerous parties--and lived the
+sort of hand-to-mouth, wild, reckless life which such parties generally
+have to put up with. Nevertheless they never quite lost favour with
+young Brooke, who was now the cock of the house, and just getting into
+the sixth; and Diggs stuck to them like a man, and gave them store of
+good advice, by which they never in the least profited.
+
+And even after the house mended, and law and order had been restored,
+which soon happened after young Brooke and Diggs got into the sixth,
+they couldn't easily or at once return into the paths of steadiness, and
+many of the old, wild, out-of-bounds habits stuck to them as firmly as
+ever. While they had been quite little boys, the scrapes they got into
+in the School hadn't much mattered to any one; but now they were in the
+upper school, all wrong-doers from which were sent up straight to the
+Doctor at once. So they began to come under his notice; and as they were
+a sort of leaders in a small way amongst their own contemporaries, his
+eye, which was everywhere, was upon them.
+
+It was a toss-up whether they turned out well or ill, and so they were
+just the boys who caused most anxiety to such a master. You have been
+told of the first occasion on which they were sent up to the Doctor, and
+the remembrance of it was so pleasant that they had much less fear of
+him than most boys of their standing had. "It's all his look," Tom used
+to say to East, "that frightens fellows. Don't you remember, he never
+said anything to us my first half-year for being an hour late for
+locking-up?"
+
+The next time that Tom came before him, however, the interview was of
+a very different kind. It happened just about the time at which we have
+now arrived, and was the first of a series of scrapes into which our
+hero managed now to tumble.
+
+The river Avon at Rugby is a slow and not very clear stream, in which
+chub, dace, roach, and other coarse fish are (or were) plentiful
+enough, together with a fair sprinkling of small jack, but no fish worth
+sixpence either for sport or food. It is, however, a capital river for
+bathing, as it has many nice small pools and several good reaches for
+swimming, all within about a mile of one another, and at an easy twenty
+minutes' walk from the school. This mile of water is rented, or used to
+be rented, for bathing purposes by the trustees of the School, for the
+boys. The footpath to Brownsover crosses the river by "the Planks," a
+curious old single-plank bridge running for fifty or sixty yards into
+the flat meadows on each side of the river--for in the winter there
+are frequent floods. Above the Planks were the bathing-places for the
+smaller boys--Sleath's, the first bathing-place, where all new boys
+had to begin, until they had proved to the bathing men (three steady
+individuals, who were paid to attend daily through the summer to prevent
+accidents) that they could swim pretty decently, when they were allowed
+to go on to Anstey's, about one hundred and fifty yards below. Here
+there was a hole about six feet deep and twelve feet across, over which
+the puffing urchins struggled to the opposite side, and thought no small
+beer of themselves for having been out of their depths. Below the Planks
+came larger and deeper holes, the first of which was Wratislaw's, and
+the last Swift's, a famous hole, ten or twelve feet deep in parts, and
+thirty yards across, from which there was a fine swimming reach right
+down to the mill. Swift's was reserved for the sixth and fifth forms,
+and had a spring board and two sets of steps: the others had one set of
+steps each, and were used indifferently by all the lower boys, though
+each house addicted itself more to one hole than to another. The
+School-house at this time affected Wratislaw's hole, and Tom and East,
+who had learnt to swim like fishes, were to be found there as regular as
+the clock through the summer, always twice, and often three times a day.
+
+Now the boys either had, or fancied they had, a right also to fish at
+their pleasure over the whole of this part of the river, and would not
+understand that the right (if any) only extended to the Rugby side. As
+ill-luck would have it, the gentleman who owned the opposite bank, after
+allowing it for some time without interference, had ordered his keepers
+not to let the boys fish on his side--the consequence of which had been
+that there had been first wranglings and then fights between the keepers
+and boys; and so keen had the quarrel become that the landlord and his
+keepers, after a ducking had been inflicted on one of the latter, and
+a fierce fight ensued thereon, had been up to the great school at
+calling-over to identify the delinquents, and it was all the Doctor
+himself and five or six masters could do to keep the peace. Not even his
+authority could prevent the hissing; and so strong was the feeling that
+the four praepostors of the week walked up the school with their canes,
+shouting "S-s-s-s-i-lenc-c-c-c-e" at the top of their voices. However,
+the chief offenders for the time were flogged and kept in bounds; but
+the victorious party had brought a nice hornet's nest about their ears.
+The landlord was hissed at the School-gates as he rode past, and when he
+charged his horse at the mob of boys, and tried to thrash them with
+his whip, was driven back by cricket-bats and wickets, and pursued with
+pebbles and fives balls; while the wretched keepers' lives were a burden
+to them, from having to watch the waters so closely.
+
+The School-house boys of Tom's standing, one and all, as a protest
+against this tyranny and cutting short of their lawful amusements, took
+to fishing in all ways, and especially by means of night-lines. The
+little tacklemaker at the bottom of the town would soon have made his
+fortune had the rage lasted, and several of the barbers began to lay in
+fishing-tackle. The boys had this great advantage over their enemies,
+that they spent a large portion of the day in nature's garb by the
+river-side, and so, when tired of swimming, would get out on the other
+side and fish, or set night-lines, till the keepers hove in sight, and
+then plunge in and swim back and mix with the other bathers, and the
+keepers were too wise to follow across the stream.
+
+While things were in this state, one day Tom and three or four others
+were bathing at Wratislaw's, and had, as a matter of course, been taking
+up and re-setting night-lines. They had all left the water, and were
+sitting or standing about at their toilets, in all costumes, from
+a shirt upwards, when they were aware of a man in a velveteen
+shooting-coat approaching from the other side. He was a new keeper, so
+they didn't recognize or notice him, till he pulled up right opposite,
+and began:
+
+"I see'd some of you young gentlemen over this side a-fishing just now."
+
+"Hullo! who are you? What business is that of yours, old Velveteens?"
+
+"I'm the new under-keeper, and master's told me to keep a sharp lookout
+on all o' you young chaps. And I tells 'ee I means business, and you'd
+better keep on your own side, or we shall fall out."
+
+"Well, that's right, Velveteens; speak out, and let's know your mind at
+once."
+
+"Look here, old boy," cried East, holding up a miserable, coarse fish
+or two and a small jack; "would you like to smell 'em and see which bank
+they lived under?"
+
+"I'll give you a bit of advice, keeper," shouted Tom, who was sitting
+in his shirt paddling with his feet in the river: "you'd better go down
+there to Swift's, where the big boys are; they're beggars at setting
+lines, and'll put you up to a wrinkle or two for catching the
+five-pounders." Tom was nearest to the keeper, and that officer, who was
+getting angry at the chaff, fixed his eyes on our hero, as if to take a
+note of him for future use. Tom returned his gaze with a steady stare,
+and then broke into a laugh, and struck into the middle of a favourite
+School-house song,--
+
+     "As I and my companions
+     Were setting of a snare
+     The gamekeeper was watching us;
+     For him we did not care:
+     For we can wrestle and fight, my boys,
+     And jump out anywhere.
+     For it's my delight of a likely night,
+     In the season of the year."
+
+The chorus was taken up by the other boys with shouts of laughter, and
+the keeper turned away with a grunt, but evidently bent on mischief. The
+boys thought no more of the matter.
+
+But now came on the May-fly season; the soft, hazy summer weather lay
+sleepily along the rich meadows by Avon side, and the green and gray
+flies flickered with their graceful, lazy up-and-down flight over
+the reeds and the water and the meadows, in myriads upon myriads.
+The May-flies must surely be the lotus-eaters of the ephemerae--the
+happiest, laziest, carelessest fly that dances and dreams out his few
+hours of sunshiny life by English rivers.
+
+Every little pitiful, coarse fish in the Avon was on the alert for
+the flies, and gorging his wretched carcass with hundreds daily, the
+gluttonous rogues! and every lover of the gentle craft was out to avenge
+the poor May-flies.
+
+So one fine Thursday afternoon, Tom, having borrowed East's new rod,
+started by himself to the river. He fished for some time with small
+success--not a fish would rise at him; but as he prowled along the bank,
+he was presently aware of mighty ones feeding in a pool on the opposite
+side, under the shade of a huge willow-tree. The stream was deep
+here, but some fifty yards below was a shallow, for which he made off
+hot-foot; and forgetting landlords, keepers, solemn prohibitions of the
+Doctor, and everything else, pulled up his trousers, plunged across, and
+in three minutes was creeping along on all fours towards the clump of
+willows.
+
+It isn't often that great chub, or any other coarse fish, are in earnest
+about anything; but just then they were thoroughly bent on feeding, and
+in half an hour Master Tom had deposited three thumping fellows at the
+foot of the giant willow. As he was baiting for a fourth pounder, and
+just going to throw in again, he became aware of a man coming up the
+bank not one hundred yards off. Another look told him that it was the
+under-keeper. Could he reach the shallow before him? No, not carrying
+his rod. Nothing for it but the tree. So Tom laid his bones to it,
+shinning up as fast as he could, and dragging up his rod after him. He
+had just time to reach and crouch along upon a huge branch some ten feet
+up, which stretched out over the river, when the keeper arrived at the
+clump. Tom's heart beat fast as he came under the tree; two steps more
+and he would have passed, when, as ill-luck would have it, the gleam on
+the scales of the dead fish caught his eye, and he made a dead point
+at the foot of the tree. He picked up the fish one by one; his eye and
+touch told him that they had been alive and feeding within the hour. Tom
+crouched lower along the branch, and heard the keeper beating the clump.
+"If I could only get the rod hidden," thought he, and began gently
+shifting it to get it alongside of him; "willowtrees don't throw out
+straight hickory shoots twelve feet long, with no leaves, worse luck."
+Alas! the keeper catches the rustle, and then a sight of the rod, and
+then of Tom's hand and arm.
+
+"Oh, be up ther', be 'ee?" says he, running under the tree. "Now you
+come down this minute."
+
+"Tree'd at last," thinks Tom, making no answer, and keeping as close as
+possible, but working away at the rod, which he takes to pieces. "I'm
+in for it, unless I can starve him out." And then he begins to meditate
+getting along the branch for a plunge, and scramble to the other side;
+but the small branches are so thick, and the opposite bank so difficult,
+that the keeper will have lots of time to get round by the ford before
+he can get out, so he gives that up. And now he hears the keeper
+beginning to scramble up the trunk. That will never do; so he scrambles
+himself back to where his branch joins the trunk; and stands with lifted
+rod.
+
+"Hullo, Velveteens; mind your fingers if you come any higher."
+
+The keeper stops and looks up, and then with a grin says, "Oh! be you,
+be it, young measter? Well, here's luck. Now I tells 'ee to come down at
+once, and 't'll be best for 'ee."
+
+"Thank 'ee, Velveteens; I'm very comfortable," said Tom, shortening the
+rod in his hand, and preparing for battle.
+
+"Werry well; please yourself," says the keeper, descending, however,
+to the ground again, and taking his seat on the bank. "I bean't in no
+hurry, so you may take your time. I'll l'arn 'ee to gee honest folk
+names afore I've done with 'ee."
+
+"My luck as usual," thinks Tom; "what a fool I was to give him a black!
+If I'd called him 'keeper,' now, I might get off. The return match is
+all his way."
+
+The keeper quietly proceeded to take out his pipe, fill, and light it,
+keeping an eye on Tom, who now sat disconsolately across the branch,
+looking at keeper--a pitiful sight for men and fishes. The more he
+thought of it the less he liked it. "It must be getting near second
+calling-over," thinks he. Keeper smokes on stolidly. "If he takes me up,
+I shall be flogged safe enough. I can't sit here all night. Wonder if
+he'll rise at silver."
+
+"I say, keeper," said he meekly, "let me go for two bob?"
+
+"Not for twenty neither," grunts his persecutor.
+
+And so they sat on till long past second calling-over, and the sun came
+slanting in through the willow-branches, and telling of locking-up near
+at hand.
+
+"I'm coming down, keeper," said Tom at last, with a sigh, fairly tired
+out. "Now what are you going to do?"
+
+"Walk 'ee up to School, and give 'ee over to the Doctor; them's my
+orders," says Velveteens, knocking the ashes out of his fourth pipe, and
+standing up and shaking himself.
+
+"Very good," said Tom; "but hands off, you know. I'll go with you
+quietly, so no collaring or that sort of thing."
+
+Keeper looked at him a minute. "Werry good," said he at last. And so Tom
+descended, and wended his way drearily by the side of the keeper, up to
+the Schoolhouse, where they arrived just at locking-up. As they passed
+the School-gates, the Tadpole and several others who were standing there
+caught the state of things, and rushed out, crying, "Rescue!" But Tom
+shook his head; so they only followed to the Doctor's gate, and went
+back sorely puzzled.
+
+How changed and stern the Doctor seemed from the last time that Tom was
+up there, as the keeper told the story, not omitting to state how Tom
+had called him blackguard names. "Indeed, sir," broke in the culprit,
+"it was only Velveteens." The Doctor only asked one question.
+
+"You know the rule about the banks, Brown?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Then wait for me to-morrow, after first lesson."
+
+"I thought so," muttered Tom.
+
+"And about the rod, sir?" went on the keeper. "Master's told we as we
+might have all the rods--"
+
+"Oh, please, sir," broke in Tom, "the rod isn't mine."
+
+The Doctor looked puzzled; but the keeper, who was a good-hearted
+fellow, and melted at Tom's evident distress, gave up his claim. Tom
+was flogged next morning, and a few days afterwards met Velveteens, and
+presented him with half a crown for giving up the rod claim, and they
+became sworn friends; and I regret to say that Tom had many more fish
+from under the willow that May-fly season, and was never caught again by
+Velveteens.
+
+It wasn't three weeks before Tom, and now East by his side, were
+again in the awful presence. This time, however, the Doctor was not so
+terrible. A few days before, they had been fagged at fives to fetch the
+balls that went off the court. While standing watching the game, they
+saw five or six nearly new balls hit on the top of the School. "I say,
+Tom," said East, when they were dismissed, "couldn't we get those balls
+somehow?"
+
+"Let's try, anyhow."
+
+So they reconnoitred the walls carefully, borrowed a coal-hammer from
+old Stumps, bought some big nails, and after one or two attempts, scaled
+the Schools, and possessed themselves of huge quantities of fives balls.
+The place pleased them so much that they spent all their spare time
+there, scratching and cutting their names on the top of every tower; and
+at last, having exhausted all other places, finished up with inscribing
+H.EAST, T.BROWN, on the minute-hand of the great clock; in the doing of
+which they held the minute-hand, and disturbed the clock's economy. So
+next morning, when masters and boys came trooping down to prayers, and
+entered the quadrangle, the injured minute-hand was indicating three
+minutes to the hour. They all pulled up, and took their time. When the
+hour struck, doors were closed, and half the school late. Thomas being
+set to make inquiry, discovers their names on the minute-hand, and
+reports accordingly; and they are sent for, a knot of their friends
+making derisive and pantomimic allusions to what their fate will be as
+they walk off.
+
+But the Doctor, after hearing their story, doesn't make much of it, and
+only gives them thirty lines of Homer to learn by heart, and a lecture
+on the likelihood of such exploits ending in broken bones.
+
+Alas! almost the next day was one of the great fairs in the town; and as
+several rows and other disagreeable accidents had of late taken place
+on these occasions, the Doctor gives out, after prayers in the morning,
+that no boy is to go down into the town. Wherefore East and Tom, for
+no earthly pleasure except that of doing what they are told not to do,
+start away, after second lesson, and making a short circuit through the
+fields, strike a back lane which leads into the town, go down it, and
+run plump upon one of the masters as they emerge into the High Street.
+The master in question, though a very clever, is not a righteous man.
+He has already caught several of his own pupils, and gives them lines
+to learn, while he sends East and Tom, who are not his pupils, up to the
+Doctor, who, on learning that they had been at prayers in the morning,
+flogs them soundly.
+
+The flogging did them no good at the time, for the injustice of their
+captor was rankling in their minds; but it was just the end of the half,
+and on the next evening but one Thomas knocks at their door, and says
+the Doctor wants to see them. They look at one another in silent dismay.
+What can it be now? Which of their countless wrong-doings can he have
+heard of officially? However, it's no use delaying, so up they go to the
+study. There they find the Doctor, not angry, but very graver. "He has
+sent for them to speak to very seriously before they go home. They have
+each been flogged several times in the half-year for direct and
+wilful breaches of rules. This cannot go on. They are doing no good to
+themselves or others, and now they are getting up in the School, and
+have influence. They seem to think that rules are made capriciously, and
+for the pleasure of the masters; but this is not so. They are made for
+the good of the whole School, and must and shall be obeyed. Those who
+thoughtlessly or wilfully break them will not be allowed to stay at the
+School. He should be sorry if they had to leave, as the School might
+do them both much good, and wishes them to think very seriously in the
+holidays over what he has said. Good-night."
+
+And so the two hurry off horribly scared; the idea of having to leave
+has never crossed their minds, and is quite unbearable.
+
+As they go out, they meet at the door old Holmes, a sturdy, cheery
+praepostor of another house, who goes in to the Doctor; and they hear
+his genial, hearty greeting of the newcomer, so different to their own
+reception, as the door closes, and return to their study with heavy
+hearts, and tremendous resolves to break no more rules.
+
+Five minutes afterwards the master of their form--a late arrival and a
+model young master--knocks at the Doctor's study-door. "Come in!" And
+as he enters, the Doctor goes on, to Holmes--"You see, I do not know
+anything of the case officially, and if I take any notice of it at all,
+I must publicly expel the boy. I don't wish to do that, for I think
+there is some good in him. There's nothing for it but a good sound
+thrashing." He paused to shake hands with the master, which Holmes does
+also, and then prepares to leave.
+
+"I understand. Good-night, sir."
+
+"Good-night, Holmes. And remember," added the Doctor, emphasizing the
+words, "a good sound thrashing before the whole house."
+
+The door closed on Holmes; and the Doctor, in answer to the puzzled
+look of his lieutenant, explained shortly. "A gross case of bullying.
+Wharton, the head of the house, is a very good fellow, but slight and
+weak, and severe physical pain is the only way to deal with such a
+case; so I have asked Holmes to take it up. He is very careful and
+trustworthy, and has plenty of strength. I wish all the sixth had as
+much. We must have it here, if we are to keep order at all."
+
+Now I don't want any wiseacres to read this book, but if they should, of
+course they will prick up their long ears, and howl, or rather bray, at
+the above story. Very good--I don't object; but what I have to add for
+you boys is this, that Holmes called a levy of his house after breakfast
+next morning, made them a speech on the case of bullying in question,
+and then gave the bully a "good sound thrashing;" and that years
+afterwards, that boy sought out Holmes, and thanked him, saying it
+had been the kindest act which had ever been done upon him, and the
+turning-point in his character; and a very good fellow he became, and a
+credit to his School.
+
+After some other talk between them, the Doctor said, "I want to speak
+to you about two boys in your form, East and Brown. I have just been
+speaking to them. What do you think of them?"
+
+"Well, they are not hard workers, and very thoughtless and full of
+spirits; but I can't help liking them. I think they are sound, good
+fellows at the bottom."
+
+"I'm glad of it. I think so too: But they make me very uneasy. They are
+taking the lead a good deal amongst the fags in my house, for they are
+very active, bold fellows. I should be sorry to lose them, but I shan't
+let them stay if I don't see them gaining character and manliness. In
+another year they may do great harm to all the younger boys."
+
+"Oh, I hope you won't send them away," pleaded their master.
+
+"Not if I can help it. But now I never feel sure, after any
+half-holiday, that I shan't have to flog one of them next morning, for
+some foolish, thoughtless scrape. I quite dread seeing either of them."
+
+They were both silent for a minute. Presently the Doctor began again:--
+
+"They don't feel that they have any duty or work to do in the school,
+and how is one to make them feel it?"
+
+"I think if either of them had some little boy to take care of, it would
+steady them. Brown is the most reckless of the two, I should say. East
+wouldn't get into so many scrapes without him."
+
+"Well," said the Doctor, with something like a sigh, "I'll think of it."
+And they went on to talk of other subjects.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+     "I [hold] it truth, with him who sings,
+     To one clear harp in divers tones,
+     That men may rise on stepping-stones
+     Of their dead selves to higher things."
+     --TENNYSON.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--HOW THE TIDE TURNED.
+
+     "Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
+     In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.
+     . . . .
+     Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
+     Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified."
+     --LOWELL.
+
+The turning-point in our hero's school career had now come, and the
+manner of it was as follows. On the evening of the first day of the next
+half-year, Tom, East, and another School-house boy, who had just been
+dropped at the Spread Eagle by the old Regulator, rushed into the
+matron's room in high spirits, such as all real boys are in when they
+first get back, however fond they may be of home.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Wixie," shouted one, seizing on the methodical, active,
+little dark-eyed woman, who was busy stowing away the linen of the boys
+who had already arrived into their several pigeon-holes, "here we are
+again, you see, as jolly as ever. Let us help you put the things away."
+
+"And, Mary," cried another (she was called indifferently by either
+name), "who's come back? Has the Doctor made old Jones leave? How many
+new boys are there?"
+
+"Am I and East to have Gray's study? You know you promised to get it for
+us if you could," shouted Tom.
+
+"And am I to sleep in Number 4?" roared East.
+
+"How's old Sam, and Bogle, and Sally?"
+
+"Bless the boys!" cries Mary, at last getting in a word; "why, you'll
+shake me to death. There, now, do go away up to the housekeeper's room
+and get your suppers; you know I haven't time to talk. You'll find
+plenty more in the house.--Now, Master East, do let those things alone.
+You're mixing up three new boys' things." And she rushed at East, who
+escaped round the open trunks holding up a prize.
+
+"Hullo! look here, Tommy," shouted he; "here's fun!" and he brandished
+above his head some pretty little night-caps, beautifully made and
+marked, the work of loving fingers in some distant country home. The
+kind mother and sisters who sewed that delicate stitching with aching
+hearts little thought of the trouble they might be bringing on the
+young head for which they were meant. The little matron was wiser, and
+snatched the caps from East before he could look at the name on them.
+
+"Now, Master East, I shall be very angry if you don't go," said she;
+"there's some capital cold beef and pickles upstairs, and I won't have
+you old boys in my room first night."
+
+"Hurrah for the pickles! Come along, Tommy--come along, Smith. We shall
+find out who the young count is, I'll be bound. I hope he'll sleep in my
+room. Mary's always vicious first week."
+
+As the boys turned to leave the room, the matron touched Tom's arm, and
+said, "Master Brown, please stop a minute; I want to speak to you."
+
+"Very well, Mary. I'll come in a minute, East. Don't finish the
+pickles."
+
+"O Master Brown," went on the little matron, when the rest had gone,
+"you're to have Gray's study, Mrs. Arnold says. And she wants you to
+take in this young gentleman. He's a new boy, and thirteen years old
+though he don't look it. He's very delicate, and has never been from
+home before. And I told Mrs. Arnold I thought you'd be kind to him, and
+see that they don't bully him at first. He's put into your form, and
+I've given him the bed next to yours in Number 4; so East can't sleep
+there this half."
+
+Tom was rather put about by this speech. He had got the double study
+which he coveted, but here were conditions attached which greatly
+moderated his joy. He looked across the room, and in the far corner of
+the sofa was aware of a slight, pale boy, with large blue eyes and light
+fair hair, who seemed ready to shrink through the floor. He saw at a
+glance that the little stranger was just the boy whose first half-year
+at a public school would be misery to himself if he were left alone, or
+constant anxiety to any one who meant to see him through his troubles.
+Tom was too honest to take in the youngster, and then let him shift for
+himself; and if he took him as his chum instead of East, where were
+all his pet plans of having a bottled-beer cellar under his window, and
+making night-lines and slings, and plotting expeditions to Brownsover
+Mills and Caldecott's Spinney? East and he had made up their minds to
+get this study, and then every night from locking-up till ten they would
+be together to talk about fishing, drink bottled-beer, read Marryat's
+novels, and sort birds' eggs. And this new boy would most likely never
+go out of the close, and would be afraid of wet feet, and always getting
+laughed at, and called Molly, or Jenny, or some derogatory feminine
+nickname.
+
+The matron watched him for a moment, and saw what was passing in his
+mind, and so, like a wise negotiator, threw in an appeal to his warm
+heart. "Poor little fellow," said she, in almost a whisper; "his
+father's dead, and he's got no brothers. And his mamma--such a kind,
+sweet lady--almost broke her heart at leaving him this morning; and she
+said one of his sisters was like to die of decline, and so--"
+
+"Well, well," burst in Tom, with something like a sigh at the effort,
+"I suppose I must give up East.--Come along, young un. What's your name?
+We'll go and have some supper, and then I'll show you our study."
+
+"His name's George Arthur," said the matron, walking up to him with Tom,
+who grasped his little delicate hand as the proper preliminary to making
+a chum of him, and felt as if he could have blown him away. "I've had
+his books and things put into the study, which his mamma has had new
+papered, and the sofa covered, and new green-baize curtains over the
+door" (the diplomatic matron threw this in, to show that the new boy was
+contributing largely to the partnership comforts). "And Mrs. Arnold told
+me to say," she added, "that she should like you both to come up to tea
+with her. You know the way, Master Brown, and the things are just gone
+up, I know."
+
+Here was an announcement for Master Tom! He was to go up to tea the
+first night, just as if he were a sixth or fifth form boy, and of
+importance in the School world, instead of the most reckless young
+scapegrace amongst the fags. He felt himself lifted on to a higher
+social and moral platform at once. Nevertheless he couldn't give up
+without a sigh the idea of the jolly supper in the housekeeper's room
+with East and the rest, and a rush round to all the studies of his
+friends afterwards, to pour out the deeds and wonders of the holidays,
+to plot fifty plans for the coming half-year, and to gather news of who
+had left and what new boys had come, who had got who's study, and where
+the new praepostors slept. However, Tom consoled himself with thinking
+that he couldn't have done all this with the new boy at his heels, and
+so marched off along the passages to the Doctor's private house with his
+young charge in tow, in monstrous good-humour with himself and all the
+world.
+
+It is needless, and would be impertinent, to tell how the two young boys
+were received in that drawing-room. The lady who presided there is still
+living, and has carried with her to her peaceful home in the north the
+respect and love of all those who ever felt and shared that gentle and
+high-bred hospitality. Ay, many is the brave heart, now doing its work
+and bearing its load in country curacies, London chambers, under the
+Indian sun, and in Australian towns and clearings, which looks back with
+fond and grateful memory to that School-house drawing-room, and dates
+much of its highest and best training to the lessons learnt there.
+
+Besides Mrs. Arnold and one or two of the elder children, there were one
+of the younger masters, young Brooke (who was now in the sixth, and
+had succeeded to his brother's position and influence), and another
+sixth-form boy, talking together before the fire. The master and young
+Brooke, now a great strapping fellow six feet high, eighteen years old,
+and powerful as a coal-heaver, nodded kindly to Tom, to his intense
+glory, and then went on talking. The other did not notice them.
+The hostess, after a few kind words, which led the boys at once and
+insensibly to feel at their ease and to begin talking to one another,
+left them with her own children while she finished a letter. The young
+ones got on fast and well, Tom holding forth about a prodigious pony he
+had been riding out hunting, and hearing stories of the winter glories
+of the lakes, when tea came in, and immediately after the Doctor
+himself.
+
+How frank, and kind, and manly was his greeting to the party by the
+fire! It did Tom's heart good to see him and young Brooke shake hands,
+and look one another in the face; and he didn't fail to remark that
+Brooke was nearly as tall and quite as broad as the Doctor. And his cup
+was full when in another moment his master turned to him with another
+warm shake of the hand, and, seemingly oblivious of all the late scrapes
+which he had been getting into, said, "Ah, Brown, you here! I hope you
+left your father and all well at home?"
+
+"Yes, sir, quite well."
+
+"And this is the little fellow who is to share your study. Well, he
+doesn't look as we should like to see him. He wants some Rugby air, and
+cricket. And you must take him some good long walks, to Bilton Grange,
+and Caldecott's Spinney, and show him what a little pretty country we
+have about here."
+
+Tom wondered if the Doctor knew that his visits to Bilton Grange
+were for the purpose of taking rooks' nests (a proceeding strongly
+discountenanced by the owner thereof), and those to Caldecott's Spinney
+were prompted chiefly by the conveniences for setting night-lines. What
+didn't the Doctor know? And what a noble use he always made of it! He
+almost resolved to abjure rook-pies and night-lines for ever. The tea
+went merrily off, the Doctor now talking of holiday doings, and then of
+the prospects of the half-year--what chance there was for the Balliol
+scholarship, whether the eleven would be a good one. Everybody was at
+his ease, and everybody felt that he, young as he might be, was of some
+use in the little School world, and had a work to do there.
+
+Soon after tea the Doctor went off to his study, and the young boys a
+few minutes afterwards took their leave and went out of the private door
+which led from the Doctor's house into the middle passage.
+
+At the fire, at the farther end of the passage, was a crowd of boys in
+loud talk and laughter. There was a sudden pause when the door opened,
+and then a great shout of greeting, as Tom was recognized marching down
+the passage.
+
+"Hullo, Brown! where do you come from?"
+
+"Oh, I've been to tea with the Doctor," says Tom, with great dignity.
+
+"My eye!" cried East, "Oh! so that's why Mary called you back, and you
+didn't come to supper. You lost something. That beef and pickles was no
+end good."
+
+"I say, young fellow," cried Hall, detecting Arthur and catching him by
+the collar, "what's your name? Where do you come from? How old are you?"
+
+Tom saw Arthur shrink back and look scared as all the group turned to
+him, but thought it best to let him answer, just standing by his side to
+support in case of need.
+
+"Arthur, sir. I come from Devonshire."
+
+"Don't call me 'sir,' you young muff. How old are you?"
+
+"Thirteen."
+
+"Can you sing?"
+
+The poor boy was trembling and hesitating. Tom struck in--"You be
+hanged, Tadpole. He'll have to sing, whether he can or not, Saturday
+twelve weeks, and that's long enough off yet."
+
+"Do you know him at home, Brown?"
+
+"No; but he's my chum in Gray's old study, and it's near prayer-time,
+and I haven't had a look at it yet.--Come along, Arthur."
+
+Away went the two, Tom longing to get his charge safe under cover, where
+he might advise him on his deportment.
+
+"What a queer chum for Tom Brown," was the comment at the fire; and it
+must be confessed so thought Tom himself, as he lighted his candle, and
+surveyed the new green-baize curtains and the carpet and sofa with much
+satisfaction.
+
+"I say, Arthur, what a brick your mother is to make us so cozy! But look
+here now; you must answer straight up when the fellows speak to you, and
+don't be afraid. If you're afraid, you'll get bullied. And don't you
+say you can sing; and don't you ever talk about home, or your mother and
+sisters."
+
+Poor little Arthur looked ready to cry.
+
+"But, please," said he, "mayn't I talk about--about home to you?"
+
+"Oh yes; I like it. But don't talk to boys you don't know, or they'll
+call you home-sick, or mamma's darling, or some such stuff. What a jolly
+desk! Is that yours? And what stunning binding! Why, your school-books
+look like novels."
+
+And Tom was soon deep in Arthur's goods and chattels, all new, and good
+enough for a fifth-form boy, and hardly thought of his friends outside
+till the prayer-bell rang.
+
+I have already described the School-house prayers. They were the same on
+the first night as on the other nights, save for the gaps caused by the
+absence of those boys who came late, and the line of new boys who stood
+all together at the farther table--of all sorts and sizes, like young
+bears with all their troubles to come, as Tom's father had said to him
+when he was in the same position. He thought of it as he looked at the
+line, and poor little slight Arthur standing with them, and as he was
+leading him upstairs to Number 4, directly after prayers, and showing
+him his bed. It was a huge, high, airy room, with two large windows
+looking on to the School close. There were twelve beds in the room. The
+one in the farthest corner by the fireplace, occupied by the sixth-form
+boy, who was responsible for the discipline of the room, and the rest
+by boys in the lower-fifth and other junior forms, all fags (for the
+fifth-form boys, as has been said, slept in rooms by themselves). Being
+fags, the eldest of them was not more than about sixteen years old, and
+were all bound to be up and in bed by ten. The sixth-form boys came to
+bed from ten to a quarter-past (at which time the old verger came round
+to put the candles out), except when they sat up to read.
+
+Within a few minutes therefore of their entry, all the other boys who
+slept in Number 4 had come up. The little fellows went quietly to their
+own beds, and began undressing, and talking to each other in whispers;
+while the elder, amongst whom was Tom, sat chatting about on one
+another's beds, with their jackets and waistcoats off. Poor little
+Arthur was overwhelmed with the novelty of his position. The idea of
+sleeping in the room with strange boys had clearly never crossed his
+mind before, and was as painful as it was strange to him. He could
+hardly bear to take his jacket off; however, presently, with an effort,
+off it came, and then he paused and looked at Tom, who was sitting at
+the bottom of his bed talking and laughing.
+
+"Please, Brown," he whispered, "may I wash my face and hands?"
+
+"Of course, if you like," said Tom, staring; "that's your
+washhand-stand, under the window, second from your bed. You'll have to
+go down for more water in the morning if you use it all." And on he went
+with his talk, while Arthur stole timidly from between the beds out
+to his washhand-stand, and began his ablutions, thereby drawing for a
+moment on himself the attention of the room.
+
+On went the talk and laughter. Arthur finished his washing and
+undressing, and put on his night-gown. He then looked round more
+nervously than ever. Two or three of the little boys were already in
+bed, sitting up with their chins on their knees. The light burned clear,
+the noise went on. It was a trying moment for the poor little lonely
+boy; however, this time he didn't ask Tom what he might or might not do,
+but dropped on his knees by his bedside, as he had done every day from
+his childhood, to open his heart to Him who heareth the cry and beareth
+the sorrows of the tender child, and the strong man in agony.
+
+Tom was sitting at the bottom of his bed unlacing his boots, so that his
+back was towards Arthur, and he didn't see what had happened, and looked
+up in wonder at the sudden silence. Then two or three boys laughed and
+sneered, and a big, brutal fellow who was standing in the middle of the
+room picked up a slipper, and shied it at the kneeling boy, calling him
+a snivelling young shaver. Then Tom saw the whole, and the next moment
+the boot he had just pulled off flew straight at the head of the bully,
+who had just time to throw up his arm and catch it on his elbow.
+
+"Confound you, Brown! what's that for?" roared he, stamping with pain.
+
+"Never mind what I mean," said Tom, stepping on to the floor, every drop
+of blood in his body tingling; "if any fellow wants the other boot, he
+knows how to get it."
+
+What would have been the result is doubtful, for at this moment the
+sixth-form boy came in, and not another word could be said. Tom and
+the rest rushed into bed and finished their unrobing there, and the
+old verger, as punctual as the clock, had put out the candle in another
+minute, and toddled on to the next room, shutting their door with his
+usual "Good-night, gen'lm'n."
+
+There were many boys in the room by whom that little scene was taken to
+heart before they slept. But sleep seemed to have deserted the pillow of
+poor Tom. For some time his excitement, and the flood of memories
+which chased one another through his brain, kept him from thinking or
+resolving. His head throbbed, his heart leapt, and he could hardly keep
+himself from springing out of bed and rushing about the room. Then the
+thought of his own mother came across him, and the promise he had made
+at her knee, years ago, never to forget to kneel by his bedside, and
+give himself up to his Father, before he laid his head on the pillow,
+from which it might never rise; and he lay down gently, and cried as if
+his heart would break. He was only fourteen years old.
+
+It was no light act of courage in those days, my dear boys, for a little
+fellow to say his prayers publicly, even at Rugby. A few years later,
+when Arnold's manly piety had begun to leaven the School, the tables
+turned; before he died, in the School-house at least, and I believe in
+the other house, the rule was the other way. But poor Tom had come to
+school in other times. The first few nights after he came he did not
+kneel down because of the noise, but sat up in bed till the candle was
+out, and then stole out and said his prayers, in fear lest some one
+should find him out. So did many another poor little fellow. Then he
+began to think that he might just as well say his prayers in bed, and
+then that it didn't matter whether he was kneeling, or sitting, or lying
+down. And so it had come to pass with Tom, as with all who will not
+confess their Lord before men; and for the last year he had probably not
+said his prayers in earnest a dozen times.
+
+Poor Tom! the first and bitterest feeling which was like to break his
+heart was the sense of his own cowardice. The vice of all others which
+he loathed was brought in and burnt in on his own soul. He had lied to
+his mother, to his conscience, to his God. How could he bear it? And
+then the poor little weak boy, whom he had pitied and almost scorned for
+his weakness, had done that which he, braggart as he was, dared not do.
+The first dawn of comfort came to him in swearing to himself that he
+would stand by that boy through thick and thin, and cheer him, and help
+him, and bear his burdens for the good deed done that night. Then he
+resolved to write home next day and tell his mother all, and what a
+coward her son had been. And then peace came to him as he resolved,
+lastly, to bear his testimony next morning. The morning would be harder
+than the night to begin with, but he felt that he could not afford to
+let one chance slip. Several times he faltered, for the devil showed him
+first all his old friends calling him "Saint" and "Square-toes," and
+a dozen hard names, and whispered to him that his motives would be
+misunderstood, and he would only be left alone with the new boy; whereas
+it was his duty to keep all means of influence, that he might do good to
+the largest number. And then came the more subtle temptation, "Shall I
+not be showing myself braver than others by doing this? Have I any right
+to begin it now? Ought I not rather to pray in my own study, letting
+other boys know that I do so, and trying to lead them to it, while in
+public at least I should go on as I have done?" However, his good angel
+was too strong that night, and he turned on his side and slept, tired of
+trying to reason, but resolved to follow the impulse which had been so
+strong, and in which he had found peace.
+
+Next morning he was up and washed and dressed, all but his jacket and
+waistcoat, just as the ten minutes' bell began to ring, and then in
+the face of the whole room knelt down to pray. Not five words could
+he say--the bell mocked him; he was listening for every whisper in
+the room--what were they all thinking of him? He was ashamed to go on
+kneeling, ashamed to rise from his knees. At last, as it were from his
+inmost heart, a still, small voice seemed to breathe forth the words of
+the publican, "God be merciful to me a sinner!" He repeated them over
+and over, clinging to them as for his life, and rose from his knees
+comforted and humbled, and ready to face the whole world. It was not
+needed: two other boys besides Arthur had already followed his example,
+and he went down to the great School with a glimmering of another lesson
+in his heart--the lesson that he who has conquered his own coward spirit
+has conquered the whole outward world; and that other one which the old
+prophet learnt in the cave in Mount Horeb, when he hid his face, and the
+still, small voice asked, "What doest thou here, Elijah?" that however
+we may fancy ourselves alone on the side of good, the King and Lord
+of men is nowhere without His witnesses; for in every society, however
+seemingly corrupt and godless, there are those who have not bowed the
+knee to Baal.
+
+He found, too, how greatly he had exaggerated the effect to be produced
+by his act. For a few nights there was a sneer or a laugh when he knelt
+down, but this passed off soon, and one by one all the other boys but
+three or four followed the lead. I fear that this was in some measure
+owing to the fact that Tom could probably have thrashed any boy in the
+room except the praepostor; at any rate, every boy knew that he would
+try upon very slight provocation, and didn't choose to run the risk of a
+hard fight because Tom Brown had taken a fancy to say his prayers. Some
+of the small boys of Number 4 communicated the new state of things to
+their chums, and in several other rooms the poor little fellows tried
+it on--in one instance or so, where the praepostor heard of it and
+interfered very decidedly, with partial success; but in the rest, after
+a short struggle, the confessors were bullied or laughed down, and the
+old state of things went on for some time longer. Before either Tom
+Brown or Arthur left the School-house, there was no room in which it had
+not become the regular custom. I trust it is so still, and that the old
+heathen state of things has gone out for ever.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--THE NEW BOY.
+
+     "And Heaven's rich instincts in him grew
+     As effortless as woodland nooks
+     Send violets up and paint them blue."--LOWELL.
+
+I do not mean to recount all the little troubles and annoyances which
+thronged upon Tom at the beginning of this half-year, in his new
+character of bear-leader to a gentle little boy straight from home. He
+seemed to himself to have become a new boy again, without any of the
+long-suffering and meekness indispensable for supporting that character
+with moderate success. From morning till night he had the feeling of
+responsibility on his mind, and even if he left Arthur in their study
+or in the close for an hour, was never at ease till he had him in sight
+again. He waited for him at the doors of the school after every lesson
+and every calling-over; watched that no tricks were played him, and none
+but the regulation questions asked; kept his eye on his plate at dinner
+and breakfast, to see that no unfair depredations were made upon his
+viands; in short, as East remarked, cackled after him like a hen with
+one chick.
+
+Arthur took a long time thawing, too, which made it all the harder work;
+was sadly timid; scarcely ever spoke unless Tom spoke to him first; and,
+worst of all, would agree with him in everything--the hardest thing in
+the world for a Brown to bear. He got quite angry sometimes, as they
+sat together of a night in their study, at this provoking habit of
+agreement, and was on the point of breaking out a dozen times with a
+lecture upon the propriety of a fellow having a will of his own and
+speaking out, but managed to restrain himself by the thought that he
+might only frighten Arthur, and the remembrance of the lesson he had
+learnt from him on his first night at Number 4. Then he would resolve to
+sit still and not say a word till Arthur began; but he was always beat
+at that game, and had presently to begin talking in despair, fearing
+lest Arthur might think he was vexed at something if he didn't, and
+dog-tired of sitting tongue-tied.
+
+It was hard work. But Tom had taken it up, and meant to stick to it, and
+go through with it so as to satisfy himself; in which resolution he
+was much assisted by the chafing of East and his other old friends, who
+began to call him "dry-nurse," and otherwise to break their small wit
+on him. But when they took other ground, as they did every now and then,
+Tom was sorely puzzled.
+
+"Tell you what, Tommy," East would say; "you'll spoil young Hopeful with
+too much coddling. Why can't you let him go about by himself and find
+his own level? He'll never be worth a button if you go on keeping him
+under your skirts."
+
+"Well, but he ain't fit to fight his own way yet; I'm trying to get him
+to it every day, but he's very odd. Poor little beggar! I can't make him
+out a bit. He ain't a bit like anything I've ever seen or heard of--he
+seems all over nerves; anything you say seems to hurt him like a cut or
+a blow."
+
+"That sort of boy's no use here," said East; "he'll only spoil. Now I'll
+tell you what to do, Tommy. Go and get a nice large band-box made, and
+put him in with plenty of cotton-wool and a pap-bottle, labelled 'With
+care--this side up,' and send him back to mamma."
+
+"I think I shall make a hand of him though," said Tom, smiling, "say
+what you will. There's something about him, every now and then, which
+shows me he's got pluck somewhere in him. That's the only thing after
+all that'll wash, ain't it, old Scud? But how to get at it and bring it
+out?"
+
+Tom took one hand out of his breeches-pocket and stuck it in his back
+hair for a scratch, giving his hat a tilt over his nose, his one method
+of invoking wisdom. He stared at the ground with a ludicrously puzzled
+look, and presently looked up and met East's eyes. That young gentleman
+slapped him on the back, and then put his arm round his shoulder, as
+they strolled through the quadrangle together. "Tom," said he, "blest if
+you ain't the best old fellow ever was. I do like to see you go into a
+thing. Hang it, I wish I could take things as you do; but I never
+can get higher than a joke. Everything's a joke. If I was going to be
+flogged next minute, I should be in a blue funk, but I couldn't help
+laughing at it for the life of me."
+
+"Brown and East, you go and fag for Jones on the great fives court."
+
+"Hullo, though, that's past a joke," broke out East, springing at
+the young gentleman who addressed them, and catching him by the
+collar.--"Here, Tommy, catch hold of him t'other side before he can
+holla."
+
+The youth was seized, and dragged, struggling, out of the quadrangle
+into the School-house hall. He was one of the miserable little pretty
+white-handed, curly-headed boys, petted and pampered by some of the big
+fellows, who wrote their verses for them, taught them to drink and use
+bad language, and did all they could to spoil them for everything *
+in this world and the next. One of the avocations in which these young
+gentlemen took particular delight was in going about and getting fags
+for their protectors, when those heroes were playing any game. They
+carried about pencil and paper with them, putting down the names of all
+the boys they sent, always sending five times as many as were wanted,
+and getting all those thrashed who didn't go. The present youth belonged
+to a house which was very jealous of the School-house, and always picked
+out School-house fags when he could find them. However, this time he'd
+got the wrong sow by the ear. His captors slammed the great door of the
+hall, and East put his back against it, while Tom gave the prisoner a
+shake up, took away his list, and stood him up on the floor, while he
+proceeded leisurely to examine that document.
+
+     * A kind and wise critic, an old Rugboean, notes here in the
+     margin: "The small friend system was not so utterly bad from
+     1841-1847." Before that, too, there were many noble
+     friendships between big and little boys; but I can't strike
+     out the passage. Many boys will know why it is left in.
+
+"Let me out, let me go!" screamed the boy, in a furious passion. "I'll
+go and tell Jones this minute, and he'll give you both the --- thrashing
+you ever had."
+
+"Pretty little dear," said East, patting the top of his hat.--"Hark how
+he swears, Tom. Nicely brought up young man, ain't he, I don't think."
+
+"Let me alone, --- you," roared the boy, foaming with rage, and kicking
+at East, who quietly tripped him up, and deposited him on the floor in a
+place of safety.
+
+"Gently, young fellow," said he; "'tain't improving for little
+whippersnappers like you to be indulging in blasphemy; so you stop that,
+or you'll get something you won't like."
+
+"I'll have you both licked when I get out, that I will," rejoined the
+boy, beginning to snivel.
+
+"Two can play at that game, mind you," said Tom, who had finished his
+examination of the list. "Now you just listen here. We've just come
+across the fives court, and Jones has four fags there already--two
+more than he wants. If he'd wanted us to change, he'd have stopped us
+himself. And here, you little blackguard, you've got seven names down on
+your list besides ours, and five of them School-house." Tom walked up to
+him, and jerked him on to his legs; he was by this time whining like a
+whipped puppy. "Now just listen to me. We ain't going to fag for
+Jones. If you tell him you've sent us, we'll each of us give you such
+a thrashing as you'll remember." And Tom tore up the list and threw the
+pieces into the fire.
+
+"And mind you, too," said East, "don't let me catch you again sneaking
+about the School-house, and picking up our fags. You haven't got the
+sort of hide to take a sound licking kindly." And he opened the door and
+sent the young gentleman flying into the quadrangle with a parting kick.
+
+"Nice boy, Tommy," said East, shoving his hands in his pockets, and
+strolling to the fire.
+
+"Worst sort we breed," responded Tom, following his example. "Thank
+goodness, no big fellow ever took to petting me."
+
+"You'd never have been like that," said East. "I should like to have put
+him in a museum: Christian young gentleman, nineteenth century, highly
+educated. Stir him up with a long pole, Jack, and hear him swear like a
+drunken sailor. He'd make a respectable public open its eyes, I think."
+
+"Think he'll tell Jones?" said Tom.
+
+"No," said East. "Don't care if he does."
+
+"Nor I," said Tom. And they went back to talk about Arthur.
+
+The young gentleman had brains enough not to tell Jones, reasoning
+that East and Brown, who were noted as some of the toughest fags in
+the School, wouldn't care three straws for any licking Jones might give
+them, and would be likely to keep their words as to passing it on with
+interest.
+
+After the above conversation, East came a good deal to their study, and
+took notice of Arthur, and soon allowed to Tom that he was a thorough
+little gentleman, and would get over his shyness all in good time; which
+much comforted our hero. He felt every day, too, the value of having an
+object in his life--something that drew him out of himself; and it being
+the dull time of the year, and no games going about for which he much
+cared, was happier than he had ever yet been at school, which was saying
+a great deal.
+
+The time which Tom allowed himself away from his charge was from
+locking-up till supper-time. During this hour or hour and a half he used
+to take his fling, going round to the studies of all his acquaintance,
+sparring or gossiping in the hall, now jumping the old iron-bound
+tables, or carving a bit of his name on them, then joining in some
+chorus of merry voices--in fact, blowing off his steam, as we should now
+call it.
+
+This process was so congenial to his temper, and Arthur showed himself
+so pleased at the arrangement, that it was several weeks before Tom was
+ever in their study before supper. One evening, however, he rushed in to
+look for an old chisel, or some corks, or other article essential to his
+pursuit for the time being, and while rummaging about in the cupboards,
+looked up for a moment, and was caught at once by the figure of poor
+little Arthur. The boy was sitting with his elbows on the table, and
+his head leaning on his hands, and before him an open book, on which his
+tears were falling fast. Tom shut the door at once, and sat down on the
+sofa by Arthur, putting his arm round his neck.
+
+"Why, young un, what's the matter?" said he kindly; "you ain't unhappy,
+are you?"
+
+"Oh no, Brown," said the little boy, looking up with the great tears in
+his eyes; "you are so kind to me, I'm very happy."
+
+"Why don't you call me Tom? Lots of boys do that I don't like half so
+much as you. What are you reading, then? Hang it! you must come about
+with me, and not mope yourself." And Tom cast down his eyes on the book,
+and saw it was the Bible. He was silent for a minute, and thought to
+himself, "Lesson Number 2, Tom Brown;" and then said gently, "I'm very
+glad to see this, Arthur, and ashamed that I don't read the Bible more
+myself. Do you read it every night before supper while I'm out?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, I wish you'd wait till afterwards, and then we'd read together.
+But, Arthur, why does it make you cry?"
+
+"Oh, it isn't that I'm unhappy. But at home, while my father was alive,
+we always read the lessons after tea; and I love to read them over now,
+and try to remember what he said about them. I can't remember all and I
+think I scarcely understand a great deal of what I do remember. But
+it all comes back to me so fresh that I can't help crying sometimes to
+think I shall never read them again with him."
+
+Arthur had never spoken of his home before, and Tom hadn't encouraged
+him to do so, as his blundering schoolboy reasoning made him think that
+Arthur would be softened and less manly for thinking of home. But now
+he was fairly interested, and forgot all about chisels and bottled
+beer; while with very little encouragement Arthur launched into his home
+history, and the prayer-bell put them both out sadly when it rang to
+call them to the hall.
+
+From this time Arthur constantly spoke of his home, and above all, of
+his father, who had been dead about a year, and whose memory Tom soon
+got to love and reverence almost as much as his own son did.
+
+Arthur's father had been the clergyman of a parish in the Midland
+counties, which had risen into a large town during the war, and upon
+which the hard years which followed had fallen with fearful weight. The
+trade had been half ruined; and then came the old, sad story, of masters
+reducing their establishments, men turned off and wandering about,
+hungry and wan in body, and fierce in soul, from the thought of wives
+and children starving at home, and the last sticks of furniture going to
+the pawnshop; children taken from school, and lounging about the dirty
+streets and courts, too listless almost to play, and squalid in rags
+and misery; and then the fearful struggle between the employers and
+men--lowerings of wages, strikes, and the long course of oft-repeated
+crime, ending every now and then with a riot, a fire, and the county
+yeomanry. There is no need here to dwell upon such tales: the Englishman
+into whose soul they have not sunk deep is not worthy the name. You
+English boys, for whom this book is meant (God bless your bright faces
+and kind hearts!), will learn it all soon enough.
+
+Into such a parish and state of society Arthur's father had been thrown
+at the age of twenty-five--a young married parson, full of faith,
+hope, and love. He had battled with it like a man, and had lots of fine
+Utopian ideas about the perfectibility of mankind, glorious humanity,
+and such-like, knocked out of his head, and a real, wholesome Christian
+love for the poor, struggling, sinning men, of whom he felt himself one,
+and with and for whom he spent fortune, and strength, and life, driven
+into his heart. He had battled like a man, and gotten a man's reward--no
+silver tea-pots or salvers, with flowery inscriptions setting forth
+his virtues and the appreciation of a genteel parish; no fat living or
+stall, for which he never looked, and didn't care; no sighs and praises
+of comfortable dowagers and well-got-up young women, who worked him
+slippers, sugared his tea, and adored him as "a devoted man;" but a
+manly respect, wrung from the unwilling souls of men who fancied his
+order their natural enemies; the fear and hatred of every one who was
+false or unjust in the district, were he master or man; and the blessed
+sight of women and children daily becoming more human and more homely, a
+comfort to themselves and to their husbands and fathers.
+
+These things, of course, took time, and had to be fought for with toil
+and sweat of brain and heart, and with the life-blood poured out. All
+that, Arthur had laid his account to give, and took as a matter of
+course, neither pitying himself, nor looking on himself as a martyr,
+when he felt the wear and tear making him feel old before his time, and
+the stifling air of fever-dens telling on his health. His wife seconded
+him in everything. She had been rather fond of society, and much admired
+and run after before her marriage; and the London world to which she had
+belonged pitied poor Fanny Evelyn when she married the young clergyman,
+and went to settle in that smoky hole Turley; a very nest of Chartism
+and Atheism, in a part of the country which all the decent families had
+had to leave for years. However, somehow or other she didn't seem to
+care. If her husband's living had been amongst green fields and near
+pleasant neighbours she would have liked it better--that she never
+pretended to deny. But there they were. The air wasn't bad, after all;
+the people were very good sort of people--civil to you if you were civil
+to them, after the first brush; and they didn't expect to work miracles,
+and convert them all off-hand into model Christians. So he and she went
+quietly among the folk, talking to and treating them just as they would
+have done people of their own rank. They didn't feel that they were
+doing anything out of the common way, and so were perfectly natural,
+and had none of that condescension or consciousness of manner which so
+outrages the independent poor. And thus they gradually won respect and
+confidence; and after sixteen years he was looked up to by the whole
+neighbourhood as the just man, the man to whom masters and men could
+go in their strikes, and in all their quarrels and difficulties, and by
+whom the right and true word would be said without fear or favour. And
+the women had come round to take her advice, and go to her as a friend
+in all their troubles; while the children all worshipped the very ground
+she trod on.
+
+They had three children, two daughters and a son, little Arthur, who
+came between his sisters. He had been a very delicate boy from his
+childhood; they thought he had a tendency to consumption, and so he had
+been kept at home and taught by his father, who had made a companion of
+him, and from whom he had gained good scholarship, and a knowledge of
+and interest in many subjects which boys in general never come across
+till they are many years older.
+
+Just as he reached his thirteenth year, and his father had settled that
+he was strong enough to go to school, and, after much debating with
+himself, had resolved to send him there, a desperate typhus fever broke
+out in the town. Most of the other clergy, and almost all the doctors,
+ran away; the work fell with tenfold weight on those who stood to their
+work. Arthur and his wife both caught the fever, of which he died in a
+few days; and she recovered, having been able to nurse him to the end,
+and store up his last words. He was sensible to the last, and calm and
+happy, leaving his wife and children with fearless trust for a few years
+in the hands of the Lord and Friend who had lived and died for him, and
+for whom he, to the best of his power, had lived and died. His widow's
+mourning was deep and gentle. She was more affected by the request of
+the committee of a freethinking club, established in the town by some of
+the factory hands (which he had striven against with might and main, and
+nearly suppressed), that some of their number might be allowed to help
+bear the coffin, than by anything else. Two of them were chosen, who,
+with six other labouring men, his own fellow-workmen and friends, bore
+him to his grave--a man who had fought the Lord's fight even unto the
+death. The shops were closed and the factories shut that day in the
+parish, yet no master stopped the day's wages; but for many a year
+afterwards the townsfolk felt the want of that brave, hopeful, loving
+parson and his wife, who had lived to teach them mutual forbearance and
+helpfulness, and had almost at last given them a glimpse of what this
+old world would be if people would live for God and each other instead
+of for themselves.
+
+What has all this to do with our story? Well, my dear boys, let a fellow
+go on his own way, or you won't get anything out of him worth having.
+I must show you what sort of a man it was who had begotten and trained
+little Arthur, or else you won't believe in him, which I am resolved you
+shall do; and you won't see how he, the timid, weak boy, had points in
+him from which the bravest and strongest recoiled, and made his presence
+and example felt from the first on all sides, unconsciously to himself,
+and without the least attempt at proselytizing. The spirit of his father
+was in him, and the Friend to whom his father had left him did not
+neglect the trust.
+
+After supper that night, and almost nightly for years afterwards,
+Tom and Arthur, and by degrees East occasionally, and sometimes one,
+sometimes another, of their friends, read a chapter of the Bible
+together, and talked it over afterwards. Tom was at first utterly
+astonished, and almost shocked, at the sort of way in which Arthur read
+the book and talked about the men and women whose lives were there told.
+The first night they happened to fall on the chapters about the famine
+in Egypt, and Arthur began talking about Joseph as if he were a living
+statesman--just as he might have talked about Lord Grey and the Reform
+Bill, only that they were much more living realities to him. The book
+was to him, Tom saw, the most vivid and delightful history of real
+people, who might do right or wrong, just like any one who was walking
+about in Rugby--the Doctor, or the masters, or the sixth-form boys. But
+the astonishment soon passed off, the scales seemed to drop from his
+eyes, and the book became at once and for ever to him the great human
+and divine book, and the men and women, whom he had looked upon
+as something quite different from himself, became his friends and
+counsellors.
+
+For our purposes, however, the history of one night's reading will be
+sufficient, which must be told here, now we are on the subject, though
+it didn't happen till a year afterwards, and long after the events
+recorded in the next chapter of our story.
+
+Arthur, Tom, and East were together one night, and read the story of
+Naaman coming to Elisha to be cured of his leprosy. When the chapter was
+finished, Tom shut his Bible with a slap.
+
+"I can't stand that fellow Naaman," said he, "after what he'd seen and
+felt, going back and bowing himself down in the house of Rimmon, because
+his effeminate scoundrel of a master did it. I wonder Elisha took the
+trouble to heal him. How he must have despised him!"
+
+"Yes; there you go off as usual, with a shell on your head," struck
+in East, who always took the opposite side to Tom, half from love of
+argument, half from conviction. "How do you know he didn't think better
+of it? How do you know his master was a scoundrel? His letter don't look
+like it, and the book don't say so."
+
+"I don't care," rejoined Tom; "why did Naaman talk about bowing down,
+then, if he didn't mean to do it? He wasn't likely to get more in
+earnest when he got back to court, and away from the prophet."
+
+"Well, but, Tom," said Arthur, "look what Elisha says to him--'Go in
+peace.' He wouldn't have said that if Naaman had been in the wrong."
+
+"I don't see that that means more than saying, 'You're not the man I
+took you for.'"
+
+"No, no; that won't do at all," said East. "Read the words fairly, and
+take men as you find them. I like Naaman, and think he was a very fine
+fellow."
+
+"I don't," said Tom positively.
+
+"Well, I think East is right," said Arthur; "I can't see but what it's
+right to do the best you can, though it mayn't be the best absolutely.
+Every man isn't born to be a martyr."
+
+"Of course, of course," said East; "but he's on one of his pet
+hobbies.--How often have I told you, Tom, that you must drive a nail
+where it'll go."
+
+"And how often have I told you," rejoined Tom, "that it'll always go
+where you want, if you only stick to it and hit hard enough. I hate
+half-measures and compromises."
+
+"Yes, he's a whole-hog man, is Tom. Must have the whole animal-hair and
+teeth, claws and tail," laughed East. "Sooner have no bread any day than
+half the loaf."
+
+"I don't know;" said Arthur--"it's rather puzzling; but ain't most right
+things got by proper compromises--I mean where the principle isn't given
+up?"
+
+"That's just the point," said Tom; "I don't object to a compromise,
+where you don't give up your principle."
+
+"Not you," said East laughingly.--"I know him of old, Arthur, and you'll
+find him out some day. There isn't such a reasonable fellow in the
+world, to hear him talk. He never wants anything but what's right
+and fair; only when you come to settle what's right and fair, it's
+everything that he wants, and nothing that you want. And that's his idea
+of a compromise. Give me the Brown compromise when I'm on his side."
+
+"Now, Harry," said Tom, "no more chaff. I'm serious. Look here. This is
+what makes my blood tingle." And he turned over the pages of his Bible
+and read, "Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego answered and said to the
+king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this
+matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from
+the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O
+king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve
+thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up." He read
+the last verse twice, emphasizing the nots, and dwelling on them as if
+they gave him actual pleasure, and were hard to part with.
+
+They were silent a minute, and then Arthur said, "Yes, that's a glorious
+story, but it don't prove your point, Tom, I think. There are times when
+there is only one way, and that the highest, and then the men are found
+to stand in the breach."
+
+"There's always a highest way, and it's always the right one," said Tom.
+"How many times has the Doctor told us that in his sermons in the last
+year, I should like to know?"
+
+"Well, you ain't going to convince us--is he, Arthur? No Brown
+compromise to-night," said East, looking at his watch. "But it's past
+eight, and we must go to first lesson. What a bore!"
+
+So they took down their books and fell to work; but Arthur didn't
+forget, and thought long and often over the conversation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--ARTHUR MAKES A FRIEND.
+
+     "Let Nature be your teacher:
+     Sweet is the lore which Nature brings.
+     Our meddling intellect
+     Misshapes the beauteous forms of things.
+     We murder to dissect.
+     Enough of Science and of Art:
+     Close up those barren leaves;
+     Come forth, and bring with you a heart
+     That watches and receives."--WORDSWORTH.
+
+About six weeks after the beginning of the half, as Tom and Arthur were
+sitting one night before supper beginning their verses, Arthur suddenly
+stopped, and looked up, and said, "Tom, do you know anything of Martin?"
+
+"Yes," said Tom, taking his hand out of his back hair, and delighted to
+throw his Gradus ad Parnassum on to the sofa; "I know him pretty well.
+He's a very good fellow, but as mad as a hatter. He's called Madman, you
+know. And never was such a fellow for getting all sorts of rum things
+about him. He tamed two snakes last half, and used to carry them about
+in his pocket; and I'll be bound he's got some hedgehogs and rats in his
+cupboard now, and no one knows what besides."
+
+"I should like very much to know him," said Arthur; "he was next to me
+in the form to-day, and he'd lost his book and looked over mine, and he
+seemed so kind and gentle that I liked him very much."
+
+"Ah, poor old Madman, he's always losing his books," said Tom, "and
+getting called up and floored because he hasn't got them."
+
+"I like him all the better," said Arthur.
+
+"Well, he's great fun, I can tell you," said Tom, throwing himself back
+on the sofa, and chuckling at the remembrance. "We had such a game with
+him one day last half. He had been kicking up horrid stinks for some
+time in his study, till I suppose some fellow told Mary, and she told
+the Doctor. Anyhow, one day a little before dinner, when he came down
+from the library, the Doctor, instead of going home, came striding into
+the hall. East and I and five or six other fellows were at the fire, and
+preciously we stared, for he don't come in like that once a year, unless
+it is a wet day and there's a fight in the hall. 'East,' says he, 'just
+come and show me Martin's study.' 'Oh, here's a game,' whispered the
+rest of us; and we all cut upstairs after the Doctor, East leading. As
+we got into the New Row, which was hardly wide enough to hold the Doctor
+and his gown, click, click, click, we heard in the old Madman's den.
+Then that stopped all of a sudden, and the bolts went to like fun. The
+Madman knew East's step, and thought there was going to be a siege.
+
+"'It's the Doctor, Martin. He's here and wants to see you,' sings out
+East.
+
+"Then the bolts went back slowly, and the door opened, and there was
+the old Madman standing, looking precious scared--his jacket off, his
+shirt-sleeves up to his elbows, and his long skinny arms all covered
+with anchors and arrows and letters, tattooed in with gunpowder like a
+sailor-boy's, and a stink fit to knock you down coming out. 'Twas
+all the Doctor could do to stand his ground, and East and I, who were
+looking in under his arms, held our noses tight. The old magpie was
+standing on the window-sill, all his feathers drooping, and looking
+disgusted and half-poisoned.
+
+"'What can you be about, Martin?' says the Doctor. 'You really mustn't
+go on in this way; you're a nuisance to the whole passage.'
+
+"'Please, sir, I was only mixing up this powder; there isn't any harm
+in it. And the Madman seized nervously on his pestle and mortar, to
+show the Doctor the harmlessness of his pursuits, and went on
+pounding--click, click, click. He hadn't given six clicks before, puff!
+up went the whole into a great blaze, away went the pestle and mortar
+across the study, and back we tumbled into the passage. The magpie
+fluttered down into the court, swearing, and the Madman danced out,
+howling, with his fingers in his mouth. The Doctor caught hold of him,
+and called to us to fetch some water. 'There, you silly fellow,' said
+he, quite pleased, though, to find he wasn't much hurt, 'you see you
+don't know the least what you're doing with all these things; and now,
+mind, you must give up practising chemistry by yourself.' Then he took
+hold of his arm and looked at it, and I saw he had to bite his lip, and
+his eyes twinkled; but he said, quite grave, 'Here, you see, you've been
+making all these foolish marks on yourself, which you can never get out,
+and you'll be very sorry for it in a year or two. Now come down to the
+housekeeper's room, and let us see if you are hurt.' And away went
+the two, and we all stayed and had a regular turn-out of the den, till
+Martin came back with his hand bandaged and turned us out. However, I'll
+go and see what he's after, and tell him to come in after prayers to
+supper." And away went Tom to find the boy in question, who dwelt in a
+little study by himself, in New Row.
+
+The aforesaid Martin, whom Arthur had taken such a fancy for, was one of
+those unfortunates who were at that time of day (and are, I fear, still)
+quite out of their places at a public school. If we knew how to use
+our boys, Martin would have been seized upon and educated as a natural
+philosopher. He had a passion for birds, beasts, and insects, and knew
+more of them and their habits than any one in Rugby--except perhaps the
+Doctor, who knew everything. He was also an experimental chemist on a
+small scale, and had made unto himself an electric machine, from which
+it was his greatest pleasure and glory to administer small shocks to any
+small boys who were rash enough to venture into his study. And this
+was by no means an adventure free from excitement; for besides the
+probability of a snake dropping on to your head or twining lovingly up
+your leg, or a rat getting into your breeches-pocket in search of food,
+there was the animal and chemical odour to be faced, which always hung
+about the den, and the chance of being blown up in some of the many
+experiments which Martin was always trying, with the most wondrous
+results in the shape of explosions and smells that mortal boy ever heard
+of. Of course, poor Martin, in consequence of his pursuits, had become
+an Ishmaelite in the house. In the first place, he half-poisoned all his
+neighbours, and they in turn were always on the lookout to pounce upon
+any of his numerous live-stock, and drive him frantic by enticing his
+pet old magpie out of his window into a neighbouring study, and making
+the disreputable old bird drunk on toast soaked in beer and sugar. Then
+Martin, for his sins, inhabited a study looking into a small court some
+ten feet across, the window of which was completely commanded by those
+of the studies opposite in the Sick-room Row, these latter being at
+a slightly higher elevation. East, and another boy of an equally
+tormenting and ingenious turn of mind, now lived exactly opposite, and
+had expended huge pains and time in the preparation of instruments of
+annoyance for the behoof of Martin and his live colony. One morning
+an old basket made its appearance, suspended by a short cord outside
+Martin's window, in which were deposited an amateur nest containing four
+young hungry jackdaws, the pride and glory of Martin's life, for the
+time being, and which he was currently asserted to have hatched upon
+his own person. Early in the morning and late at night he was to be
+seen half out of window, administering to the varied wants of his callow
+brood. After deep cogitation, East and his chum had spliced a knife on
+to the end of a fishing-rod; and having watched Martin out, had, after
+half an hour's severe sawing, cut the string by which the basket
+was suspended, and tumbled it on to the pavement below, with hideous
+remonstrance from the occupants. Poor Martin, returning from his short
+absence, collected the fragments and replaced his brood (except one
+whose neck had been broken in the descent) in their old location,
+suspending them this time by string and wire twisted together, defiant
+of any sharp instrument which his persecutors could command. But, like
+the Russian engineers at Sebastopol, East and his chum had an answer for
+every move of the adversary, and the next day had mounted a gun in the
+shape of a pea-shooter upon the ledge of their window, trained so as to
+bear exactly upon the spot which Martin had to occupy while tending his
+nurslings. The moment he began to feed they began to shoot. In vain did
+the enemy himself invest in a pea-shooter, and endeavour to answer the
+fire while he fed the young birds with his other hand; his attention was
+divided, and his shots flew wild, while every one of theirs told on his
+face and hands, and drove him into howlings and imprecations. He
+had been driven to ensconce the nest in a corner of his already
+too-well-filled den.
+
+His door was barricaded by a set of ingenious bolts of his own
+invention, for the sieges were frequent by the neighbours when any
+unusually ambrosial odour spread itself from the den to the neighbouring
+studies. The door panels were in a normal state of smash, but the frame
+of the door resisted all besiegers, and behind it the owner carried on
+his varied pursuits--much in the same state of mind, I should fancy,
+as a border-farmer lived in, in the days of the moss-troopers, when his
+hold might be summoned or his cattle carried off at any minute of night
+or day.
+
+"Open, Martin, old boy; it's only I, Tom Brown."
+
+"Oh, very well; stop a moment." One bolt went back. "You're sure East
+isn't there?"
+
+"No, no; hang it, open." Tom gave a kick, the other bolt creaked, and he
+entered the den.
+
+Den indeed it was--about five feet six inches long by five wide, and
+seven feet high. About six tattered school-books, and a few chemical
+books, Taxidermy, Stanley on Birds, and an odd volume of Bewick, the
+latter in much better preservation, occupied the top shelves. The other
+shelves, where they had not been cut away and used by the owner for
+other purposes, were fitted up for the abiding-places of birds, beasts,
+and reptiles. There was no attempt at carpet or curtain. The table was
+entirely occupied by the great work of Martin, the electric machine,
+which was covered carefully with the remains of his table-cloth. The
+jackdaw cage occupied one wall; and the other was adorned by a small
+hatchet, a pair of climbing irons, and his tin candle-box, in which he
+was for the time being endeavouring to raise a hopeful young family of
+field-mice. As nothing should be let to lie useless, it was well that
+the candle-box was thus occupied, for candles Martin never had. A pound
+was issued to him weekly, as to the other boys; but as candles were
+available capital, and easily exchangeable for birds' eggs or young
+birds, Martin's pound invariably found its way in a few hours to
+Howlett's the bird-fancier's, in the Bilton road, who would give a
+hawk's or nightingale's egg or young linnet in exchange. Martin's
+ingenuity was therefore for ever on the rack to supply himself with
+a light. Just now he had hit upon a grand invention, and the den was
+lighted by a flaring cotton wick issuing from a ginger-beer bottle full
+of some doleful composition. When light altogether failed him, Martin
+would loaf about by the fires in the passages or hall, after the manner
+of Diggs, and try to do his verses or learn his lines by the firelight.
+
+"Well, old boy, you haven't got any sweeter in the den this half. How
+that stuff in the bottle stinks! Never mind; I ain't going to stop; but
+you come up after prayers to our study. You know young Arthur. We've got
+Gray's study. We'll have a good supper and talk about bird-nesting."
+
+Martin was evidently highly pleased at the invitation, and promised to
+be up without fail.
+
+As soon as prayers were over, and the sixth and fifth form boys had
+withdrawn to the aristocratic seclusion of their own room, and the rest,
+or democracy, had sat down to their supper in the hall, Tom and Arthur,
+having secured their allowances of bread and cheese, started on their
+feet to catch the eye of the praepostor of the week, who remained in
+charge during supper, walking up and down the hall. He happened to be an
+easy-going fellow, so they got a pleasant nod to their "Please may I go
+out?" and away they scrambled to prepare for Martin a sumptuous banquet.
+This Tom had insisted on, for he was in great delight on the occasion,
+the reason of which delight must be expounded. The fact was that this
+was the first attempt at a friendship of his own which Arthur had made,
+and Tom hailed it as a grand step. The ease with which he himself became
+hail-fellow-well-met with anybody, and blundered into and out of twenty
+friendships a half-year, made him sometimes sorry and sometimes angry at
+Arthur's reserve and loneliness. True, Arthur was always pleasant, and
+even jolly, with any boys who came with Tom to their study; but Tom felt
+that it was only through him, as it were, that his chum associated
+with others, and that but for him Arthur would have been dwelling in
+a wilderness. This increased his consciousness of responsibility;
+and though he hadn't reasoned it out and made it clear to himself yet
+somehow he knew that this responsibility, this trust which he had taken
+on him without thinking about it, head over heels in fact, was the
+centre and turning-point of his school-life, that which was to make him
+or mar him, his appointed work and trial for the time being. And Tom
+was becoming a new boy, though with frequent tumbles in the dirt and
+perpetual hard battle with himself, and was daily growing in manfulness
+and thoughtfulness, as every high-couraged and well-principled boy must,
+when he finds himself for the first time consciously at grips with self
+and the devil. Already he could turn almost without a sigh from the
+School-gates, from which had just scampered off East and three or four
+others of his own particular set, bound for some jolly lark not quite
+according to law, and involving probably a row with louts, keepers,
+or farm-labourers, the skipping dinner or calling-over, some of Phoebe
+Jennings's beer, and a very possible flogging at the end of all as a
+relish. He had quite got over the stage in which he would grumble to
+himself--"Well, hang it, it's very hard of the Doctor to have saddled me
+with Arthur. Why couldn't he have chummed him with Fogey, or Thomkin, or
+any of the fellows who never do anything but walk round the close, and
+finish their copies the first day they're set?" But although all this
+was past, he longed, and felt that he was right in longing, for more
+time for the legitimate pastimes of cricket, fives, bathing, and
+fishing, within bounds, in which Arthur could not yet be his companion;
+and he felt that when the "young un" (as he now generally called him)
+had found a pursuit and some other friend for himself, he should be
+able to give more time to the education of his own body with a clear
+conscience.
+
+And now what he so wished for had come to pass; he almost hailed it as
+a special providence (as indeed it was, but not for the reasons he
+gave for it--what providences are?) that Arthur should have singled out
+Martin of all fellows for a friend. "The old Madman is the very fellow,"
+thought he; "he will take him scrambling over half the country after
+birds' eggs and flowers, make him run and swim and climb like an Indian,
+and not teach him a word of anything bad, or keep him from his lessons.
+What luck!" And so, with more than his usual heartiness, he dived into
+his cupboard, and hauled out an old knuckle-bone of ham, and two or
+three bottles of beer, together with the solemn pewter only used on
+state occasions; while Arthur, equally elated at the easy accomplishment
+of his first act of volition in the joint establishment, produced from
+his side a bottle of pickles and a pot of jam, and cleared the table. In
+a minute or two the noise of the boys coming up from supper was heard,
+and Martin knocked and was admitted, bearing his bread and cheese; and
+the three fell to with hearty good-will upon the viands, talking faster
+than they ate, for all shyness disappeared in a moment before Tom's
+bottled-beer and hospitable ways. "Here's Arthur, a regular young
+town-mouse, with a natural taste for the woods, Martin, longing to break
+his neck climbing trees, and with a passion for young snakes."
+
+"Well, I say," sputtered out Martin eagerly, "will you come to-morrow,
+both of you, to Caldecott's Spinney then? for I know of a kestrel's
+nest, up a fir-tree. I can't get at it without help; and, Brown, you can
+climb against any one."
+
+"Oh yes, do let us go," said Arthur; "I never saw a hawk's nest nor a
+hawk's egg."
+
+"You just come down to my study, then, and I'll show you five sorts,"
+said Martin.
+
+"Ay, the old Madman has got the best collection in the house, out and
+out," said Tom; and then Martin, warming with unaccustomed good cheer
+and the chance of a convert, launched out into a proposed bird-nesting
+campaign, betraying all manner of important secrets--a golden-crested
+wren's nest near Butlin's Mound, a moor-hen who was sitting on nine eggs
+in a pond down the Barby road, and a kingfisher's nest in a corner of
+the old canal above Brownsover Mill. He had heard, he said, that no
+one had ever got a kingfisher's nest out perfect, and that the British
+Museum, or the Government, or somebody, had offered 100 pounds to any
+one who could bring them a nest and eggs not damaged. In the middle of
+which astounding announcement, to which the others were listening with
+open ears, and already considering the application of the 100 pounds, a
+knock came to the door, and East's voice was heard craving admittance.
+
+"There's Harry," said Tom; "we'll let him in. I'll keep him steady,
+Martin. I thought the old boy would smell out the supper."
+
+The fact was, that Tom's heart had already smitten him for not asking
+his fidus Achates to the feast, although only an extempore affair; and
+though prudence and the desire to get Martin and Arthur together alone
+at first had overcome his scruples, he was now heartily glad to open the
+door, broach another bottle of beer, and hand over the old ham-knuckle
+to the searching of his old friend's pocket-knife.
+
+"Ah, you greedy vagabonds," said East, with his mouth full, "I knew
+there was something going on when I saw you cut off out of hall so
+quick with your suppers. What a stunning tap, Tom! You are a wunner for
+bottling the swipes."
+
+"I've had practice enough for the sixth in my time, and it's hard if I
+haven't picked up a wrinkle or two for my own benefit."
+
+"Well, old Madman, and how goes the bird-nesting campaign? How's
+Howlett? I expect the young rooks'll be out in another fortnight, and
+then my turn comes."
+
+"There'll be no young rooks fit for pies for a month yet; shows how much
+you know about it," rejoined Martin, who, though very good friends with
+East, regarded him with considerable suspicion for his propensity to
+practical jokes.
+
+"Scud knows nothing and cares for nothing but grub and mischief," said
+Tom; "but young rook pie, specially when you've had to climb for them,
+is very pretty eating.--However, I say, Scud, we're all going after a
+hawk's nest to-morrow, in Caldecott's Spinney; and if you'll come and
+behave yourself, we'll have a stunning climb."
+
+"And a bathe in Aganippe. Hooray! I'm your man."
+
+"No, no; no bathing in Aganippe; that's where our betters go."
+
+"Well, well, never mind. I'm for the hawk's nest, and anything that
+turns up."
+
+And the bottled-beer being finished, and his hunger appeased, East
+departed to his study, "that sneak Jones," as he informed them, who had
+just got into the sixth, and occupied the next study, having instituted
+a nightly visitation upon East and his chum, to their no small
+discomfort.
+
+When he was gone Martin rose to follow, but Tom stopped him. "No one
+goes near New Row," said he, "so you may just as well stop here and do
+your verses, and then we'll have some more talk. We'll be no end quiet.
+Besides, no praepostor comes here now. We haven't been visited once this
+half."
+
+So the table was cleared, the cloth restored, and the three fell to work
+with Gradus and dictionary upon the morning's vulgus.
+
+They were three very fair examples of the way in which such tasks were
+done at Rugby, in the consulship of Plancus. And doubtless the method
+is little changed, for there is nothing new under the sun, especially at
+schools.
+
+Now be it known unto all you boys who are at schools which do not
+rejoice in the time-honoured institution of the vulgus (commonly
+supposed to have been established by William of Wykeham at Winchester,
+and imported to Rugby by Arnold more for the sake of the lines which
+were learnt by heart with it than for its own intrinsic value, as I've
+always understood), that it is a short exercise in Greek or Latin verse,
+on a given subject, the minimum number of lines being fixed for each
+form.
+
+The master of the form gave out at fourth lesson on the previous day the
+subject for next morning's vulgus, and at first lesson each boy had to
+bring his vulgus ready to be looked over; and with the vulgus, a
+certain number of lines from one of the Latin or Greek poets then being
+construed in the form had to be got by heart. The master at first lesson
+called up each boy in the form in order, and put him on in the lines.
+If he couldn't say them, or seem to say them, by reading them off the
+master's or some other boy's book who stood near, he was sent back,
+and went below all the boys who did so say or seem to say them; but
+in either case his vulgus was looked over by the master, who gave and
+entered in his book, to the credit or discredit of the boy, so many
+marks as the composition merited. At Rugby vulgus and lines were the
+first lesson every other day in the week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and
+Saturdays; and as there were thirty-eight weeks in the school year, it
+is obvious to the meanest capacity that the master of each form had
+to set one hundred and fourteen subjects every year, two hundred and
+twenty-eight every two years, and so on. Now, to persons of moderate
+invention this was a considerable task, and human nature being prone to
+repeat itself, it will not be wondered that the masters gave the same
+subjects sometimes over again after a certain lapse of time. To meet
+and rebuke this bad habit of the masters, the schoolboy mind, with its
+accustomed ingenuity, had invented an elaborate system of tradition.
+Almost every boy kept his own vulgus written out in a book, and these
+books were duly handed down from boy to boy, till (if the tradition has
+gone on till now) I suppose the popular boys, in whose hands bequeathed
+vulgus-books have accumulated, are prepared with three or four vulguses
+on any subject in heaven or earth, or in "more worlds than one," which
+an unfortunate master can pitch upon. At any rate, such lucky fellows
+had generally one for themselves and one for a friend in my time. The
+only objection to the traditionary method of doing your vulguses was the
+risk that the successions might have become confused, and so that you
+and another follower of traditions should show up the same identical
+vulgus some fine morning; in which case, when it happened, considerable
+grief was the result. But when did such risk hinder boys or men from
+short cuts and pleasant paths?
+
+Now in the study that night Tom was the upholder of the traditionary
+method of vulgus doing. He carefully produced two large vulgus-books,
+and began diving into them, and picking out a line here, and an ending
+there (tags, as they were vulgarly called), till he had gotten all
+that he thought he could make fit. He then proceeded to patch his tags
+together with the help of his Gradus, producing an incongruous and
+feeble result of eight elegiac lines, the minimum quantity for his form,
+and finishing up with two highly moral lines extra, making ten in
+all, which he cribbed entire from one of his books, beginning "O genus
+humanum," and which he himself must have used a dozen times before,
+whenever an unfortunate or wicked hero, of whatever nation or language
+under the sun, was the subject. Indeed he began to have great doubts
+whether the master wouldn't remember them, and so only throw them in as
+extra lines, because in any case they would call off attention from the
+other tags, and if detected, being extra lines, he wouldn't be sent back
+to do more in their place, while if they passed muster again he would
+get marks for them.
+
+The second method, pursued by Martin, may be called the dogged or
+prosaic method. He, no more than Tom, took any pleasure in the task,
+but having no old vulgus-books of his own, or any one's else, could
+not follow the traditionary method, for which too, as Tom remarked, he
+hadn't the genius. Martin then proceeded to write down eight lines in
+English, of the most matter-of-fact kind, the first that came into his
+head; and to convert these, line by line, by main force of Gradus and
+dictionary into Latin that would scan. This was all he cared for--to
+produce eight lines with no false quantities or concords: whether the
+words were apt, or what the sense was, mattered nothing; and as the
+article was all new, not a line beyond the minimum did the followers of
+the dogged method ever produce.
+
+The third, or artistic method, was Arthur's. He considered first what
+point in the character or event which was the subject could most neatly
+be brought out within the limits of a vulgus, trying always to get his
+idea into the eight lines, but not binding himself to ten or even twelve
+lines if he couldn't do this. He then set to work as much as possible
+without Gradus or other help, to clothe his idea in appropriate Latin or
+Greek, and would not be satisfied till he had polished it well up with
+the aptest and most poetic words and phrases he could get at.
+
+A fourth method, indeed, was used in the school, but of too simple
+a kind to require a comment. It may be called the vicarious method,
+obtained amongst big boys of lazy or bullying habits, and consisted
+simply in making clever boys whom they could thrash do their whole
+vulgus for them, and construe it to them afterwards; which latter is a
+method not to be encouraged, and which I strongly advise you all not
+to practise. Of the others, you will find the traditionary most
+troublesome, unless you can steal your vulguses whole (experto crede),
+and that the artistic method pays the best both in marks and other ways.
+
+The vulguses being finished by nine o'clock, and Martin having rejoiced
+above measure in the abundance of light, and of Gradus and dictionary,
+and other conveniences almost unknown to him for getting through the
+work, and having been pressed by Arthur to come and do his verses there
+whenever he liked, the three boys went down to Martin's den, and Arthur
+was initiated into the lore of birds' eggs, to his great delight.
+The exquisite colouring and forms astonished and charmed him, who had
+scarcely ever seen any but a hen's egg or an ostrich's, and by the time
+he was lugged away to bed he had learned the names of at least twenty
+sorts, and dreamed of the glorious perils of tree-climbing, and that he
+had found a roc's egg in the island as big as Sinbad's, and clouded like
+a tit-lark's, in blowing which Martin and he had nearly been drowned in
+the yolk.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--THE BIRD-FANCIERS.
+
+     "I have found out a gift for my fair--
+     I have found where the wood-pigeons breed;
+     But let me the plunder forbear,
+     She would say 'twas a barbarous deed."--ROWE.
+
+     "And now, my lad, take them five shilling,
+     And on my advice in future think;
+     So Billy pouched them all so willing,
+     And got that night disguised in drink."--MS. Ballad.
+
+The next morning, at first lesson, Tom was turned back in his lines,
+and so had to wait till the second round; while Martin and Arthur said
+theirs all right, and got out of school at once. When Tom got out and
+ran down to breakfast at Harrowell's they were missing, and Stumps
+informed him that they had swallowed down their breakfasts and gone off
+together--where, he couldn't say. Tom hurried over his own breakfast,
+and went first to Martin's study and then to his own; but no signs of
+the missing boys were to be found. He felt half angry and jealous of
+Martin. Where could they be gone?
+
+He learnt second lesson with East and the rest in no very good temper,
+and then went out into the quadrangle. About ten minutes before school
+Martin and Arthur arrived in the quadrangle breathless; and catching
+sight of him, Arthur rushed up, all excitement, and with a bright glow
+on his face.
+
+"O Tom, look here!" cried he, holding out three moor-hen's eggs; "we've
+been down the Barby road, to the pool Martin told us of last night, and
+just see what we've got."
+
+Tom wouldn't be pleased, and only looked out for something to find fault
+with.
+
+"Why, young un," said he, "what have you been after? You don't mean to
+say you've been wading?"
+
+The tone of reproach made poor little Arthur shrink up in a moment and
+look piteous; and Tom with a shrug of his shoulders turned his anger on
+Martin.
+
+"Well, I didn't think, Madman, that you'd have been such a muff as to
+let him be getting wet through at this time of day. You might have done
+the wading yourself."
+
+"So I did, of course; only he would come in too, to see the nest. We
+left six eggs in. They'll be hatched in a day or two."
+
+"Hang the eggs!" said Tom; "a fellow can't turn his back for a moment
+but all his work's undone. He'll be laid up for a week for this precious
+lark, I'll be bound."
+
+"Indeed, Tom, now," pleaded Arthur, "my feet ain't wet, for Martin made
+me take off my shoes and stockings and trousers."
+
+"But they are wet, and dirty too; can't I see?" answered Tom; "and
+you'll be called up and floored when the master sees what a state you're
+in. You haven't looked at second lesson, you know."
+
+O Tom, you old humbug! you to be upbraiding any one with not learning
+their lessons! If you hadn't been floored yourself now at first lesson,
+do you mean to say you wouldn't have been with them? And you've taken
+away all poor little Arthur's joy and pride in his first birds' eggs,
+and he goes and puts them down in the study, and takes down his books
+with a sigh, thinking he has done something horribly wrong, whereas he
+has learnt on in advance much more than will be done at second lesson.
+
+But the old Madman hasn't, and gets called up, and makes some frightful
+shots, losing about ten places, and all but getting floored. This
+somewhat appeases Tom's wrath, and by the end of the lesson he has
+regained his temper. And afterwards in their study he begins to get
+right again, as he watches Arthur's intense joy at seeing Martin blowing
+the eggs and gluing them carefully on to bits of cardboard, and notes
+the anxious, loving looks which the little fellow casts sidelong at him.
+And then he thinks, "What an ill-tempered beast I am! Here's just what I
+was wishing for last night come about, and I'm spoiling it all," and in
+another five minutes has swallowed the last mouthful of his bile, and is
+repaid by seeing his little sensitive plant expand again and sun itself
+in his smiles.
+
+After dinner the Madman is busy with the preparations for their
+expedition, fitting new straps on to his climbing-irons, filling large
+pill-boxes with cotton-wool, and sharpening East's small axe. They carry
+all their munitions into calling-overs and directly afterwards, having
+dodged such praepostors as are on the lookout for fags at cricket, the
+four set off at a smart trot down the Lawford footpath, straight for
+Caldecott's Spinney and the hawk's nest.
+
+Martin leads the way in high feather; it is quite a new sensation to
+him, getting companions, and he finds it very pleasant, and means to
+show them all manner of proofs of his science and skill. Brown and East
+may be better at cricket and football and games, thinks he, but out in
+the fields and woods see if I can't teach them something. He has
+taken the leadership already, and strides away in front with his
+climbing-irons strapped under one arm, his pecking-bag under the other,
+and his pockets and hat full of pill-boxes, cotton-wool, and other
+etceteras. Each of the others carries a pecking-bag, and East his
+hatchet.
+
+When they had crossed three or four fields without a check, Arthur began
+to lag; and Tom seeing this shouted to Martin to pull up a bit. "We
+ain't out hare-and-hounds. What's the good of grinding on at this rate?"
+
+"There's the Spinney," said Martin, pulling up on the brow of a slope
+at the bottom of which lay Lawford brook, and pointing to the top of the
+opposite slope; "the nest is in one of those high fir-trees at this end.
+And down by the brook there I know of a sedge-bird's nest. We'll go and
+look at it coming back."
+
+"Oh, come on, don't let us stop," said Arthur, who was getting excited
+at the sight of the wood. So they broke into a trot again, and were soon
+across the brook, up the slope, and into the Spinney. Here they advanced
+as noiselessly as possible, lest keepers or other enemies should be
+about, and stopped at the foot of a tall fir, at the top of which Martin
+pointed out with pride the kestrel's nest, the object of their quest.
+
+"Oh, where? which is it?" asks Arthur, gaping up in the air, and having
+the most vague idea of what it would be like.
+
+"There, don't you see?" said East, pointing to a lump of mistletoe in
+the next tree, which was a beech. He saw that Martin and Tom were busy
+with the climbing-irons, and couldn't resist the temptation of hoaxing.
+Arthur stared and wondered more than ever.
+
+"Well, how curious! It doesn't look a bit like what I expected," said
+he.
+
+"Very odd birds, kestrels," said East, looking waggishly at his victim,
+who was still star-gazing.
+
+"But I thought it was in a fir-tree?" objected Arthur.
+
+"Ah, don't you know? That's a new sort of fir which old Caldecott
+brought from the Himalayas."
+
+"Really!" said Arthur; "I'm glad I know that. How unlike our firs they
+are! They do very well too here, don't they? The Spinney's full of
+them."
+
+"What's that humbug he's telling you?" cried Tom, looking up, having
+caught the word Himalayas, and suspecting what East was after.
+
+"Only about this fir," said Arthur, putting his hand on the stem of the
+beech.
+
+"Fir!" shouted Tom; "why, you don't mean to say, young un, you don't
+know a beech when you see one?"
+
+Poor little Arthur looked terribly ashamed, and East exploded in
+laughter which made the wood ring.
+
+"I've hardly ever seen any trees," faltered Arthur.
+
+"What a shame to hoax him, Scud!" cried Martin.--"Never mind, Arthur;
+you shall know more about trees than he does in a week or two."
+
+"And isn't that the kestrel's nest, then?" asked Arthur. "That! Why,
+that's a piece of mistletoe. There's the nest, that lump of sticks up
+this fir."
+
+"Don't believe him, Arthur," struck in the incorrigible East; "I just
+saw an old magpie go out of it."
+
+Martin did not deign to reply to this sally, except by a grunt, as
+he buckled the last buckle of his climbing-irons, and Arthur looked
+reproachfully at East without speaking.
+
+But now came the tug of war. It was a very difficult tree to climb until
+the branches were reached, the first of which was some fourteen feet
+up, for the trunk was too large at the bottom to be swarmed; in fact,
+neither of the boys could reach more than half round it with their arms.
+Martin and Tom, both of whom had irons on, tried it without success at
+first; the fir bark broke away where they stuck the irons in as soon as
+they leant any weight on their feet, and the grip of their arms wasn't
+enough to keep them up; so, after getting up three or four feet, down
+they came slithering to the ground, barking their arms and faces. They
+were furious, and East sat by laughing and shouting at each failure,
+"Two to one on the old magpie!"
+
+"We must try a pyramid," said Tom at last. "Now, Scud, you lazy rascal,
+stick yourself against the tree!"
+
+"I dare say! and have you standing on my shoulders with the irons on.
+What do you think my skin's made of?" However, up he got, and leant
+against the tree, putting his head down and clasping it with his arms as
+far as he could.
+
+"Now then, Madman," said Tom, "you next."
+
+"No, I'm lighter than you; you go next." So Tom got on East's shoulders,
+and grasped the tree above, and then Martin scrambled up on to Tom's
+shoulders, amidst the totterings and groanings of the pyramid, and, with
+a spring which sent his supporters howling to the ground, clasped the
+stem some ten feet up, and remained clinging. For a moment or two they
+thought he couldn't get up; but then, holding on with arms and teeth, he
+worked first one iron then the other firmly into the bark, got another
+grip with his arms, and in another minute had hold of the lowest branch.
+
+"All up with the old magpie now," said East; and after a minute's
+rest, up went Martin, hand over hand, watched by Arthur with fearful
+eagerness.
+
+"Isn't it very dangerous?" said he.
+
+"Not a bit," answered Tom; "you can't hurt if you only get good
+hand-hold. Try every branch with a good pull before you trust it, and
+then up you go."
+
+Martin was now amongst the small branches close to the nest, and
+away dashed the old bird, and soared up above the trees, watching the
+intruder.
+
+"All right--four eggs!" shouted he.
+
+"Take 'em all!" shouted East; "that'll be one a-piece."
+
+"No, no; leave one, and then she won't care," said Tom.
+
+We boys had an idea that birds couldn't count, and were quite content as
+long as you left one egg. I hope it is so.
+
+Martin carefully put one egg into each of his boxes and the third
+into his mouth, the only other place of safety, and came down like a
+lamplighter. All went well till he was within ten feet of the ground,
+when, as the trunk enlarged, his hold got less and less firm, and at
+last down he came with a run, tumbling on to his back on the turf,
+spluttering and spitting out the remains of the great egg, which had
+broken by the jar of his fall.
+
+"Ugh, ugh! something to drink--ugh! it was addled," spluttered he, while
+the wood rang again with the merry laughter of East and Tom.
+
+Then they examined the prizes, gathered up their things, and went off to
+the brook, where Martin swallowed huge draughts of water to get rid
+of the taste; and they visited the sedge-bird's nest, and from thence
+struck across the country in high glee, beating the hedges and brakes as
+they went along; and Arthur at last, to his intense delight, was allowed
+to climb a small hedgerow oak for a magpie's nest with Tom, who kept all
+round him like a mother, and showed him where to hold and how to throw
+his weight; and though he was in a great fright, didn't show it, and was
+applauded by all for his lissomness.
+
+They crossed a road soon afterwards, and there, close to them, lay a
+great heap of charming pebbles.
+
+"Look here," shouted East; "here's luck! I've been longing for some
+good, honest pecking this half-hour. Let's fill the bags, and have no
+more of this foozling bird-nesting."
+
+No one objected, so each boy filled the fustian bag he carried full of
+stones. They crossed into the next field, Tom and East taking one side
+of the hedges, and the other two the other side. Noise enough they made
+certainly, but it was too early in the season for the young birds, and
+the old birds were too strong on the wing for our young marksmen,
+and flew out of shot after the first discharge. But it was great fun,
+rushing along the hedgerows, and discharging stone after stone at
+blackbirds and chaffinches, though no result in the shape of slaughtered
+birds was obtained; and Arthur soon entered into it, and rushed to head
+back the birds, and shouted, and threw, and tumbled into ditches, and
+over and through hedges, as wild as the Madman himself.
+
+Presently the party, in full cry after an old blackbird (who was
+evidently used to the thing and enjoyed the fun, for he would wait till
+they came close to him, and then fly on for forty yards or so, and, with
+an impudent flicker of his tail, dart into the depths of the quickset),
+came beating down a high double hedge, two on each side.
+
+"There he is again," "Head him," "Let drive," "I had him there," "Take
+care where you're throwing, Madman." The shouts might have been heard a
+quarter of a mile off. They were heard some two hundred yards off by a
+farmer and two of his shepherds, who were doctoring sheep in a fold in
+the next field.
+
+Now, the farmer in question rented a house and yard situate at the end
+of the field in which the young bird-fanciers had arrived, which house
+and yard he didn't occupy or keep any one else in. Nevertheless, like
+a brainless and unreasoning Briton, he persisted in maintaining on the
+premises a large stock of cocks, hens, and other poultry. Of course,
+all sorts of depredators visited the place from time to time: foxes and
+gipsies wrought havoc in the night; while in the daytime, I regret
+to have to confess that visits from the Rugby boys, and consequent
+disappearances of ancient and respectable fowls were not unfrequent.
+Tom and East had during the period of their outlawry visited the farm in
+question for felonious purposes, and on one occasion had conquered and
+slain a duck there, and borne away the carcass triumphantly, hidden in
+their handkerchiefs. However, they were sickened of the practice by the
+trouble and anxiety which the wretched duck's body caused them. They
+carried it to Sally Harrowell's, in hopes of a good supper; but she,
+after examining it, made a long face, and refused to dress or have
+anything to do with it. Then they took it into their study, and began
+plucking it themselves; but what to do with the feathers, where to hide
+them?
+
+"Good gracious, Tom, what a lot of feathers a duck has!" groaned East,
+holding a bagful in his hand, and looking disconsolately at the carcass,
+not yet half plucked.
+
+"And I do think he's getting high, too, already," said Tom, smelling at
+him cautiously, "so we must finish him up soon."
+
+"Yes, all very well; but how are we to cook him? I'm sure I ain't going
+to try it on in the hall or passages; we can't afford to be roasting
+ducks about--our character's too bad."
+
+"I wish we were rid of the brute," said Tom, throwing him on the table
+in disgust. And after a day or two more it became clear that got rid of
+he must be; so they packed him and sealed him up in brown paper, and put
+him in the cupboard of an unoccupied study, where he was found in the
+holidays by the matron, a gruesome body.
+
+They had never been duck-hunting there since, but others had, and the
+bold yeoman was very sore on the subject, and bent on making an example
+of the first boys he could catch. So he and his shepherds crouched
+behind the hurdles, and watched the party, who were approaching all
+unconscious. Why should that old guinea-fowl be lying out in the
+hedge just at this particular moment of all the year? Who can say?
+Guinea-fowls always are; so are all other things, animals, and persons,
+requisite for getting one into scrapes--always ready when any mischief
+can come of them. At any rate, just under East's nose popped out the old
+guinea-hen, scuttling along and shrieking, "Come back, come back,"
+at the top of her voice. Either of the other three might perhaps have
+withstood the temptation, but East first lets drive the stone he has in
+his hand at her, and then rushes to turn her into the hedge again. He
+succeeds, and then they are all at it for dear life, up and down the
+hedge in full cry, the "Come back, come back," getting shriller and
+fainter every minute.
+
+Meantime, the farmer and his men steal over the hurdles and creep down
+the hedge towards the scene of action. They are almost within a stone's
+throw of Martin, who is pressing the unlucky chase hard, when Tom
+catches sight of them, and sings out, "Louts, 'ware louts, your side!
+Madman, look ahead!" and then catching hold of Arthur, hurries him away
+across the field towards Rugby as hard as they can tear. Had he been by
+himself, he would have stayed to see it out with the others, but now
+his heart sinks and all his pluck goes. The idea of being led up to the
+Doctor with Arthur for bagging fowls quite unmans and takes half the run
+out of him.
+
+However, no boys are more able to take care of themselves than East and
+Martin; they dodge the pursuers, slip through a gap, and come pelting
+after Tom and Arthur, whom they catch up in no time. The farmer and his
+men are making good running about a field behind. Tom wishes to himself
+that they had made off in any other direction, but now they are all in
+for it together, and must see it out.
+
+"You won't leave the young un, will you?" says he, as they haul poor
+little Arthur, already losing wind from the fright, through the next
+hedge. "Not we," is the answer from both. The next hedge is a stiff
+one; the pursuers gain horribly on them, and they only just pull Arthur
+through, with two great rents in his trousers, as the foremost shepherd
+comes up on the other side. As they start into the next field, they are
+aware of two figures walking down the footpath in the middle of it, and
+recognize Holmes and Diggs taking a constitutional. Those good-natured
+fellows immediately shout, "On." "Let's go to them and surrender,"
+pants Tom. Agreed. And in another minute the four boys, to the great
+astonishment of those worthies, rush breathless up to Holmes and Diggs,
+who pull up to see what is the matter; and then the whole is explained
+by the appearance of the farmer and his men, who unite their forces and
+bear down on the knot of boys.
+
+There is no time to explain, and Tom's heart beats frightfully quick, as
+he ponders, "Will they stand by us?"
+
+The farmer makes a rush at East and collars him; and that young
+gentleman, with unusual discretion, instead of kicking his shins, looks
+appealingly at Holmes, and stands still.
+
+"Hullo there; not so fast," says Holmes, who is bound to stand up for
+them till they are proved in the wrong. "Now what's all this about?"
+
+"I've got the young varmint at last, have I," pants the farmer; "why,
+they've been a-skulking about my yard and stealing my fowls--that's
+where 'tis; and if I doan't have they flogged for it, every one on 'em,
+my name ain't Thompson."
+
+Holmes looks grave and Diggs's face falls. They are quite ready to
+fight--no boys in the school more so; but they are praepostors, and
+understand their office, and can't uphold unrighteous causes.
+
+"I haven't been near his old barn this half," cries East. "Nor I," "Nor
+I," chime in Tom and Martin.
+
+"Now, Willum, didn't you see 'em there last week?"
+
+"Ees, I seen 'em sure enough," says Willum, grasping a prong he carried,
+and preparing for action.
+
+The boys deny stoutly, and Willum is driven to admit that "if it worn't
+they 'twas chaps as like 'em as two peas'n;" and "leastways he'll swear
+he see'd them two in the yard last Martinmas," indicating East and Tom.
+
+Holmes has had time to meditate. "Now, sir," says he to Willum, "you see
+you can't remember what you have seen, and I believe the boys."
+
+"I doan't care," blusters the farmer; "they was arter my fowls
+to-day--that's enough for I.--Willum, you catch hold o' t'other chap.
+They've been a-sneaking about this two hours, I tells 'ee," shouted he,
+as Holmes stands between Martin and Willum, "and have druv a matter of a
+dozen young pullets pretty nigh to death."
+
+"Oh, there's a whacker!" cried East; "we haven't been within a hundred
+yards of his barn; we haven't been up here above ten minutes, and we've
+seen nothing but a tough old guinea-hen, who ran like a greyhound."
+
+"Indeed, that's all true, Holmes, upon my honour," added Tom; "we
+weren't after his fowls; guinea-hen ran out of the hedge under our feet,
+and we've seen nothing else."
+
+"Drat their talk. Thee catch hold o' t'other, Willum, and come along wi'
+un."
+
+"Farmer Thompson," said Holmes, warning off Willum and the prong with
+his stick, while Diggs faced the other shepherd, cracking his fingers
+like pistol-shots, "now listen to reason. The boys haven't been after
+your fowls, that's plain."
+
+"Tells 'ee I see'd'em. Who be you, I should like to know?"
+
+"Never you mind, farmer," answered Holmes. "And now I'll just tell you
+what it is: you ought to be ashamed of yourself for leaving all that
+poultry about, with no one to watch it, so near the School. You deserve
+to have it all stolen. So if you choose to come up to the Doctor with
+them, I shall go with you, and tell him what I think of it."
+
+The farmer began to take Holmes for a master; besides, he wanted to get
+back to his flock. Corporal punishment was out of the question, the odds
+were too great; so he began to hint at paying for the damage. Arthur
+jumped at this, offering to pay anything, and the farmer immediately
+valued the guinea-hen at half a sovereign.
+
+"Half a sovereign!" cried East, now released from the farmer's grip;
+"well, that is a good one! The old hen ain't hurt a bit, and she's seven
+years old, I know, and as tough as whipcord; she couldn't lay another
+egg to save her life."
+
+It was at last settled that they should pay the farmer two shillings,
+and his man one shilling; and so the matter ended, to the unspeakable
+relief of Tom, who hadn't been able to say a word, being sick at heart
+at the idea of what the Doctor would think of him; and now the whole
+party of boys marched off down the footpath towards Rugby. Holmes, who
+was one of the best boys in the School, began to improve the occasion.
+"Now, you youngsters," said he, as he marched along in the middle of
+them, "mind this; you're very well out of this scrape. Don't you go near
+Thompson's barn again; do you hear?"
+
+Profuse promises from all, especially East.
+
+"Mind, I don't ask questions," went on Mentor, "but I rather think some
+of you have been there before this after his chickens. Now, knocking
+over other people's chickens, and running off with them, is stealing.
+It's a nasty word, but that's the plain English of it. If the chickens
+were dead and lying in a shop, you wouldn't take them, I know that, any
+more than you would apples out of Griffith's basket; but there's no real
+difference between chickens running about and apples on a tree, and the
+same articles in a shop. I wish our morals were sounder in such matters.
+There's nothing so mischievous as these school distinctions, which
+jumble up right and wrong, and justify things in us for which poor boys
+would be sent to prison." And good old Holmes delivered his soul on the
+walk home of many wise sayings, and, as the song says,
+
+     "Gee'd 'em a sight of good advice;"
+
+which same sermon sank into them all, more or less, and very penitent
+they were for several hours. But truth compels me to admit that East, at
+any rate, forgot it all in a week, but remembered the insult which had
+been put upon him by Farmer Thompson, and with the Tadpole and other
+hair-brained youngsters committed a raid on the barn soon afterwards,
+in which they were caught by the shepherds and severely handled, besides
+having to pay eight shillings--all the money they had in the world--to
+escape being taken up to the Doctor.
+
+Martin became a constant inmate in the joint study from this time, and
+Arthur took to him so kindly that Tom couldn't resist slight fits of
+jealousy, which, however, he managed to keep to himself. The kestrel's
+eggs had not been broken, strange to say, and formed the nucleus
+of Arthur's collection, at which Martin worked heart and soul, and
+introduced Arthur to Howlett the bird-fancier, and instructed him in
+the rudiments of the art of stuffing. In token of his gratitude, Arthur
+allowed Martin to tattoo a small anchor on one of his wrists; which
+decoration, however, he carefully concealed from Tom. Before the end of
+the half-year he had trained into a bold climber and good runner, and,
+as Martin had foretold, knew twice as much about trees, birds, flowers,
+and many other things, as our good-hearted and facetious young friend
+Harry East.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--THE FIGHT:
+
+     "Surgebat Macnevisius
+     Et mox jactabat ultro,
+     Pugnabo tua gratia
+     Feroci hoc Mactwoltro."--Etonian.
+
+There is a certain sort of fellow--we who are used to studying boys all
+know him well enough--of whom you can predicate with almost positive
+certainty, after he has been a month at school, that he is sure to have
+a fight, and with almost equal certainty that he will have but one. Tom
+Brown was one of these; and as it is our well-weighed intention to give
+a full, true, and correct account of Tom's only single combat with a
+school-fellow in the manner of our old friend Bell's Life, let those
+young persons whose stomachs are not strong, or who think a good set-to
+with the weapons which God has given us all an uncivilized, unchristian,
+or ungentlemanly affair, just skip this chapter at once, for it won't be
+to their taste.
+
+It was not at all usual in those days for two School-house boys to
+have a fight. Of course there were exceptions, when some cross-grained,
+hard-headed fellow came up who would never be happy unless he was
+quarrelling with his nearest neighbours, or when there was some
+class-dispute, between the fifth form and the fags, for instance, which
+required blood-letting; and a champion was picked out on each side
+tacitly, who settled the matter by a good hearty mill. But, for the
+most part, the constant use of those surest keepers of the peace, the
+boxing-gloves, kept the School-house boys from fighting one another. Two
+or three nights in every week the gloves were brought out, either in the
+hall or fifth-form room; and every boy who was ever likely to fight at
+all knew all his neighbours' prowess perfectly well, and could tell to a
+nicety what chance he would have in a stand-up fight with any other
+boy in the house. But, of course, no such experience could be gotten as
+regarded boys in other houses; and as most of the other houses were more
+or less jealous of the School-house, collisions were frequent.
+
+After all, what would life be without fighting, I should like to know?
+From the cradle to the grave, fighting, rightly understood, is the
+business, the real highest, honestest business of every son of man.
+Every one who is worth his salt has his enemies, who must be beaten, be
+they evil thoughts and habits in himself, or spiritual wickednesses in
+high places, or Russians, or Border-ruffians, or Bill, Tom, or Harry,
+who will not let him live his life in quiet till he has thrashed them.
+
+It is no good for quakers, or any other body of men, to uplift their
+voices against fighting. Human nature is too strong for them, and they
+don't follow their own precepts. Every soul of them is doing his own
+piece of fighting, somehow and somewhere. The world might be a better
+world without fighting, for anything I know, but it wouldn't be our
+world; and therefore I am dead against crying peace when there is no
+peace, and isn't meant to be. I am as sorry as any man to see folk
+fighting the wrong people and the wrong things, but I'd a deal sooner
+see them doing that than that they should have no fight in them. So
+having recorded, and being about to record, my hero's fights of all
+sorts, with all sorts of enemies, I shall now proceed to give an account
+of his passage-at-arms with the only one of his school-fellows whom he
+ever had to encounter in this manner.
+
+It was drawing towards the close of Arthur's first half-year, and
+the May evenings were lengthening out. Locking-up was not till eight
+o'clock, and everybody was beginning to talk about what he would do in
+the holidays. The shell, in which form all our dramatis personae now
+are, were reading, amongst other things, the last book of Homer's
+"Iliad," and had worked through it as far as the speeches of the women
+over Hector's body. It is a whole school-day, and four or five of the
+School-house boys (amongst whom are Arthur, Tom, and East) are preparing
+third lesson together. They have finished the regulation forty lines,
+and are for the most part getting very tired, notwithstanding
+the exquisite pathos of Helen's lamentation. And now several long
+four-syllabled words come together, and the boy with the dictionary
+strikes work.
+
+"I am not going to look out any more words," says he; "we've done the
+quantity. Ten to one we shan't get so far. Let's go out into the close."
+
+"Come along, boys," cries East, always ready to leave "the grind," as he
+called it; "our old coach is laid up, you know, and we shall have one of
+the new masters, who's sure to go slow and let us down easy."
+
+So an adjournment to the close was carried nem. con., little Arthur not
+daring to uplift his voice; but, being deeply interested in what they
+were reading, stayed quietly behind, and learnt on for his own pleasure.
+
+As East had said, the regular master of the form was unwell, and they
+were to be heard by one of the new masters--quite a young man, who had
+only just left the university. Certainly it would be hard lines if,
+by dawdling as much as possible in coming in and taking their places,
+entering into long-winded explanations of what was the usual course of
+the regular master of the form, and others of the stock contrivances of
+boys for wasting time in school, they could not spin out the lesson so
+that he should not work them through more than the forty lines. As to
+which quantity there was a perpetual fight going on between the master
+and his form--the latter insisting, and enforcing by passive resistance,
+that it was the prescribed quantity of Homer for a shell lesson; the
+former, that there was no fixed quantity, but that they must always be
+ready to go on to fifty or sixty lines if there were time within the
+hour. However, notwithstanding all their efforts, the new master got on
+horribly quick. He seemed to have the bad taste to be really interested
+in the lesson, and to be trying to work them up into something like
+appreciation of it, giving them good, spirited English words, instead
+of the wretched bald stuff into which they rendered poor old Homer, and
+construing over each piece himself to them, after each boy, to show them
+how it should be done.
+
+Now the clock strikes the three-quarters; there is only a quarter of an
+hour more, but the forty lines are all but done. So the boys, one after
+another, who are called up, stick more and more, and make balder and
+ever more bald work of it. The poor young master is pretty near beat by
+this time, and feels ready to knock his head against the wall, or his
+fingers against somebody else's head. So he gives up altogether the
+lower and middle parts of the form, and looks round in despair at the
+boys on the top bench, to see if there is one out of whom he can strike
+a spark or two, and who will be too chivalrous to murder the most
+beautiful utterances of the most beautiful woman of the old world. His
+eye rests on Arthur, and he calls him up to finish construing Helen's
+speech. Whereupon all the other boys draw long breaths, and begin to
+stare about and take it easy. They are all safe: Arthur is the head of
+the form, and sure to be able to construe, and that will tide on safely
+till the hour strikes.
+
+Arthur proceeds to read out the passage in Greek before construing it,
+as the custom is. Tom, who isn't paying much attention, is suddenly
+caught by the falter in his voice as he reads the two lines--
+
+[greek text deleted]
+
+He looks up at Arthur. "Why, bless us," thinks he, "what can be the
+matter with the young un? He's never going to get floored. He's sure
+to have learnt to the end." Next moment he is reassured by the spirited
+tone in which Arthur begins construing, and betakes himself to drawing
+dogs' heads in his notebook, while the master, evidently enjoying the
+change, turns his back on the middle bench and stands before Arthur,
+beating a sort of time with his hand and foot, and saying; "Yes, yes,"
+"Very well," as Arthur goes on.
+
+But as he nears the fatal two lines, Tom catches that falter, and again
+looks up. He sees that there is something the matter; Arthur can hardly
+get on at all. What can it be?
+
+Suddenly at this point Arthur breaks down altogether, and fairly bursts
+out crying, and dashes the cuff of his jacket across his eyes, blushing
+up to the roots of his hair, and feeling as if he should like to go down
+suddenly through the floor. The whole form are taken aback; most of them
+stare stupidly at him, while those who are gifted with presence of mind
+find their places and look steadily at their books, in hopes of not
+catching the master's eye and getting called up in Arthur's place.
+
+The master looks puzzled for a moment, and then seeing, as the fact is,
+that the boy is really affected to tears by the most touching thing in
+Homer, perhaps in all profane poetry put together, steps up to him and
+lays his hand kindly on his shoulder, saying, "Never mind, my little
+man, you've construed very well. Stop a minute; there's no hurry."
+
+Now, as luck would have it, there sat next above Tom on that day, in
+the middle bench of the form, a big boy, by name Williams, generally
+supposed to be the cock of the shell, therefore of all the school below
+the fifths. The small boys, who are great speculators on the prowess of
+their elders, used to hold forth to one another about Williams's great
+strength, and to discuss whether East or Brown would take a licking from
+him. He was called Slogger Williams, from the force with which it was
+supposed he could hit. In the main, he was a rough, goodnatured fellow
+enough, but very much alive to his own dignity. He reckoned himself
+the king of the form, and kept up his position with the strong hand,
+especially in the matter of forcing boys not to construe more than the
+legitimate forty lines. He had already grunted and grumbled to himself
+when Arthur went on reading beyond the forty lines; but now that he
+had broken down just in the middle of all the long words, the Slogger's
+wrath was fairly roused.
+
+"Sneaking little brute," muttered he, regardless of prudence--"clapping
+on the water-works just in the hardest place; see if I don't punch his
+head after fourth lesson."
+
+"Whose?" said Tom, to whom the remark seemed to be addressed.
+
+"Why, that little sneak, Arthur's," replied Williams.
+
+"No, you shan't," said Tom.
+
+"Hullo!" exclaimed Williams, looking at Tom with great surprise for a
+moment, and then giving him a sudden dig in the ribs with his elbow,
+which sent Tom's books flying on to the floor, and called the attention
+of the master, who turned suddenly round, and seeing the state of
+things, said,--
+
+"Williams, go down three places, and then go on."
+
+The Slogger found his legs very slowly, and proceeded to go below Tom
+and two other boys with great disgust; and then, turning round and
+facing the master, said, "I haven't learnt any more, sir; our lesson is
+only forty lines."
+
+"Is that so?" said the master, appealing generally to the top bench. No
+answer.
+
+"Who is the head boy of the form?" said he, waxing wroth.
+
+"Arthur, sir," answered three or four boys, indicating our friend.
+
+"Oh, your name's Arthur. Well, now, what is the length of your regular
+lesson?"
+
+Arthur hesitated a moment, and then said, "We call it only forty lines,
+sir."
+
+"How do you mean--you call it?"
+
+"Well, sir, Mr. Graham says we ain't to stop there when there's time to
+construe more."
+
+"I understand," said the master.--"Williams, go down three more places,
+and write me out the lesson in Greek and English. And now, Arthur,
+finish construing."
+
+"Oh! would I be in Arthur's shoes after fourth lesson?" said the little
+boys to one another; but Arthur finished Helen's speech without any
+further catastrophe, and the clock struck four, which ended third
+lesson.
+
+Another hour was occupied in preparing and saying fourth lesson, during
+which Williams was bottling up his wrath; and when five struck, and the
+lessons for the day were over, he prepared to take summary vengeance on
+the innocent cause of his misfortune.
+
+Tom was detained in school a few minutes after the rest, and on coming
+out into the quadrangle, the first thing he saw was a small ring of
+boys, applauding Williams, who was holding Arthur by the collar.
+
+"There, you young sneak," said he, giving Arthur a cuff on the head with
+his other hand; "what made you say that--"
+
+"Hullo!" said Tom, shouldering into the crowd; "you drop that, Williams;
+you shan't touch him."
+
+"Who'll stop me?" said the Slogger, raising his hand again.
+
+"I," said Tom; and suiting the action to the word he struck the arm
+which held Arthur's arm so sharply that the Slogger dropped it with a
+start, and turned the full current of his wrath on Tom.
+
+"Will you fight?"
+
+"Yes, of course."
+
+"Huzza! There's going to be a fight between Slogger Williams and Tom
+Brown!"
+
+The news ran like wildfire about, and many boys who were on their way
+to tea at their several houses turned back, and sought the back of the
+chapel, where the fights come off.
+
+"Just run and tell East to come and back me," said Tom to a small
+School-house boy, who was off like a rocket to Harrowell's, just
+stopping for a moment to poke his head into the School-house hall, where
+the lower boys were already at tea, and sing out, "Fight! Tom Brown and
+Slogger Williams."
+
+Up start half the boys at once, leaving bread, eggs, butter, sprats,
+and all the rest to take care of themselves. The greater part of the
+remainder follow in a minute, after swallowing their tea, carrying their
+food in their hands to consume as they go. Three or four only remain,
+who steal the butter of the more impetuous, and make to themselves an
+unctuous feast.
+
+In another minute East and Martin tear through the quadrangle, carrying
+a sponge, and arrive at the scene of action just as the combatants are
+beginning to strip.
+
+Tom felt he had got his work cut out for him, as he stripped off his
+jacket, waistcoat, and braces. East tied his handkerchief round his
+waist, and rolled up his shirtsleeves for him. "Now, old boy, don't you
+open your mouth to say a word, or try to help yourself a bit--we'll do
+all that; you keep all your breath and strength for the Slogger." Martin
+meanwhile folded the clothes, and put them under the chapel rails; and
+now Tom, with East to handle him, and Martin to give him a knee, steps
+out on the turf, and is ready for all that may come; and here is the
+Slogger too, all stripped, and thirsting for the fray.
+
+It doesn't look a fair match at first glance: Williams is nearly two
+inches taller, and probably a long year older than his opponent, and he
+is very strongly made about the arms and shoulders--"peels well," as the
+little knot of big fifth-form boys, the amateurs, say, who stand outside
+the ring of little boys, looking complacently on, but taking no active
+part in the proceedings. But down below he is not so good by any
+means--no spring from the loins, and feeblish, not to say shipwrecky,
+about the knees. Tom, on the contrary, though not half so strong in the
+arms, is good all over, straight, hard, and springy, from neck to ankle,
+better perhaps in his legs than anywhere. Besides, you can see by the
+clear white of his eye, and fresh, bright look of his skin, that he is
+in tip-top training, able to do all he knows; while the Slogger looks
+rather sodden, as if he didn't take much exercise and ate too much
+tuck. The time-keeper is chosen, a large ring made, and the two stand
+up opposite one another for a moment, giving us time just to make our
+little observations.
+
+"If Tom'll only condescend to fight with his head and heels," as East
+mutters to Martin, "we shall do."
+
+But seemingly he won't, for there he goes in, making play with both
+hands. Hard all is the word; the two stand to one another like men;
+rally follows rally in quick succession, each fighting as if he thought
+to finish the whole thing out of hand. "Can't last at this rate," say
+the knowing ones, while the partisans of each make the air ring
+with their shouts and counter-shouts of encouragement, approval, and
+defiance.
+
+"Take it easy, take it easy; keep away; let him come after you,"
+implores East, as he wipes Tom's face after the first round with a wet
+sponge, while he sits back on Martin's knee, supported by the Madman's
+long arms which tremble a little from excitement.
+
+"Time's up," calls the time-keeper.
+
+"There he goes again, hang it all!" growls East, as his man is at it
+again, as hard as ever. A very severe round follows, in which Tom gets
+out and out the worst of it, and is at last hit clean off his legs, and
+deposited on the grass by a right-hander from the Slogger.
+
+Loud shouts rise from the boys of Slogger's house, and the School-house
+are silent and vicious, ready to pick quarrels anywhere.
+
+"Two to one in half-crowns on the big un," says Rattle, one of the
+amateurs, a tall fellow, in thunder-and-lightning waistcoat, and puffy,
+good-natured face.
+
+"Done!" says Groove, another amateur of quieter look, taking out his
+notebook to enter it, for our friend Rattle sometimes forgets these
+little things.
+
+Meantime East is freshening up Tom with the sponges for next round, and
+has set two other boys to rub his hands.
+
+"Tom, old boy," whispers he, "this may be fun for you, but it's death to
+me. He'll hit all the fight out of you in another five minutes, and then
+I shall go and drown myself in the island ditch. Feint him; use your
+legs; draw him about. He'll lose his wind then in no time, and you can
+go into him. Hit at his body too; we'll take care of his frontispiece
+by-and-by."
+
+Tom felt the wisdom of the counsel, and saw already that he couldn't go
+in and finish the Slogger off at mere hammer and tongs, so changed his
+tactics completely in the third round. He now fights cautiously, getting
+away from and parrying the Slogger's lunging hits, instead of trying
+to counter, and leading his enemy a dance all round the ring after
+him. "He's funking; go in, Williams," "Catch him up," "Finish him off,"
+scream the small boys of the Slogger party.
+
+"Just what we want," thinks East, chuckling to himself, as he sees
+Williams, excited by these shouts, and thinking the game in his own
+hands, blowing himself in his exertions to get to close quarters again,
+while Tom is keeping away with perfect ease.
+
+They quarter over the ground again and again, Tom always on the
+defensive.
+
+The Slogger pulls up at last for a moment, fairly blown.
+
+"Now, then, Tom," sings out East, dancing with delight. Tom goes in in a
+twinkling, and hits two heavy body blows, and gets away again before the
+Slogger can catch his wind, which when he does he rushes with blind fury
+at Tom, and being skilfully parried and avoided, overreaches himself and
+falls on his face, amidst terrific cheers from the School-house boys.
+
+"Double your two to one?" says Groove to Rattle, notebook in hand.
+
+"Stop a bit," says that hero, looking uncomfortably at Williams, who is
+puffing away on his second's knee, winded enough, but little the worse
+in any other way.
+
+After another round the Slogger too seems to see that he can't go in and
+win right off, and has met his match or thereabouts. So he too begins
+to use his head, and tries to make Tom lose his patience, and come in
+before his time. And so the fight sways on, now one and now the other
+getting a trifling pull.
+
+Tom's face begins to look very one-sided--there are little queer bumps
+on his forehead, and his mouth is bleeding; but East keeps the wet
+sponge going so scientifically that he comes up looking as fresh and
+bright as ever. Williams is only slightly marked in the face, but by
+the nervous movement of his elbows you can see that Tom's body blows are
+telling. In fact, half the vice of the Slogger's hitting is neutralized,
+for he daren't lunge out freely for fear of exposing his sides. It is
+too interesting by this time for much shouting, and the whole ring is
+very quiet.
+
+"All right, Tommy," whispers East; "hold on's the horse that's to win.
+We've got the last. Keep your head, old boy."
+
+But where is Arthur all this time? Words cannot paint the poor little
+fellow's distress. He couldn't muster courage to come up to the ring,
+but wandered up and down from the great fives court to the corner of the
+chapel rails, now trying to make up his mind to throw himself between
+them, and try to stop them; then thinking of running in and telling his
+friend Mary, who, he knew, would instantly report to the Doctor.
+The stories he had heard of men being killed in prize-fights rose up
+horribly before him.
+
+Once only, when the shouts of "Well done, Brown!" "Huzza for the
+School-house!" rose higher than ever, he ventured up to the ring,
+thinking the victory was won. Catching sight of Tom's face in the state
+I have described, all fear of consequences vanishing out of his mind;
+he rushed straight off to the matron's room, beseeching her to get the
+fight stopped, or he should die.
+
+But it's time for us to get back to the close. What is this fierce
+tumult and confusion? The ring is broken, and high and angry words are
+being bandied about. "It's all fair"--"It isn't"--"No hugging!" The
+fight is stopped. The combatants, however, sit there quietly, tended by
+their seconds, while their adherents wrangle in the middle. East can't
+help shouting challenges to two or three of the other side, though he
+never leaves Tom for a moment, and plies the sponges as fast as ever.
+
+The fact is, that at the end of the last round, Tom, seeing a good
+opening, had closed with his opponent, and after a moment's struggle,
+had thrown him heavily, by help of the fall he had learnt from his
+village rival in the Vale of White Horse. Williams hadn't the ghost of
+a chance with Tom at wrestling; and the conviction broke at once on
+the Slogger faction that if this were allowed their man must be licked.
+There was a strong feeling in the School against catching hold and
+throwing, though it was generally ruled all fair within limits; so the
+ring was broken and the fight stopped.
+
+The School-house are overruled--the fight is on again, but there is to
+be no throwing; and East, in high wrath, threatens to take his man away
+after next round (which he don't mean to do, by the way), when suddenly
+young Brooke comes through the small gate at the end of the chapel. The
+School-house faction rush to him. "Oh, hurrah! now we shall get fair
+play."
+
+"Please, Brooke, come up. They won't let Tom Brown throw him."
+
+"Throw whom?" says Brooke, coming up to the ring. "Oh! Williams, I see.
+Nonsense! Of course he may throw him, if he catches him fairly above the
+waist."
+
+Now, young Brooke, you're in the sixth, you know, and you ought to stop
+all fights. He looks hard at both boys. "Anything wrong?" says he to
+East, nodding at Tom.
+
+"Not a bit."
+
+"Not beat at all?"
+
+"Bless you, no! Heaps of fight in him.--Ain't there, Tom?"
+
+Tom looks at Brooke and grins.
+
+"How's he?" nodding at Williams.
+
+"So so; rather done, I think, since his last fall. He won't stand above
+two more."
+
+"Time's up!" The boys rise again and face one another. Brooke can't find
+it in his heart to stop them just yet, so the round goes on, the Slogger
+waiting for Tom, and reserving all his strength to hit him out should
+he come in for the wrestling dodge again, for he feels that that must be
+stopped, or his sponge will soon go up in the air.
+
+And now another newcomer appears on the field, to wit, the under-porter,
+with his long brush and great wooden receptacle for dust under his arm.
+He has been sweeping out the schools.
+
+"You'd better stop, gentlemen," he says; "the Doctor knows that Brown's
+fighting--he'll be out in a minute."
+
+"You go to Bath, Bill," is all that that excellent servitor gets by
+his advice; and being a man of his hands, and a stanch upholder of the
+School-house, can't help stopping to look on for a bit, and see Tom
+Brown, their pet craftsman, fight a round.
+
+It is grim earnest now, and no mistake. Both boys feel this, and summon
+every power of head, hand, and eye to their aid. A piece of luck on
+either side, a foot slipping, a blow getting well home, or another fall,
+may decide it. Tom works slowly round for an opening; he has all the
+legs, and can choose his own time. The Slogger waits for the attack,
+and hopes to finish it by some heavy right-handed blow. As they quarter
+slowly over the ground, the evening sun comes out from behind a cloud
+and falls full on Williams's face. Tom darts in; the heavy right hand
+is delivered, but only grazes his head. A short rally at close quarters,
+and they close; in another moment the Slogger is thrown again heavily
+for the third time.
+
+"I'll give you three or two on the little one in half-crowns," said
+Groove to Rattle.
+
+"No, thank 'ee," answers the other, diving his hands farther into his
+coat-tails.
+
+Just at this stage of the proceedings, the door of the turret which
+leads to the Doctor's library suddenly opens, and he steps into the
+close, and makes straight for the ring, in which Brown and the Slogger
+are both seated on their seconds' knees for the last time.
+
+"The Doctor! the Doctor!" shouts some small boy who catches sight of
+him, and the ring melts away in a few seconds, the small boys tearing
+off, Tom collaring his jacket and waistcoat, and slipping through the
+little gate by the chapel, and round the corner to Harrowell's with his
+backers, as lively as need be; Williams and his backers making off not
+quite so fast across the close; Groove, Rattle, and the other bigger
+fellows trying to combine dignity and prudence in a comical manner, and
+walking off fast enough, they hope, not to be recognized, and not fast
+enough to look like running away.
+
+Young Brooke alone remains on the ground by the time the Doctor gets
+there, and touches his hat, not without a slight inward qualm.
+
+"Hah! Brooke. I am surprised to see you here. Don't you know that I
+expect the sixth to stop fighting?"
+
+Brooke felt much more uncomfortable than he had expected, but he was
+rather a favourite with the Doctor for his openness and plainness of
+speech, so blurted out, as he walked by the Doctor's side, who had
+already turned back,--
+
+"Yes, sir, generally. But I thought you wished us to exercise a
+discretion in the matter too--not to interfere too soon."
+
+"But they have been fighting this half-hour and more," said the Doctor.
+
+"Yes, sir; but neither was hurt. And they're the sort of boys who'll be
+all the better friends now, which they wouldn't have been if they had
+been stopped, any earlier--before it was so equal."
+
+"Who was fighting with Brown?" said the Doctor.
+
+"Williams, sir, of Thompson's. He is bigger than Brown, and had the best
+of it at first, but not when you came up, sir. There's a good deal of
+jealousy between our house and Thompson's, and there would have been
+more fights if this hadn't been let go on, or if either of them had had
+much the worst of it."
+
+"Well but, Brooke," said the Doctor, "doesn't this look a little as
+if you exercised your discretion by only stopping a fight when the
+School-house boy is getting the worst of it?"
+
+Brooke, it must be confessed, felt rather gravelled.
+
+"Now remember," added the Doctor, as he stopped at the turret-door,
+"this fight is not to go on; you'll see to that. And I expect you to
+stop all fights in future at once."
+
+"Very well, sir," said young Brooke, touching his hat, and not sorry to
+see the turret-door close behind the Doctor's back.
+
+Meantime Tom and the stanchest of his adherents had reached Harrowell's,
+and Sally was bustling about to get them a late tea, while Stumps had
+been sent off to Tew, the butcher, to get a piece of raw beef for Tom's
+eye, which was to be healed off-hand, so that he might show well in the
+morning. He was not a bit the worse, except a slight difficulty in his
+vision, a singing in his ears, and a sprained thumb, which he kept in
+a cold-water bandage, while he drank lots of tea, and listened to the
+babel of voices talking and speculating of nothing but the fight, and
+how Williams would have given in after another fall (which he didn't in
+the least believe), and how on earth the Doctor could have got to know
+of it--such bad luck! He couldn't help thinking to himself that he was
+glad he hadn't won; he liked it better as it was, and felt very friendly
+to the Slogger. And then poor little Arthur crept in and sat down
+quietly near him, and kept looking at him and the raw beef with such
+plaintive looks that Tom at last burst out laughing.
+
+"Don't make such eyes, young un," said he; "there's nothing the matter."
+
+"Oh, but, Tom, are you much hurt? I can't bear thinking it was all for
+me."
+
+"Not a bit of it; don't flatter yourself. We were sure to have had it
+out sooner or later."
+
+"Well, but you won't go on, will you? You'll promise me you won't go
+on?"
+
+"Can't tell about that--all depends on the houses. We're in the hands
+of our countrymen, you know. Must fight for the School-house flag, if so
+be."
+
+However, the lovers of the science were doomed to disappointment this
+time. Directly after locking-up, one of the night-fags knocked at Tom's
+door.
+
+"Brown, young Brooke wants you in the sixth-form room."
+
+Up went Tom to the summons, and found the magnates sitting at their
+supper.
+
+"Well, Brown," said young Brooke, nodding to him, "how do you feel?"
+
+"Oh, very well, thank you, only I've sprained my thumb, I think."
+
+"Sure to do that in a fight. Well, you hadn't the worst of it, I could
+see. Where did you learn that throw?"
+
+"Down in the country when I was a boy."
+
+"Hullo! why, what are you now? Well, never mind, you're a plucky fellow.
+Sit down and have some supper."
+
+Tom obeyed, by no means loath. And the fifth-form boy next filled him a
+tumbler of bottled beer, and he ate and drank, listening to the pleasant
+talk, and wondering how soon he should be in the fifth, and one of that
+much-envied society.
+
+As he got up to leave, Brooke said, "You must shake hands to-morrow
+morning; I shall come and see that done after first lesson."
+
+And so he did. And Tom and the Slogger shook hands with great
+satisfaction and mutual respect. And for the next year or two, whenever
+fights were being talked of, the small boys who had been present shook
+their heads wisely, saying, "Ah! but you should just have seen the fight
+between Slogger Williams and Tom Brown!"
+
+And now, boys all, three words before we quit the subject. I have put
+in this chapter on fighting of malice prepense, partly because I want to
+give you a true picture of what everyday school life was in my time, and
+not a kid-glove and go-to-meeting-coat picture, and partly because of
+the cant and twaddle that's talked of boxing and fighting with fists
+nowadays. Even Thackeray has given in to it; and only a few weeks ago
+there was some rampant stuff in the Times on the subject, in an article
+on field sports.
+
+Boys will quarrel, and when they quarrel will sometimes fight. Fighting
+with fists is the natural and English way for English boys to settle
+their quarrels. What substitute for it is there, or ever was there,
+amongst any nation under the sun? What would you like to see take its
+place?
+
+Learn to box, then, as you learn to play cricket and football. Not one
+of you will be the worse, but very much the better, for learning to box
+well. Should you never have to use it in earnest, there's no exercise
+in the world so good for the temper and for the muscles of the back and
+legs.
+
+As to fighting, keep out of it if you can, by all means. When the
+time comes, if it ever should, that you have to say "Yes" or "No" to
+a challenge to fight, say "No" if you can--only take care you make
+it clear to yourselves why you say "No." It's a proof of the highest
+courage, if done from true Christian motives. It's quite right and
+justifiable, if done from a simple aversion to physical pain and danger.
+But don't say "No" because you fear a licking, and say or think it's
+because you fear God, for that's neither Christian nor honest. And if
+you do fight, fight it out; and don't give in while you can stand and
+see.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--FEVER IN THE SCHOOL.
+
+     "This our hope for all that's mortal
+     And we too shall burst the bond;
+     Death keeps watch beside the portal,
+     But 'tis life that dwells beyond."
+     --JOHN STERLING.
+
+Two years have passed since the events recorded in the last chapter, and
+the end of the summer half-year is again drawing on. Martin has left and
+gone on a cruise in the South Pacific, in one of his uncle's ships; the
+old magpie, as disreputable as ever, his last bequest to Arthur, lives
+in the joint study. Arthur is nearly sixteen, and at the head of the
+twenty, having gone up the school at the rate of a form a half-year.
+East and Tom have been much more deliberate in their progress, and are
+only a little way up the fifth form. Great strapping boys they are,
+but still thorough boys, filling about the same place in the house that
+young Brooke filled when they were new boys, and much the same sort
+of fellows. Constant intercourse with Arthur has done much for both of
+them, especially for Tom; but much remains yet to be done, if they
+are to get all the good out of Rugby which is to be got there in these
+times. Arthur is still frail and delicate, with more spirit than body;
+but, thanks to his intimacy with them and Martin, has learned to swim,
+and run, and play cricket, and has never hurt himself by too much
+reading.
+
+One evening, as they were all sitting down to supper in the fifth-form
+room, some one started a report that a fever had broken out at one of
+the boarding-houses. "They say," he added, "that Thompson is very ill,
+and that Dr. Robertson has been sent for from Northampton."
+
+"Then we shall all be sent home," cried another. "Hurrah! five weeks'
+extra holidays, and no fifth-form examination!"
+
+"I hope not," said Tom; "there'll be no Marylebone match then at the end
+of the half."
+
+Some thought one thing, some another, many didn't believe the report;
+but the next day, Tuesday, Dr. Robertson arrived, and stayed all day,
+and had long conferences with the Doctor.
+
+On Wednesday morning, after prayers, the Doctor addressed the whole
+school. There were several cases of fever in different houses, he said;
+but Dr. Robertson, after the most careful examination, had assured him
+that it was not infectious, and that if proper care were taken,
+there could be no reason for stopping the school-work at present. The
+examinations were just coming on, and it would be very unadvisable to
+break up now. However, any boys who chose to do so were at liberty to
+write home, and, if their parents wished it, to leave at once. He should
+send the whole school home if the fever spread.
+
+The next day Arthur sickened, but there was no other case. Before the
+end of the week thirty or forty boys had gone, but the rest stayed on.
+There was a general wish to please the Doctor, and a feeling that it was
+cowardly to run away.
+
+On the Saturday Thompson died, in the bright afternoon, while the
+cricket-match was going on as usual on the big-side ground. The Doctor,
+coming from his deathbed, passed along the gravel-walk at the side
+of the close, but no one knew what had happened till the next day. At
+morning lecture it began to be rumoured, and by afternoon chapel was
+known generally; and a feeling of seriousness and awe at the actual
+presence of death among them came over the whole school. In all the long
+years of his ministry the Doctor perhaps never spoke words which sank
+deeper than some of those in that day's sermon.
+
+"When I came yesterday from visiting all but the very death-bed of him
+who has been taken from us, and looked around upon all the familiar
+objects and scenes within our own ground, where your common amusements
+were going on with your common cheerfulness and activity, I felt there
+was nothing painful in witnessing that; it did not seem in any way
+shocking or out of tune with those feelings which the sight of a dying
+Christian must be supposed to awaken. The unsuitableness in point of
+natural feeling between scenes of mourning and scenes of liveliness did
+not at all present itself. But I did feel that if at that moment any of
+those faults had been brought before me which sometimes occur amongst
+us; had I heard that any of you had been guilty of falsehood, or of
+drunkenness, or of any other such sin; had I heard from any quarter the
+language of profaneness, or of unkindness, or of indecency; had I heard
+or seen any signs of that wretched folly which courts the laugh of
+fools by affecting not to dread evil and not to care for good, then the
+unsuitableness of any of these things with the scene I had just quitted
+would indeed have been most intensely painful. And why? Not because such
+things would really have been worse than at any other time, but because
+at such a moment the eyes are opened really to know good and evil,
+because we then feel what it is so to live as that death becomes an
+infinite blessing, and what it is so to live also that it were good for
+us if we had never been born."
+
+Tom had gone into chapel in sickening anxiety about Arthur, but he came
+out cheered and strengthened by those grand words, and walked up alone
+to their study. And when he sat down and looked round, and saw Arthur's
+straw hat and cricket-jacket hanging on their pegs, and marked all his
+little neat arrangements, not one of which had been disturbed, the tears
+indeed rolled down his cheeks; but they were calm and blessed tears, and
+he repeated to himself, "Yes, Geordie's eyes are opened; he knows what
+it is so to live as that death becomes an infinite blessing. But do I? O
+God, can I bear to lose him?"
+
+The week passed mournfully away. No more boys sickened, but Arthur was
+reported worse each day, and his mother arrived early in the week. Tom
+made many appeals to be allowed to see him, and several times tried to
+get up to the sick-room; but the housekeeper was always in the way, and
+at last spoke to the Doctor, who kindly but peremptorily forbade him.
+
+Thompson was buried on the Tuesday, and the burial service, so soothing
+and grand always, but beyond all words solemn when read over a boy's
+grave to his companions, brought him much comfort, and many strange
+new thoughts and longings. He went back to his regular life, and played
+cricket and bathed as usual. It seemed to him that this was the right
+thing to do, and the new thoughts and longings became more brave and
+healthy for the effort. The crisis came on Saturday; the day week that
+Thompson had died; and during that long afternoon Tom sat in his study
+reading his Bible, and going every half-hour to the housekeeper's room,
+expecting each time to hear that the gentle and brave little spirit
+had gone home. But God had work for Arthur to do. The crisis passed:
+on Sunday evening he was declared out of danger; on Monday he sent a
+message to Tom that he was almost well, had changed his room, and was to
+be allowed to see him the next day.
+
+It was evening when the housekeeper summoned him to the sick-room.
+Arthur was lying on the sofa by the open window, through which the rays
+of the western sun stole gently, lighting up his white face and golden
+hair. Tom remembered a German picture of an angel which he knew; often
+had he thought how transparent and golden and spirit-like it was; and
+he shuddered, to think how like it Arthur looked, and felt a shock as if
+his blood had all stopped short, as he realized how near the other world
+his friend must have been to look like that. Never till that moment had
+he felt how his little chum had twined himself round his heart-strings,
+and as he stole gently across the room and knelt down, and put his arm
+round Arthur's head on the pillow, felt ashamed and half-angry at his
+own red and brown face, and the bounding sense of health and power which
+filled every fibre of his body, and made every movement of mere living a
+joy to him. He needn't have troubled himself: it was this very strength
+and power so different from his own which drew Arthur so to him.
+
+Arthur laid his thin, white hand, on which the blue veins stood out so
+plainly, on Tom's great brown fist, and smiled at him; and then looked
+out of the window again, as if he couldn't bear to lose a moment of the
+sunset, into the tops of the great feathery elms, round which the rooks
+were circling and clanging, returning in flocks from their evening's
+foraging parties. The elms rustled, the sparrows in the ivy just outside
+the window chirped and fluttered about, quarrelling, and making it up
+again; the rooks, young and old, talked in chorus, and the merry shouts
+of the boys and the sweet click of the cricket-bats came up cheerily
+from below.
+
+"Dear George," said Tom, "I am so glad to be let up to see you at last.
+I've tried hard to come so often, but they wouldn't let me before."
+
+"Oh, I know, Tom; Mary has told me every day about you, and how she was
+obliged to make the Doctor speak to you to keep you away. I'm very glad
+you didn't get up, for you might have caught it; and you couldn't stand
+being ill, with all the matches going on. And you're in the eleven, too,
+I hear. I'm so glad."
+
+"Yes; ain't it jolly?" said Tom proudly. "I'm ninth too. I made forty at
+the last pie-match, and caught three fellows out. So I was put in
+above Jones and Tucker. Tucker's so savage, for he was head of the
+twenty-two."
+
+"Well, I think you ought to be higher yet," said Arthur, who was as
+jealous for the renown of Tom in games as Tom was for his as a scholar.
+
+"Never mind. I don't care about cricket or anything now you're getting
+well, Geordie; and I shouldn't have hurt, I know, if they'd have let me
+come up. Nothing hurts me. But you'll get about now directly, won't you?
+You won't believe how clean I've kept the study. All your things are
+just as you left them; and I feed the old magpie just when you used,
+though I have to come in from big-side for him, the old rip. He won't
+look pleased all I can do, and sticks his head first on one side and
+then on the other, and blinks at me before he'll begin to eat, till I'm
+half inclined to box his ears. And whenever East comes in, you should
+see him hop off to the window, dot and go one, though Harry wouldn't
+touch a feather of him now."
+
+Arthur laughed. "Old Gravey has a good memory; he can't forget the
+sieges of poor Martin's den in old times." He paused a moment, and then
+went on: "You can't think how often I've been thinking of old Martin
+since I've been ill. I suppose one's mind gets restless, and likes to
+wander off to strange, unknown places. I wonder what queer new pets the
+old boy has got. How he must be revelling in the thousand new birds,
+beasts, and fishes!"
+
+Tom felt a pang of jealousy, but kicked it out in a moment. "Fancy him
+on a South Sea island, with the Cherokees, or Patagonians, or some
+such wild niggers!" (Tom's ethnology and geography were faulty,
+but sufficient for his needs.) "They'll make the old Madman cock
+medicine-man, and tattoo him all over. Perhaps he's cutting about now
+all blue, and has a squaw and a wigwam. He'll improve their boomerangs,
+and be able to throw them too, without having old Thomas sent after him
+by the Doctor to take them away."
+
+Arthur laughed at the remembrance of the boomerang story, but then
+looked grave again, and said, "He'll convert all the island, I know."
+
+"Yes, if he don't blow it up first."
+
+"Do you remember, Tom, how you and East used to laugh at him and chaff
+him, because he said he was sure the rooks all had calling-over or
+prayers, or something of the sort, when the locking-up bell rang? Well,
+I declare," said Arthur, looking up seriously into Tom's laughing eyes,
+"I do think he was right. Since I've been lying here, I've watched them
+every night; and, do you know, they really do come and perch, all of
+them, just about locking-up time; and then first there's a regular
+chorus of caws; and then they stop a bit, and one old fellow, or perhaps
+two or three in different trees, caw solos; and then off they all go
+again, fluttering about and cawing anyhow till they roost."
+
+"I wonder if the old blackies do talk," said Tom, looking up at them.
+"How they must abuse me and East, and pray for the Doctor for stopping
+the slinging!"
+
+"There! look, look!" cried Arthur; "don't you see the old fellow without
+a tail coming up? Martin used to call him the 'clerk.' He can't steer
+himself. You never saw such fun as he is in a high wind, when he can't
+steer himself home, and gets carried right past the trees, and has to
+bear up again and again before he can perch."
+
+The locking-up bell began to toll, and the two boys were silent, and
+listened to it. The sound soon carried Tom off to the river and the
+woods, and he began to go over in his mind the many occasions on which
+he had heard that toll coming faintly down the breeze, and had to pack
+his rod in a hurry and make a run for it, to get in before the gates
+were shut. He was roused with a start from his memories by Arthur's
+voice, gentle and weak from his late illness.
+
+"Tom, will you be angry if I talk to you very seriously?"
+
+"No, dear old boy, not I. But ain't you faint, Arthur, or ill? What can
+I get you? Don't say anything to hurt yourself now--you are very weak;
+let me come up again."
+
+"No, no; I shan't hurt myself. I'd sooner speak to you now, if you don't
+mind. I've asked Mary to tell the Doctor that you are with me, so you
+needn't go down to calling-over; and I mayn't have another chance, for
+I shall most likely have to go home for change of air to get well, and
+mayn't come back this half."
+
+"Oh, do you think you must go away before the end of the half? I'm
+so sorry. It's more than five weeks yet to the holidays, and all the
+fifth-form examination and half the cricket-matches to come yet. And
+what shall I do all that time alone in our study? Why, Arthur, it will
+be more than twelve weeks before I see you again. Oh, hang it, I can't
+stand that! Besides who's to keep me up to working at the examination
+books? I shall come out bottom of the form, as sure as eggs is eggs."
+
+Tom was rattling on, half in joke, half in earnest, for he wanted to
+get Arthur out of his serious vein, thinking it would do him harm; but
+Arthur broke in,--
+
+"Oh, please, Tom, stop, or you'll drive all I had to say out of my head.
+And I'm already horribly afraid I'm going to make you angry."
+
+"Don't gammon, young un," rejoined Tom (the use of the old name, dear to
+him from old recollections, made Arthur start and smile and feel quite
+happy); "you know you ain't afraid, and you've never made me angry since
+the first month we chummed together. Now I'm going to be quite sober for
+a quarter of an hour, which is more than I am once in a year; so make
+the most of it; heave ahead, and pitch into me right and left."
+
+"Dear Tom, I ain't going to pitch into you," said Arthur piteously; "and
+it seems so cocky in me to be advising you, who've been my backbone ever
+since I've been at Rugby, and have made the school a paradise to me. Ah,
+I see I shall never do it, unless I go head over heels at once, as
+you said when you taught me to swim. Tom, I want you to give up using
+vulgus-books and cribs."
+
+Arthur sank back on to his pillow with a sigh, as if the effort had been
+great; but the worst was now over, and he looked straight at Tom, who
+was evidently taken aback. He leant his elbows on his knees, and stuck
+his hands into his hair, whistled a verse of "Billy Taylor," and then
+was quite silent for another minute. Not a shade crossed his face,
+but he was clearly puzzled. At last he looked up, and caught Arthur's
+anxious look, took his hand, and said simply,--
+
+"Why, young un?"
+
+"Because you're the honestest boy in Rugby, and that ain't honest."
+
+"I don't see that."
+
+"What were you sent to Rugby for?"
+
+"Well, I don't know exactly--nobody ever told me. I suppose because all
+boys are sent to a public school in England."
+
+"But what do you think yourself? What do you want to do here, and to
+carry away?"
+
+Tom thought a minute. "I want to be A1 at cricket and football, and all
+the other games, and to make my hands keep my head against any fellow,
+lout or gentleman. I want to get into the sixth before I leave, and to
+please the Doctor; and I want to carry away just as much Latin and Greek
+as will take me through Oxford respectably. There, now, young un; I
+never thought of it before, but that's pretty much about my figure.
+Ain't it all on the square? What have you got to say to that?"
+
+"Why, that you are pretty sure to do all that you want, then."
+
+"Well, I hope so. But you've forgot one thing--what I want to leave
+behind me. I want to leave behind me," said Tom, speaking slow, and
+looking much moved, "the name of a fellow who never bullied a little
+boy, or turned his back on a big one."
+
+Arthur pressed his hand, and after a moment's silence went on, "You say,
+Tom, you want to please the Doctor. Now, do you want to please him by
+what he thinks you do, or by what you really do?"
+
+"By what I really do, of course."
+
+"Does he think you use cribs and vulgus-books?"
+
+Tom felt at once that his flank was turned, but he couldn't give in. "He
+was at Winchester himself," said he; "he knows all about it."
+
+"Yes; but does he think you use them? Do you think he approves of it?"
+
+"You young villain!" said Tom, shaking his fist at Arthur, half vexed
+and half pleased, "I never think about it. Hang it! there, perhaps he
+don't. Well, I suppose he don't."
+
+Arthur saw that he had got his point; he knew his friend well, and was
+wise in silence as in speech. He only said, "I would sooner have the
+doctor's good opinion of me as I really am than any man's in the world."
+
+After another minute, Tom began again, "Look here, young un. How on
+earth am I to get time to play the matches this half if I give up cribs?
+We're in the middle of that long crabbed chorus in the Agamemnon. I can
+only just make head or tail of it with the crib. Then there's Pericles's
+speech coming on in Thucydides, and 'The Birds' to get up for the
+examination, besides the Tacitus." Tom groaned at the thought of his
+accumulated labours. "I say, young un, there's only five weeks or so
+left to holidays. Mayn't I go on as usual for this half? I'll tell the
+Doctor about it some day, or you may."
+
+Arthur looked out of the window. The twilight had come on, and all was
+silent. He repeated in a low voice: "In this thing the Lord pardon thy
+servant, that when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship
+there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow down myself in the house of
+Rimmon, when I bow down myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon
+thy servant in this thing."
+
+Not a word more was said on the subject, and the boys were again
+silent--one of those blessed, short silences in which the resolves which
+colour a life are so often taken.
+
+Tom was the first to break it. "You've been very ill indeed, haven't
+you, Geordie?" said he, with a mixture of awe and curiosity, feeling as
+if his friend had been in some strange place or scene, of which he could
+form no idea, and full of the memory of his own thoughts during the last
+week.
+
+"Yes, very. I'm sure the Doctor thought I was going to die. He gave me
+the Sacrament last Sunday, and you can't think what he is when one is
+ill. He said such brave, and tender, and gentle things to me, I felt
+quite light and strong after it, and never had any more fear. My mother
+brought our old medical man, who attended me when I was a poor sickly
+child. He said my constitution was quite changed, and that I'm fit for
+anything now. If it hadn't, I couldn't have stood three days of this
+illness. That's all thanks to you, and the games you've made me fond
+of."
+
+"More thanks to old Martin," said Tom; "he's been your real friend."
+
+"Nonsense, Tom; he never could have done for me what you have."
+
+"Well, I don't know; I did little enough. Did they tell you--you won't
+mind hearing it now, I know--that poor Thompson died last week? The
+other three boys are getting quite round, like you."
+
+"Oh yes, I heard of it."
+
+Then Tom, who was quite full of it, told Arthur of the burial-service
+in the chapel, and how it had impressed him, and, he believed, all the
+other boys. "And though the Doctor never said a word about it," said he,
+"and it was a half-holiday and match-day, there wasn't a game played in
+the close all the afternoon, and the boys all went about as if it were
+Sunday."
+
+"I'm very glad of it," said Arthur. "But, Tom, I've had such strange
+thoughts about death lately. I've never told a soul of them, not even my
+mother. Sometimes I think they're wrong, but, do you know, I don't think
+in my heart I could be sorry at the death of any of my friends."
+
+Tom was taken quite aback. "What in the world is the young un after
+now?" thought he; "I've swallowed a good many of his crotchets, but this
+altogether beats me. He can't be quite right in his head." He didn't
+want to say a word, and shifted about uneasily in the dark; however,
+Arthur seemed to be waiting for an answer, so at last he said, "I don't
+think I quite see what you mean, Geordie. One's told so often to think
+about death that I've tried it on sometimes, especially this last week.
+But we won't talk of it now. I'd better go. You're getting tired, and I
+shall do you harm."
+
+"No, no; indeed I ain't, Tom. You must stop till nine; there's only
+twenty minutes. I've settled you shall stop till nine. And oh! do let me
+talk to you--I must talk to you. I see it's just as I feared. You think
+I'm half mad. Don't you, now?"
+
+"Well, I did think it odd what you said, Geordie, as you ask me."
+
+Arthur paused a moment, and then said quickly, "I'll tell you how it all
+happened. At first, when I was sent to the sick-room, and found I had
+really got the fever, I was terribly frightened. I thought I should
+die, and I could not face it for a moment. I don't think it was sheer
+cowardice at first, but I thought how hard it was to be taken away from
+my mother and sisters and you all, just as I was beginning to see my way
+to many things, and to feel that I might be a man and do a man's work.
+To die without having fought, and worked, and given one's life away,
+was too hard to bear. I got terribly impatient, and accused God of
+injustice, and strove to justify myself. And the harder I strove the
+deeper I sank. Then the image of my dear father often came across me,
+but I turned from it. Whenever it came, a heavy, numbing throb seemed to
+take hold of my heart, and say, 'Dead-dead-dead.' And I cried out, 'The
+living, the living shall praise Thee, O God; the dead cannot praise
+thee. There is no work in the grave; in the night no man can work. But
+I can work. I can do great things. I will do great things. Why wilt thou
+slay me?' And so I struggled and plunged, deeper and deeper, and went
+down into a living black tomb. I was alone there, with no power to stir
+or think; alone with myself; beyond the reach of all human fellowship;
+beyond Christ's reach, I thought, in my nightmare. You, who are brave
+and bright and strong, can have no idea of that agony. Pray to God you
+never may. Pray as for your life."
+
+Arthur stopped--from exhaustion, Tom thought; but what between his fear
+lest Arthur should hurt himself, his awe, and his longing for him to go
+on, he couldn't ask, or stir to help him.
+
+Presently he went on, but quite calm and slow. "I don't know how long
+I was in that state--for more than a day, I know; for I was quite
+conscious, and lived my outer life all the time, and took my medicines,
+and spoke to my mother, and heard what they said. But I didn't take much
+note of time. I thought time was over for me, and that that tomb was
+what was beyond. Well, on last Sunday morning, as I seemed to lie in
+that tomb, alone, as I thought, for ever and ever, the black, dead wall
+was cleft in two, and I was caught up and borne through into the light
+by some great power, some living, mighty spirit. Tom, do you remember
+the living creatures and the wheels in Ezekiel? It was just like that.
+'When they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of
+great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the
+noise of an host; when they stood, they let down their wings.' 'And
+they went every one straight forward: whither the spirit was to go, they
+went; and they turned not when they went.' And we rushed through the
+bright air, which was full of myriads of living creatures, and paused
+on the brink of a great river. And the power held me up, and I knew that
+that great river was the grave, and death dwelt there, but not the death
+I had met in the black tomb. That, I felt, was gone for ever. For on the
+other bank of the great river I saw men and women and children rising up
+pure and bright, and the tears were wiped from their eyes, and they put
+on glory and strength, and all weariness and pain fell away. And beyond
+were a multitude which no man could number, and they worked at some
+great work; and they who rose from the river went on and joined in the
+work. They all worked, and each worked in a different way, but all at
+the same work. And I saw there my father, and the men in the old town
+whom I knew when I was a child--many a hard, stern man, who never came
+to church, and whom they called atheist and infidel. There they were,
+side by side with my father, whom I had seen toil and die for them, and
+women and little children, and the seal was on the foreheads of all. And
+I longed to see what the work was, and could not; so I tried to plunge
+in the river, for I thought I would join them, but I could not. Then I
+looked about to see how they got into the river. And this I could not
+see, but I saw myriads on this side, and they too worked, and I knew
+that it was the same work, and the same seal was on their foreheads. And
+though I saw that there was toil and anguish in the work of these, and
+that most that were working were blind and feeble, yet I longed no more
+to plunge into the river, but more and more to know what the work was.
+And as I looked I saw my mother and my sisters, and I saw the Doctor,
+and you, Tom, and hundreds more whom I knew; and at last I saw myself
+too, and I was toiling and doing ever so little a piece of the great
+work. Then it all melted away, and the power left me, and as it left
+me I thought I heard a voice say, 'The vision is for an appointed time;
+though it tarry, wait for it, for in the end it shall speak and not lie,
+it shall surely come, it shall not tarry.' It was early morning I know,
+then--it was so quiet and cool, and my mother was fast asleep in the
+chair by my bedside; but it wasn't only a dream of mine. I know it
+wasn't a dream. Then I fell into a deep sleep, and only woke after
+afternoon chapel; and the Doctor came and gave me the Sacrament, as I
+told you. I told him and my mother I should get well--I knew I should;
+but I couldn't tell them why. Tom," said Arthur gently, after another
+minute, "do you see why I could not grieve now to see my dearest friend
+die? It can't be--it isn't--all fever or illness. God would never have
+let me see it so clear if it wasn't true. I don't understand it all yet;
+it will take me my life and longer to do that--to find out what the work
+is."
+
+When Arthur stopped there was a long pause. Tom could not speak; he was
+almost afraid to breathe, lest he should break the train of Arthur's
+thoughts. He longed to hear more, and to ask questions. In another
+minute nine o'clock struck, and a gentle tap at the door called them
+both back into the world again. They did not answer, however, for a
+moment; and so the door opened, and a lady came in carrying a candle.
+
+She went straight to the sofa, and took hold of Arthur's hand, and then
+stooped down and kissed him.
+
+"My dearest boy, you feel a little feverish again. Why didn't you have
+lights? You've talked too much, and excited yourself in the dark."
+
+"Oh no, mother; you can't think how well I feel. I shall start with
+you to-morrow for Devonshire. But, mother, here's my friend--here's Tom
+Brown. You know him?"
+
+"Yes, indeed; I've known him for years," she said, and held out her
+hand to Tom, who was now standing up behind the sofa. This was Arthur's
+mother: tall and slight and fair, with masses of golden hair drawn back
+from the broad, white forehead, and the calm blue eye meeting his so
+deep and open--the eye that he knew so well, for it was his friend's
+over again, and the lovely, tender mouth that trembled while he
+looked--she stood there, a woman of thirty-eight, old enough to be his
+mother, and one whose face showed the lines which must be written on the
+faces of good men's wives and widows, but he thought he had never seen
+anything so beautiful. He couldn't help wondering if Arthur's sisters
+were like her.
+
+Tom held her hand, and looked on straight in her face; he could neither
+let it go nor speak.
+
+"Now, Tom," said Arthur, laughing, "where are your manners? You'll stare
+my mother out of countenance." Tom dropped the little hand with a sigh.
+"There, sit down, both of you.--Here, dearest mother; there's room
+here." And he made a place on the sofa for her.--"Tom, you needn't go;
+I'm sure you won't be called up at first lesson." Tom felt that he
+would risk being floored at every lesson for the rest of his natural
+school-life sooner than go, so sat down. "And now," said Arthur, "I have
+realized one of the dearest wishes of my life--to see you two together."
+
+And then he led away the talk to their home in Devonshire, and the
+red, bright earth, and the deep green combes, and the peat streams like
+cairngorm pebbles, and the wild moor with its high, cloudy tors for a
+giant background to the picture, till Tom got jealous, and stood up for
+the clear chalk streams, and the emerald water meadows and great elms
+and willows of the dear old royal county, as he gloried to call it. And
+the mother sat on quiet and loving, rejoicing in their life. The quarter
+to ten struck, and the bell rang for bed, before they had well begun
+their talk, as it seemed.
+
+Then Tom rose with a sigh to go.
+
+"Shall I see you in the morning, Geordie?" said he, as he shook his
+friend's hand. "Never mind, though; you'll be back next half. And I
+shan't forget the house of Rimmon."
+
+Arthur's mother got up and walked with him to the door, and there gave
+him her hand again; and again his eyes met that deep, loving look, which
+was like a spell upon him. Her voice trembled slightly as she said,
+"Good-night. You are one who knows what our Father has promised to the
+friend of the widow and the fatherless. May He deal with you as you have
+dealt with me and mine!"
+
+Tom was quite upset; he mumbled something about owing everything good in
+him to Geordie, looked in her face again, pressed her hand to his lips,
+and rushed downstairs to his study, where he sat till old Thomas came
+kicking at the door, to tell him his allowance would be stopped if he
+didn't go off to bed. (It would have been stopped anyhow, but that he
+was a great favourite with the old gentleman, who loved to come out in
+the afternoons into the close to Tom's wicket, and bowl slow twisters to
+him, and talk of the glories of bygone Surrey heroes, with whom he
+had played former generations.) So Tom roused himself, and took up
+his candle to go to bed; and then for the first time was aware of
+a beautiful new fishing-rod, with old Eton's mark on it, and a
+splendidly-bound Bible, which lay on his table, on the title-page
+of which was written--"TOM BROWN, from his affectionate and grateful
+friends, Frances Jane Arthur; George Arthur."
+
+I leave you all to guess how he slept, and what he dreamt of.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--HARRY EAST'S DILEMMAS AND DELIVERANCES.
+
+     "The Holy Supper is kept indeed,
+     In whatso we share with another's need
+     Not that which we give, but what we share,
+     For the gift without the giver is bare.
+     Who bestows himself with his alms feeds three,
+     Himself, his hungering neighbour and Me."
+     --LOWELL, The Vision of Sir Launfal.
+
+The next morning, after breakfast, Tom, East, and Gower met as usual
+to learn their second lesson together. Tom had been considering how to
+break his proposal of giving up the crib to the others, and having found
+no better way (as indeed none better can ever be found by man or boy),
+told them simply what had happened; how he had been to see Arthur, who
+had talked to him upon the subject, and what he had said, and for his
+part he had made up his mind, and wasn't going to use cribs any more;
+and not being quite sure of his ground, took the high and pathetic tone,
+and was proceeding to say "how that, having learnt his lessons with
+them for so many years, it would grieve him much to put an end to the
+arrangement, and he hoped, at any rate, that if they wouldn't go on
+with him, they should still be just as good friends, and respect one
+another's motives; but--"
+
+Here the other boys, who had been listening with open eyes and ears,
+burst in,--
+
+"Stuff and nonsense!" cried Gower. "Here, East, get down the crib and
+find the place."
+
+"O Tommy, Tommy!" said East, proceeding to do as he was bidden, "that it
+should ever have come to this! I knew Arthur'd be the ruin of you some
+day, and you of me. And now the time's come." And he made a doleful
+face.
+
+"I don't know about ruin," answered Tom; "I know that you and I would
+have had the sack long ago if it hadn't been for him. And you know it as
+well as I."
+
+"Well, we were in a baddish way before he came, I own; but this new
+crotchet of his is past a joke."
+
+"Let's give it a trial, Harry; come. You know how often he has been
+right and we wrong."
+
+"Now, don't you two be jawing away about young Square-toes," struck in
+Gower. "He's no end of a sucking wiseacre, I dare say; but we've no time
+to lose, and I've got the fives court at half-past nine."
+
+"I say, Gower," said Tom appealingly, "be a good fellow, and let's try
+if we can't get on without the crib."
+
+"What! in this chorus? Why, we shan't get through ten lines."
+
+"I say, Tom," cried East, having hit on a new idea, "don't you remember,
+when we were in the upper fourth, and old Momus caught me construing
+off the leaf of a crib which I'd torn out and put in my book, and which
+would float out on to the floor, he sent me up to be flogged for it?"
+
+"Yes, I remember it very well."
+
+"Well, the Doctor, after he'd flogged me, told me himself that he didn't
+flog me for using a translation, but for taking it in to lesson, and
+using it there when I hadn't learnt a word before I came in. He said
+there was no harm in using a translation to get a clue to hard passages,
+if you tried all you could first to make them out without."
+
+"Did he, though?" said Tom; "then Arthur must be wrong."
+
+"Of course he is," said Gower--"the little prig. We'll only use the crib
+when we can't construe without it.--Go ahead, East."
+
+And on this agreement they started--Tom, satisfied with having made his
+confession, and not sorry to have a locus penitentiae, and not to be
+deprived altogether of the use of his old and faithful friend.
+
+The boys went on as usual, each taking a sentence in turn, and the crib
+being handed to the one whose turn it was to construe. Of course
+Tom couldn't object to this, as, was it not simply lying there to be
+appealed to in case the sentence should prove too hard altogether for
+the construer? But it must be owned that Gower and East did not make
+very tremendous exertions to conquer their sentences before having
+recourse to its help. Tom, however, with the most heroic virtue and
+gallantry, rushed into his sentence, searching in a high-minded manner
+for nominative and verb, and turning over his dictionary frantically for
+the first hard word that stopped him. But in the meantime Gower, who
+was bent on getting to fives, would peep quietly into the crib, and then
+suggest, "Don't you think this is the meaning?" "I think you must take
+it this way, Brown." And as Tom didn't see his way to not profiting by
+these suggestions, the lesson went on about as quickly as usual, and
+Gower was able to start for the fives court within five minutes of the
+half-hour.
+
+When Tom and East were left face to face, they looked at one another for
+a minute, Tom puzzled, and East chokefull of fun, and then burst into a
+roar of laughter.
+
+"Well, Tom," said East, recovering himself, "I don t see any objection
+to the new way. It's about as good as the old one, I think, besides the
+advantage it gives one of feeling virtuous, and looking down on one's
+neighbours."
+
+Tom shoved his hand into his back hair. "I ain't so sure," said he; "you
+two fellows carried me off my legs. I don't think we really tried one
+sentence fairly. Are you sure you remember what the Doctor said to you?"
+
+"Yes. And I'll swear I couldn't make out one of my sentences to-day--no,
+nor ever could. I really don't remember," said East, speaking slowly and
+impressively, "to have come across one Latin or Greek sentence this half
+that I could go and construe by the light of nature. Whereby I am sure
+Providence intended cribs to be used."
+
+"The thing to find out," said Tom meditatively, "is how long one ought
+to grind at a sentence without looking at the crib. Now I think if one
+fairly looks out all the words one don't know, and then can't hit it,
+that's enough."
+
+"To be sure, Tommy," said East demurely, but with a merry twinkle in his
+eye. "Your new doctrine too, old fellow," added he, "when one comes to
+think of it, is a cutting at the root of all school morality. You'll
+take away mutual help, brotherly love, or, in the vulgar tongue, giving
+construes, which I hold to be one of our highest virtues. For how can
+you distinguish between getting a construe from another boy and using a
+crib? Hang it, Tom, if you're going to deprive all our school-fellows
+of the chance of exercising Christian benevolence and being good
+Samaritans, I shall cut the concern."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't joke about it, Harry; it's hard enough to see one's
+way--a precious sight harder than I thought last night. But I suppose
+there's a use and an abuse of both, and one'll get straight enough
+somehow. But you can't make out, anyhow, that one has a right to use old
+vulgus-books and copy-books."
+
+"Hullo, more heresy! How fast a fellow goes downhill when he once gets
+his head before his legs. Listen to me, Tom. Not use old vulgus-books!
+Why, you Goth, ain't we to take the benefit of the wisdom and admire and
+use the work of past generations? Not use old copy-books! Why, you
+might as well say we ought to pull down Westminster Abbey, and put up a
+go-to-meeting shop with churchwarden windows; or never read Shakespeare,
+but only Sheridan Knowles. Think of all the work and labour that our
+predecessors have bestowed on these very books; and are we to make their
+work of no value?"
+
+"I say, Harry, please don't chaff; I'm really serious."
+
+"And then, is it not our duty to consult the pleasure of others rather
+than our own, and above all, that of our masters? Fancy, then, the
+difference to them in looking over a vulgus which has been carefully
+touched and retouched by themselves and others, and which must bring
+them a sort of dreamy pleasure, as if they'd met the thought
+or expression of it somewhere or another--before they were born
+perhaps--and that of cutting up, and making picture-frames round all
+your and my false quantities, and other monstrosities. Why, Tom, you
+wouldn't be so cruel as never to let old Momus hum over the 'O genus
+humanum' again, and then look up doubtingly through his spectacles, and
+end by smiling and giving three extra marks for it--just for old sake's
+sake, I suppose."
+
+"Well," said Tom, getting up in something as like a huff as he was
+capable of, "it's deuced hard that when a fellow's really trying to do
+what he ought, his best friends'll do nothing but chaff him and try to
+put him down." And he stuck his books under his arm and his hat on his
+head, preparatory to rushing out into the quadrangle, to testify with
+his own soul of the faithlessness of friendships.
+
+"Now don't be an ass, Tom," said East, catching hold of him; "you know
+me well enough by this time; my bark's worse than my bite. You can't
+expect to ride your new crotchet without anybody's trying to stick a
+nettle under his tail and make him kick you off--especially as we shall
+all have to go on foot still. But now sit down, and let's go over it
+again. I'll be as serious as a judge."
+
+Then Tom sat himself down on the table, and waxed eloquent about all the
+righteousnesses and advantages of the new plan, as was his wont whenever
+he took up anything, going into it as if his life depended upon it, and
+sparing no abuse which he could think of, of the opposite method, which
+he denounced as ungentlemanly, cowardly, mean, lying, and no one knows
+what besides. "Very cool of Tom," as East thought, but didn't say,
+"seeing as how he only came out of Egypt himself last night at bedtime."
+
+"Well, Tom," said he at last, "you see, when you and I came to school
+there were none of these sort of notions. You may be right--I dare say
+you are. Only what one has always felt about the masters is, that it's
+a fair trial of skill and last between us and them--like a match at
+football or a battle. We're natural enemies in school--that's the fact.
+We've got to learn so much Latin and Greek, and do so many verses, and
+they've got to see that we do it. If we can slip the collar and do so
+much less without getting caught, that's one to us. If they can get more
+out of us, or catch us shirking, that's one to them. All's fair in war
+but lying. If I run my luck against theirs, and go into school without
+looking at my lessons, and don't get called up, why am I a snob or a
+sneak? I don't tell the master I've learnt it. He's got to find out
+whether I have or not. What's he paid for? If he calls me up and I get
+floored, he makes me write it out in Greek and English. Very good. He's
+caught me, and I don't grumble. I grant you, if I go and snivel to him,
+and tell him I've really tried to learn it, but found it so hard without
+a translation, or say I've had a toothache, or any humbug of that kind,
+I'm a snob. That's my school morality; it's served me, and you too, Tom,
+for the matter of that, these five years. And it's all clear and fair,
+no mistake about it. We understand it, and they understand it, and I
+don't know what we're to come to with any other."
+
+Tom looked at him pleased and a little puzzled. He had never heard
+East speak his mind seriously before, and couldn't help feeling how
+completely he had hit his own theory and practice up to that time.
+
+"Thank you, old fellow," said he. "You're a good old brick to be
+serious, and not put out with me. I said more than I meant, I dare say,
+only you see I know I'm right. Whatever you and Gower and the rest do, I
+shall hold on. I must. And as it's all new and an uphill game, you see,
+one must hit hard and hold on tight at first."
+
+"Very good," said East; "hold on and hit away, only don't hit under the
+line."
+
+"But I must bring you over, Harry, or I shan't be comfortable. Now, I'll
+allow all you've said. We've always been honourable enemies with the
+masters. We found a state of war when we came, and went into it of
+course. Only don't you think things are altered a good deal? I don't
+feel as I used to the masters. They seem to me to treat one quite
+differently."
+
+"Yes, perhaps they do," said East; "there's a new set you see, mostly,
+who don't feel sure of themselves yet. They don't want to fight till
+they know the ground."
+
+"I don't think it's only that," said Tom. "And then the Doctor, he does
+treat one so openly, and like a gentleman, and as if one was working
+with him."
+
+"Well, so he does," said East; "he's a splendid fellow, and when I get
+into the sixth I shall act accordingly. Only you know he has nothing to
+do with our lessons now, except examining us. I say, though," looking at
+his watch, "it's just the quarter. Come along."
+
+As they walked out they got a message, to say that Arthur was just
+starting, and would like to say goodbye. So they went down to the
+private entrance of the School-house, and found an open carriage,
+with Arthur propped up with pillows in it, looking already better, Tom
+thought.
+
+They jumped up on to the steps to shake hands with him, and Tom mumbled
+thanks for the presents he had found in his study, and looked round
+anxiously for Arthur's mother.
+
+East, who had fallen back into his usual humour, looked quaintly at
+Arthur, and said,--
+
+"So you've been at it again, through that hot-headed convert of yours
+there. He's been making our lives a burden to us all the morning about
+using cribs. I shall get floored to a certainty at second lesson, if I'm
+called up."
+
+Arthur blushed and looked down. Tom struck in,--
+
+"Oh, it's all right. He's converted already; he always comes through the
+mud after us, grumbling and sputtering."
+
+The clock struck, and they had to go off to school, wishing Arthur a
+pleasant holiday, Tom, lingering behind a moment to send his thanks and
+love to Arthur's mother.
+
+Tom renewed the discussion after second lesson, and succeeded so far as
+to get East to promise to give the new plan a fair trial.
+
+Encouraged by his success, in the evening, when they were sitting alone
+in the large study, where East lived now almost, "vice Arthur on leave,"
+after examining the new fishing-rod, which both pronounced to be the
+genuine article ("play enough to throw a midge tied on a single
+hair against the wind, and strength enough to hold a grampus"), they
+naturally began talking about Arthur. Tom, who was still bubbling over
+with last night's scene and all the thoughts of the last week, and
+wanting to clinch and fix the whole in his own mind, which he could
+never do without first going through the process of belabouring somebody
+else with it all, suddenly rushed into the subject of Arthur's illness,
+and what he had said about death.
+
+East had given him the desired opening. After a serio-comic grumble,
+"that life wasn't worth having, now they were tied to a young beggar
+who was always 'raising his standard;' and that he, East, was like a
+prophet's donkey, who was obliged to struggle on after the donkey-man
+who went after the prophet; that he had none of the pleasure of starting
+the new crotchets, and didn't half understand them, but had to take the
+kicks and carry the luggage as if he had all the fun," he threw his legs
+up on to the sofa, and put his hands behind his head, and said,--
+
+"Well, after all, he's the most wonderful little fellow I ever came
+across. There ain't such a meek, humble boy in the school. Hanged if
+I don't think now, really, Tom, that he believes himself a much worse
+fellow than you or I, and that he don't think he has more influence in
+the house than Dot Bowles, who came last quarter, and isn't ten yet. But
+he turns you and me round his little finger, old boy--there's no mistake
+about that." And East nodded at Tom sagaciously.
+
+"Now or never!" thought Tom; so, shutting his eyes and hardening his
+heart, he went straight at it, repeating all that Arthur had said, as
+near as he could remember it, in the very words, and all he had himself
+thought. The life seemed to ooze out of it as he went on, and several
+times he felt inclined to stop, give it all up, and change the subject.
+But somehow he was borne on; he had a necessity upon him to speak it all
+out, and did so. At the end he looked at East with some anxiety, and was
+delighted to see that that young gentleman was thoughtful and attentive.
+The fact is, that in the stage of his inner life at which Tom had lately
+arrived, his intimacy with and friendship for East could not have lasted
+if he had not made him aware of, and a sharer in, the thoughts that were
+beginning to exercise him. Nor indeed could the friendship have lasted
+if East had shown no sympathy with these thoughts; so that it was a
+great relief to have unbosomed himself, and to have found that his
+friend could listen.
+
+Tom had always had a sort of instinct that East's levity was only
+skin-deep, and this instinct was a true one. East had no want of
+reverence for anything he felt to be real; but his was one of those
+natures that burst into what is generally called recklessness and
+impiety the moment they feel that anything is being poured upon them for
+their good which does not come home to their inborn sense of right, or
+which appeals to anything like self-interest in them. Daring and
+honest by nature, and outspoken to an extent which alarmed all
+respectabilities, with a constant fund of animal health and spirits
+which he did not feel bound to curb in any way, he had gained for
+himself with the steady part of the school (including as well those who
+wished to appear steady as those who really were so) the character of a
+boy with whom it would be dangerous to be intimate; while his own hatred
+of everything cruel, or underhand, or false, and his hearty respect for
+what he would see to be good and true, kept off the rest.
+
+Tom, besides being very like East in many points of character, had
+largely developed in his composition the capacity for taking the weakest
+side. This is not putting it strongly enough: it was a necessity with
+him; he couldn't help it any more than he could eating or drinking. He
+could never play on the strongest side with any heart at football or
+cricket, and was sure to make friends with any boy who was unpopular, or
+down on his luck.
+
+Now, though East was not what is generally called unpopular, Tom felt
+more and more every day, as their characters developed, that he
+stood alone, and did not make friends among their contemporaries, and
+therefore sought him out. Tom was himself much more popular, for his
+power of detecting humbug was much less acute, and his instincts were
+much more sociable. He was at this period of his life, too, largely
+given to taking people for what they gave themselves out to be; but
+his singleness of heart, fearlessness, and honesty were just what East
+appreciated, and thus the two had been drawn into great intimacy.
+
+This intimacy had not been interrupted by Tom's guardianship of Arthur.
+
+East had often, as has been said, joined them in reading the Bible; but
+their discussions had almost always turned upon the characters of the
+men and women of whom they read, and not become personal to themselves.
+In fact, the two had shrunk from personal religious discussion, not
+knowing how it might end, and fearful of risking a friendship very dear
+to both, and which they felt somehow, without quite knowing why,
+would never be the same, but either tenfold stronger or sapped at its
+foundation, after such a communing together.
+
+What a bother all this explaining is! I wish we could get on without
+it. But we can't. However, you'll all find, if you haven't found it out
+already, that a time comes in every human friendship when you must go
+down into the depths of yourself, and lay bare what is there to your
+friend, and wait in fear for his answer. A few moments may do it; and
+it may be (most likely will be, as you are English boys) that you will
+never do it but once. But done it must be, if the friendship is to be
+worth the name. You must find what is there, at the very root and bottom
+of one another's hearts; and if you are at one there, nothing on earth
+can or at least ought to sunder you.
+
+East had remained lying down until Tom finished speaking, as if fearing
+to interrupt him; he now sat up at the table, and leant his head on one
+hand, taking up a pencil with the other, and working little holes with
+it in the table-cover. After a bit he looked up, stopped the pencil,
+and said, "Thank you very much, old fellow. There's no other boy in
+the house would have done it for me but you or Arthur. I can see well
+enough," he went on, after a pause, "all the best big fellows look on me
+with suspicion; they think I'm a devil-may-care, reckless young scamp.
+So I am--eleven hours out of twelve, but not the twelfth. Then all of
+our contemporaries worth knowing follow suit, of course: we're very good
+friends at games and all that, but not a soul of them but you and
+Arthur ever tried to break through the crust, and see whether there was
+anything at the bottom of me; and then the bad ones I won't stand and
+they know that."
+
+"Don't you think that's half fancy, Harry?"
+
+"Not a bit of it," said East bitterly, pegging away with his pencil.
+"I see it all plain enough. Bless you, you think everybody's as
+straightforward and kindhearted as you are."
+
+"Well, but what's the reason of it? There must be a reason. You can play
+all the games as well as any one and sing the best song, and are the
+best company in the house. You fancy you're not liked, Harry. It's all
+fancy."
+
+"I only wish it was, Tom. I know I could be popular enough with all the
+bad ones, but that I won't have, and the good ones won't have me."
+
+"Why not?" persisted Tom; "you don't drink or swear, or get out at
+night; you never bully, or cheat at lessons. If you only showed you
+liked it, you'd have all the best fellows in the house running after
+you."
+
+"Not I," said East. Then with an effort he went on, "I'll tell you what
+it is. I never stop the Sacrament. I can see, from the Doctor downwards,
+how that tells against me."
+
+"Yes, I've seen that," said Tom, "and I've been very sorry for it, and
+Arthur and I have talked about it. I've often thought of speaking to
+you, but it's so hard to begin on such subjects. I'm very glad you've
+opened it. Now, why don't you?"
+
+"I've never been confirmed," said East.
+
+"Not been confirmed!" said Tom, in astonishment. "I never thought of
+that. Why weren't you confirmed with the rest of us nearly three years
+ago? I always thought you'd been confirmed at home."
+
+"No," answered East sorrowfully; "you see this was how it happened. Last
+Confirmation was soon after Arthur came, and you were so taken up with
+him I hardly saw either of you. Well, when the Doctor sent round for us
+about it, I was living mostly with Green's set. You know the sort. They
+all went in. I dare say it was all right, and they got good by it; I
+don't want to judge them. Only all I could see of their reasons drove me
+just the other way. 'Twas 'because the Doctor liked it;' 'no boy got
+on who didn't stay the Sacrament;' it was the 'correct thing,' in fact,
+like having a good hat to wear on Sundays. I couldn't stand it. I didn't
+feel that I wanted to lead a different life. I was very well content
+as I was, and I wasn't going to sham religious to curry favour with the
+Doctor, or any one else."
+
+East stopped speaking, and pegged away more diligently than ever with
+his pencil. Tom was ready to cry. He felt half sorry at first that he
+had been confirmed himself. He seemed to have deserted his earliest
+friend--to have left him by himself at his worst need for those long
+years. He got up and went and sat by East, and put his arm over his
+shoulder.
+
+"Dear old boy," he said, "how careless and selfish I've been. But why
+didn't you come and talk to Arthur and me?"
+
+"I wish to Heaven I had," said East, "but I was a fool. It's too late
+talking of it now."
+
+"Why too late? You want to be confirmed now, don't you?"
+
+"I think so," said East. "I've thought about it a good deal; only, often
+I fancy I must be changing, because I see it's to do me good here--just
+what stopped me last time. And then I go back again."
+
+"I'll tell you now how 'twas with me," said Tom warmly. "If it hadn't
+been for Arthur, I should have done just as you did. I hope I should. I
+honour you for it. But then he made it out just as if it was taking the
+weak side before all the world--going in once for all against everything
+that's strong and rich, and proud and respectable, a little band of
+brothers against the whole world. And the Doctor seemed to say so too,
+only he said a great deal more."
+
+"Ah!" groaned East, "but there again, that's just another of my
+difficulties whenever I think about the matter. I don't want to be one
+of your saints, one of your elect, whatever the right phrase is. My
+sympathies are all the other way--with the many, the poor devils who run
+about the streets and don't go to church. Don't stare, Tom; mind, I'm
+telling you all that's in my heart--as far as I know it--but it's all a
+muddle. You must be gentle with me if you want to land me. Now I've seen
+a deal of this sort of religion; I was bred up in it, and I can't stand
+it. If nineteen-twentieths of the world are to be left to uncovenanted
+mercies, and that sort of thing, which means in plain English to go to
+hell, and the other twentieth are to rejoice at it all, why--"
+
+"Oh! but, Harry, they ain't, they don't," broke in Tom, really shocked.
+"Oh, how I wish Arthur hadn't gone! I'm such a fool about these things.
+But it's all you want too, East; it is indeed. It cuts both ways
+somehow, being confirmed and taking the Sacrament. It makes you feel on
+the side of all the good and all the bad too, of everybody in the world.
+Only there's some great dark strong power, which is crushing you and
+everybody else. That's what Christ conquered, and we've got to fight.
+What a fool I am! I can't explain. If Arthur were only here!"
+
+"I begin to get a glimmering of what you mean," said East.
+
+"I say, now," said Tom eagerly, "do you remember how we both hated
+Flashman?"
+
+"Of course I do," said East; "I hate him still. What then?"
+
+"Well, when I came to take the Sacrament, I had a great struggle about
+that. I tried to put him out of my head; and when I couldn't do that, I
+tried to think of him as evil--as something that the Lord who was loving
+me hated, and which I might hate too. But it wouldn't do. I broke down;
+I believe Christ Himself broke me down. And when the Doctor gave me the
+bread and wine, and leant over me praying, I prayed for poor Flashman,
+as if it had been you or Arthur."
+
+East buried his face in his hands on the table. Tom could feel the table
+tremble. At last he looked up. "Thank you again, Tom," said he; "you
+don't know what you may have done for me to-night. I think I see now how
+the right sort of sympathy with poor devils is got at."
+
+"And you'll stop the Sacrament next time, won't you?" said Tom.
+
+"Can I, before I'm confirmed?"
+
+"Go and ask the Doctor."
+
+"I will."
+
+That very night, after prayers, East followed the Doctor, and the old
+verger bearing the candle, upstairs. Tom watched, and saw the Doctor
+turn round when he heard footsteps following him closer than usual, and
+say, "Hah, East! Do you want to speak to me, my man?"
+
+"If you please, sir." And the private door closed, and Tom went to his
+study in a state of great trouble of mind.
+
+It was almost an hour before East came back. Then he rushed in
+breathless.
+
+"Well, it's all right," he shouted, seizing Tom by the hand. "I feel as
+if a ton weight were off my mind."
+
+"Hurrah," said Tom. "I knew it would be; but tell us all about it."
+
+"Well, I just told him all about it. You can't think how kind and gentle
+he was, the great grim man, whom I've feared more than anybody on earth.
+When I stuck, he lifted me just as if I'd been a little child. And he
+seemed to know all I'd felt, and to have gone through it all. And I
+burst out crying--more than I've done this five years; and he sat down
+by me, and stroked my head; and I went blundering on, and told him
+all--much worse things than I've told you. And he wasn't shocked a bit,
+and didn't snub me, or tell me I was a fool, and it was all nothing but
+pride or wickedness, though I dare say it was. And he didn't tell me
+not to follow out my thoughts, and he didn't give me any cut-and-dried
+explanation. But when I'd done he just talked a bit. I can hardly
+remember what he said yet; but it seemed to spread round me like
+healing, and strength, and light, and to bear me up, and plant me on a
+rock, where I could hold my footing and fight for myself. I don't know
+what to do, I feel so happy. And it's all owing to you, dear old boy!"
+And he seized Tom's hand again.
+
+"And you're to come to the Communion?" said Tom.
+
+"Yes, and to be confirmed in the holidays."
+
+Tom's delight was as great as his friend's. But he hadn't yet had
+out all his own talk, and was bent on improving the occasion: so he
+proceeded to propound Arthur's theory about not being sorry for his
+friends' deaths, which he had hitherto kept in the background, and by
+which he was much exercised; for he didn't feel it honest to take what
+pleased him, and throw over the rest, and was trying vigorously to
+persuade himself that he should like all his best friends to die
+off-hand.
+
+But East's powers of remaining serious were exhausted, and in five
+minutes he was saying the most ridiculous things he could think of, till
+Tom was almost getting angry again.
+
+Despite of himself, however, he couldn't help laughing and giving it up,
+when East appealed to him with, "Well, Tom, you ain't going to punch my
+head, I hope, because I insist upon being sorry when you got to earth?"
+
+And so their talk finished for that time, and they tried to learn first
+lesson, with very poor success, as appeared next morning, when they were
+called up and narrowly escaped being floored, which ill-luck, however,
+did not sit heavily on either of their souls.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--TOM BROWN'S LAST MATCH.
+
+     "Heaven grant the manlier heart, that timely ere
+     Youth fly, with life's real tempest would be coping;
+     The fruit of dreamy hoping
+     Is, waking, blank despair."--CLOUGH, Ambarvalia.
+
+The curtain now rises upon the last act of our little drama, for
+hard-hearted publishers warn me that a single volume must of necessity
+have an end. Well, well! the pleasantest things must come to an end.
+I little thought last long vacation, when I began these pages to help
+while away some spare time at a watering-place, how vividly many an old
+scene which had lain hid away for years in some dusty old corner of my
+brain, would come back again, and stand before me as clear and bright as
+if it had happened yesterday. The book has been a most grateful task
+to me, and I only hope that all you, my dear young friends, who read it
+(friends assuredly you must be, if you get as far as this), will be half
+as sorry to come to the last stage as I am.
+
+Not but what there has been a solemn and a sad side to it. As the old
+scenes became living, and the actors in them became living too, many
+a grave in the Crimea and distant India, as well as in the quiet
+churchyards of our dear old country, seemed to open and send forth their
+dead, and their voices and looks and ways were again in one's ears and
+eyes, as in the old School-days. But this was not sad. How should it be,
+if we believe as our Lord has taught us? How should it be, when one more
+turn of the wheel, and we shall be by their sides again, learning from
+them again, perhaps, as we did when we were new boys.
+
+Then there were others of the old faces so dear to us once who had
+somehow or another just gone clean out of sight. Are they dead or
+living? We know not, but the thought of them brings no sadness with it.
+Wherever they are, we can well believe they are doing God's work and
+getting His wages.
+
+But are there not some, whom we still see sometimes in the streets,
+whose haunts and homes we know, whom we could probably find almost any
+day in the week if we were set to do it, yet from whom we are really
+farther than we are from the dead, and from those who have gone out of
+our ken? Yes, there are and must be such; and therein lies the sadness
+of old School memories. Yet of these our old comrades, from whom more
+than time and space separate us, there are some by whose sides we can
+feel sure that we shall stand again when time shall be no more. We may
+think of one another now as dangerous fanatics or narrow bigots, with
+whom no truce is possible, from whom we shall only sever more and more
+to the end of our lives, whom it would be our respective duties to
+imprison or hang, if we had the power. We must go our way, and they
+theirs, as long as flesh and spirit hold together; but let our own Rugby
+poet speak words of healing for this trial:--
+
+     "To veer how vain! on, onward strain,
+     Brave barks, in light, in darkness too;
+     Through winds and tides one compass guides,--
+     To that, and your own selves, be true.
+
+     "But, O blithe breeze, and O great seas,
+     Though ne'er that earliest parting past,
+     On your wide plain they join again;
+     Together lead them home at last.
+
+     "One port, methought, alike they sought,
+     One purpose hold where'er they fare.
+     O bounding breeze, O rushing seas,
+     At last, at last, unite them there!" *
+
+
+     * Clough, Ambarvalia.
+
+This is not mere longing; it is prophecy. So over these too, our old
+friends, who are friends no more, we sorrow not as men without hope. It
+is only for those who seem to us to have lost compass and purpose, and
+to be driven helplessly on rocks and quicksands, whose lives are spent
+in the service of the world, the flesh, and the devil, for self alone,
+and not for their fellow-men, their country, or their God, that we must
+mourn and pray without sure hope and without light, trusting only that
+He, in whose hands they as well as we are, who has died for them as well
+as for us, who sees all His creatures
+
+     "With larger other eyes than ours,
+     To make allowance for us all,"
+
+will, in His own way and at His own time, lead them also home.
+
+Another two years have passed, and it is again the end of the summer
+half-year at Rugby; in fact, the School has broken up. The fifth-form
+examinations were over last week, and upon them have followed the
+speeches, and the sixth-form examinations for exhibitions; and they too
+are over now. The boys have gone to all the winds of heaven, except the
+town boys and the eleven, and the few enthusiasts besides who have asked
+leave to stay in their houses to see the result of the cricket matches.
+For this year the Wellesburn return match and the Marylebone match are
+played at Rugby, to the great delight of the town and neighbourhood, and
+the sorrow of those aspiring young cricketers who have been reckoning
+for the last three months on showing off at Lord's ground.
+
+The Doctor started for the Lakes yesterday morning, after an interview
+with the captain of the eleven, in the presence of Thomas, at which he
+arranged in what school the cricket dinners were to be, and all other
+matters necessary for the satisfactory carrying out of the festivities,
+and warned them as to keeping all spirituous liquors out of the close,
+and having the gates closed by nine o'clock.
+
+The Wellesburn match was played out with great success yesterday, the
+School winning by three wickets; and to-day the great event of the
+cricketing year, the Marylebone match, is being played. What a match it
+has been! The London eleven came down by an afternoon train yesterday,
+in time to see the end of the Wellesburn match; and as soon as it was
+over, their leading men and umpire inspected the ground, criticising it
+rather unmercifully. The captain of the School eleven, and one or
+two others, who had played the Lord's match before, and knew old Mr.
+Aislabie and several of the Lord's men, accompanied them; while the rest
+of the eleven looked on from under the Three Trees with admiring eyes,
+and asked one another the names of the illustrious strangers, and
+recounted how many runs each of them had made in the late matches in
+Bell's Life. They looked such hard-bitten, wiry, whiskered fellows that
+their young adversaries felt rather desponding as to the result of the
+morrow's match. The ground was at last chosen, and two men set to work
+upon it to water and roll; and then, there being yet some half-hour of
+daylight, some one had suggested a dance on the turf. The close was
+half full of citizens and their families, and the idea was hailed
+with enthusiasm. The cornopean player was still on the ground. In five
+minutes the eleven and half a dozen of the Wellesburn and Marylebone men
+got partners somehow or another, and a merry country-dance was going on,
+to which every one flocked, and new couples joined in every minute, till
+there were a hundred of them going down the middle and up again; and the
+long line of school buildings looked gravely down on them, every window
+glowing with the last rays of the western sun; and the rooks clanged
+about in the tops of the old elms, greatly excited, and resolved on
+having their country-dance too; and the great flag flapped lazily in the
+gentle western breeze. Altogether it was a sight which would have made
+glad the heart of our brave old founder, Lawrence Sheriff, if he were
+half as good a fellow as I take him to have been. It was a cheerful
+sight to see. But what made it so valuable in the sight of the captain
+of the School eleven was that he there saw his young hands shaking
+off their shyness and awe of the Lord's men, as they crossed hands and
+capered about on the grass together; for the strangers entered into
+it all, and threw away their cigars, and danced and shouted like boys;
+while old Mr. Aislabie stood by looking on in his white hat, leaning on
+a bat, in benevolent enjoyment. "This hop will be worth thirty runs to
+us to-morrow, and will be the making of Raggles and Johnson," thinks the
+young leader, as he revolves many things in his mind, standing by the
+side of Mr. Aislabie, whom he will not leave for a minute, for he
+feels that the character of the School for courtesy is resting on his
+shoulders.
+
+But when a quarter to nine struck, and he saw old Thomas beginning
+to fidget about with the keys in his hand, he thought of the Doctor's
+parting monition, and stopped the cornopean at once, notwithstanding the
+loud-voiced remonstrances from all sides; and the crowd scattered away
+from the close, the eleven all going into the School-house, where supper
+and beds were provided for them by the Doctor's orders.
+
+Deep had been the consultations at supper as to the order of going in,
+who should bowl the first over, whether it would be best to play steady
+or freely; and the youngest hands declared that they shouldn't be a
+bit nervous, and praised their opponents as the jolliest fellows in the
+world, except perhaps their old friends the Wellesburn men. How far
+a little good-nature from their elders will go with the right sort of
+boys!
+
+The morning had dawned bright and warm, to the intense relief of many
+an anxious youngster, up betimes to mark the signs of the weather. The
+eleven went down in a body before breakfast, for a plunge in the cold
+bath in a corner of the close. The ground was in splendid order, and
+soon after ten o'clock, before spectators had arrived, all was ready,
+and two of the Lord's men took their places at the wickets--the School,
+with the usual liberality of young hands, having put their adversaries
+in first. Old Bailey stepped up to the wicket, and called play, and the
+match has begun.
+
+"Oh, well bowled! well bowled, Johnson!" cries the captain, catching
+up the ball and sending it high above the rook trees, while the third
+Marylebone man walks away from the wicket, and old Bailey gravely sets
+up the middle stump again and puts the bails on.
+
+"How many runs?" Away scamper three boys to the scoring table, and are
+back again in a minute amongst the rest of the eleven, who are collected
+together in a knot between wicket. "Only eighteen runs, and three
+wickets down!" "Huzza for old Rugby!" sings out Jack Raggles, the
+long-stop, toughest and burliest of boys, commonly called "Swiper Jack,"
+and forthwith stands on his head, and brandishes his legs in the air
+in triumph, till the next boy catches hold of his heels, and throws him
+over on to his back.
+
+"Steady there; don't be such an ass, Jack," says the captain; "we
+haven't got the best wicket yet. Ah, look out now at cover-point," adds
+he, as he sees a long-armed bare-headed, slashing-looking player coming
+to the wicket. "And, Jack, mind your hits. He steals more runs than any
+man in England."
+
+And they all find that they have got their work to do now. The
+newcomer's off-hitting is tremendous, and his running like a flash of
+lightning. He is never in his ground except when his wicket is down.
+Nothing in the whole game so trying to boys. He has stolen three byes in
+the first ten minutes, and Jack Raggles is furious, and begins throwing
+over savagely to the farther wicket, until he is sternly stopped by the
+captain. It is all that young gentlemen can do to keep his team steady,
+but he knows that everything depends on it, and faces his work bravely.
+The score creeps up to fifty; the boys begin to look blank; and the
+spectators, who are now mustering strong, are very silent. The ball
+flies off his bat to all parts of the field, and he gives no rest and
+no catches to any one. But cricket is full of glorious chances, and
+the goddess who presides over it loves to bring down the most skilful
+players. Johnson, the young bowler, is getting wild, and bowls a ball
+almost wide to the off; the batter steps out and cuts it beautifully to
+where cover-point is standing very deep--in fact almost off the ground.
+The ball comes skimming and twisting along about three feet from the
+ground; he rushes at it, and it sticks somehow or other in the fingers
+of his left hand, to the utter astonishment of himself and the whole
+field. Such a catch hasn't been made in the close for years, and the
+cheering is maddening. "Pretty cricket," says the captain, throwing
+himself on the ground by the deserted wicket with a long breath. He
+feels that a crisis has passed.
+
+I wish I had space to describe the match--how the captain stumped the
+next man off a leg-shooter, and bowled small cobs to old Mr. Aislabie,
+who came in for the last wicket; how the Lord's men were out by
+half-past twelve o'clock for ninety-eight runs; how the captain of
+the School eleven went in first to give his men pluck, and scored
+twenty-five in beautiful style; how Rugby was only four behind in
+the first innings; what a glorious dinner they had in the fourth-form
+school; and how the cover-point hitter sang the most topping comic
+songs, and old Mr. Aislabie made the best speeches that ever were heard,
+afterwards. But I haven't space--that's the fact; and so you must fancy
+it all, and carry yourselves on to half-past seven o'clock, when the
+School are again in, with five wickets down, and only thirty-two runs
+to make to win. The Marylebone men played carelessly in their second
+innings, but they are working like horses now to save the match.
+
+There is much healthy, hearty, happy life scattered up and down the
+close; but the group to which I beg to call your especial attention
+is there, on the slope of the island, which looks towards the
+cricket-ground. It consists of three figures; two are seated on a bench,
+and one on the ground at their feet. The first, a tall, slight and
+rather gaunt man, with a bushy eyebrow and a dry, humorous smile, is
+evidently a clergyman. He is carelessly dressed, and looks rather used
+up, which isn't much to be wondered at, seeing that he has just finished
+six weeks of examination work; but there he basks, and spreads himself
+out in the evening sun, bent on enjoying life, though he doesn't quite
+know what to do with his arms and legs. Surely it is our friend the
+young master, whom we have had glimpses of before, but his face has
+gained a great deal since we last came across him.
+
+And by his side, in white flannel shirt and trousers, straw hat, the
+captain's belt, and the untanned yellow cricket shoes which all the
+eleven wear, sits a strapping figure, near six feet high, with ruddy,
+tanned face and whiskers, curly brown hair, and a laughing, dancing eye.
+He is leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees, and dandling
+his favourite bat, with which he has made thirty or forty runs to-day,
+in his strong brown hands. It is Tom Brown, grown into a young man
+nineteen years old, a praepostor and captain of the eleven, spending
+his last day as a Rugby boy, and, let us hope, as much wiser as he is
+bigger, since we last had the pleasure of coming across him.
+
+And at their feet on the warm, dry ground, similarly dressed, sits
+Arthur, Turkish fashion, with his bat across his knees. He too is no
+longer a boy--less of a boy, in fact, than Tom, if one may judge from
+the thoughtfulness of his face, which is somewhat paler, too, than one
+could wish; but his figure, though slight, is well knit and active, and
+all his old timidity has disappeared, and is replaced by silent, quaint
+fun, with which his face twinkles all over, as he listens to the broken
+talk between the other two, in which he joins every now and then.
+
+All three are watching the game eagerly, and joining in the cheering
+which follows every good hit. It is pleasing to see the easy, friendly
+footing which the pupils are on with their master, perfectly respectful,
+yet with no reserve and nothing forced in their intercourse. Tom has
+clearly abandoned the old theory of "natural enemies" in this case at
+any rate.
+
+But it is time to listen to what they are saying, and see what we can
+gather out of it.
+
+"I don't object to your theory," says the master, "and I allow you have
+made a fair case for yourself. But now, in such books as Aristophanes,
+for instance, you've been reading a play this half with the Doctor,
+haven't you?"
+
+"Yes, the Knights," answered Tom.
+
+"Well, I'm sure you would have enjoyed the wonderful humour of it twice
+as much if you had taken more pains with your scholarship."
+
+"Well, sir, I don't believe any boy in the form enjoyed the sets-to
+between Cleon and the Sausage-seller more than I did--eh, Arthur?" said
+Tom, giving him a stir with his foot.
+
+"Yes, I must say he did," said Arthur. "I think, sir, you've hit upon
+the wrong book there."
+
+"Not a bit of it," said the master. "Why, in those very passages of
+arms, how can you thoroughly appreciate them unless you are master of
+the weapons? and the weapons are the language, which you, Brown, have
+never half worked at; and so, as I say, you must have lost all the
+delicate shades of meaning which make the best part of the fun."
+
+"Oh, well played! bravo, Johnson!" shouted Arthur, dropping his bat and
+clapping furiously, and Tom joined in with a "Bravo, Johnson!" which
+might have been heard at the chapel.
+
+"Eh! what was it? I didn't see," inquired the master. "They only got one
+run, I thought?"
+
+"No, but such a ball, three-quarters length, and coming straight for his
+leg bail. Nothing but that turn of the wrist could have saved him, and
+he drew it away to leg for a safe one.--Bravo, Johnson!"
+
+"How well they are bowling, though," said Arthur; "they don't mean to be
+beat, I can see."
+
+"There now," struck in the master; "you see that's just what I have been
+preaching this half-hour. The delicate play is the true thing. I don't
+understand cricket, so I don't enjoy those fine draws which you tell me
+are the best play, though when you or Raggles hit a ball hard away for
+six I am as delighted as any one. Don't you see the analogy?"
+
+"Yes, sir," answered Tom, looking up roguishly, "I see; only the
+question remains whether I should have got most good by understanding
+Greek particles or cricket thoroughly. I'm such a thick, I never should
+have had time for both."
+
+"I see you are an incorrigible," said the master, with a chuckle; "but
+I refute you by an example. Arthur there has taken in Greek and cricket
+too."
+
+"Yes, but no thanks to him; Greek came natural to him. Why, when he
+first came I remember he used to read Herodotus for pleasure as I did
+Don Quixote, and couldn't have made a false concord if he'd tried ever
+so hard; and then I looked after his cricket."
+
+"Out! Bailey has given him out. Do you see, Tom?" cries Arthur. "How
+foolish of them to run so hard."
+
+"Well, it can't be helped; he has played very well. Whose turn is it to
+go in?"
+
+"I don't know; they've got your list in the tent."
+
+"Let's go and see," said Tom, rising; but at this moment Jack Raggles
+and two or three more came running to the island moat.
+
+"O Brown, mayn't I go in next?" shouts the Swiper.
+
+"Whose name is next on the list?" says the captain.
+
+"Winter's, and then Arthur's," answers the boy who carries it; "but
+there are only twenty-six runs to get, and no time to lose. I heard
+Mr. Aislabie say that the stumps must be drawn at a quarter past eight
+exactly."
+
+"Oh, do let the Swiper go in," chorus the boys; so Tom yields against
+his better judgment.
+
+"I dare say now I've lost the match by this nonsense," he says, as he
+sits down again; "they'll be sure to get Jack's wicket in three or four
+minutes; however, you'll have the chance, sir, of seeing a hard hit or
+two," adds he, smiling, and turning to the master.
+
+"Come, none of your irony, Brown," answers the master. "I'm beginning to
+understand the game scientifically. What a noble game it is, too!"
+
+"Isn't it? But it's more than a game. It's an institution," said Tom.
+
+"Yes," said Arthur--"the birthright of British boys old and young, as
+habeas corpus and trial by jury are of British men."
+
+"The discipline and reliance on one another which it teaches is
+so valuable, I think," went on the master, "it ought to be such an
+unselfish game. It merges the individual in the eleven; he doesn't play
+that he may win, but that his side may."
+
+"That's very true," said Tom, "and that's why football and cricket,
+now one comes to think of it, are such much better games than fives or
+hare-and-hounds, or any others where the object is to come in first or
+to win for oneself, and not that one's side may win."
+
+"And then the captain of the eleven!" said the master; "what a post is
+his in our School-world! almost as hard as the Doctor's--requiring skill
+and gentleness and firmness, and I know not what other rare qualities."
+
+"Which don't he may wish he may get!" said Tom, laughing; "at any rate
+he hasn't got them yet, or he wouldn't have been such a flat to-night as
+to let Jack Raggles go in out of his turn."
+
+"Ah, the Doctor never would have done that," said Arthur demurely. "Tom,
+you've a great deal to learn yet in the art of ruling."
+
+"Well, I wish you'd tell the Doctor so then, and get him to let me stop
+till I'm twenty. I don't want to leave, I'm sure."
+
+"What a sight it is," broke in the master, "the Doctor as a ruler!
+Perhaps ours is the only little corner of the British Empire which
+is thoroughly, wisely, and strongly ruled just now. I'm more and more
+thankful every day of my life that I came here to be under him."
+
+"So am I, I'm sure," said Tom, "and more and more sorry that I've got to
+leave."
+
+"Every place and thing one sees here reminds one of some wise act of
+his," went on the master. "This island now--you remember the time,
+Brown, when it was laid out in small gardens, and cultivated by
+frost-bitten fags in February and March?"
+
+"Of course I do," said Tom; "didn't I hate spending two hours in the
+afternoon grubbing in the tough dirt with the stump of a fives bat? But
+turf-cart was good fun enough."
+
+"I dare say it was, but it was always leading to fights with the
+townspeople; and then the stealing flowers out of all the gardens in
+Rugby for the Easter show was abominable."
+
+"Well, so it was," said Tom, looking down, "but we fags couldn't help
+ourselves. But what has that to do with the Doctor's ruling?"
+
+"A great deal, I think," said the master; "what brought island-fagging
+to an end?"
+
+"Why, the Easter speeches were put off till midsummer," said Tom, "and
+the sixth had the gymnastic poles put up here."
+
+"Well, and who changed the time of the speeches, and put the idea of
+gymnastic poles into the heads of their worships the sixth form?" said
+the master.
+
+"The Doctor, I suppose," said Tom. "I never thought of that."
+
+"Of course you didn't," said the master, "or else, fag as you were,
+you would have shouted with the whole school against putting down old
+customs. And that's the way that all the Doctor's reforms have been
+carried out when he has been left to himself--quietly and naturally,
+putting a good thing in the place of a bad, and letting the bad die out;
+no wavering, and no hurry--the best thing that could be done for the
+time being, and patience for the rest."
+
+"Just Tom's own way," chimed in Arthur, nudging Tom with his
+elbow--"driving a nail where it will go;" to which allusion Tom answered
+by a sly kick.
+
+"Exactly so," said the master, innocent of the allusion and by-play.
+
+Meantime Jack Raggles, with his sleeves tucked up above his great brown
+elbows, scorning pads and gloves, has presented himself at the wicket;
+and having run one for a forward drive of Johnson's, is about to receive
+his first ball. There are only twenty-four runs to make, and four
+wickets to go down--a winning match if they play decently steady. The
+ball is a very swift one, and rises fast, catching Jack on the outside
+of the thigh, and bounding away as if from india-rubber, while they
+run two for a leg-bye amidst great applause and shouts from Jack's many
+admirers. The next ball is a beautifully-pitched ball for the outer
+stump, which the reckless and unfeeling Jack catches hold of, and hits
+right round to leg for five, while the applause becomes deafening. Only
+seventeen runs to get with four wickets! The game is all but ours!
+
+It is over now, and Jack walks swaggering about his wicket, with his bat
+over his shoulder, while Mr. Aislabie holds a short parley with his
+men. Then the cover-point hitter, that cunning man, goes on to bowl slow
+twisters. Jack waves his hand triumphantly towards the tent, as much as
+to say, "See if I don't finish it all off now in three hits."
+
+Alas, my son Jack, the enemy is too old for thee. The first ball of the
+over Jack steps out and meets, swiping with all his force. If he had
+only allowed for the twist! But he hasn't, and so the ball goes spinning
+up straight in the air, as if it would never come down again. Away runs
+Jack, shouting and trusting to the chapter of accidents; but the bowler
+runs steadily under it, judging every spin, and calling out, "I have
+it," catches it, and playfully pitches it on to the back of the stalwart
+Jack, who is departing with a rueful countenance.
+
+"I knew how it would be," says Tom, rising. "Come along; the game's
+getting very serious."
+
+So they leave the island and go to the tent; and after deep
+consultation, Arthur is sent in, and goes off to the wicket with a last
+exhortation from Tom to play steady and keep his bat straight. To the
+suggestions that Winter is the best bat left, Tom only replies, "Arthur
+is the steadiest, and Johnson will make the runs if the wicket is only
+kept up."
+
+"I am surprised to see Arthur in the eleven," said the master, as they
+stood together in front of the dense crowd, which was now closing in
+round the ground.
+
+"Well, I'm not quite sure that he ought to be in for his play," said
+Tom, "but I couldn't help putting him in. It will do him so much good,
+and you can't think what I owe him."
+
+The master smiled. The clock strikes eight, and the whole field becomes
+fevered with excitement. Arthur, after two narrow escapes, scores one,
+and Johnson gets the ball. The bowling and fielding are superb, and
+Johnson's batting worthy the occasion. He makes here a two, and there a
+one, managing to keep the ball to himself, and Arthur backs up and runs
+perfectly. Only eleven runs to make now, and the crowd scarcely breathe.
+At last Arthur gets the ball again, and actually drives it forward
+for two, and feels prouder than when he got the three best prizes, at
+hearing Tom's shout of joy, "Well played, well played, young un!"
+
+But the next ball is too much for the young hand, and his bails fly
+different ways. Nine runs to make, and two wickets to go down: it is too
+much for human nerves.
+
+Before Winter can get in, the omnibus which is to take the Lord's men
+to the train pulls up at the side of the close, and Mr. Aislabie and Tom
+consult, and give out that the stumps will be drawn after the next over.
+And so ends the great match. Winter and Johnson carry out their bats,
+and, it being a one day's match, the Lord's men are declared the
+winners, they having scored the most in the first innings.
+
+But such a defeat is a victory: so think Tom and all the School eleven,
+as they accompany their conquerors to the omnibus, and send them off
+with three ringing cheers, after Mr. Aislabie has shaken hands all
+round, saying to Tom, "I must compliment you, sir, on your eleven, and I
+hope we shall have you for a member if you come up to town."
+
+As Tom and the rest of the eleven were turning back into the close, and
+everybody was beginning to cry out for another country-dance, encouraged
+by the success of the night before, the young master, who was just
+leaving the close, stopped him, and asked him to come up to tea at
+half-past eight, adding, "I won't keep you more than half an hour, and
+ask Arthur to come up too."
+
+"I'll come up with you directly, if you'll let me," said Tom, "for I
+feel rather melancholy, and not quite up to the country-dance and supper
+with the rest."
+
+"Do, by all means," said the master; "I'll wait here for you."
+
+So Tom went off to get his boots and things from the tent, to tell
+Arthur of the invitation, and to speak to his second in command about
+stopping the dancing and shutting up the close as soon as it grew dusk.
+Arthur promised to follow as soon as he had had a dance. So Tom handed
+his things over to the man in charge of the tent, and walked quietly
+away to the gate where the master was waiting, and the two took their
+way together up the Hillmorton road.
+
+Of course they found the master's house locked up, and all the servants
+away in the close--about this time, no doubt, footing it away on the
+grass, with extreme delight to themselves, and in utter oblivion of the
+unfortunate bachelor their master, whose one enjoyment in the shape
+of meals was his "dish of tea" (as our grandmothers called it) in the
+evening; and the phrase was apt in his case, for he always poured his
+out into the saucer before drinking. Great was the good man's horror at
+finding himself shut out of his own house. Had he been alone he
+would have treated it as a matter of course, and would have strolled
+contentedly up and down his gravel walk until some one came home; but he
+was hurt at the stain on his character of host, especially as the guest
+was a pupil. However, the guest seemed to think it a great joke, and
+presently, as they poked about round the house, mounted a wall, from
+which he could reach a passage window. The window, as it turned out, was
+not bolted, so in another minute Tom was in the house and down at the
+front door, which he opened from inside. The master chuckled grimly at
+this burglarious entry, and insisted on leaving the hall-door and two
+of the front windows open, to frighten the truants on their return; and
+then the two set about foraging for tea, in which operation the master
+was much at fault, having the faintest possible idea of where to find
+anything, and being, moreover, wondrously short-sighted; but Tom, by a
+sort of instinct, knew the right cupboards in the kitchen and pantry,
+and soon managed to place on the snuggery table better materials for a
+meal than had appeared there probably during the reign of his tutor, who
+was then and there initiated, amongst other things, into the excellence
+of that mysterious condiment, a dripping-cake. The cake was newly baked,
+and all rich and flaky; Tom had found it reposing in the cook's private
+cupboard, awaiting her return; and as a warning to her they finished
+it to the last crumb. The kettle sang away merrily on the hob of the
+snuggery, for, notwithstanding the time of year, they lighted a fire,
+throwing both the windows wide open at the same time; the heaps of books
+and papers were pushed away to the other end of the table, and the great
+solitary engraving of King's College Chapel over the mantelpiece looked
+less stiff than usual, as they settled themselves down in the twilight
+to the serious drinking of tea.
+
+After some talk on the match, and other indifferent subjects, the
+conversation came naturally back to Tom's approaching departure, over
+which he began again to make his moan.
+
+"Well, we shall all miss you quite as much as you will miss us," said
+the master. "You are the Nestor of the School now, are you not?"
+
+"Yes, ever since East left," answered Tom. "By-the-bye, have you heard
+from him?"
+
+"Yes, I had a letter in February, just before he started for India to
+join his regiment."
+
+"He will make a capital officer."
+
+"Ay, won't he!" said Tom, brightening. "No fellow could handle boys
+better, and I suppose soldiers are very like boys. And he'll never tell
+them to go where he won't go himself. No mistake about that. A braver
+fellow never walked."
+
+"His year in the sixth will have taught him a good deal that will be
+useful to him now."
+
+"So it will,"' said Tom, staring into the fire. "Poor dear Harry," he
+went on--"how well I remember the day we were put out of the twenty! How
+he rose to the situation, and burnt his cigar-cases, and gave away his
+pistols, and pondered on the constitutional authority of the sixth, and
+his new duties to the Doctor, and the fifth form, and the fags! Ay, and
+no fellow ever acted up to them better, though he was always a people's
+man--for the fags, and against constituted authorities. He couldn't
+help that, you know. I'm sure the Doctor must have liked him?" said Tom,
+looking up inquiringly.
+
+"The Doctor sees the good in every one, and appreciates it," said the
+master dogmatically; "but I hope East will get a good colonel. He won't
+do if he can't respect those above him. How long it took him, even here,
+to learn the lesson of obeying!"
+
+"Well, I wish I were alongside of him," said Tom. "If I can't be at
+Rugby, I want to be at work in the world, and not dawdling away three
+years at Oxford."
+
+"What do you mean by 'at work in the world'?" said the master, pausing
+with his lips close to his saucerful of tea, and peering at Tom over it.
+
+"Well, I mean real work--one's profession--whatever one will have really
+to do and make one's living by. I want to be doing some real good,
+feeling that I am not only at play in the world," answered Tom, rather
+puzzled to find out himself what he really did mean.
+
+"You are mixing up two very different things in your head, I think,
+Brown," said the master, putting down the empty saucer, "and you ought
+to get clear about them. You talk of 'working to get your living,' and
+'doing some real good in the world,' in the same breath. Now, you may be
+getting a very good living in a profession, and yet doing no good at all
+in the world, but quite the contrary, at the same time. Keep the latter
+before you as your one object, and you will be right, whether you make
+a living or not; but if you dwell on the other, you'll very likely drop
+into mere money-making, and let the world take care of itself for good
+or evil. Don't be in a hurry about finding your work in the world for
+yourself--you are not old enough to judge for yourself yet; but just
+look about you in the place you find yourself in, and try to make things
+a little better and honester there. You'll find plenty to keep your hand
+in at Oxford, or wherever else you go. And don't be led away to think
+this part of the world important and that unimportant. Every corner of
+the world is important. No man knows whether this part or that is most
+so, but every man may do some honest work in his own corner." And then
+the good man went on to talk wisely to Tom of the sort of work which
+he might take up as an undergraduate, and warned him of the prevalent
+university sins, and explained to him the many and great differences
+between university and school life, till the twilight changed into
+darkness, and they heard the truant servants stealing in by the back
+entrance.
+
+"I wonder where Arthur can be," said Tom at last, looking at his watch;
+"why, it's nearly half-past nine already."
+
+"Oh, he is comfortably at supper with the eleven, forgetful of his
+oldest friends," said the master. "Nothing has given me greater
+pleasure," he went on, "than your friendship for him; it has been the
+making of you both."
+
+"Of me, at any rate," answered Tom; "I should never have been here now
+but for him. It was the luckiest chance in the world that sent him to
+Rugby and made him my chum."
+
+"Why do you talk of lucky chances?" said the master. "I don't know that
+there are any such things in the world; at any rate, there was neither
+luck nor chance in that matter."
+
+Tom looked at him inquiringly, and he went on. "Do you remember when the
+Doctor lectured you and East at the end of one half-year, when you were
+in the shell, and had been getting into all sorts of scrapes?"
+
+"Yes, well enough," said Tom; "it was the half-year before Arthur came."
+
+"Exactly so," answered the master. "Now, I was with him a few minutes
+afterwards, and he was in great distress about you two. And after some
+talk, we both agreed that you in particular wanted some object in the
+School beyond games and mischief; for it was quite clear that you never
+would make the regular school work your first object. And so the Doctor,
+at the beginning of the next half-year, looked out the best of the new
+boys, and separated you and East, and put the young boy into your study,
+in the hope that when you had somebody to lean on you, you would
+begin to stand a little steadier yourself, and get manliness and
+thoughtfulness. And I can assure you he has watched the experiment ever
+since with great satisfaction. Ah! not one of you boys will ever know
+the anxiety you have given him, or the care with which he has watched
+over every step in your school lives."
+
+Up to this time Tom had never given wholly in to or understood the
+Doctor. At first he had thoroughly feared him. For some years, as I have
+tried to show, he had learnt to regard him with love and respect, and
+to think him a very great and wise and good man. But as regarded his own
+position in the School, of which he was no little proud, Tom had no idea
+of giving any one credit for it but himself, and, truth to tell, was a
+very self-conceited young gentleman on the subject. He was wont to boast
+that he had fought his own way fairly up the School, and had never made
+up to or been taken up by any big fellow or master, and that it was
+now quite a different place from what it was when he first came. And,
+indeed, though he didn't actually boast of it, yet in his secret soul
+he did to a great extent believe that the great reform in the School
+had been owing quite as much to himself as to any one else. Arthur,
+he acknowledged, had done him good, and taught him a good deal; so had
+other boys in different ways, but they had not had the same means of
+influence on the School in general. And as for the Doctor, why, he was
+a splendid master; but every one knew that masters could do very little
+out of school hours. In short, he felt on terms of equality with his
+chief, so far as the social state of the School was concerned, and
+thought that the Doctor would find it no easy matter to get on without
+him. Moreover, his School Toryism was still strong, and he looked still
+with some jealousy on the Doctor, as somewhat of a fanatic in the matter
+of change, and thought it very desirable for the School that he should
+have some wise person (such as himself) to look sharply after vested
+School-rights, and see that nothing was done to the injury of the
+republic without due protest.
+
+It was a new light to him to find that, besides teaching the sixth, and
+governing and guiding the whole School, editing classics, and writing
+histories, the great headmaster had found time in those busy years
+to watch over the career even of him, Tom Brown, and his particular
+friends, and, no doubt, of fifty other boys at the same time, and all
+this without taking the least credit to himself, or seeming to know, or
+let any one else know, that he ever thought particularly of any boy at
+all.
+
+However, the Doctor's victory was complete from that moment over Tom
+Brown at any rate. He gave way at all points, and the enemy marched
+right over him--cavalry, infantry, and artillery, and the land transport
+corps, and the camp followers. It had taken eight long years to do it;
+but now it was done thoroughly, and there wasn't a corner of him left
+which didn't believe in the Doctor. Had he returned to School again, and
+the Doctor begun the half-year by abolishing fagging, and football, and
+the Saturday half-holiday, or all or any of the most cherished School
+institutions, Tom would have supported him with the blindest faith. And
+so, after a half confession of his previous shortcomings, and sorrowful
+adieus to his tutor, from whom he received two beautifully-bound volumes
+of the Doctor's sermons, as a parting present, he marched down to the
+Schoolhouse, a hero-worshipper, who would have satisfied the soul of
+Thomas Carlyle himself.
+
+There he found the eleven at high jinks after supper, Jack Raggles
+shouting comic songs and performing feats of strength, and was greeted
+by a chorus of mingled remonstrance at his desertion and joy at his
+reappearance. And falling in with the humour of the evening, he was soon
+as great a boy as all the rest; and at ten o'clock was chaired round
+the quadrangle, on one of the hall benches, borne aloft by the eleven,
+shouting in chorus, "For he's a jolly good fellow," while old Thomas, in
+a melting mood, and the other School-house servants, stood looking on.
+
+And the next morning after breakfast he squared up all the cricketing
+accounts, went round to his tradesmen and other acquaintance, and said
+his hearty good-byes; and by twelve o'clock was in the train, and away
+for London, no longer a school-boy, and divided in his thoughts between
+hero-worship, honest regrets over the long stage of his life which was
+now slipping out of sight behind him, and hopes and resolves for the
+next stage upon which he was entering with all the confidence of a young
+traveller.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--FINIS.
+
+     "Strange friend, past, present, and to be;
+     Loved deeplier, darklier understood;
+     Behold I dream a dream of good,
+     And mingle all the world with thee."--TENNYSON.
+
+In the summer of 1842, our hero stopped once again at the well-known
+station; and leaving his bag and fishing-rod with a porter, walked
+slowly and sadly up towards the town. It was now July. He had rushed
+away from Oxford the moment that term was over, for a fishing ramble in
+Scotland with two college friends, and had been for three weeks living
+on oatcake, mutton-hams, and whisky, in the wildest parts of Skye. They
+had descended one sultry evening on the little inn at Kyle Rhea ferry;
+and while Tom and another of the party put their tackle together
+and began exploring the stream for a sea-trout for supper, the third
+strolled into the house to arrange for their entertainment. Presently he
+came out in a loose blouse and slippers, a short pipe in his mouth, and
+an old newspaper in his hand, and threw himself on the heathery scrub
+which met the shingle, within easy hail of the fishermen. There he lay,
+the picture of free-and-easy, loafing, hand-to-mouth young England,
+"improving his mind," as he shouted to them, by the perusal of the
+fortnight-old weekly paper, soiled with the marks of toddy-glasses and
+tobacco-ashes, the legacy of the last traveller, which he had hunted
+out from the kitchen of the little hostelry, and, being a youth of
+a communicative turn of mind, began imparting the contents to the
+fishermen as he went on.
+
+"What a bother they are making about these wretched corn-laws! Here's
+three or four columns full of nothing but sliding scales and fixed
+duties. Hang this tobacco, it's always going out! Ah, here's something
+better--a splendid match between Kent and England, Brown, Kent winning
+by three wickets. Felix fifty-six runs without a chance, and not out!"
+
+Tom, intent on a fish which had risen at him twice, answered only with a
+grunt.
+
+"Anything about the Goodwood?" called out the third man.
+
+"Rory O'More drawn. Butterfly colt amiss," shouted the student.
+
+"Just my luck," grumbled the inquirer, jerking his flies off the water,
+and throwing again with a heavy, sullen splash, and frightening Tom's
+fish.
+
+"I say, can't you throw lighter over there? We ain't fishing for
+grampuses," shouted Tom across the stream.
+
+"Hullo, Brown! here's something for you," called out the reading man
+next moment. "Why, your old master, Arnold of Rugby, is dead."
+
+Tom's hand stopped half-way in his cast, and his line and flies went all
+tangling round and round his rod; you might have knocked him over with a
+feather. Neither of his companions took any notice of him, luckily; and
+with a violent effort he set to work mechanically to disentangle his
+line. He felt completely carried off his moral and intellectual legs, as
+if he had lost his standing-point in the invisible world. Besides which,
+the deep, loving loyalty which he felt for his old leader made the shock
+intensely painful. It was the first great wrench of his life, the first
+gap which the angel Death had made in his circle, and he felt numbed,
+and beaten down, and spiritless. Well, well! I believe it was good for
+him and for many others in like case, who had to learn by that loss
+that the soul of man cannot stand or lean upon any human prop, however
+strong, and wise, and good; but that He upon whom alone it can stand and
+lean will knock away all such props in His own wise and merciful way,
+until there is no ground or stay left but Himself, the Rock of Ages,
+upon whom alone a sure foundation for every soul of man is laid.
+
+As he wearily laboured at his line, the thought struck him, "It may
+be all false--a mere newspaper lie." And he strode up to the recumbent
+smoker.
+
+"Let me look at the paper," said he.
+
+"Nothing else in it," answered the other, handing it up to him
+listlessly. "Hullo, Brown! what's the matter, old fellow? Ain't you
+well?"
+
+"Where is it?" said Tom, turning over the leaves, his hands trembling,
+and his eyes swimming, so that he could not read.
+
+"What? What are you looking for?" said his friend, jumping up and
+looking over his shoulder.
+
+"That--about Arnold," said Tom.
+
+"Oh, here," said the other, putting his finger on the paragraph. Tom
+read it over and over again. There could be no mistake of identity,
+though the account was short enough.
+
+"Thank you," said he at last, dropping the paper. "I shall go for a
+walk. Don't you and Herbert wait supper for me." And away he strode,
+up over the moor at the back of the house, to be alone, and master his
+grief if possible.
+
+His friend looked after him, sympathizing and wondering, and, knocking
+the ashes out of his pipe, walked over to Herbert. After a short parley
+they walked together up to the house.
+
+"I'm afraid that confounded newspaper has spoiled Brown's fun for this
+trip."
+
+"How odd that he should be so fond of his old master," said Herbert. Yet
+they also were both public-school men.
+
+The two, however, notwithstanding Tom's prohibition, waited supper
+for him, and had everything ready when he came back some half an hour
+afterwards. But he could not join in their cheerful talk, and the party
+was soon silent, notwithstanding the efforts of all three. One thing
+only had Tom resolved, and that was, that he couldn't stay in Scotland
+any longer: he felt an irresistible longing to get to Rugby, and then
+home, and soon broke it to the others, who had too much tact to oppose.
+
+So by daylight the next morning he was marching through Ross-shire,
+and in the evening hit the Caledonian Canal, took the next steamer,
+and travelled as fast as boat and railway could carry him to the Rugby
+station.
+
+As he walked up to the town, he felt shy and afraid of being seen,
+and took the back streets--why, he didn't know, but he followed his
+instinct. At the School-gates he made a dead pause; there was not a soul
+in the quadrangle--all was lonely, and silent, and sad. So with another
+effort he strode through the quadrangle, and into the School-house
+offices.
+
+He found the little matron in her room in deep mourning; shook her hand,
+tried to talk, and moved nervously about. She was evidently thinking of
+the same subject as he, but he couldn't begin talking.
+
+"Where shall I find Thomas?" said he at last, getting desperate.
+
+"In the servants' hall, I think, sir. But won't you take anything?" said
+the matron, looking rather disappointed.
+
+"No, thank you," said he, and strode off again to find the old
+verger, who was sitting in his little den, as of old, puzzling over
+hieroglyphics.
+
+He looked up through his spectacles as Tom seized his hand and wrung it.
+
+"Ah! you've heard all about it, sir, I see," said he. Tom nodded, and
+then sat down on the shoe-board, while the old man told his tale, and
+wiped his spectacles, and fairly flowed over with quaint, homely, honest
+sorrow.
+
+By the time he had done Tom felt much better.
+
+"Where is he buried, Thomas?" said he at last.
+
+"Under the altar in the chapel, sir," answered Thomas. "You'd like to
+have the key, I dare say?"
+
+"Thank you, Thomas--yes, I should, very much."
+
+And the old man fumbled among his bunch, and then got up, as though
+he would go with him; but after a few steps stopped short, and said,
+"Perhaps you'd like to go by yourself, sir?"
+
+Tom nodded, and the bunch of keys were handed to him, with an injunction
+to be sure and lock the door after him, and bring them back before eight
+o'clock.
+
+He walked quickly through the quadrangle and out into the close. The
+longing which had been upon him and driven him thus far, like the
+gad-fly in the Greek legends, giving him no rest in mind or body, seemed
+all of a sudden not to be satisfied, but to shrivel up and pall. "Why
+should I go on? It's no use," he thought, and threw himself at full
+length on the turf, and looked vaguely and listlessly at all the
+well-known objects. There were a few of the town boys playing cricket,
+their wicket pitched on the best piece in the middle of the big-side
+ground--a sin about equal to sacrilege in the eyes of a captain of the
+eleven. He was very nearly getting up to go and send them off. "Pshaw!
+they won't remember me. They've more right there than I," he muttered.
+And the thought that his sceptre had departed, and his mark was wearing
+out, came home to him for the first time, and bitterly enough. He was
+lying on the very spot where the fights came off--where he himself had
+fought six years ago his first and last battle. He conjured up the scene
+till he could almost hear the shouts of the ring, and East's whisper in
+his ear; and looking across the close to the Doctor's private door,
+half expected to see it open, and the tall figure in cap and gown come
+striding under the elm-trees towards him.
+
+No, no; that sight could never be seen again. There was no flag flying
+on the round tower; the School-house windows were all shuttered up; and
+when the flag went up again, and the shutters came down, it would be
+to welcome a stranger. All that was left on earth of him whom he had
+honoured was lying cold and still under the chapel floor. He would go in
+and see the place once more, and then leave it once for all. New men and
+new methods might do for other people; let those who would, worship the
+rising star; he, at least, would be faithful to the sun which had
+set. And so he got up, and walked to the chapel door, and unlocked it,
+fancying himself the only mourner in all the broad land, and feeding on
+his own selfish sorrow.
+
+He passed through the vestibule, and then paused for a moment to glance
+over the empty benches. His heart was still proud and high, and he
+walked up to the seat which he had last occupied as a sixth-form boy,
+and sat himself down there to collect his thoughts.
+
+And, truth to tell, they needed collecting and setting in order not a
+little. The memories of eight years were all dancing through his brain,
+and carrying him about whither they would; while, beneath them all, his
+heart was throbbing with the dull sense of a loss that could never be
+made up to him. The rays of the evening sun came solemnly through the
+painted windows above his head, and fell in gorgeous colours on the
+opposite wall, and the perfect stillness soothed his spirit by little
+and little. And he turned to the pulpit, and looked at it, and then,
+leaning forward with his head on his hands, groaned aloud. If he could
+only have seen the Doctor again for one five minutes--have told him all
+that was in his heart, what he owed to him, how he loved and reverenced
+him, and would, by God's help, follow his steps in life and death--he
+could have borne it all without a murmur. But that he should have gone
+away for ever without knowing it all, was too much to bear. "But am I
+sure that he does not know it all?" The thought made him start. "May he
+not even now be near me, in this very chapel? If he be, am I sorrowing
+as he would have me sorrow, as I should wish to have sorrowed when I
+shall meet him again?"
+
+He raised himself up and looked round, and after a minute rose and
+walked humbly down to the lowest bench, and sat down on the very seat
+which he had occupied on his first Sunday at Rugby. And then the old
+memories rushed back again, but softened and subdued, and soothing him
+as he let himself be carried away by them. And he looked up at the great
+painted window above the altar, and remembered how, when a little boy,
+he used to try not to look through it at the elm-trees and the rooks,
+before the painted glass came; and the subscription for the painted
+glass, and the letter he wrote home for money to give to it. And there,
+down below, was the very name of the boy who sat on his right hand on
+that first day, scratched rudely in the oak panelling.
+
+And then came the thought of all his old schoolfellows; and form after
+form of boys nobler, and braver, and purer than he rose up and seemed to
+rebuke him. Could he not think of them, and what they had felt and were
+feeling--they who had honoured and loved from the first the man whom he
+had taken years to know and love? Could he not think of those yet dearer
+to him who was gone, who bore his name and shared his blood, and were
+now without a husband or a father? Then the grief which he began to
+share with others became gentle and holy, and he rose up once more, and
+walked up the steps to the altar, and while the tears flowed freely down
+his cheeks, knelt down humbly and hopefully, to lay down there his share
+of a burden which had proved itself too heavy for him to bear in his own
+strength.
+
+Here let us leave him. Where better could we leave him than at the
+altar before which he had first caught a glimpse of the glory of his
+birthright, and felt the drawing of the bond which links all living
+souls together in one brotherhood--at the grave beneath the altar of him
+who had opened his eyes to see that glory, and softened his heart till
+it could feel that bond?
+
+And let us not be hard on him, if at that moment his soul is fuller of
+the tomb and him who lies there than of the altar and Him of whom it
+speaks. Such stages have to be gone through, I believe, by all young and
+brave souls, who must win their way through hero-worship to the worship
+of Him who is the King and Lord of heroes. For it is only through our
+mysterious human relationships--through the love and tenderness and
+purity of mothers and sisters and wives, through the strength and
+courage and wisdom of fathers and brothers and teachers--that we can
+come to the knowledge of Him in whom alone the love, and the tenderness,
+and the purity, and the strength, and the courage, and the wisdom of all
+these dwell for ever and ever in perfect fullness.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Tom Brown's Schooldays, by Thomas Hughes
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+Project Gutenberg Etext; Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes
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+Tom Brown's Schooldays
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+by Thomas Hughes
+
+October, 1998  [Etext #1480]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext; Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes
+******This file should be named tbssd10.txt or tbssd10.zip******
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+This etext was prepared from the 1905 Thomas Nelson and Sons edition
+by Gil Jaysmith
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+
+
+
+
+TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I - THE BROWN FAMILY
+
+
+
+"I'm the Poet of White Horse Vale, sir,
+With liberal notions under my cap." - Ballad
+
+
+The Browns have become illustrious by the pen of Thackeray and
+the pencil of Doyle, within the memory of the young gentlemen
+who are now matriculating at the universities.  Notwithstanding
+the well-merited but late fame which has now fallen upon them,
+any one at all acquainted with the family must feel that much
+has yet to be written and said before the British nation will be
+properly sensible of how much of its greatness it owes to the
+Browns.  For centuries, in their quiet, dogged, homespun way,
+they have been subduing the earth in most English counties, and
+leaving their mark in American forests and Australian uplands.
+Wherever the fleets and armies of England have won renown, there
+stalwart sons of the Browns have done yeomen's work.  With the
+yew bow and cloth-yard shaft at Cressy and Agincourt--with the
+brown bill and pike under the brave Lord Willoughby--with
+culverin and demi-culverin against Spaniards and Dutchmen--with
+hand-grenade and sabre, and musket and bayonet, under Rodney and
+St. Vincent, Wolfe and Moore, Nelson and Wellington, they have
+carried their lives in their hands, getting hard knocks and hard
+work in plenty--which was on the whole what they looked for,
+and the best thing for them--and little praise or pudding,
+which indeed they, and most of us, are better without.  Talbots
+and Stanleys, St. Maurs, and such-like folk, have led armies and
+made laws time out of mind; but those noble families would be
+somewhat astounded--if the accounts ever came to be fairly
+taken--to find how small their work for England has been by the
+side of that of the Browns.
+
+These latter, indeed, have, until the present generation,
+rarely been sung by poet, or chronicled by sage.  They have
+wanted their sacer vates, having been too solid to rise to the
+top by themselves, and not having been largely gifted with the
+talent of catching hold of, and holding on tight to, whatever
+good things happened to be going--the foundation of the
+fortunes of so many noble families.  But the world goes on its
+way, and the wheel turns, and the wrongs of the Browns, like
+other wrongs, seem in a fair way to get righted.  And this
+present writer, having for many years of his life been a devout
+Brown-worshipper, and, moreover, having the honour of being
+nearly connected with an eminently respectable branch of the
+great Brown family, is anxious, so far as in him lies, to help
+the wheel over, and throw his stone on to the pile.
+
+However, gentle reader, or simple reader, whichever you may be,
+lest you should be led to waste your precious time upon these
+pages, I make so bold as at once to tell you the sort of folk
+you'll have to meet and put up with, if you and I are to jog on
+comfortably together.  You shall hear at once what sort of folk
+the Browns are--at least my branch of them; and then, if you
+don't like the sort, why, cut the concern at once, and let you
+and I cry quits before either of us can grumble at the other.
+
+In the first place, the Browns are a fighting family.  One may
+question their wisdom, or wit, or beauty, but about their fight
+there can be no question.  Wherever hard knocks of any kind,
+visible or invisible, are going; there the Brown who is nearest
+must shove in his carcass.  And these carcasses, for the most
+part, answer very well to the characteristic propensity:  they
+are a squareheaded and snake-necked generation, broad in the
+shoulder, deep in the chest, and thin in the flank, carrying no
+lumber.  Then for clanship, they are as bad as Highlanders; it
+is amazing the belief they have in one another.  With them there
+is nothing like the Browns, to the third and fourth generation.
+"Blood is thicker than water," is one of their pet sayings.
+They can't be happy unless they are always meeting one another.
+Never were such people for family gatherings; which, were you a
+stranger, or sensitive, you might think had better not have been
+gathered together.  For during the whole time of their being
+together they luxuriate in telling one another their minds on
+whatever subject turns up; and their minds are wonderfully
+antagonistic, and all their opinions are downright beliefs.
+Till you've been among them some time and understand them, you
+can't think but that they are quarrelling.  Not a bit of it.
+They love and respect one another ten times the more after a
+good set family arguing bout, and go back, one to his curacy,
+another to his chambers, and another to his regiment, freshened
+for work, and more than ever convinced that the Browns are the
+height of company.
+
+This family training, too, combined with their turn for
+combativeness, makes them eminently quixotic.  They can't let
+anything alone which they think going wrong.  They must speak
+their mind about it, annoying all easy-going folk, and spend
+their time and money in having a tinker at it, however hopeless
+the job.  It is an impossibility to a Brown to leave the most
+disreputable lame dog on the other side of a stile.  Most other
+folk get tired of such work.  The old Browns, with red faces,
+white whiskers, and bald heads, go on believing and fighting to
+a green old age.  They have always a crotchet going, till the
+old man with the scythe reaps and garners them away for
+troublesome old boys as they are.
+
+And the most provoking thing is, that no failures knock them up,
+or make them hold their hands, or think you, or me, or other
+sane people in the right.  Failures slide off them like July
+rain off a duck's back feathers.  Jem and his whole family turn
+out bad, and cheat them one week, and the next they are doing
+the same thing for Jack; and when he goes to the treadmill, and
+his wife and children to the workhouse, they will be on the
+lookout for Bill to take his place.
+
+However, it is time for us to get from the general to the
+particular; so, leaving the great army of Browns, who are
+scattered over the whole empire on which the sun never sets, and
+whose general diffusion I take to be the chief cause of that
+empire's stability; let us at once fix our attention upon the
+small nest of Browns in which our hero was hatched, and which
+dwelt in that portion of the royal county of Berks which is
+called the Vale of White Horse.
+
+Most of you have probably travelled down the Great Western
+Railway as far as Swindon.  Those of you who did so with their
+eyes open have been aware, soon after leaving the Didcot
+station, of a fine range of chalk hills running parallel with
+the railway on the left-hand side as you go down, and distant
+some two or three miles, more or less, from the line.  The
+highest point in the range is the White Horse Hill, which you
+come in front of just before you stop at the Shrivenham station.
+If you love English scenery, and have a few hours to spare, you
+can't do better, the next time you pass, than stop at the
+Farringdon Road or Shrivenham station, and make your way to that
+highest point.  And those who care for the vague old stories
+that haunt country-sides all about England, will not, if they
+are wise, be content with only a few hours' stay; for, glorious
+as the view is, the neighbourhood is yet more interesting for
+its relics of bygone times.  I only know two English
+neighbourhoods thoroughly, and in each, within a circle of five
+miles, there is enough of interest and beauty to last any
+reasonable man his life.  I believe this to be the case almost
+throughout the country, but each has a special attraction, and
+none can be richer than the one I am speaking of and going to
+introduce you to very particularly, for on this subject I must
+be prosy; so those that don't care for England in detail may
+skip the chapter.
+
+O young England! young England! you who are born into these
+racing railroad times, when there's a Great Exhibition, or some
+monster sight, every year, and you can get over a couple of
+thousand miles of ground for three pound ten in a five-weeks'
+holiday, why don't you know more of your own birthplaces?
+You're all in the ends of the earth, it seems to me, as soon as
+you get your necks out of the educational collar, for midsummer
+holidays, long vacations, or what not--going round Ireland,
+with a return ticket, in a fortnight; dropping your copies of
+Tennyson on the tops of Swiss mountains; or pulling down the
+Danube in Oxford racing boats.  And when you get home for a
+quiet fortnight, you turn the steam off, and lie on your backs
+in the paternal garden, surrounded by the last batch of books
+from Mudie's library, and half bored to death.  Well, well!  I
+know it has its good side.  You all patter French more or less,
+and perhaps German; you have seen men and cities, no doubt, and
+have your opinions, such as they are, about schools of painting,
+high art, and all that; have seen the pictures of Dresden and
+the Louvre, and know the taste of sour krout.  All I say is, you
+don't know your own lanes and woods and fields.  Though you may
+be choke-full of science, not one in twenty of you knows where
+to find the wood-sorrel, or bee-orchis, which grow in the next
+wood, or on the down three miles off, or what the bog-bean and
+wood-sage are good for.  And as for the country legends, the
+stories of the old gable-ended farmhouses, the place where the
+last skirmish was fought in the civil wars, where the parish
+butts stood, where the last highwayman turned to bay, where the
+last ghost was laid by the parson, they're gone out of date
+altogether.
+
+Now, in my time, when we got home by the old coach, which put us
+down at the cross-roads with our boxes, the first day of the
+holidays, and had been driven off by the family coachman,
+singing "Dulce Domum" at the top of our voices, there we were,
+fixtures, till black Monday came round.  We had to cut out our
+own amusements within a walk or a ride of home.  And so we got
+to know all the country folk and their ways and songs and
+stories by heart, and went over the fields and woods and hills,
+again and again, till we made friends of them all.  We were
+Berkshire, or Gloucestershire, or Yorkshire boys; and you're
+young cosmopolites, belonging to all countries and no countries.
+No doubt it's all right; I dare say it is.  This is the day of
+large views, and glorious humanity, and all that; but I wish
+back-sword play hadn't gone out in the Vale of White Horse, and
+that that confounded Great Western hadn't carried away Alfred's
+Hill to make an embankment.
+
+But to return to the said Vale of White Horse, the country in
+which the first scenes of this true and interesting story are
+laid.  As I said, the Great Western now runs right through it,
+and it is a land of large, rich pastures bounded by ox-fences,
+and covered with fine hedgerow timber, with here and there a
+nice little gorse or spinney, where abideth poor Charley, having
+no other cover to which to betake himself for miles and miles,
+when pushed out some fine November morning by the old Berkshire.
+Those who have been there, and well mounted, only know how he
+and the stanch little pack who dash after him--heads high and
+sterns low, with a breast-high scent--can consume the ground at
+such times.  There being little ploughland, and few woods, the
+Vale is only an average sporting country, except for hunting.
+The villages are straggling, queer, old-fashioned places, the
+houses being dropped down without the least regularity, in nooks
+and out-of-the-way corners, by the sides of shadowy lanes and
+footpaths, each with its patch of garden.  They are built
+chiefly of good gray stone, and thatched; though I see that
+within the last year or two the red-brick cottages are
+multiplying, for the Vale is beginning to manufacture largely
+both bricks and tiles.  There are lots of waste ground by the
+side of the roads in every village, amounting often to village
+greens, where feed the pigs and ganders of the people; and these
+roads are old-fashioned, homely roads, very dirty and badly
+made, and hardly endurable in winter, but still pleasant jog-
+trot roads running through the great pasture-lands, dotted here
+and there with little clumps of thorns, where the sleek kine are
+feeding, with no fence on either side of them, and a gate at the
+end of each field, which makes you get out of your gig (if you
+keep one), and gives you a chance of looking about you every
+quarter of a mile.
+
+One of the moralists whom we sat under in our youth--was it the
+great Richard Swiveller, or Mr. Stiggins--says, "We are born in
+a vale, and must take the consequences of being found in such a
+situation."  These consequences I, for one, am ready to
+encounter.  I pity people who weren't born in a vale.  I don't
+mean a flat country; but a vale--that is, a flat country
+bounded by hills.  The having your hill always in view if you
+choose to turn towards him--that's the essence of a vale.
+There he is for ever in the distance, your friend and companion.
+You never lose him as you do in hilly districts.
+
+And then what a hill is the White Horse Hill!  There it stands
+right up above all the rest, nine hundred feet above the sea,
+and the boldest, bravest shape for a chalk hill that you ever
+saw.  Let us go up to the top of him, and see what is to be
+found there.  Ay, you may well wonder and think it odd you never
+heard of this before; but wonder or not, as you please, there
+are hundreds of such things lying about England, which wiser
+folk than you know nothing of, and care nothing for.  Yes, it's
+a magnificent Roman camp, and no mistake, with gates and ditch
+and mounds, all as complete as it was twenty years after the
+strong old rogues left it.  Here, right up on the highest point,
+from which they say you can see eleven counties, they trenched
+round all the table-land, some twelve or fourteen acres, as was
+their custom, for they couldn't bear anybody to overlook them,
+and made their eyrie.  The ground falls away rapidly on all
+sides.  Was there ever such turf in the whole world?  You sink
+up to your ankles at every step, and yet the spring of it is
+delicious.  There is always a breeze in the "camp," as it is
+called; and here it lies, just as the Romans left it, except
+that cairn on the east side, left by her Majesty's corps of
+sappers and miners the other day, when they and the engineer
+officer had finished their sojourn there, and their surveys for
+the ordnance map of Berkshire.  It is altogether a place that
+you won't forget, a place to open a man's soul, and make him
+prophesy, as he looks down on that great Vale spread out as the
+garden of the Lord before him, and wave on wave of the
+mysterious downs behind, and to the right and left the chalk
+hills running away into the distance, along which he can trace
+for miles the old Roman road, "the Ridgeway" ("the Rudge," as
+the country folk call it), keeping straight along the highest
+back of the hills--such a place as Balak brought Balaam to, and
+told him to prophesy against the people in the valley beneath.
+And he could not, neither shall you, for they are a people of
+the Lord who abide there.
+
+And now we leave the camp, and descend towards the west, and are
+on the Ashdown.  We are treading on heroes.  It is sacred ground
+for Englishmen--more sacred than all but one or two fields
+where their bones lie whitening.  For this is the actual place
+where our Alfred won his great battle, the battle of Ashdown
+("Aescendum" in the chroniclers), which broke the Danish power,
+and made England a Christian land.  The Danes held the camp and
+the slope where we are standing--the whole crown of the hill,
+in fact.  "The heathen had beforehand seized the higher ground,"
+as old Asser says, having wasted everything behind them from
+London, and being just ready to burst down on the fair Vale,
+Alfred's own birthplace and heritage.  And up the heights came
+the Saxons, as they did at the Alma.  "The Christians led up
+their line from the lower ground.  There stood also on that same
+spot a single thorn-tree, marvellous stumpy (which we ourselves
+with our very own eyes have seen)."  Bless the old chronicler!
+Does he think nobody ever saw the "single thorn-tree" but
+himself?  Why, there it stands to this very day, just on the
+edge of the slope, and I saw it not three weeks since--an old
+single thorn-tree, "marvellous stumpy."  At least, if it isn't
+the same tree it ought to have been, for it's just in the place
+where the battle must have been won or lost--"around which, as
+I was saying, the two lines of foemen came together in battle
+with a huge shout.  And in this place one of the two kings of
+the heathen and five of his earls fell down and died, and many
+thousands of the heathen side in the same place." *  After which
+crowning mercy, the pious king, that there might never be
+wanting a sign and a memorial to the country-side, carved out on
+the northern side of the chalk hill, under the camp, where it is
+almost precipitous, the great Saxon White Horse, which he who
+will may see from the railway, and which gives its name to the
+Vale, over which it has looked these thousand years and more.
+
+
+* "Pagani editiorem Iocum praeoccupaverant.  Christiani ab
+inferiori loco aciem dirigebant.  Erat quoque in eodem loco
+unica spinosa arbor, brevis admodum (quam nos ipsi nostris
+propriis oculis vidimus).  Circa quam ergo hostiles inter se
+acies cum ingenti clamore hostiliter conveniunt.  Quo in loco
+alter de duobus Paganorum regibus et quinque comites occisi
+occubuerunt, et multa millia Paganae partis in eodem loco.
+Cecidit illic ergo Boegsceg Rex, et Sidroc ille senex comes, et
+Sidroc Junior comes, et Obsbern comes," etc. --Annales Rerum
+Gestarum AElfredi Magni, Auctore Asserio. Recensuit Franciscus
+Wise. Oxford, 1722, p.23.
+
+
+Right down below the White Horse is a curious deep and broad
+gully called "the Manger," into one side of which the hills fall
+with a series of the most lovely sweeping curves, known as "the
+Giant's Stairs."  They are not a bit like stairs, but I never
+saw anything like them anywhere else, with their short green
+turf, and tender bluebells, and gossamer and thistle-down
+gleaming in the sun and the sheep-paths running along their
+sides like ruled lines.
+
+The other side of the Manger is formed by the Dragon's Hill, a
+curious little round self-confident fellow, thrown forward from
+the range, utterly unlike everything round him.  On this hill
+some deliverer of mankind--St. George, the country folk used to
+tell me--killed a dragon.  Whether it were St. George, I cannot
+say; but surely a dragon was killed there, for you may see the
+marks yet where his blood ran down, and more by token the place
+where it ran down is the easiest way up the hillside.
+
+Passing along the Ridgeway to the west for about a mile, we come
+to a little clump of young beech and firs, with a growth of
+thorn and privet underwood.  Here you may find nests of the
+strong down partridge and peewit, but take care that the keeper
+isn't down upon you; and in the middle of it is an old cromlech,
+a huge flat stone raised on seven or eight others, and led up to
+by a path, with large single stones set up on each side.  This
+is Wayland Smith's cave, a place of classic fame now; but as Sir
+Walter has touched it, I may as well let it alone, and refer you
+to "Kenilworth" for the legend.
+
+The thick, deep wood which you see in the hollow, about a mile
+off, surrounds Ashdown Park, built by Inigo Jones.  Four broad
+alleys are cut through the wood from circumference to centre,
+and each leads to one face of the house.  The mystery of the
+downs hangs about house and wood, as they stand there alone, so
+unlike all around, with the green slopes studded with great
+stones just about this part, stretching away on all sides.  It
+was a wise Lord Craven, I think, who pitched his tent there.
+
+Passing along the Ridgeway to the east, we soon come to
+cultivated land.  The downs, strictly so called, are no more.
+Lincolnshire farmers have been imported, and the long, fresh
+slopes are sheep-walks no more, but grow famous turnips and
+barley.  One of these improvers lives over there at the "Seven
+Barrows" farm, another mystery of the great downs.  There are
+the barrows still, solemn and silent, like ships in the calm
+sea, the sepulchres of some sons of men.  But of whom?  It is
+three miles from the White Horse--too far for the slain of
+Ashdown to be buried there.  Who shall say what heroes are
+waiting there?  But we must get down into the Vale again, and so
+away by the Great Western Railway to town, for time and the
+printer's devil press, and it is a terrible long and slippery
+descent, and a shocking bad road.  At the bottom, however, there
+is a pleasant public; whereat we must really take a modest
+quencher, for the down air is provocative of thirst.  So we pull
+up under an old oak which stands before the door.
+
+"What is the name of your hill, landlord?"
+
+"Blawing STWUN Hill, sir, to be sure."
+
+[READER. "Stuym?"
+
+AUTHOR: "Stone, stupid--the Blowing Stone."]
+
+"And of your house?  I can't make out the sign."
+
+"Blawing Stwun, sir," says the landlord, pouring out his old ale
+from a Toby Philpot jug, with a melodious crash, into the long-
+necked glass.
+
+"What queer names!" say we, sighing at the end of our draught,
+and holding out the glass to be replenished.
+
+"Bean't queer at all, as I can see, sir," says mine host,
+handing back our glass, "seeing as this here is the Blawing
+Stwun, his self," putting his hand on a square lump of stone,
+some three feet and a half high, perforated with two or three
+queer holes, like petrified antediluvian rat-holes, which lies
+there close under the oak, under our very nose.  We are more
+than ever puzzled, and drink our second glass of ale, wondering
+what will come next.  "Like to hear un, sir?" says mine host,
+setting down Toby Philpot on the tray, and resting both hands on
+the "Stwun."  We are ready for anything; and he, without waiting
+for a reply, applies his mouth to one of the ratholes.
+Something must come of it, if he doesn't burst.  Good heavens!
+I hope he has no apoplectic tendencies.  Yes, here it comes,
+sure enough, a gruesome sound between a moan and a roar, and
+spreads itself away over the valley, and up the hillside, and
+into the woods at the back of the house, a ghost-like, awful
+voice.  "Um do say, sir," says mine host, rising purple-faced,
+while the moan is still coming out of the Stwun, "as they used
+in old times to warn the country-side by blawing the Stwun when
+the enemy was a-comin', and as how folks could make un heered
+then for seven mile round; leastways, so I've heered Lawyer
+Smith say, and he knows a smart sight about them old times."  We
+can hardly swallow Lawyer Smith's seven miles; but could the
+blowing of the stone have been a summons, a sort of sending the
+fiery cross round the neighbourhood in the old times?  What old
+times?  Who knows?  We pay for our beer, and are thankful.
+
+"And what's the name of the village just below, landlord?"
+
+"Kingstone Lisle, sir."
+
+"Fine plantations you've got here?"
+
+"Yes, sir; the Squire's 'mazing fond of trees and such like."
+
+"No wonder.  He's got some real beauties to be fond of.  Good-
+day, landlord."
+
+"Good-day, sir, and a pleasant ride to 'ee."
+
+And now, my boys, you whom I want to get for readers, have you
+had enough?  Will you give in at once, and say you're convinced,
+and let me begin my story, or will you have more of it?
+Remember, I've only been over a little bit of the hillside yet--
+what you could ride round easily on your ponies in an hour.  I'm
+only just come down into the Vale, by Blowing Stone Hill; and if
+I once begin about the Vale, what's to stop me?  You'll have to
+hear all about Wantage, the birthplace of Alfred, and
+Farringdon, which held out so long for Charles the First (the
+Vale was near Oxford, and dreadfully malignant--full of
+Throgmortons, Puseys, and Pyes, and such like; and their brawny
+retainers).  Did you ever read Thomas Ingoldsby's "Legend of
+Hamilton Tighe"?  If you haven't, you ought to have.  Well,
+Farringdon is where he lived, before he went to sea; his real
+name was Hamden Pye, and the Pyes were the great folk at
+Farringdon.  Then there's Pusey.  You've heard of the Pusey
+horn, which King Canute gave to the Puseys of that day, and
+which the gallant old squire, lately gone to his rest (whom
+Berkshire freeholders turned out of last Parliament, to their
+eternal disgrace, for voting according to his conscience), used
+to bring out on high days, holidays, and bonfire nights.  And
+the splendid old cross church at Uffington, the Uffingas town.
+How the whole countryside teems with Saxon names and memories!
+And the old moated grange at Compton, nestled close under the
+hillside, where twenty Marianas may have lived, with its bright
+water-lilies in the moat, and its yew walk, "the cloister walk,"
+and its peerless terraced gardens.  There they all are, and
+twenty things beside, for those who care about them, and have
+eyes.  And these are the sort of things you may find, I believe,
+every one of you, in any common English country neighbourhood.
+
+Will you look for them under your own noses, or will you not?
+Well, well, I've done what I can to make you; and if you will go
+gadding over half Europe now, every holidays, I can't help it.
+I was born and bred a west-country man, thank God! a Wessex man,
+a citizen of the noblest Saxon kingdom of Wessex, a regular
+"Angular Saxon," the very soul of me adscriptus glebae.  There's
+nothing like the old country-side for me, and no music like the
+twang of the real old Saxon tongue, as one gets it fresh from
+the veritable chaw in the White Horse Vale; and I say with
+"Gaarge Ridler," the old west-country yeoman, -
+
+
+"Throo aall the waarld owld Gaarge would bwoast,
+Commend me to merry owld England mwoast;
+While vools gwoes prating vur and nigh,
+We stwops at whum, my dog and I."
+
+
+Here, at any rate, lived and stopped at home Squire Brown, J.P.
+for the county of Berks, in a village near the foot of the White
+Horse range.  And here he dealt out justice and mercy in a rough
+way, and begat sons and daughters, and hunted the fox, and
+grumbled at the badness of the roads and the times.  And his
+wife dealt out stockings, and calico shirts, and smock frocks,
+and comforting drinks to the old folks with the "rheumatiz," and
+good counsel to all; and kept the coal and clothes' clubs going,
+for yule-tide, when the bands of mummers came round, dressed out
+in ribbons and coloured paper caps, and stamped round the
+Squire's kitchen, repeating in true sing-song vernacular the
+legend of St. George and his fight, and the ten-pound doctor,
+who plays his part at healing the Saint--a relic, I believe, of
+the old Middle-age mysteries.  It was the first dramatic
+representation which greeted the eyes of little Tom, who was
+brought down into the kitchen by his nurse to witness it, at the
+mature age of three years.  Tom was the eldest child of his
+parents, and from his earliest babyhood exhibited the family
+characteristics in great strength.  He was a hearty, strong boy
+from the first, given to fighting with and escaping from his
+nurse, and fraternizing with all the village boys, with whom he
+made expeditions all round the neighbourhood.  And here, in the
+quiet old-fashioned country village, under the shadow of the
+everlasting hills, Tom Brown was reared, and never left it till
+he went first to school, when nearly eight years of age, for in
+those days change of air twice a year was not thought absolutely
+necessary for the health of all her Majesty's lieges.
+
+I have been credibly informed, and am inclined to believe, that
+the various boards of directors of railway companies, those
+gigantic jobbers and bribers, while quarrelling about everything
+else, agreed together some ten years back to buy up the learned
+profession of medicine, body and soul.  To this end they set
+apart several millions of money, which they continually
+distribute judiciously among the doctors, stipulating only this
+one thing, that they shall prescribe change of air to every
+patient who can pay, or borrow money to pay, a railway fare, and
+see their prescription carried out.  If it be not for this, why
+is it that none of us can be well at home for a year together?
+It wasn't so twenty years ago, not a bit of it.  The Browns
+didn't go out of the country once in five years.  A visit to
+Reading or Abingdon twice a year, at assizes or quarter
+sessions, which the Squire made on his horse with a pair of
+saddle-bags containing his wardrobe, a stay of a day or two at
+some country neighbour's, or an expedition to a county ball or
+the yeomanry review, made up the sum of the Brown locomotion in
+most years.  A stray Brown from some distant county dropped in
+every now and then; or from Oxford, on grave nag, an old don,
+contemporary of the Squire; and were looked upon by the Brown
+household and the villagers with the same sort of feeling with
+which we now regard a man who has crossed the Rocky Mountains,
+or launched a boat on the Great Lake in Central Africa.  The
+White Horse Vale, remember, was traversed by no great road--
+nothing but country parish roads, and these very bad.  Only one
+coach ran there, and this one only from Wantage to London, so
+that the western part of the Vale was without regular means of
+moving on, and certainly didn't seem to want them.  There was
+the canal, by the way, which supplied the country-side with
+coal, and up and down which continually went the long barges,
+with the big black men lounging by the side of the horses along
+the towing-path, and the women in bright-coloured handkerchiefs
+standing in the sterns steering.  Standing I say, but you could
+never see whether they were standing or sitting, all but their
+heads and shoulders being out of sight in the cozy little cabins
+which occupied some eight feet of the stern, and which Tom Brown
+pictured to himself as the most desirable of residences.  His
+nurse told him that those good-natured-looking women were in the
+constant habit of enticing children into the barges, and taking
+them up to London and selling them, which Tom wouldn't believe,
+and which made him resolve as soon as possible to accept the
+oft-proffered invitation of these sirens to "young master" to
+come in and have a ride.  But as yet the nurse was too much for
+Tom.
+
+Yet why should I, after all, abuse the gadabout propensities of
+my countrymen?  We are a vagabond nation now, that's certain,
+for better for worse.  I am a vagabond; I have been away from
+home no less than five distinct times in the last year.  The
+Queen sets us the example:  we are moving on from top to bottom.
+Little dirty Jack, who abides in Clement's Inn gateway, and
+blacks my boots for a penny, takes his month's hop-picking every
+year as a matter of course.  Why shouldn't he?  I'm delighted at
+it.  I love vagabonds, only I prefer poor to rich ones.
+Couriers and ladies'-maids, imperials and travelling carriages,
+are an abomination unto me; I cannot away with them.  But for
+dirty Jack, and every good fellow who, in the words of the
+capital French song, moves about,
+
+
+"Comme le limacon,
+Portant tout son bagage,
+Ses meubles, sa maison,"
+
+
+on his own back, why, good luck to them, and many a merry
+roadside adventure, and steaming supper in the chimney corners
+of roadside inns, Swiss chalets, Hottentot kraals, or wherever
+else they like to go.  So, having succeeded in contradicting
+myself in my first chapter (which gives me great hopes that you
+will all go on, and think me a good fellow notwithstanding my
+crotchets), I shall here shut up for the present, and consider
+my ways; having resolved to "sar' it out," as we say in the
+Vale, "holus bolus" just as it comes, and then you'll probably
+get the truth out of me.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II - THE "VEAST."
+
+
+
+"And the King commandeth and forbiddeth, that from henceforth
+neither fairs nor markets be kept in Churchyards, for the honour
+of the Church." - STATUTES : 13 Edw. I. Stat. II. cap. vi.
+
+
+As that venerable and learned poet (whose voluminous works we
+all think it the correct thing to admire and talk about, but
+don't read often) most truly says, "The child is father to the
+man;" a fortiori, therefore, he must be father to the boy.  So
+as we are going at any rate to see Tom Brown through his
+boyhood, supposing we never get any farther (which, if you show
+a proper sense of the value of this history, there is no knowing
+but what we may), let us have a look at the life and
+environments of the child in the quiet country village to which
+we were introduced in the last chapter.
+
+Tom, as has been already said, was a robust and combative
+urchin, and at the age of four began to struggle against the
+yoke and authority of his nurse.  That functionary was a good-
+hearted, tearful, scatter-brained girl, lately taken by Tom's
+mother, Madam Brown, as she was called, from the village school
+to be trained as nurserymaid.  Madam Brown was a rare trainer of
+servants, and spent herself freely in the profession; for
+profession it was, and gave her more trouble by half than many
+people take to earn a good income.  Her servants were known and
+sought after for miles round.  Almost all the girls who attained
+a certain place in the village school were taken by her, one or
+two at a time, as housemaids, laundrymaids, nurserymaids, or
+kitchenmaids, and after a year or two's training were started in
+life amongst the neighbouring families, with good principles and
+wardrobes.  One of the results of this system was the perpetual
+despair of Mrs. Brown's cook and own maid, who no sooner had a
+notable girl made to their hands than missus was sure to find a
+good place for her and send her off, taking in fresh
+importations from the school.  Another was, that the house was
+always full of young girls, with clean, shining faces, who broke
+plates and scorched linen, but made an atmosphere of cheerful,
+homely life about the place, good for every one who came within
+its influence.  Mrs. Brown loved young people, and in fact human
+creatures in general, above plates and linen.  They were more
+like a lot of elder children than servants, and felt to her more
+as a mother or aunt than as a mistress.
+
+Tom's nurse was one who took in her instruction very slowly--
+she seemed to have two left hands and no head; and so Mrs. Brown
+kept her on longer than usual, that she might expend her
+awkwardness and forgetfulness upon those who would not judge and
+punish her too strictly for them.
+
+Charity Lamb was her name.  It had been the immemorial habit of
+the village to christen children either by Bible names, or by
+those of the cardinal and other virtues; so that one was for
+ever hearing in the village street or on the green, shrill
+sounds of "Prudence! Prudence! thee cum' out o' the gutter;" or,
+"Mercy! drat the girl, what bist thee a-doin' wi' little Faith?"
+and there were Ruths, Rachels, Keziahs, in every corner.  The
+same with the boys:  they were Benjamins, Jacobs, Noahs, Enochs.
+I suppose the custom has come down from Puritan times.  There it
+is, at any rate, very strong still in the Vale.
+
+Well, from early morning till dewy eve, when she had it out of
+him in the cold tub before putting him to bed, Charity and Tom
+were pitted against one another.  Physical power was as yet on
+the side of Charity, but she hadn't a chance with him wherever
+headwork was wanted.  This war of independence began every
+morning before breakfast, when Charity escorted her charge to a
+neighbouring farmhouse, which supplied the Browns, and where, by
+his mother's wish, Master Tom went to drink whey before
+breakfast.  Tom had no sort of objection to whey, but he had a
+decided liking for curds, which were forbidden as unwholesome;
+and there was seldom a morning that he did not manage to secure
+a handful of hard curds, in defiance of Charity and of the
+farmer's wife.  The latter good soul was a gaunt, angular woman,
+who, with an old black bonnet on the top of her head, the
+strings dangling about her shoulders, and her gown tucked
+through her pocket-holes, went clattering about the dairy,
+cheese-room, and yard, in high pattens.  Charity was some sort
+of niece of the old lady's, and was consequently free of the
+farmhouse and garden, into which she could not resist going for
+the purposes of gossip and flirtation with the heir-apparent,
+who was a dawdling fellow, never out at work as he ought to have
+been.  The moment Charity had found her cousin, or any other
+occupation, Tom would slip away; and in a minute shrill cries
+would be heard from the dairy, "Charity, Charity, thee lazy
+huzzy, where bist?" and Tom would break cover, hands and mouth
+full of curds, and take refuge on the shaky surface of the great
+muck reservoir in the middle of the yard, disturbing the repose
+of the great pigs.  Here he was in safety, as no grown person
+could follow without getting over their knees; and the luckless
+Charity, while her aunt scolded her from the dairy door, for
+being "allus hankering about arter our Willum, instead of
+minding Master Tom," would descend from threats to coaxing, to
+lure Tom out of the muck, which was rising over his shoes, and
+would soon tell a tale on his stockings, for which she would be
+sure to catch it from missus's maid.
+
+Tom had two abettors, in the shape of a couple of old boys, Noah
+and Benjamin by name, who defended him from Charity, and
+expended much time upon his education.  They were both of them
+retired servants of former generations of the Browns.  Noah
+Crooke was a keen, dry old man of almost ninety, but still able
+to totter about.  He talked to Tom quite as if he were one of
+his own family, and indeed had long completely identified the
+Browns with himself.  In some remote age he had been the
+attendant of a Miss Brown, and had conveyed her about the
+country on a pillion.  He had a little round picture of the
+identical gray horse, caparisoned with the identical pillion,
+before which he used to do a sort of fetish worship, and abuse
+turnpike-roads and carriages.  He wore an old full-bottomed wig,
+the gift of some dandy old Brown whom he had valeted in the
+middle of last century, which habiliment Master Tom looked upon
+with considerable respect, not to say fear; and indeed his whole
+feeling towards Noah was strongly tainted with awe.  And when
+the old gentleman was gathered to his fathers, Tom's lamentation
+over him was not unaccompanied by a certain joy at having seen
+the last of the wig.  "Poor old Noah, dead and gone," said he;
+"Tom Brown so sorry.  Put him in the coffin, wig and all."
+
+But old Benjy was young master's real delight and refuge.  He
+was a youth by the side of Noah, scarce seventy years old--a
+cheery, humorous, kind-hearted old man, full of sixty years of
+Vale gossip, and of all sorts of helpful ways for young and old,
+but above all for children.  It was he who bent the first pin
+with which Tom extracted his first stickleback out of "Pebbly
+Brook," the little stream which ran through the village.  The
+first stickleback was a splendid fellow, with fabulous red and
+blue gills.  Tom kept him in a small basin till the day of his
+death, and became a fisherman from that day.  Within a month
+from the taking of the first stickleback, Benjy had carried off
+our hero to the canal, in defiance of Charity; and between them,
+after a whole afternoon's popjoying, they had caught three or
+four small, coarse fish and a perch, averaging perhaps two and a
+half ounces each, which Tom bore home in rapture to his mother
+as a precious gift, and which she received like a true mother
+with equal rapture, instructing the cook nevertheless, in a
+private interview, not to prepare the same for the Squire's
+dinner.  Charity had appealed against old Benjy in the meantime,
+representing the dangers of the canal banks; but Mrs. Brown,
+seeing the boy's inaptitude for female guidance, had decided in
+Benjy's favour, and from thenceforth the old man was Tom's dry
+nurse.  And as they sat by the canal watching their little
+green-and-white float, Benjy would instruct him in the doings of
+deceased Browns.  How his grandfather, in the early days of the
+great war, when there was much distress and crime in the Vale,
+and the magistrates had been threatened by the mob, had ridden
+in with a big stick in his hand, and held the petty sessions by
+himself.  How his great-uncle, the rector, had encountered and
+laid the last ghost, who had frightened the old women, male and
+female, of the parish out of their senses, and who turned out to
+be the blacksmith's apprentice disguised in drink and a white
+sheet.  It was Benjy, too, who saddled Tom's first pony, and
+instructed him in the mysteries of horsemanship, teaching him to
+throw his weight back and keep his hand low, and who stood
+chuckling outside the door of the girls' school when Tom rode
+his little Shetland into the cottage and round the table, where
+the old dame and her pupils were seated at their work.
+
+Benjy himself was come of a family distinguished in the Vale for
+their prowess in all athletic games.  Some half-dozen of his
+brothers and kinsmen had gone to the wars, of whom only one had
+survived to come home, with a small pension, and three bullets
+in different parts of his body; he had shared Benjy's cottage
+till his death, and had left him his old dragoon's sword and
+pistol, which hung over the mantelpiece, flanked by a pair of
+heavy single-sticks with which Benjy himself had won renown long
+ago as an old gamester, against the picked men of Wiltshire and
+Somersetshire, in many a good bout at the revels and pastimes of
+the country-side.  For he had been a famous back-swordman in his
+young days, and a good wrestler at elbow and collar.
+
+Back-swording and wrestling were the most serious holiday
+pursuits of the Vale--those by which men attained fame--and
+each village had its champion.  I suppose that, on the whole,
+people were less worked then than they are now; at any rate,
+they seemed to have more time and energy for the old pastimes.
+The great times for back-swording came round once a year in each
+village; at the feast.  The Vale "veasts" were not the common
+statute feasts, but much more ancient business.  They are
+literally, so far as one can ascertain, feasts of the dedication
+- that is, they were first established in the churchyard on the
+day on which the village church was opened for public worship,
+which was on the wake or festival of the patron saint, and have
+been held on the same day in every year since that time.
+
+There was no longer any remembrance of why the "veast" had been
+instituted, but nevertheless it had a pleasant and almost sacred
+character of its own; for it was then that all the children of
+the village, wherever they were scattered, tried to get home for
+a holiday to visit their fathers and mothers and friends,
+bringing with them their wages or some little gift from up the
+country for the old folk.  Perhaps for a day or two before, but
+at any rate on "veast day" and the day after, in our village,
+you might see strapping, healthy young men and women from all
+parts of the country going round from house to house in their
+best clothes, and finishing up with a call on Madam Brown, whom
+they would consult as to putting out their earnings to the best
+advantage, or how best to expend the same for the benefit of the
+old folk.  Every household, however poor, managed to raise a
+"feast-cake" and a bottle of ginger or raisin wine, which stood
+on the cottage table ready for all comers, and not unlikely to
+make them remember feast-time, for feast-cake is very solid, and
+full of huge raisins.  Moreover, feast-time was the day of
+reconciliation for the parish.  If Job Higgins and Noah Freeman
+hadn't spoken for the last six months, their "old women" would
+be sure to get it patched up by that day.  And though there was
+a good deal of drinking and low vice in the booths of an
+evening, it was pretty well confined to those who would have
+been doing the like, "veast or no veast;" and on the whole, the
+effect was humanising and Christian.  In fact, the only reason
+why this is not the case still is that gentlefolk and farmers
+have taken to other amusements, and have, as usual, forgotten
+the poor.  They don't attend the feasts themselves, and call
+them disreputable; whereupon the steadiest of the poor leave
+them also, and they become what they are called.  Class
+amusements, be they for dukes or ploughboys, always become
+nuisances and curses to a country.  The true charm of cricket
+and hunting is that they are still more or less sociable and
+universal; there's a place for every man who will come and take
+his part.
+
+No one in the village enjoyed the approach of "veast day" more
+than Tom, in the year in which he was taken under old Benjy's
+tutelage.  The feast was held in a large green field at the
+lower end of the village.  The road to Farringdon ran along one
+side of it, and the brook by the side of the road; and above the
+brook was another large, gentle, sloping pasture-land, with a
+footpath running down it from the churchyard; and the old
+church, the originator of all the mirth, towered up with its
+gray walls and lancet windows, overlooking and sanctioning the
+whole, though its own share therein had been forgotten.  At the
+point where the footpath crossed the brook and road, and entered
+on the field where the feast was held, was a long, low roadside
+inn; and on the opposite side of the field was a large white
+thatched farmhouse, where dwelt an old sporting farmer, a great
+promoter of the revels.
+
+Past the old church, and down the footpath, pottered the old man
+and the child hand-in-hand early on the afternoon of the day
+before the feast, and wandered all round the ground, which was
+already being occupied by the "cheap Jacks," with their green-
+covered carts and marvellous assortment of wares; and the booths
+of more legitimate small traders, with their tempting arrays of
+fairings and eatables; and penny peep-shows and other shows,
+containing pink-eyed ladies, and dwarfs, and boa-constrictors,
+and wild Indians.  But the object of most interest to Benjy, and
+of course to his pupil also, was the stage of rough planks some
+four feet high, which was being put up by the village carpenter
+for the back-swording and wrestling.  And after surveying the
+whole tenderly, old Benjy led his charge away to the roadside
+inn, where he ordered a glass of ale and a long pipe for
+himself, and discussed these unwonted luxuries on the bench
+outside in the soft autumn evening with mine host, another old
+servant of the Browns, and speculated with him on the likelihood
+of a good show of old gamesters to contend for the morrow's
+prizes, and told tales of the gallant bouts of forty years back,
+to which Tom listened with all his ears and eyes.
+
+But who shall tell the joy of the next morning, when the church
+bells were ringing a merry peal, and old Benjy appeared in the
+servants' hall, resplendent in a long blue coat and brass
+buttons, and a pair of old yellow buckskins and top-boots which
+he had cleaned for and inherited from Tom's grandfather, a stout
+thorn stick in his hand, and a nosegay of pinks and lavender in
+his buttonhole, and led away Tom in his best clothes, and two
+new shillings in his breeches-pockets?  Those two, at any rate,
+look like enjoying the day's revel.
+
+They quicken their pace when they get into the churchyard, for
+already they see the field thronged with country folk; the men
+in clean, white smocks or velveteen or fustian coats, with rough
+plush waistcoats of many colours, and the women in the
+beautiful, long scarlet cloak--the usual out-door dress of
+west-country women in those days, and which often descended in
+families from mother to daughter--or in new-fashioned stuff
+shawls, which, if they would but believe it, don't become them
+half so well.  The air resounds with the pipe and tabor, and the
+drums and trumpets of the showmen shouting at the doors of their
+caravans, over which tremendous pictures of the wonders to be
+seen within hang temptingly; while through all rises the shrill
+"root-too-too-too" of Mr. Punch, and the unceasing pan-pipe of
+his satellite.
+
+"Lawk a' massey, Mr. Benjamin," cries a stout, motherly woman in
+a red cloak, as they enter the field, "be that you?  Well, I
+never!  You do look purely.  And how's the Squire, and madam,
+and the family?"
+
+Benjy graciously shakes hands with the speaker, who has left our
+village for some years, but has come over for "veast" day on a
+visit to an old gossip, and gently indicates the heir-apparent
+of the Browns.
+
+"Bless his little heart!  I must gi' un a kiss. --Here,
+Susannah, Susannah!" cries she, raising herself from the
+embrace, "come and see Mr. Benjamin and young Master Tom. --You
+minds our Sukey, Mr. Benjamin; she be growed a rare slip of a
+wench since you seen her, though her'll be sixteen come
+Martinmas.  I do aim to take her to see madam to get her a
+place."
+
+And Sukey comes bouncing away from a knot of old school-fellows,
+and drops a curtsey to Mr. Benjamin.  And elders come up from
+all parts to salute Benjy, and girls who have been madam's
+pupils to kiss Master Tom.  And they carry him off to load him
+with fairings; and he returns to Benjy, his hat and coat covered
+with ribbons, and his pockets crammed with wonderful boxes which
+open upon ever new boxes, and popguns, and trumpets, and apples,
+and gilt gingerbread from the stall of Angel Heavens, sole
+vender thereof, whose booth groans with kings and queens, and
+elephants and prancing steeds, all gleaming with gold.  There
+was more gold on Angel's cakes than there is ginger in those of
+this degenerate age.  Skilled diggers might yet make a fortune
+in the churchyards of the Vale, by carefully washing the dust of
+the consumers of Angel's gingerbread.  Alas! he is with his
+namesakes, and his receipts have, I fear, died with him.
+
+And then they inspect the penny peep-show--at least Tom does--
+while old Benjy stands outside and gossips and walks up the
+steps, and enters the mysterious doors of the pink-eyed lady and
+the Irish giant, who do not by any means come up to their
+pictures; and the boa will not swallow his rabbit, but there the
+rabbit is waiting to be swallowed; and what can you expect for
+tuppence?  We are easily pleased in the Vale.  Now there is a
+rush of the crowd, and a tinkling bell is heard, and shouts of
+laughter; and Master Tom mounts on Benjy's shoulders, and
+beholds a jingling match in all its glory.  The games are begun,
+and this is the opening of them.  It is a quaint game, immensely
+amusing to look at; and as I don't know whether it is used in
+your counties, I had better describe it.  A large roped ring is
+made, into which are introduced a dozen or so of big boys and
+young men who mean to play; these are carefully blinded and
+turned loose into the ring, and then a man is introduced not
+blindfolded; with a bell hung round his neck, and his two hands
+tied behind him.  Of course every time he moves the bell must
+ring, as he has no hand to hold it; and so the dozen blindfolded
+men have to catch him.  This they cannot always manage if he is
+a lively fellow, but half of them always rush into the arms of
+the other half, or drive their heads together, or tumble over;
+and then the crowd laughs vehemently, and invents nicknames for
+them on the spur of the moment; and they, if they be choleric,
+tear off the handkerchiefs which blind them, and not
+unfrequently pitch into one another, each thinking that the
+other must have run against him on purpose.  It is great fun to
+look at a jingling match certainly, and Tom shouts and jumps on
+old Benjy's shoulders at the sight, until the old man feels
+weary, and shifts him to the strong young shoulders of the
+groom, who has just got down to the fun.
+
+And now, while they are climbing the pole in another part of the
+field, and muzzling in a flour-tub in another, the old farmer
+whose house, as has been said, overlooks the field, and who is
+master of the revels, gets up the steps on to the stage, and
+announces to all whom it may concern that a half-sovereign in
+money will be forthcoming to the old gamester who breaks most
+heads; to which the Squire and he have added a new hat.
+
+The amount of the prize is sufficient to stimulate the men of
+the immediate neighbourhood, but not enough to bring any very
+high talent from a distance; so, after a glance or two round, a
+tall fellow, who is a down shepherd, chucks his hat on to the
+stage and climbs up the steps, looking rather sheepish.  The
+crowd, of course, first cheer, and then chaff as usual, as he
+picks up his hat and begins handling the sticks to see which
+will suit him.
+
+"Wooy, Willum Smith, thee canst plaay wi' he arra daay," says
+his companion to the blacksmith's apprentice, a stout young
+fellow of nineteen or twenty.  Willum's sweetheart is in the
+"veast" somewhere, and has strictly enjoined him not to get his
+head broke at back-swording, on pain of her highest displeasure;
+but as she is not to be seen (the women pretend not to like to
+see the backsword play, and keep away from the stage), and as
+his hat is decidedly getting old, he chucks it on to the stage,
+and follows himself, hoping that he will only have to break
+other people's heads, or that, after all, Rachel won't really
+mind.
+
+Then follows the greasy cap lined with fur of a half-gipsy,
+poaching, loafing fellow, who travels the Vale not for much
+good, I fancy:
+
+
+"For twenty times was Peter feared
+For once that Peter was respected,"
+
+
+in fact.  And then three or four other hats, including the
+glossy castor of Joe Willis, the self-elected and would-be
+champion of the neighbourhood, a well-to-do young butcher of
+twenty-eight or thereabouts, and a great strapping fellow, with
+his full allowance of bluster.  This is a capital show of
+gamesters, considering the amount of the prize; so, while they
+are picking their sticks and drawing their lots, I think I must
+tell you, as shortly as I can, how the noble old game of back-
+sword is played; for it is sadly gone out of late, even in the
+Vale, and maybe you have never seen it.
+
+The weapon is a good stout ash stick with a large basket handle,
+heavier and somewhat shorter than a common single-stick.  The
+players are called "old gamesters"--why, I can't tell you--and
+their object is simply to break one another's heads; for the
+moment that blood runs an inch anywhere above the eyebrow, the
+old gamester to whom it belongs is beaten, and has to stop.  A
+very slight blow with the sticks will fetch blood, so that it is
+by no means a punishing pastime, if the men don't play on
+purpose and savagely at the body and arms of their adversaries.
+The old gamester going into action only takes off his hat and
+coat, and arms himself with a stick; he then loops the fingers
+of his left hand in a handkerchief or strap, which he fastens
+round his left leg, measuring the length, so that when he draws
+it tight with his left elbow in the air, that elbow shall just
+reach as high as his crown.  Thus you see, so long as he chooses
+to keep his left elbow up, regardless of cuts, he has a perfect
+guard for the left side of his head.  Then he advances his right
+hand above and in front of his head, holding his stick across,
+so that its point projects an inch or two over his left elbow;
+and thus his whole head is completely guarded, and he faces his
+man armed in like manner; and they stand some three feet apart,
+often nearer, and feint, and strike, and return at one another's
+heads, until one cries "hold," or blood flows.  In the first
+case they are allowed a minute's time; and go on again; in the
+latter another pair of gamesters are called on.  If good men are
+playing, the quickness of the returns is marvellous:  you hear
+the rattle like that a boy makes drawing his stick along
+palings, only heavier; and the closeness of the men in action to
+one another gives it a strange interest, and makes a spell at
+back-swording a very noble sight.
+
+They are all suited now with sticks, and Joe Willis and the
+gipsy man have drawn the first lot.  So the rest lean against
+the rails of the stage, and Joe and the dark man meet in the
+middle, the boards having been strewed with sawdust, Joe's white
+shirt and spotless drab breeches and boots contrasting with the
+gipsy's coarse blue shirt and dirty green velveteen breeches and
+leather gaiters.  Joe is evidently turning up his nose at the
+other, and half insulted at having to break his head.
+
+The gipsy is a tough, active fellow, but not very skilful with
+his weapon, so that Joe's weight and strength tell in a minute;
+he is too heavy metal for him.  Whack, whack, whack, come his
+blows, breaking down the gipsy's guard, and threatening to reach
+his head every moment.  There it is at last.  "Blood, blood!"
+shout the spectators, as a thin stream oozes out slowly from the
+roots of his hair, and the umpire calls to them to stop.  The
+gipsy scowls at Joe under his brows in no pleasant manner, while
+Master Joe swaggers about, and makes attitudes, and thinks
+himself, and shows that he thinks himself, the greatest man in
+the field.
+
+Then follow several stout sets-to between the other candidates
+for the new hat, and at last come the shepherd and Willum Smith.
+This is the crack set-to of the day.  They are both in famous
+wind, and there is no crying "hold."  The shepherd is an old
+hand, and up to all the dodges.  He tries them one after
+another, and very nearly gets at Willum's head by coming in
+near, and playing over his guard at the half-stick; but somehow
+Willum blunders through, catching the stick on his shoulders,
+neck, sides, every now and then, anywhere but on his head, and
+his returns are heavy and straight, and he is the youngest
+gamester and a favourite in the parish, and his gallant stand
+brings down shouts and cheers, and the knowing ones think he'll
+win if he keeps steady; and Tom, on the groom's shoulder, holds
+his hands together, and can hardly breathe for excitement.
+
+Alas for Willum!  His sweetheart, getting tired of female
+companionship, has been hunting the booths to see where he can
+have got to, and now catches sight of him on the stage in full
+combat.  She flushes and turns pale; her old aunt catches hold
+of her, saying, "Bless 'ee, child, doan't 'ee go a'nigst it;"
+but she breaks away and runs towards the stage calling his name.
+Willum keeps up his guard stoutly, but glances for a moment
+towards the voice.  No guard will do it, Willum, without the
+eye.  The shepherd steps round and strikes, and the point of his
+stick just grazes Willum's forehead, fetching off the skin, and
+the blood flows, and the umpire cries, "Hold!" and poor Willum's
+chance is up for the day.  But he takes it very well, and puts
+on his old hat and coat, and goes down to be scolded by his
+sweetheart, and led away out of mischief.  Tom hears him say
+coaxingly, as he walks off, -
+
+"Now doan't 'ee, Rachel!  I wouldn't ha' done it, only I wanted
+summut to buy 'ee a fairing wi', and I be as vlush o' money as a
+twod o' feathers."
+
+"Thee mind what I tells 'ee," rejoins Rachel saucily, "and
+doan't 'ee kep blethering about fairings."
+
+Tom resolves in his heart to give Willum the remainder of his
+two shillings after the back-swording.
+
+Joe Willis has all the luck to-day.  His next bout ends in an
+easy victory, while the shepherd has a tough job to break his
+second head; and when Joe and the shepherd meet, and the whole
+circle expect and hope to see him get a broken crown, the
+shepherd slips in the first round and falls against the rails,
+hurting himself so that the old farmer will not let him go on,
+much as he wishes to try; and that impostor Joe (for he is
+certainly not the best man) struts and swaggers about the stage
+the conquering gamester, though he hasn't had five minutes'
+really trying play.
+
+Joe takes the new hat in his hand, and puts the money into it,
+and then, as if a thought strikes him, and he doesn't think his
+victory quite acknowledged down below, walks to each face of the
+stage, and looks down, shaking the money, and chaffing, as how
+he'll stake hat and money and another half-sovereign "agin any
+gamester as hasn't played already."  Cunning Joe! he thus gets
+rid of Willum and the shepherd, who is quite fresh again.
+
+No one seems to like the offer, and the umpire is just coming
+down, when a queer old hat, something like a doctor of
+divinity's shovel, is chucked on to the stage and an elderly,
+quiet man steps out, who has been watching the play, saying he
+should like to cross a stick wi' the prodigalish young chap.
+
+The crowd cheer, and begin to chaff Joe, who turns up his nose
+and swaggers across to the sticks.  "Imp'dent old wosbird!" says
+he; "I'll break the bald head on un to the truth."
+
+The old boy is very bald, certainly, and the blood will show
+fast enough if you can touch him, Joe.
+
+He takes off his long-flapped coat, and stands up in a long-
+flapped waistcoat, which Sir Roger de Coverley might have worn
+when it was new, picks out a stick, and is ready for Master Joe,
+who loses no time, but begins his old game, whack, whack, whack,
+trying to break down the old man's guard by sheer strength.  But
+it won't do; he catches every blow close by the basket, and
+though he is rather stiff in his returns, after a minute walks
+Joe about the stage, and is clearly a stanch old gamester.  Joe
+now comes in, and making the most of his height, tries to get
+over the old man's guard at half-stick, by which he takes a
+smart blow in the ribs and another on the elbow, and nothing
+more.  And now he loses wind and begins to puff, and the crowd
+laugh.  "Cry 'hold,' Joe; thee'st met thy match!"  Instead of
+taking good advice and getting his wind, Joe loses his temper,
+and strikes at the old man's body.
+
+"Blood, blood!" shout the crowd; "Joe's head's broke!"
+
+Who'd have thought it?  How did it come?  That body-blow left
+Joe's head unguarded for a moment; and with one turn of the
+wrist the old gentleman has picked a neat little bit of skin off
+the middle of his forehead; and though he won't believe it, and
+hammers on for three more blows despite of the shouts, is then
+convinced by the blood trickling into his eye.  Poor Joe is
+sadly crestfallen, and fumbles in his pocket for the other half-
+sovereign, but the old gamester won't have it.  "Keep thy money,
+man, and gi's thy hand," says he; and they shake hands.  But the
+old gamester gives the new hat to the shepherd, and, soon after,
+the half-sovereign to Willum, who thereout decorates his
+sweetheart with ribbons to his heart's content.
+
+"Who can a be?"  "Wur do a cum from?" ask the crowd.  And it
+soon flies about that the old west-country champion, who played
+a tie with Shaw the Lifeguardsman at "Vizes" twenty years
+before, has broken Joe Willis's crown for him.
+
+How my country fair is spinning out!  I see I must skip the
+wrestling; and the boys jumping in sacks, and rolling
+wheelbarrows blindfolded; and the donkey-race, and the fight
+which arose thereout, marring the otherwise peaceful "veast;"
+and the frightened scurrying away of the female feast-goers, and
+descent of Squire Brown, summoned by the wife of one of the
+combatants to stop it; which he wouldn't start to do till he had
+got on his top-boots.  Tom is carried away by old Benjy, dog-
+tired and surfeited with pleasure, as the evening comes on and
+the dancing begins in the booths; and though Willum, and Rachel
+in her new ribbons, and many another good lad and lass don't
+come away just yet, but have a good step out, and enjoy it, and
+get no harm thereby, yet we, being sober folk, will just stroll
+away up through the churchyard, and by the old yew-tree, and get
+a quiet dish of tea and a parley with our gossips, as the steady
+ones of our village do, and so to bed.
+
+That's the fair, true sketch, as far as it goes, of one of the
+larger village feasts in the Vale of Berks, when I was a little
+boy.  They are much altered for the worse, I am told.  I haven't
+been at one these twenty years, but I have been at the statute
+fairs in some west-country towns, where servants are hired, and
+greater abominations cannot be found.  What village feasts have
+come to, I fear, in many cases, may be read in the pages of
+"Yeast" (though I never saw one so bad--thank God!).
+
+Do you want to know why?  It is because, as I said before,
+gentlefolk and farmers have left off joining or taking an
+interest in them.  They don't either subscribe to the prizes, or
+go down and enjoy the fun.
+
+Is this a good or a bad sign?  I hardly know.  Bad, sure enough,
+if it only arises from the further separation of classes
+consequent on twenty years of buying cheap and selling dear, and
+its accompanying overwork; or because our sons and daughters
+have their hearts in London club-life, or so-called "society,"
+instead of in the old English home-duties; because farmers' sons
+are apeing fine gentlemen, and farmers' daughters caring more to
+make bad foreign music than good English cheeses.  Good,
+perhaps, if it be that the time for the old "veast" has gone by;
+that it is no longer the healthy, sound expression of English
+country holiday-making; that, in fact, we, as a nation, have got
+beyond it, and are in a transition state, feeling for and soon
+likely to find some better substitute.
+
+Only I have just got this to say before I quit the text.  Don't
+let reformers of any sort think that they are going really to
+lay hold of the working boys and young men of England by any
+educational grapnel whatever, which isn't some bona fide
+equivalent for the games of the old country "veast" in it;
+something to put in the place of the back-swording and wrestling
+and racing; something to try the muscles of men's bodies, and
+the endurance of their hearts, and to make them rejoice in their
+strength.  In all the new-fangled comprehensive plans which I
+see, this is all left out; and the consequence is, that your
+great mechanics' institutes end in intellectual priggism, and
+your Christian young men's societies in religious Pharisaism.
+
+Well, well, we must bide our time.  Life isn't all beer and
+skittles; but beer and skittles, or something better of the same
+sort, must form a good part of every Englishman's education.  If
+I could only drive this into the heads of you rising
+parliamentary lords, and young swells who "have your ways made
+for you," as the saying is, you, who frequent palaver houses and
+West-end clubs, waiting always ready to strap yourselves on to
+the back of poor dear old John, as soon as the present used-up
+lot (your fathers and uncles), who sit there on the great
+parliamentary-majorities' pack-saddle, and make believe they're
+guiding him with their red-tape bridle, tumble, or have to be
+lifted off!
+
+I don't think much of you yet--I wish I could--though you do
+go talking and lecturing up and down the country to crowded
+audiences, and are busy with all sorts of philanthropic
+intellectualism, and circulating libraries and museums, and
+Heaven only knows what besides, and try to make us think,
+through newspaper reports, that you are, even as we, of the
+working classes.  But bless your hearts, we "ain't so green,"
+though lots of us of all sorts toady you enough certainly, and
+try to make you think so.
+
+I'll tell you what to do now:  instead of all this trumpeting and
+fuss, which is only the old parliamentary-majority dodge over
+again, just you go, each of you (you've plenty of time for it,
+if you'll only give up t'other line), and quietly make three or
+four friends--real friends--among us.  You'll find a little
+trouble in getting at the right sort, because such birds don't
+come lightly to your lure; but found they may be.  Take, say,
+two out of the professions, lawyer, parson, doctor--which you
+will; one out of trade; and three or four out of the working
+classes--tailors, engineers, carpenters, engravers.  There's
+plenty of choice.  Let them be men of your own ages, mind, and
+ask them to your homes; introduce them to your wives and
+sisters, and get introduced to theirs; give them good dinners,
+and talk to them about what is really at the bottom of your
+hearts; and box, and run, and row with them, when you have a
+chance.  Do all this honestly as man to man, and by the time you
+come to ride old John, you'll be able to do something more than
+sit on his back, and may feel his mouth with some stronger
+bridle than a red-tape one.
+
+Ah, if you only would!  But you have got too far out of the
+right rut, I fear.  Too much over-civilization, and the
+deceitfulness of riches.  It is easier for a camel to go through
+the eye of a needle.  More's the pity.  I never came across but
+two of you who could value a man wholly and solely for what was
+in him--who thought themselves verily and indeed of the same
+flesh and blood as John Jones the attorney's clerk, and Bill
+Smith the costermonger, and could act as if they thought so.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III - SUNDRY WARS AND ALLIANCES.
+
+
+
+Poor old Benjy!  The "rheumatiz" has much to answer for all
+through English country-sides, but it never played a scurvier
+trick than in laying thee by the heels, when thou wast yet in a
+green old age.  The enemy, which had long been carrying on a
+sort of border warfare, and trying his strength against Benjy's
+on the battlefield of his hands and legs, now, mustering all his
+forces, began laying siege to the citadel, and overrunning the
+whole country.  Benjy was seized in the back and loins; and
+though he made strong and brave fight, it was soon clear enough
+that all which could be beaten of poor old Benjy would have to
+give in before long.
+
+It was as much as he could do now, with the help of his big
+stick and frequent stops, to hobble down to the canal with
+Master Tom, and bait his hook for him, and sit and watch his
+angling, telling him quaint old country stories; and when Tom
+had no sport, and detecting a rat some hundred yards or so off
+along the bank, would rush off with Toby the turnspit terrier,
+his other faithful companion, in bootless pursuit, he might have
+tumbled in and been drowned twenty times over before Benjy could
+have got near him.
+
+Cheery and unmindful of himself, as Benjy was, this loss of
+locomotive power bothered him greatly.  He had got a new object
+in his old age, and was just beginning to think himself useful
+again in the world.  He feared much, too, lest Master Tom should
+fall back again into the hands of Charity and the women.  So he
+tried everything he could think of to get set up.  He even went
+an expedition to the dwelling of one of those queer mortals, who
+- say what we will, and reason how we will--do cure simple
+people of diseases of one kind or another without the aid of
+physic, and so get to themselves the reputation of using charms,
+and inspire for themselves and their dwellings great respect,
+not to say fear, amongst a simple folk such as the dwellers in
+the Vale of White Horse.  Where this power, or whatever else it
+may be, descends upon the shoulders of a man whose ways are not
+straight, he becomes a nuisance to the neighbourhood--a
+receiver of stolen goods, giver of love-potions, and deceiver of
+silly women--the avowed enemy of law and order, of justices of
+the peace, head-boroughs, and gamekeepers,--such a man, in
+fact, as was recently caught tripping, and deservedly dealt with
+by the Leeds justices, for seducing a girl who had come to him
+to get back a faithless lover, and has been convicted of bigamy
+since then.  Sometimes, however, they are of quite a different
+stamp--men who pretend to nothing, and are with difficulty
+persuaded to exercise their occult arts in the simplest cases.
+
+Of this latter sort was old Farmer Ives, as he was called, the
+"wise man" to whom Benjy resorted (taking Tom with him as
+usual), in the early spring of the year next after the feast
+described in the last chapter.  Why he was called "farmer" I
+cannot say, unless it be that he was the owner of a cow, a pig
+or two, and some poultry, which he maintained on about an acre
+of land inclosed from the middle of a wild common, on which
+probably his father had squatted before lords of manors looked
+as keenly after their rights as they do now.  Here he had lived
+no one knew how long, a solitary man.  It was often rumoured
+that he was to be turned out and his cottage pulled down, but
+somehow it never came to pass; and his pigs and cow went grazing
+on the common, and his geese hissed at the passing children and
+at the heels of the horse of my lord's steward, who often rode
+by with a covetous eye on the inclosure still unmolested.  His
+dwelling was some miles from our village; so Benjy, who was half
+ashamed of his errand, and wholly unable to walk there, had to
+exercise much ingenuity to get the means of transporting himself
+and Tom thither without exciting suspicion.  However, one fine
+May morning he managed to borrow the old blind pony of our
+friend the publican, and Tom persuaded Madam Brown to give him a
+holiday to spend with old Benjy, and to lend them the Squire's
+light cart, stored with bread and cold meat and a bottle of ale.
+And so the two in high glee started behind old Dobbin, and
+jogged along the deep-rutted plashy roads, which had not been
+mended after their winter's wear, towards the dwelling of the
+wizard.  About noon they passed the gate which opened on to the
+large common, and old Dobbin toiled slowly up the hill, while
+Benjy pointed out a little deep dingle on the left, out of which
+welled a tiny stream.  As they crept up the hill the tops of a
+few birch-trees came in sight, and blue smoke curling up through
+their delicate light boughs; and then the little white thatched
+home and inclosed ground of Farmer Ives, lying cradled in the
+dingle, with the gay gorse common rising behind and on both
+sides; while in front, after traversing a gentle slope, the eye
+might travel for miles and miles over the rich vale.  They now
+left the main road and struck into a green track over the common
+marked lightly with wheel and horse-shoe, which led down into
+the dingle and stopped at the rough gate of Farmer Ives.  Here
+they found the farmer, an iron-gray old man, with a bushy
+eyebrow and strong aquiline nose, busied in one of his
+vocations.  He was a horse and cow doctor, and was tending a
+sick beast which had been sent up to be cured.  Benjy hailed him
+as an old friend, and he returned the greeting cordially enough,
+looking however hard for a moment both at Benjy and Tom, to see
+whether there was more in their visit than appeared at first
+sight.  It was a work of some difficulty and danger for Benjy to
+reach the ground, which, however, he managed to do without
+mishap; and then he devoted himself to unharnessing Dobbin and
+turning him out for a graze ("a run" one could not say of that
+virtuous steed) on the common.  This done, he extricated the
+cold provisions from the cart, and they entered the farmer's
+wicket; and he, shutting up the knife with which he was taking
+maggots out of the cow's back and sides, accompanied them
+towards the cottage.  A big old lurcher got up slowly from the
+door-stone, stretching first one hind leg and then the other,
+and taking Tom's caresses and the presence of Toby, who kept,
+however, at a respectful distance, with equal indifference.
+
+"Us be cum to pay 'ee a visit.  I've a been long minded to do't
+for old sake's sake, only I vinds I dwon't get about now as I'd
+used to't.  I be so plaguy bad wi' th' rheumatiz in my back."
+Benjy paused, in hopes of drawing the farmer at once on the
+subject of his ailments without further direct application.
+
+"Ah, I see as you bean't quite so lissom as you was," replied
+the farmer, with a grim smile, as he lifted the latch of his
+door; "we bean't so young as we was, nother on us, wuss luck."
+
+The farmer's cottage was very like those of the better class of
+peasantry in general.  A snug chimney corner with two seats, and
+a small carpet on the hearth, an old flint gun and a pair of
+spurs over the fireplace, a dresser with shelves on which some
+bright pewter plates and crockeryware were arranged, an old
+walnut table, a few chairs and settles, some framed samplers,
+and an old print or two, and a bookcase with some dozen volumes
+on the walls, a rack with flitches of bacon, and other stores
+fastened to the ceiling, and you have the best part of the
+furniture.  No sign of occult art is to be seen, unless the
+bundles of dried herbs hanging to the rack and in the ingle and
+the row of labelled phials on one of the shelves betoken it.
+
+Tom played about with some kittens who occupied the hearth, and
+with a goat who walked demurely in at the open door--while
+their host and Benjy spread the table for dinner--and was soon
+engaged in conflict with the cold meat, to which he did much
+honour.  The two old men's talk was of old comrades and their
+deeds, mute inglorious Miltons of the Vale, and of the doings
+thirty years back, which didn't interest him much, except when
+they spoke of the making of the canal; and then indeed he began
+to listen with all his ears, and learned, to his no small
+wonder, that his dear and wonderful canal had not been there
+always--was not, in fact, so old as Benjy or Farmer Ives, which
+caused a strange commotion in his small brain.
+
+After dinner Benjy called attention to a wart which Tom had on
+the knuckles of his hand, and which the family doctor had been
+trying his skill on without success, and begged the farmer to
+charm it away.  Farmer Ives looked at it, muttered something or
+another over it, and cut some notches in a short stick, which he
+handed to Benjy, giving him instructions for cutting it down on
+certain days, and cautioning Tom not to meddle with the wart for
+a fortnight.  And then they strolled out and sat on a bench in
+the sun with their pipes, and the pigs came up and grunted
+sociably and let Tom scratch them; and the farmer, seeing how he
+liked animals, stood up and held his arms in the air, and gave a
+call, which brought a flock of pigeons wheeling and dashing
+through the birch-trees.  They settled down in clusters on the
+farmer's arms and shoulders, making love to him and scrambling
+over one another's backs to get to his face; and then he threw
+them all off, and they fluttered about close by, and lighted on
+him again and again when he held up his arms.  All the creatures
+about the place were clean and fearless, quite unlike their
+relations elsewhere; and Tom begged to be taught how to make all
+the pigs and cows and poultry in our village tame, at which the
+farmer only gave one of his grim chuckles.
+
+It wasn't till they were just ready to go, and old Dobbin was
+harnessed, that Benjy broached the subject of his rheumatism
+again, detailing his symptoms one by one.  Poor old boy!  He
+hoped the farmer could charm it away as easily as he could Tom's
+wart, and was ready with equal faith to put another notched
+stick into his other pocket, for the cure of his own ailments.
+The physician shook his head, but nevertheless produced a
+bottle, and handed it to Benjy, with instructions for use.  "Not
+as 't'll do 'ee much good--leastways I be afeard not," shading
+his eyes with his hand, and looking up at them in the cart.
+"There's only one thing as I knows on as'll cure old folks like
+you and I o' th' rheumatiz."
+
+"Wot be that then, farmer?" inquired Benjy.
+
+"Churchyard mould," said the old iron-gray man, with another
+chuckle.  And so they said their good-byes and went their ways
+home.  Tom's wart was gone in a fortnight, but not so Benjy's
+rheumatism, which laid him by the heels more and more.  And
+though Tom still spent many an hour with him, as he sat on a
+bench in the sunshine, or by the chimney corner when it was
+cold, he soon had to seek elsewhere for his regular companions.
+
+Tom had been accustomed often to accompany his mother in her
+visits to the cottages, and had thereby made acquaintance with
+many of the village boys of his own age.  There was Job Rudkin,
+son of widow Rudkin, the most bustling woman in the parish.  How
+she could ever have had such a stolid boy as Job for a child
+must always remain a mystery.  The first time Tom went to their
+cottage with his mother, Job was not indoors; but he entered
+soon after, and stood with both hands in his pockets, staring at
+Tom.  Widow Rudkin, who would have had to cross madam to get at
+young Hopeful--a breach of good manners of which she was wholly
+incapable--began a series of pantomime signs, which only
+puzzled him; and at last, unable to contain herself longer,
+burst out with, "Job! Job! where's thy cap?"
+
+"What! bean't 'ee on ma head, mother?" replied Job, slowly
+extricating one hand from a pocket, and feeling for the article
+in question; which he found on his head sure enough, and left
+there, to his mother's horror and Tom's great delight.
+
+Then there was poor Jacob Dodson, the half-witted boy, who
+ambled about cheerfully, undertaking messages and little helpful
+odds and ends for every one, which, however, poor Jacob managed
+always hopelessly to imbrangle.  Everything came to pieces in
+his hands, and nothing would stop in his head. They nicknamed
+him Jacob Doodle-calf.
+
+But above all there was Harry Winburn, the quickest and best boy
+in the parish.  He might be a year older than Tom, but was very
+little bigger, and he was the Crichton of our village boys.  He
+could wrestle and climb and run better than all the rest, and
+learned all that the schoolmaster could teach him faster than
+that worthy at all liked.  He was a boy to be proud of, with his
+curly brown hair, keen gray eye, straight active figure, and
+little ears and hands and feet, "as fine as a lord's," as
+Charity remarked to Tom one day, talking, as usual, great
+nonsense.  Lords' hands and ears and feet are just as ugly as
+other folk's when they are children, as any one may convince
+himself if he likes to look.  Tight boots and gloves, and doing
+nothing with them, I allow make a difference by the time they
+are twenty.
+
+Now that Benjy was laid on the shelf, and his young brothers
+were still under petticoat government, Tom, in search of
+companions, began to cultivate the village boys generally more
+and more.  Squire Brown, be it said, was a true-blue Tory to the
+backbone, and believed honestly that the powers which be were
+ordained of God, and that loyalty and steadfast obedience were
+men's first duties.  Whether it were in consequence or in spite
+of his political creed, I do not mean to give an opinion, though
+I have one; but certain it is that he held therewith divers
+social principles not generally supposed to be true blue in
+colour.  Foremost of these, and the one which the Squire loved
+to propound above all others, was the belief that a man is to be
+valued wholly and solely for that which he is in himself, for
+that which stands up in the four fleshly walls of him, apart
+from clothes, rank, fortune, and all externals whatsoever.
+Which belief I take to be a wholesome corrective of all
+political opinions, and, if held sincerely, to make all opinions
+equally harmless, whether they be blue, red, or green.  As a
+necessary corollary to this belief, Squire Brown held further
+that it didn't matter a straw whether his son associated with
+lords' sons or ploughmen's sons, provided they were brave and
+honest.  He himself had played football and gone bird-nesting
+with the farmers whom he met at vestry and the labourers who
+tilled their fields, and so had his father and grandfather, with
+their progenitors.  So he encouraged Tom in his intimacy with
+the boys of the village, and forwarded it by all means in his
+power, and gave them the run of a close for a playground, and
+provided bats and balls and a football for their sports.
+
+Our village was blessed amongst other things with a well-endowed
+school.  The building stood by itself, apart from the master's
+house, on an angle of ground where three roads met--an old gray
+stone building with a steep roof and mullioned windows.  On one
+of the opposite angles stood Squire Brown's stables and kennel,
+with their backs to the road, over which towered a great elm-
+tree; on the third stood the village carpenter and wheelwright's
+large open shop, and his house and the schoolmaster's, with long
+low eaves, under which the swallows built by scores.
+
+The moment Tom's lessons were over, he would now get him down to
+this corner by the stables, and watch till the boys came out of
+school.  He prevailed on the groom to cut notches for him in the
+bark of the elm so that he could climb into the lower branches;
+and there he would sit watching the school door, and speculating
+on the possibility of turning the elm into a dwelling-place for
+himself and friends, after the manner of the Swiss Family
+Robinson.  But the school hours were long and Tom's patience
+short, so that he soon began to descend into the street, and go
+and peep in at the school door and the wheelwright's shop, and
+look out for something to while away the time.  Now the
+wheelwright was a choleric man, and one fine afternoon,
+returning from a short absence, found Tom occupied with one of
+his pet adzes, the edge of which was fast vanishing under our
+hero's care.  A speedy flight saved Tom from all but one sound
+cuff on the ears; but he resented this unjustifiable
+interruption of his first essays at carpentering, and still more
+the further proceedings of the wheelwright, who cut a switch,
+and hung it over the door of his workshop, threatening to use it
+upon Tom if he came within twenty yards of his gate.  So Tom, to
+retaliate, commenced a war upon the swallows who dwelt under the
+wheelwright's eaves, whom he harassed with sticks and stones;
+and being fleeter of foot than his enemy, escaped all
+punishment, and kept him in perpetual anger.  Moreover, his
+presence about the school door began to incense the master, as
+the boys in that neighbourhood neglected their lessons in
+consequence; and more than once he issued into the porch, rod in
+hand, just as Tom beat a hasty retreat.  And he and the
+wheelwright, laying their heads together, resolved to acquaint
+the Squire with Tom's afternoon occupations; but in order to do
+it with effect, determined to take him captive and lead him away
+to judgment fresh from his evil doings.  This they would have
+found some difficulty in doing, had Tom continued the war
+single-handed, or rather single-footed, for he would have taken
+to the deepest part of Pebbly Brook to escape them; but, like
+other active powers, he was ruined by his alliances.  Poor Jacob
+Doodle-calf could not go to the school with the other boys, and
+one fine afternoon, about three o'clock (the school broke up at
+four), Tom found him ambling about the street, and pressed him
+into a visit to the school-porch.  Jacob, always ready to do
+what he was asked, consented, and the two stole down to the
+school together.  Tom first reconnoitred the wheelwright's shop;
+and seeing no signs of activity, thought all safe in that
+quarter, and ordered at once an advance of all his troops upon
+the schoolporch.  The door of the school was ajar, and the boys
+seated on the nearest bench at once recognized and opened a
+correspondence with the invaders.  Tom, waxing bold, kept
+putting his head into the school and making faces at the master
+when his back was turned.  Poor Jacob, not in the least
+comprehending the situation, and in high glee at finding himself
+so near the school, which he had never been allowed to enter,
+suddenly, in a fit of enthusiasm, pushed by Tom, and ambling
+three steps into the school, stood there, looking round him and
+nodding with a self-approving smile.  The master, who was
+stooping over a boy's slate, with his back to the door, became
+aware of something unusual, and turned quickly round.  Tom
+rushed at Jacob, and began dragging him back by his smock-frock,
+and the master made at them, scattering forms and boys in his
+career.  Even now they might have escaped, but that in the
+porch, barring retreat, appeared the crafty wheelwright, who had
+been watching all their proceedings.  So they were seized, the
+school dismissed, and Tom and Jacob led away to Squire Brown as
+lawful prize, the boys following to the gate in groups, and
+speculating on the result.
+
+The Squire was very angry at first, but the interview, by Tom's
+pleading, ended in a compromise.  Tom was not to go near the
+school till three o'clock, and only then if he had done his own
+lessons well, in which case he was to be the bearer of a note to
+the master from Squire Brown; and the master agreed in such case
+to release ten or twelve of the best boys an hour before the
+time of breaking up, to go off and play in the close.  The
+wheelwright's adzes and swallows were to be for ever respected;
+and that hero and the master withdrew to the servants' hall to
+drink the Squire's health, well satisfied with their day's work.
+
+The second act of Tom's life may now be said to have begun.  The
+war of independence had been over for some time:  none of the
+women now--not even his mother's maid--dared offer to help him
+in dressing or washing.  Between ourselves, he had often at
+first to run to Benjy in an unfinished state of toilet.  Charity
+and the rest of them seemed to take a delight in putting
+impossible buttons and ties in the middle of his back; but he
+would have gone without nether integuments altogether, sooner
+than have had recourse to female valeting.  He had a room to
+himself, and his father gave him sixpence a week pocket-money.
+All this he had achieved by Benjy's advice and assistance.  But
+now he had conquered another step in life--the step which all
+real boys so long to make:  he had got amongst his equals in age
+and strength, and could measure himself with other boys; he
+lived with those whose pursuits and wishes and ways were the
+same in kind as his own.
+
+The little governess who had lately been installed in the house
+found her work grow wondrously easy, for Tom slaved at his
+lessons, in order to make sure of his note to the schoolmaster.
+So there were very few days in the week in which Tom and the
+village boys were not playing in their close by three o'clock.
+Prisoner's base, rounders, high-cock-a-lorum, cricket, football
+- he was soon initiated into the delights of them all; and
+though most of the boys were older than himself, he managed to
+hold his own very well.  He was naturally active and strong, and
+quick of eye and hand, and had the advantage of light shoes and
+well-fitting dress, so that in a short time he could run and
+jump and climb with any of them.
+
+They generally finished their regular games half an hour or so
+before tea-time, and then began trials of skill and strength in
+many ways.  Some of them would catch the Shetland pony who was
+turned out in the field, and get two or three together on his
+back, and the little rogue, enjoying the fun, would gallop off
+for fifty yards, and then turn round, or stop short and shoot
+them on to the turf, and then graze quietly on till he felt
+another load; others played at peg-top or marbles, while a few
+of the bigger ones stood up for a bout at wrestling.  Tom at
+first only looked on at this pastime, but it had peculiar
+attractions for him, and he could not long keep out of it.
+Elbow and collar wrestling, as practised in the western
+counties, was, next to back-swording, the way to fame for the
+youth of the Vale; and all the boys knew the rules of it, and
+were more or less expert.  But Job Rudkin and Harry Winburn were
+the stars--the former stiff and sturdy, with legs like small
+towers; the latter pliant as indiarubber and quick as lightning.
+Day after day they stood foot to foot, and offered first one
+hand and then the other, and grappled and closed, and swayed and
+strained, till a well-aimed crook of the heel or thrust of the
+loin took effect, and a fair back-fall ended the matter.  And
+Tom watched with all his eyes, and first challenged one of the
+less scientific, and threw him; and so one by one wrestled his
+way up to the leaders.
+
+Then indeed for months he had a poor time of it; it was not long
+indeed before he could manage to keep his legs against Job, for
+that hero was slow of offence, and gained his victories chiefly
+by allowing others to throw themselves against his immovable
+legs and loins.  But Harry Winburn was undeniably his master;
+from the first clutch of hands when they stood up, down to the
+last trip which sent him on to his back on the turf, he felt
+that Harry knew more and could do more than he.  Luckily Harry's
+bright unconsciousness and Tom's natural good temper kept them
+from quarrelling; and so Tom worked on and on, and trod more and
+more nearly on Harry's heels, and at last mastered all the
+dodges and falls except one.  This one was Harry's own
+particular invention and pet; he scarcely ever used it except
+when hard pressed, but then out it came, and as sure as it did,
+over went poor Tom.  He thought about that fall at his meals, in
+his walks, when he lay awake in bed, in his dreams, but all to
+no purpose, until Harry one day in his open way suggested to him
+how he thought it should be met; and in a week from that time
+the boys were equal, save only the slight difference of strength
+in Harry's favour, which some extra ten months of age gave.  Tom
+had often afterwards reason to be thankful for that early
+drilling, and above all, for having mastered Harry Winburn's
+fall.
+
+Besides their home games, on Saturdays the boys would wander all
+over the neighbourhood; sometimes to the downs, or up to the
+camp, where they cut their initials out in the springy turf, and
+watched the hawks soaring, and the "peert" bird, as Harry
+Winburn called the gray plover, gorgeous in his wedding
+feathers; and so home, racing down the Manger with many a roll
+among the thistles, or through Uffington Wood to watch the fox
+cubs playing in the green rides; sometimes to Rosy Brook, to cut
+long whispering reeds which grew there, to make pan-pipes of;
+sometimes to Moor Mills, where was a piece of old forest land,
+with short browsed turf and tufted brambly thickets stretching
+under the oaks, amongst which rumour declared that a raven, last
+of his race, still lingered; or to the sand-hills, in vain quest
+of rabbits; and bird-nesting in the season, anywhere and
+everywhere.
+
+The few neighbours of the Squire's own rank every now and then
+would shrug their shoulders as they drove or rode by a party of
+boys with Tom in the middle, carrying along bulrushes or
+whispering reeds, or great bundles of cowslip and meadow-sweet,
+or young starlings or magpies, or other spoil of wood, brook, or
+meadow; and Lawyer Red-tape might mutter to Squire Straight-back
+at the Board that no good would come of the young Browns, if
+they were let run wild with all the dirty village boys, whom the
+best farmers' sons even would not play with.  And the squire
+might reply with a shake of his head that his sons only mixed
+with their equals, and never went into the village without the
+governess or a footman.  But, luckily, Squire Brown was full as
+stiffbacked as his neighbours, and so went on his own way; and
+Tom and his younger brothers, as they grew up, went on playing
+with the village boys, without the idea of equality or
+inequality (except in wrestling, running, and climbing) ever
+entering their heads; as it doesn't till it's put there by Jack
+Nastys or fine ladies' maids.
+
+I don't mean to say it would be the case in all villages, but it
+certainly was so in this one:  the village boys were full as
+manly and honest, and certainly purer, than those in a higher
+rank; and Tam got more harm from his equals in his first
+fortnight at a private school, where he went when he was nine
+years old, than he had from his village friends from the day he
+left Charity's apron-strings.
+
+Great was the grief amongst the village school-boys when Tom
+drove off with the Squire, one August morning, to meet the coach
+on his way to school.  Each of them had given him some little
+present of the best that he had, and his small private box was
+full of peg-taps, white marbles (called "alley-taws" in the
+Vale), screws, birds' eggs, whip-cord, jews-harps, and other
+miscellaneous boys' wealth.  Poor Jacob Doodle-calf, in floods
+of tears, had pressed upon him with spluttering earnestness his
+lame pet hedgehog (he had always some poor broken-down beast or
+bird by him); but this Tom had been obliged to refuse, by the
+Squire's order.  He had given them all a great tea under the big
+elm in their playground, for which Madam Brown had supplied the
+biggest cake ever seen in our village; and Tom was really as
+sorry to leave them as they to lose him, but his sorrow was not
+unmixed with the pride and excitement of making a new step in
+life.
+
+And this feeling carried him through his first parting with his
+mother better than could have been expected.  Their love was as
+fair and whole as human love can be--perfect self-sacrifice on
+the one side meeting a young and true heart on the other.  It is
+not within the scope of my book, however, to speak of family
+relations, or I should have much to say on the subject of
+English mothers--ay, and of English fathers, and sisters, and
+brothers too.  Neither have I room to speak of our private
+schools.  What I have to say is about public schools--those
+much-abused and much-belauded institutions peculiar to England.
+So we must hurry through Master Tom's year at a private school
+as fast as we can.
+
+It was a fair average specimen, kept by a gentleman, with
+another gentleman as second master; but it was little enough of
+the real work they did--merely coming into school when lessons
+were prepared and all ready to be heard.  The whole discipline
+of the school out of lesson hours was in the hands of the two
+ushers, one of whom was always with the boys in their
+playground, in the school, at meals--in fact, at all times and
+every where, till they were fairly in bed at night.
+
+Now the theory of private schools is (or was) constant
+supervision out of school--therein differing fundamentally from
+that of public schools.
+
+It may be right or wrong; but if right, this supervision surely
+ought to be the especial work of the head-master, the
+responsible person.  The object of all schools is not to ram
+Latin and Greek into boys, but to make them good English boys,
+good future citizens; and by far the most important part of that
+work must be done, or not done, out of school hours.  To leave
+it, therefore, in the hands of inferior men, is just giving up
+the highest and hardest part of the work of education.  Were I a
+private school-master, I should say, Let who will hear the boys
+their lessons, but let me live with them when they are at play
+and rest.
+
+The two ushers at Tom's first school were not gentlemen, and
+very poorly educated, and were only driving their poor trade of
+usher to get such living as they could out of it.  They were not
+bad men, but had little heart for their work, and of course were
+bent on making it as easy as possible.  One of the methods by
+which they endeavoured to accomplish this was by encouraging
+tale-bearing, which had become a frightfully common vice in the
+school in consequence, and had sapped all the foundations of
+school morality.  Another was, by favouring grossly the biggest
+boys, who alone could have given them much trouble; whereby
+those young gentlemen became most abominable tyrants, oppressing
+the little boys in all the small mean ways which prevail in
+private schools.
+
+Poor little Tom was made dreadfully unhappy in his first week by
+a catastrophe which happened to his first letter home.  With
+huge labour he had, on the very evening of his arrival, managed
+to fill two sides of a sheet of letter-paper with assurances of
+his love for dear mamma, his happiness at school, and his
+resolves to do all she would wish.  This missive, with the help
+of the boy who sat at the desk next him, also a new arrival, he
+managed to fold successfully; but this done, they were sadly put
+to it for means of sealing.  Envelopes were then unknown; they
+had no wax, and dared not disturb the stillness of the evening
+school-room by getting up and going to ask the usher for some.
+At length Tom's friend, being of an ingenious turn of mind,
+suggested sealing with ink; and the letter was accordingly stuck
+down with a blob of ink, and duly handed by Tom, on his way to
+bed, to the housekeeper to be posted.  It was not till four days
+afterwards that the good dame sent for him, and produced the
+precious letter and some wax, saying, "O Master Brown, I forgot
+to tell you before, but your letter isn't sealed."  Poor Tom
+took the wax in silence and sealed his letter, with a huge lump
+rising in his throat during the process, and then ran away to a
+quiet corner of the playground, and burst into an agony of
+tears.  The idea of his mother waiting day after day for the
+letter he had promised her at once, and perhaps thinking him
+forgetful of her, when he had done all in his power to make good
+his promise, was as bitter a grief as any which he had to
+undergo for many a long year.  His wrath, then, was
+proportionately violent when he was aware of two boys, who
+stopped close by him, and one of whom, a fat gaby of a fellow,
+pointed at him and called him "Young mammy-sick!"  Whereupon Tom
+arose, and giving vent thus to his grief and shame and rage,
+smote his derider on the nose; and made it bleed; which sent
+that young worthy howling to the usher, who reported Tom for
+violent and unprovoked assault and battery.  Hitting in the face
+was a felony punishable with flogging, other hitting only a
+misdemeanour--a distinction not altogether clear in principle.
+Tom, however, escaped the penalty by pleading primum tempus; and
+having written a second letter to his mother, inclosing some
+forget-me-nots, which he picked on their first half-holiday
+walk, felt quite happy again, and began to enjoy vastly a good
+deal of his new life.
+
+These half-holiday walks were the great events of the week.  The
+whole fifty boys started after dinner with one of the ushers for
+Hazeldown, which was distant some mile or so from the school.
+Hazeldown measured some three miles round, and in the
+neighbourhood were several woods full of all manner of birds and
+butterflies.  The usher walked slowly round the down with such
+boys as liked to accompany him; the rest scattered in all
+directions, being only bound to appear again when the usher had
+completed his round, and accompany him home.  They were
+forbidden, however, to go anywhere except on the down and into
+the woods; the village had been especially prohibited, where
+huge bull's-eyes and unctuous toffy might be procured in
+exchange for coin of the realm.
+
+Various were the amusements to which the boys then betook
+themselves.  At the entrance of the down there was a steep
+hillock, like the barrows of Tom's own downs.  This mound was
+the weekly scene of terrific combats, at a game called by the
+queer name of "mud-patties."  The boys who played divided into
+sides under different leaders, and one side occupied the mound.
+Then, all parties having provided themselves with many sods of
+turf, cut with their bread-and-cheese knives, the side which
+remained at the bottom proceeded to assault the mound, advancing
+up on all sides under cover of a heavy fire of turfs, and then
+struggling for victory with the occupants, which was theirs as
+soon as they could, even for a moment, clear the summit, when
+they in turn became the besieged.  It was a good, rough, dirty
+game, and of great use in counteracting the sneaking tendencies
+of the school.  Then others of the boys spread over the downs,
+looking for the holes of humble-bees and mice, which they dug up
+without mercy, often (I regret to say) killing and skinning the
+unlucky mice, and (I do not regret to say) getting well stung by
+the bumble-bees.  Others went after butterflies and birds' eggs
+in their seasons; and Tom found on Hazeldown, for the first
+time, the beautiful little blue butterfly with golden spots on
+his wings, which he had never seen on his own downs, and dug out
+his first sand-martin's nest.  This latter achievement resulted
+in a flogging, for the sand-martins built in a high bank close
+to the village, consequently out of bounds; but one of the
+bolder spirits of the school, who never could be happy unless he
+was doing something to which risk was attached, easily persuaded
+Tom to break bounds and visit the martins' bank.  From whence it
+being only a step to the toffy shop, what could be more simple
+than to go on there and fill their pockets; or what more certain
+than that on their return, a distribution of treasure having
+been made, the usher should shortly detect the forbidden smell
+of bull's-eyes, and, a search ensuing, discover the state of the
+breeches-pockets of Tom and his ally?
+
+This ally of Tom's was indeed a desperate hero in the sight of
+the boys, and feared as one who dealt in magic, or something
+approaching thereto.  Which reputation came to him in this wise.
+The boys went to bed at eight, and, of course, consequently lay
+awake in the dark for an hour or two, telling ghost-stories by
+turns.  One night when it came to his turn, and he had dried up
+their souls by his story, he suddenly declared that he would
+make a fiery hand appear on the door; and to the astonishment
+and terror of the boys in his room, a hand, or something like
+it, in pale light, did then and there appear.  The fame of this
+exploit having spread to the other rooms, and being discredited
+there, the young necromancer declared that the same wonder would
+appear in all the rooms in turn, which it accordingly did; and
+the whole circumstances having been privately reported to one of
+the ushers as usual, that functionary, after listening about at
+the doors of the rooms, by a sudden descent caught the performer
+in his night-shirt, with a box of phosphorus in his guilty hand.
+Lucifer-matches and all the present facilities for getting
+acquainted with fire were then unknown--the very name of
+phosphorus had something diabolic in it to the boy-mind; so
+Tom's ally, at the cost of a sound flogging, earned what many
+older folk covet much--the very decided fear of most of his
+companions.
+
+He was a remarkable boy, and by no means a bad one.  Tom stuck
+to him till he left, and got into many scrapes by so doing.  But
+he was the great opponent of the tale-bearing habits of the
+school, and the open enemy of the ushers; and so worthy of all
+support.
+
+Tom imbibed a fair amount of Latin and Greek at the school, but
+somehow, on the whole, it didn't suit him, or he it, and in the
+holidays he was constantly working the Squire to send him at
+once to a public school.  Great was his joy then, when in the
+middle of his third half-year, in October 183-, a fever broke
+out in the village, and the master having himself slightly
+sickened of it, the whole of the boys were sent off at a day's
+notice to their respective homes.
+
+The Squire was not quite so pleased as Master Tom to see that
+young gentleman's brown, merry face appear at home, some two
+months before the proper time, for the Christmas holidays; and
+so, after putting on his thinking cap, he retired to his study
+and wrote several letters, the result of which was that, one
+morning at the breakfast-table, about a fortnight after Tom's
+return, he addressed his wife with--"My dear, I have arranged
+that Tom shall go to Rugby at once, for the last six weeks of
+this half-year, instead of wasting them in riding and loitering
+about home.  It is very kind of the doctor to allow it.  Will
+you see that his things are all ready by Friday, when I shall
+take him up to town, and send him down the next day by himself."
+
+Mrs. Brown was prepared for the announcement, and merely
+suggested a doubt whether Tom were yet old enough to travel by
+himself.  However, finding both father and son against her on
+this point, she gave in, like a wise woman, and proceeded to
+prepare Tom's kit for his launch into a public school.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV - THE STAGE COACH.
+
+
+
+"Let the steam-pot hiss till it's hot;
+Give me the speed of the Tantivy trot."
+Coaching Song, by R.E.E. Warburton, Esq.
+
+
+"Now, sir, time to get up, if you please.  Tally-ho coach for
+Leicester'll be round in half an hour, and don't wait for
+nobody."  So spake the boots of the Peacock Inn Islington, at
+half-past two o'clock on the morning of a day in the early part
+of November 183-, giving Tom at the same time a shake by the
+shoulder, and then putting down a candle; and carrying off his
+shoes to clean.
+
+Tom and his father arrived in town from Berkshire the day
+before, and finding, on inquiry, that the Birmingham coaches
+which ran from the city did not pass through Rugby, but
+deposited their passengers at Dunchurch, a village three miles
+distant on the main road, where said passengers had to wait for
+the Oxford and Leicester coach in the evening, or to take a
+post-chaise, had resolved that Tom should travel down by the
+Tally-ho, which diverged from the main road and passed through
+Rugby itself.  And as the Tally-ho was an early coach, they had
+driven out to the Peacock to be on the road.
+
+Tom had never been in London, and would have liked to have
+stopped at the Belle Savage, where they had been put down by the
+Star, just at dusk, that he might have gone roving about those
+endless, mysterious, gas-lit streets, which, with their glare
+and hum and moving crowds, excited him so that he couldn't talk
+even.  But as soon as he found that the Peacock arrangement
+would get him to Rugby by twelve o'clock in the day, whereas
+otherwise he wouldn't be there till the evening, all other plans
+melted away, his one absorbing aim being to become a public
+school-boy as fast as possible, and six hours sooner or later
+seeming to him of the most alarming importance.
+
+Tom and his father had alighted at the Peacock at about seven in
+the evening; and having heard with unfeigned joy the paternal
+order, at the bar, of steaks and oyster-sauce for supper in half
+an hour, and seen his father seated cozily by the bright fire in
+the coffee-room with the paper in his hand, Tom had run out to
+see about him, had wondered at all the vehicles passing and
+repassing, and had fraternized with the boots and hostler, from
+whom he ascertained that the Tally-ho was a tip-top goer--ten
+miles an hour including stoppages--and so punctual that all the
+road set their clocks by her.
+
+Then being summoned to supper, he had regaled himself in one of
+the bright little boxes of the Peacock coffee-room, on the beef-
+steak and unlimited oyster-sauce and brown stout (tasted then
+for the first time--a day to be marked for ever by Tom with a
+white stone); had at first attended to the excellent advice
+which his father was bestowing on him from over his glass of
+steaming brandy-and-water, and then began nodding, from the
+united effects of the stout, the fire, and the lecture; till the
+Squire, observing Tom's state, and remembering that it was
+nearly nine o'clock, and that the Tally-ho left at three, sent
+the little fellow off to the chambermaid, with a shake of the
+hand (Tom having stipulated in the morning before starting that
+kissing should now cease between them), and a few parting words:
+
+"And now, Tom, my boy," said the Squire, "remember you are
+going, at your own earnest request, to be chucked into this
+great school, like a young bear, with all your troubles before
+you--earlier than we should have sent you perhaps.  If schools
+are what they were in my time, you'll see a great many cruel
+blackguard things done, and hear a deal of foul, bad talk.  But
+never fear.  You tell the truth, keep a brave and kind heart,
+and never listen to or say anything you wouldn't have your
+mother and sister hear, and you'll never feel ashamed to come
+home, or we to see you."
+
+The allusion to his mother made Tom feel rather choky, and he
+would have liked to have hugged his father well, if it hadn't
+been for the recent stipulation.
+
+As it was, he only squeezed his father's hand, and looked
+bravely up and said, "I'll try, father."
+
+"I know you will, my boy.  Is your money all safe?
+
+"Yes," said Tom, diving into one pocket to make sure.
+
+"And your keys?" said the Squire.
+
+"All right," said Tom, diving into the other pocket.
+
+"Well, then, good-night.  God bless you!  I'll tell boots to
+call you, and be up to see you off."
+
+Tom was carried off by the chambermaid in a brown study, from
+which he was roused in a clean little attic, by that buxom
+person calling him a little darling and kissing him as she left
+the room; which indignity he was too much surprised to resent.
+And still thinking of his father's last words, and the look with
+which they were spoken, he knelt down and prayed that, come what
+might, he might never bring shame or sorrow on the dear folk at
+home.
+
+Indeed, the Squire's last words deserved to have their effect,
+for they had been the result of much anxious thought.  All the
+way up to London he had pondered what he should say to Tom by
+way of parting advice--something that the boy could keep in his
+head ready for use.  By way of assisting meditation, he had even
+gone the length of taking out his flint and steel and tinder,
+and hammering away for a quarter of an hour till he had
+manufactured a light for a long Trichinopoli cheroot, which he
+silently puffed, to the no small wonder of coachee, who was an
+old friend, and an institution on the Bath road, and who always
+expected a talk on the prospects and doings, agricultural and
+social, of the whole country, when he carried the Squire.
+
+To condense the Squire's meditation, it was somewhat as follows:
+"I won't tell him to read his Bible, and love and serve God; if
+he don't do that for his mother's sake and teaching, he won't
+for mine.  Shall I go into the sort of temptations he'll meet
+with?  No, I can't do that.  Never do for an old fellow to go
+into such things with a boy.  He won't understand me.  Do him
+more harm than good, ten to one.  Shall I tell him to mind his
+work, and say he's sent to school to make himself a good
+scholar?  Well, but he isn't sent to school for that--at any
+rate, not for that mainly.  I don't care a straw for Greek
+particles, or the digamma; no more does his mother.  What is he
+sent to school for?  Well, partly because he wanted so to go.
+If he'll only turn out a brave, helpful, truth-telling
+Englishman, and a gentleman, and a Christian, that's all I
+want," thought the Squire; and upon this view of the case he
+framed his last words of advice to Tom, which were well enough
+suited to his purpose.
+
+For they were Tom's first thoughts as he tumbled out of bed at
+the summons of boots, and proceeded rapidly to wash and dress
+himself.  At ten minutes to three he was down in the coffee-room
+in his stockings, carrying his hat-box, coat, and comforter in
+his hand; and there he found his father nursing a bright fire,
+and a cup of hot coffee and a hard biscuit on the table.
+
+"Now, then, Tom, give us your things here, and drink this.
+There's nothing like starting warm, old fellow."
+
+Tom addressed himself to the coffee, and prattled away while he
+worked himself into his shoes and his greatcoat, well warmed
+through--a Petersham coat with velvet collar, made tight after
+the abominable fashion of those days.  And just as he is
+swallowing his last mouthful, winding his comforter round his
+throat, and tucking the ends into the breast of his coat, the
+horn sounds; boots looks in and says, "Tally-ho, sir;" and they
+hear the ring and the rattle of the four fast trotters and the
+town-made drag, as it dashes up to the Peacock.
+
+"Anything for us, Bob?" says the burly guard, dropping down from
+behind, and slapping himself across the chest.
+
+"Young gen'lm'n, Rugby; three parcels, Leicester; hamper o'
+game, Rugby," answers hostler.
+
+"Tell young gent to look alive," says guard, opening the hind-
+boot and shooting in the parcels after examining them by the
+lamps.  "Here; shove the portmanteau up a-top.  I'll fasten him
+presently. --Now then, sir, jump up behind."
+
+"Good-bye, father--my love at home."  A last shake of the hand.
+Up goes Tom, the guard catching his hatbox and holding on with
+one hand, while with the other he claps the horn to his mouth.
+Toot, toot, toot! the hostlers let go their heads, the four bays
+plunge at the collar, and away goes the Tally-ho into the
+darkness, forty-five seconds from the time they pulled up.
+Hostler, boots, and the Squire stand looking after them under
+the Peacock lamp.
+
+"Sharp work!" says the Squire, and goes in again to his bed, the
+coach being well out of sight and hearing.
+
+Tom stands up on the coach and looks back at his father's figure
+as long as he can see it; and then the guard, having disposed of
+his luggage, comes to an anchor, and finishes his buttonings and
+other preparations for facing the three hours before dawn--no
+joke for those who minded cold, on a fast coach in November, in
+the reign of his late Majesty.
+
+I sometimes think that you boys of this generation are a deal
+tenderer fellows than we used to be.  At any rate you're much
+more comfortable travellers, for I see every one of you with his
+rug or plaid, and other dodges for preserving the caloric, and
+most of you going in, those fuzzy, dusty, padded first-class
+carriages.  It was another affair altogether, a dark ride on the
+top of the Tally-ho, I can tell you, in a tight Petersham coat,
+and your feet dangling six inches from the floor.  Then you knew
+what cold was, and what it was to be without legs, for not a bit
+of feeling had you in them after the first half-hour.  But it
+had its pleasures, the old dark ride.  First there was the
+consciousness of silent endurance, so dear to every Englishman--
+of standing out against something, and not giving in.  Then
+there was the music of the rattling harness, and the ring of the
+horses' feet on the hard road, and the glare of the two bright
+lamps through the steaming hoar frost, over the leaders' ears,
+into the darkness, and the cheery toot of the guard's horn, to
+warn some drowsy pikeman or the hostler at the next change; and
+the looking forward to daylight; and last, but not least, the
+delight of returning sensation in your toes.
+
+Then the break of dawn and the sunrise, where can they be ever
+seen in perfection but from a coach roof?  You want motion and
+change and music to see them in their glory--not the music of
+singing men and singing women, but good, silent music, which
+sets itself in your own head, the accompaniment of work and
+getting over the ground.
+
+The Tally-ho is past St. Albans, and Tom is enjoying the ride,
+though half-frozen.  The guard, who is alone with him on the
+back of the coach, is silent, but has muffled Tom's feet up in
+straw, and put the end of an oat-sack over his knees.  The
+darkness has driven him inwards, and he has gone over his little
+past life, and thought of all his doings and promises, and of
+his mother and sister, and his father's last words; and has made
+fifty good resolutions, and means to bear himself like a brave
+Brown as he is, though a young one.  Then he has been forward
+into the mysterious boy-future, speculating as to what sort of
+place Rugby is, and what they do there, and calling up all the
+stories of public schools which he has heard from big boys in
+the holidays.  He is choke-full of hope and life,
+notwithstanding the cold, and kicks his heels against the back-
+board, and would like to sing, only he doesn't know how his
+friend the silent guard might take it.
+
+And now the dawn breaks at the end of the fourth stage, and the
+coach pulls up at a little roadside inn with huge stables
+behind.  There is a bright fire gleaming through the red
+curtains of the bar window, and the door is open.  The coachman
+catches his whip into a double thong, and throws it to the
+hostler; the steam of the horses rises straight up into the air.
+He has put them along over the last two miles, and is two
+minutes before his time.  He rolls down from the box and into
+the inn.  The guard rolls off behind.  "Now, sir," says he to
+Tom, "you just jump down, and I'll give you a drop of something
+to keep the cold out."
+
+Tom finds a difficulty in jumping, or indeed in finding the top
+of the wheel with his feet, which may be in the next world for
+all he feels; so the guard picks him off the coach top, and sets
+him on his legs, and they stump off into the bar, and join the
+coachman and the other outside passengers.
+
+Here a fresh-looking barmaid serves them each with a glass of
+early purl as they stand before the fire, coachman and guard
+exchanging business remarks.  The purl warms the cockles of
+Tom's heart, and makes him cough.
+
+"Rare tackle that, sir, of a cold morning," says the coachman,
+smiling.  "Time's up."  They are out again and up; coachee the
+last, gathering the reins into his hands and talking to Jem the
+hostler about the mare's shoulder, and then swinging himself up
+on to the box--the horses dashing off in a canter before he
+falls into his seat.  Toot-toot-tootle-too goes the horn, and
+away they are again, five-and-thirty miles on their road (nearly
+half-way to Rugby, thinks Tom), and the prospect of breakfast at
+the end of the stage.
+
+And now they begin to see, and the early life of the country-
+side comes out--a market cart or two; men in smock-frocks going
+to their work, pipe in mouth, a whiff of which is no bad smell
+this bright morning.  The sun gets up, and the mist shines like
+silver gauze.  They pass the hounds jogging along to a distant
+meet, at the heels of the huntsman's back, whose face is about
+the colour of the tails of his old pink, as he exchanges
+greetings with coachman and guard.  Now they pull up at a lodge,
+and take on board a well-muffled-up sportsman, with his gun-case
+and carpet-bag,  An early up-coach meets them, and the coachmen
+gather up their horses, and pass one another with the accustomed
+lift of the elbow, each team doing eleven miles an hour, with a
+mile to spare behind if necessary.  And here comes breakfast.
+
+"Twenty minutes here, gentlemen," says the coachman, as they
+pull up at half-past seven at the inn-door.
+
+Have we not endured nobly this morning? and is not this a worthy
+reward for much endurance?  There is the low, dark wainscoted
+room hung with sporting prints; the hat-stand (with a whip or
+two standing up in it belonging to bagmen who are still snug in
+bed) by the door; the blazing fire, with the quaint old glass
+over the mantelpiece, in which is stuck a large card with the
+list of the meets for the week of the county hounds; the table
+covered with the whitest of cloths and of china, and bearing a
+pigeon-pie, ham, round of cold boiled beef cut from a mammoth
+ox, and the great loaf of household bread on a wooden trencher.
+And here comes in the stout head waiter, puffing under a tray of
+hot viands--kidneys and a steak, transparent rashers and
+poached eggs, buttered toast and muffins, coffee and tea, all
+smoking hot.  The table can never hold it all.  The cold meats
+are removed to the sideboard--they were only put on for show
+and to give us an appetite.  And now fall on, gentlemen all.  It
+is a well-known sporting-house, and the breakfasts are famous.
+Two or three men in pink, on their way to the meet, drop in, and
+are very jovial and sharp-set, as indeed we all are.
+
+"Tea or coffee, sir?" says head waiter, coming round to Tom.
+
+"Coffee, please," says Tom, with his mouth full of muffin and
+kidney.  Coffee is a treat to him, tea is not.
+
+Our coachman, I perceive, who breakfasts with us, is a cold beef
+man.  He also eschews hot potations, and addicts himself to a
+tankard of ale, which is brought him by the barmaid.  Sportsman
+looks on approvingly, and orders a ditto for himself.
+
+Tom has eaten kidney and pigeon-pie, and imbibed coffee, till
+his little skin is as tight as a drum; and then has the further
+pleasure of paying head waiter out of his own purse, in a
+dignified manner, and walks out before the inn-door to see the
+horses put to.  This is done leisurely and in a highly-finished
+manner by the hostlers, as if they enjoyed the not being
+hurried.  Coachman comes out with his waybill, and puffing a fat
+cigar which the sportsman has given him.  Guard emerges from the
+tap, where he prefers breakfasting, licking round a tough-
+looking doubtful cheroot, which you might tie round your finger,
+and three whiffs of which would knock any one else out of time.
+
+The pinks stand about the inn-door lighting cigars and waiting
+to see us start, while their hacks are led up and down the
+market-place, on which the inn looks.  They all know our
+sportsman, and we feel a reflected credit when we see him
+chatting and laughing with them.
+
+"Now, sir, please," says the coachman.  All the rest of the
+passengers are up; the guard is locking up the hind-boot.
+
+"A good run to you!" says the sportsman to the pinks, and is by
+the coachman's side in no time.
+
+"Let 'em go, Dick!"  The hostlers fly back, drawing off the
+cloths from their glossy loins, and away we go through the
+market-place and down the High Street, looking in at the first-
+floor windows, and seeing several worthy burgesses shaving
+thereat; while all the shopboys who are cleaning the windows,
+and housemaids who are doing the steps, stop and look pleased as
+we rattle past, as if we were a part of their legitimate
+morning's amusement.  We clear the town, and are well out
+between the hedgerows again as the town clock strikes eight.
+
+The sun shines almost warmly, and breakfast has oiled all
+springs and loosened all tongues.  Tom is encouraged by a remark
+or two of the guard's between the puffs of his oily cheroot, and
+besides is getting tired of not talking.  He is too full of his
+destination to talk about anything else, and so asks the guard
+if he knows Rugby.
+
+"Goes through it every day of my life.  Twenty minutes afore
+twelve down--ten o'clock up."
+
+"What sort of place is it, please?" says Tom.
+
+Guard looks at him with a comical expression.  "Werry out-o'-
+the-way place, sir; no paving to streets, nor no lighting.
+'Mazin' big horse and cattle fair in autumn--lasts a week--
+just over now.  Takes town a week to get clean after it.
+Fairish hunting country.  But slow place, sir, slow place-off
+the main road, you see--only three coaches a day, and one on
+'em a two-oss wan, more like a hearse nor a coach--Regulator--
+comes from Oxford.  Young genl'm'n at school calls her Pig and
+Whistle, and goes up to college by her (six miles an hour) when
+they goes to enter.  Belong to school, sir?"
+
+"Yes," says Tom, not unwilling for a moment that the guard
+should think him an old boy.  But then, having some qualms as to
+the truth of the assertion, and seeing that if he were to assume
+the character of an old boy he couldn't go on asking the
+questions he wanted, added--"That is to say, I'm on my way
+there.  I'm a new boy."
+
+The guard looked as if he knew this quite as well as Tom.
+
+"You're werry late, sir," says the guard; "only six weeks to-day
+to the end of the half."  Tom assented.  "We takes up fine loads
+this day six weeks, and Monday and Tuesday arter.  Hopes we
+shall have the pleasure of carrying you back."
+
+Tom said he hoped they would; but he thought within himself that
+his fate would probably be the Pig and Whistle.
+
+"It pays uncommon cert'nly," continues the guard.  "Werry free
+with their cash is the young genl'm'n.  But, Lor' bless you, we
+gets into such rows all 'long the road, what wi' their pea-
+shooters, and long whips, and hollering, and upsetting every one
+as comes by, I'd a sight sooner carry one or two on 'em, sir, as
+I may be a-carryin' of you now, than a coach-load."
+
+"What do they do with the pea-shooters?" inquires Tom.
+
+"Do wi' 'em!  Why, peppers every one's faces as we comes near,
+'cept the young gals, and breaks windows wi' them too, some on
+'em shoots so hard.  Now 'twas just here last June, as we was a-
+driving up the first-day boys, they was mendin' a quarter-mile
+of road, and there was a lot of Irish chaps, reg'lar roughs, a-
+breaking stones.  As we comes up, 'Now, boys,' says young gent
+on the box (smart young fellow and desper't reckless), 'here's
+fun!  Let the Pats have it about the ears.'  'God's sake sir!'
+says Bob (that's my mate the coachman); 'don't go for to shoot
+at 'em.  They'll knock us off the coach.'  'Damme, coachee,'
+says young my lord, 'you ain't afraid. --Hoora, boys! let 'em
+have it.'  'Hoora!' sings out the others, and fill their mouths
+choke-full of peas to last the whole line.  Bob, seeing as 'twas
+to come, knocks his hat over his eyes, hollers to his osses, and
+shakes 'em up; and away we goes up to the line on 'em, twenty
+miles an hour.  The Pats begin to hoora too, thinking it was a
+runaway; and first lot on 'em stands grinnin' and wavin' their
+old hats as we comes abreast on 'em; and then you'd ha' laughed
+to see how took aback and choking savage they looked, when they
+gets the peas a-stinging all over 'em.  But bless you, the laugh
+weren't all of our side, sir, by a long way.  We was going so
+fast, and they was so took aback, that they didn't take what was
+up till we was half-way up the line.  Then 'twas, 'Look out
+all!' surely.  They howls all down the line fit to frighten you;
+some on 'em runs arter us and tries to clamber up behind, only
+we hits 'em over the fingers and pulls their hands off; one as
+had had it very sharp act'ly runs right at the leaders, as
+though he'd ketch 'em by the heads, only luck'ly for him he
+misses his tip and comes over a heap o' stones first.  The rest
+picks up stones, and gives it us right away till we gets out of
+shot, the young gents holding out werry manful with the pea-
+shooters and such stones as lodged on us, and a pretty many
+there was too.  Then Bob picks hisself up again, and looks at
+young gent on box werry solemn.  Bob'd had a rum un in the ribs,
+which'd like to ha' knocked him off the box, or made him drop
+the reins.  Young gent on box picks hisself up, and so does we
+all, and looks round to count damage.  Box's head cut open and
+his hat gone; 'nother young gent's hat gone; mine knocked in at
+the side, and not one on us as wasn't black and blue somewheres
+or another, most on 'em all over.  Two pound ten to pay for
+damage to paint, which they subscribed for there and then, and
+give Bob and me a extra half-sovereign each; but I wouldn't go
+down that line again not for twenty half-sovereigns."  And the
+guard shook his head slowly, and got up and blew a clear, brisk
+toot-toot.
+
+"What fun!" said Tom, who could scarcely contain his pride at
+this exploit of his future school-fellows.  He longed already
+for the end of the half, that he might join them.
+
+"'Taint such good fun, though, sir, for the folk as meets the
+coach, nor for we who has to go back with it next day.  Them
+Irishers last summer had all got stones ready for us, and was
+all but letting drive, and we'd got two reverend gents aboard
+too.  We pulled up at the beginning of the line, and pacified
+them, and we're never going to carry no more pea-shooters,
+unless they promises not to fire where there's a line of Irish
+chaps a-stonebreaking."  The guard stopped and pulled away at
+his cheroot, regarding Tom benignantly the while.
+
+"Oh, don't stop!  Tell us something more about the pea-
+shooting."
+
+"Well, there'd like to have been a pretty piece of work over it
+at Bicester, a while back.  We was six mile from the town, when
+we meets an old square-headed gray-haired yeoman chap, a-jogging
+along quite quiet.  He looks up at the coach, and just then a
+pea hits him on the nose, and some catches his cob behind and
+makes him dance up on his hind legs.  I see'd the old boy's face
+flush and look plaguy awkward, and I thought we was in for
+somethin' nasty.
+
+"He turns his cob's head and rides quietly after us just out of
+shot.  How that 'ere cob did step!  We never shook him off not a
+dozen yards in the six miles.  At first the young gents was
+werry lively on him; but afore we got in, seeing how steady the
+old chap come on, they was quite quiet, and laid their heads
+together what they should do.  Some was for fighting, some for
+axing his pardon.  He rides into the town close after us, comes
+up when we stops, and says the two as shot at him must come
+before a magistrate; and a great crowd comes round, and we
+couldn't get the osses to.  But the young uns they all stand by
+one another, and says all or none must go, and as how they'd
+fight it out, and have to be carried.  Just as 'twas gettin'
+serious, and the old boy and the mob was going to pull 'em off
+the coach, one little fellow jumps up and says, 'Here--I'll
+stay.  I'm only going three miles farther.  My father's name's
+Davis; he's known about here, and I'll go before the magistrate
+with this gentleman.'  'What! be thee parson Davis's son?' says
+the old boy.  'Yes,' says the young un.  'Well, I be mortal
+sorry to meet thee in such company; but for thy father's sake
+and thine (for thee bist a brave young chap) I'll say no more
+about it.'  Didn't the boys cheer him, and the mob cheered the
+young chap; and then one of the biggest gets down, and begs his
+pardon werry gentlemanly for all the rest, saying as they all
+had been plaguy vexed from the first, but didn't like to ax his
+pardon till then, 'cause they felt they hadn't ought to shirk
+the consequences of their joke.  And then they all got down, and
+shook hands with the old boy, and asked him to all parts of the
+country, to their homes; and we drives off twenty minutes behind
+time, with cheering and hollering as if we was county 'members.
+But, Lor' bless you, sir," says the guard, smacking his hand
+down on his knee and looking full into Tom's face, "ten minutes
+arter they was all as bad as ever."
+
+Tom showed such undisguised and open-mouthed interest in his
+narrations that the old guard rubbed up his memory, and launched
+out into a graphic history of all the performances of the boys
+on the roads for the last twenty years.  Off the road he
+couldn't go; the exploit must have been connected with horses or
+vehicles to hang in the old fellow's head.  Tom tried him off
+his own ground once or twice, but found he knew nothing beyond,
+and so let him have his head, and the rest of the road bowled
+easily away; for old Blow-hard (as the boys called him) was a
+dry old file, with much kindness and humour, and a capital
+spinner of a yarn when he had broken the neck of his day's work,
+and got plenty of ale under his belt.
+
+What struck Tom's youthful imagination most was the desperate
+and lawless character of most of the stories.  Was the guard
+hoaxing him?  He couldn't help hoping that they were true.  It's
+very odd how almost all English boys love danger.  You can get
+ten to join a game, or climb a tree, or swim a stream, when
+there's a chance of breaking their limbs or getting drowned, for
+one who'll stay on level ground, or in his depth, or play quoits
+or bowls.
+
+The guard had just finished an account of a desperate fight
+which had happened at one of the fairs between the drovers and
+the farmers with their whips, and the boys with cricket-bats and
+wickets, which arose out of a playful but objectionable practice
+of the boys going round to the public-houses and taking the
+linch-pins out of the wheels of the gigs, and was moralizing
+upon the way in which the Doctor, "a terrible stern man he'd
+heard tell," had come down upon several of the performers,
+"sending three on 'em off next morning in a po-shay with a
+parish constable," when they turned a corner and neared the
+milestone, the third from Rugby.  By the stone two boys stood,
+their jackets buttoned tight, waiting for the coach.
+
+"Look here, sir," says the guard, after giving a sharp toot-
+toot; "there's two on 'em; out-and-out runners they be. They
+comes out about twice or three times a week, and spirts a mile
+alongside of us."
+
+And as they came up, sure enough, away went two boys along the
+footpath, keeping up with the horses--the first a light, clean-
+made fellow going on springs; the other stout and round-
+shouldered, labouring in his pace, but going as dogged as a
+bull-terrier.
+
+Old Blow-hard looked on admiringly.  "See how beautiful that
+there un holds hisself together, and goes from his hips, sir,"
+said he; "he's a 'mazin' fine runner.  Now many coachmen as
+drives a first-rate team'd put it on, and try and pass 'em.  But
+Bob, sir, bless you, he's tender-hearted; he'd sooner pull in a
+bit if he see'd 'em a-gettin' beat.  I do b'lieve, too, as that
+there un'd sooner break his heart than let us go by him afore
+next milestone."
+
+At the second milestone the boys pulled up short, and waved
+their hats to the guard, who had his watch out and shouted
+"4.56," thereby indicating that the mile had been done in four
+seconds under the five minutes.  They passed several more
+parties of boys, all of them objects of the deepest interest to
+Tom, and came in sight of the town at ten minutes before twelve.
+Tom fetched a long breath, and thought he had never spent a
+pleasanter day.  Before he went to bed he had quite settled that
+it must be the greatest day he should ever spend, and didn't
+alter his opinion for many a long year--if he has yet.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V - RUGBY AND FOOTBALL.
+
+
+
+"Foot and eye opposed
+In dubious strife." - Scott.
+
+
+"And so here's Rugby, sir, at last, and you'll be in plenty of
+time for dinner at the School-house, as I telled you," said the
+old guard, pulling his horn out of its case and tootle-tooing
+away, while the coachman shook up his horses, and carried them
+along the side of the school close, round Dead-man's corner,
+past the school-gates, and down the High Street to the Spread
+Eagle, the wheelers in a spanking trot, and leaders cantering,
+in a style which would not have disgraced "Cherry Bob,"
+"ramping, stamping, tearing, swearing Billy Harwood," or any
+other of the old coaching heroes.
+
+Tom's heart beat quick as he passed the great schoolfield or
+close, with its noble elms, in which several games at football
+were going on, and tried to take in at once the long line of
+gray buildings, beginning with the chapel, and ending with the
+School-house, the residence of the head-master, where the great
+flag was lazily waving from the highest round tower.  And he
+began already to be proud of being a Rugby boy, as he passed the
+schoolgates, with the oriel window above, and saw the boys
+standing there, looking as if the town belonged to them, and
+nodding in a familiar manner to the coachman, as if any one of
+them would be quite equal to getting on the box, and working the
+team down street as well as he.
+
+One of the young heroes, however, ran out from the rest, and
+scrambled up behind; where, having righted himself, and nodded
+to the guard, with "How do, Jem?" he turned short round to Tom,
+and after looking him over for a minute, began, -
+
+"I say, you fellow, is your name Brown?"
+
+"Yes," said Tom, in considerable astonishment, glad, however, to
+have lighted on some one already who seemed to know him.
+
+"Ah, I thought so. You know my old aunt, Miss East.  She lives
+somewhere down your way in Berkshire.  She wrote to me that you
+were coming to-day, and asked me to give you a lift."
+
+Tom was somewhat inclined to resent the patronizing air of his
+new friend, a boy of just about his own height and age, but
+gifted with the most transcendent coolness and assurance, which
+Tom felt to be aggravating and hard to bear, but couldn't for
+the life of him help admiring and envying--especially when
+young my lord begins hectoring two or three long loafing
+fellows, half porter, half stableman, with a strong touch of the
+blackguard, and in the end arranges with one of them, nicknamed
+Cooey, to carry Tom's luggage up to the School-house for
+sixpence.
+
+"And hark 'ee, Cooey; it must be up in ten minutes, or no more
+jobs from me.  Come along, Brown."  And away swaggers the young
+potentate, with his hands in his pockets, and Tom at his side.
+
+"All right, sir," says Cooey, touching his hat, with a leer and
+a wink at his companions.
+
+"Hullo though," says East, pulling up, and taking another look
+at Tom; "this'll never do.  Haven't you got a hat?  We never
+wear caps here.  Only the louts wear caps.  Bless you, if you
+were to go into the quadrangle with that thing on, I don't know
+what'd happen."  The very idea was quite beyond young Master
+East, and he looked unutterable things.
+
+Tom thought his cap a very knowing affair, but confessed that he
+had a hat in his hat-box; which was accordingly at once
+extracted from the hind-boot, and Tom equipped in his go-to-
+meeting roof, as his new friend called it.  But this didn't
+quite suit his fastidious taste in another minute, being too
+shiny; so, as they walk up the town, they dive into Nixon's the
+hatter's, and Tom is arrayed, to his utter astonishment, and
+without paying for it, in a regulation cat-skin at seven-and-
+sixpence, Nixon undertaking to send the best hat up to the
+matron's room, School-house, in half an hour.
+
+"You can send in a note for a tile on Monday, and make it all
+right, you know," said Mentor; "we're allowed two seven-and-
+sixers a half, besides what we bring from home."
+
+Tom by this time began to be conscious of his new social
+position and dignities, and to luxuriate in the realized
+ambition of being a public school-boy at last, with a vested
+right of spoiling two seven-and-sixers in half a year.
+
+"You see," said his friend, as they strolled up towards the
+school-gates, in explanation of his conduct, "a great deal
+depends on how a fellow cuts up at first.  If he's got nothing
+odd about him, and answers straightforward, and holds his head
+up, he gets on.  Now, you'll do very well as to rig, all but
+that cap. You see I'm doing the handsome thing by you, because
+my father knows yours; besides, I want to please the old lady.
+She gave me half a sov. this half, and perhaps'll double it
+next, if I keep in her good books."
+
+There's nothing for candour like a lower-school boy, and East
+was a genuine specimen--frank, hearty, and good-natured, well-
+satisfied with himself and his position, and choke-full of life
+and spirits, and all the Rugby prejudices and traditions which
+he had been able to get together in the long course of one half-
+year during which he had been at the School-house.
+
+And Tom, notwithstanding his bumptiousness, felt friends with
+him at once, and began sucking in all his ways and prejudices,
+as fast as he could understand them.
+
+East was great in the character of cicerone.  He carried Tom
+through the great gates, where were only two or three boys.
+These satisfied themselves with the stock questions, "You
+fellow, what's your name?  Where do you come from?  How old are
+you?  Where do you board?" and, "What form are you in?"  And so
+they passed on through the quadrangle and a small courtyard,
+upon which looked down a lot of little windows (belonging, as
+his guide informed him, to some of the School-house studies),
+into the matron's room, where East introduced Tom to that
+dignitary; made him give up the key of his trunk, that the
+matron might unpack his linen, and told the story of the hat and
+of his own presence of mind:  upon the relation whereof the
+matron laughingly scolded him for the coolest new boy in the
+house; and East, indignant at the accusation of newness, marched
+Tom off into the quadrangle, and began showing him the schools,
+and examining him as to his literary attainments; the result of
+which was a prophecy that they would be in the same form, and
+could do their lessons together.
+
+"And now come in and see my study--we shall have just time
+before dinner; and afterwards, before calling over, we'll do the
+close."
+
+Tom followed his guide through the School-house hall, which
+opens into the quadrangle.  It is a great room, thirty feet long
+and eighteen high, or thereabouts, with two great tables running
+the whole length, and two large fireplaces at the side, with
+blazing fires in them, at one of which some dozen boys were
+standing and lounging, some of whom shouted to East to stop; but
+he shot through with his convoy, and landed him in the long,
+dark passages, with a large fire at the end of each, upon which
+the studies opened.  Into one of these, in the bottom passage,
+East bolted with our hero, slamming and bolting the door behind
+them, in case of pursuit from the hall, and Tom was for the
+first time in a Rugby boy's citadel.
+
+He hadn't been prepared for separate studies, and was not a
+little astonished and delighted with the palace in question.
+
+It wasn't very large, certainly, being about six feet long by
+four broad.  It couldn't be called light, as there were bars and
+a grating to the window; which little precautions were necessary
+in the studies on the ground-floor looking out into the close,
+to prevent the exit of small boys after locking up, and the
+entrance of contraband articles.  But it was uncommonly
+comfortable to look at, Tom thought.  The space under the window
+at the farther end was occupied by a square table covered with a
+reasonably clean and whole red and blue check tablecloth; a
+hard-seated sofa covered with red stuff occupied one side,
+running up to the end, and making a seat for one, or by sitting
+close, for two, at the table  and a good stout wooden chair
+afforded a seat to another boy, so that three could sit and work
+together.  The walls were wainscoted half-way up, the wainscot
+being covered with green baize, the remainder with a bright-
+patterned paper, on which hung three or four prints of dogs'
+heads; Grimaldi winning the Aylesbury steeple-chase; Amy
+Robsart, the reigning Waverley beauty of the day; and Tom Crib,
+in a posture of defence, which did no credit to the science of
+that hero, if truly represented.  Over the door were a row of
+hat-pegs, and on each side bookcases with cupboards at the
+bottom, shelves and cupboards being filled indiscriminately with
+school-books, a cup or two, a mouse-trap and candlesticks,
+leather straps, a fustian bag, and some curious-looking articles
+which puzzled Tom not a little, until his friend explained that
+they were climbing-irons, and showed their use.  A cricket-bat
+and small fishing-rod stood up in one corner.
+
+This was the residence of East and another boy in the same form,
+and had more interest for Tom than Windsor Castle, or any other
+residence in the British Isles.  For was he not about to become
+the joint owner of a similar home, the first place he could call
+his own?  One's own!  What a charm there is in the words!  How
+long it takes boy and man to find out their worth!  How fast
+most of us hold on to them--faster and more jealously, the
+nearer we are to that general home into which we can take
+nothing, but must go naked as we came into the world!  When
+shall we learn that he who multiplieth possessions multiplieth
+troubles, and that the one single use of things which we call
+our own is that they may be his who hath need of them?
+
+"And shall I have a study like this too?" said Tom.
+
+"Yes, of course; you'll be chummed with some fellow on Monday,
+and you can sit here till then."
+
+"What nice places!"
+
+"They're well enough," answered East, patronizingly, "only
+uncommon cold at nights sometimes.  Gower--that's my chum--and
+I make a fire with paper on the floor after supper generally,
+only that makes it so smoky."
+
+"But there's a big fire out in the passage," said Tom.
+
+"Precious little we get out of that, though," said East. "Jones
+the prepostor has the study at the fire end, and he has rigged
+up an iron rod and green baize curtain across the passage, which
+he draws at night, and sits there with his door open; so he gets
+all the fire, and hears if we come out of our studies after
+eight, or make a noise.  However, he's taken to sitting in the
+fifth-form room lately, so we do get a bit of fire now
+sometimes; only to keep a sharp lookout that he don't catch you
+behind his curtain when he comes down--that's all."
+
+A quarter past one now struck, and the bell began tolling for
+dinner; so they went into the hall and took their places, Tom at
+the very bottom of the second table, next to the prepostor (who
+sat at the end to keep order there), and East a few paces
+higher.  And now Tom for the first time saw his future school-
+fellows in a body.  In they came, some hot and ruddy from
+football or long walks, some pale and chilly from hard reading
+in their studies, some from loitering over the fire at the
+pastrycook's, dainty mortals, bringing with them pickles and
+saucebottles to help them with their dinners.  And a great big-
+bearded man, whom Tom took for a master, began calling over the
+names, while the great joints were being rapidly carved on the
+third table in the corner by the old verger and the housekeeper.
+Tom's turn came last, and meanwhile he was all eyes, looking
+first with awe at the great man, who sat close to him, and was
+helped first, and who read a hard-looking book all the time he
+was eating; and when he got up and walked off to the fire, at
+the small boys round him, some of whom were reading, and the
+rest talking in whispers to one another, or stealing one
+another's bread, or shooting pellets, or digging their forks
+through the tablecloth.  However, notwithstanding his curiosity,
+he managed to make a capital dinner by the time the big man
+called "Stand up!" and said grace.
+
+As soon as dinner was over, and Tom had been questioned by such
+of his neighbours as were curious as to his birth, parentage,
+education, and other like matters, East, who evidently enjoyed
+his new dignity of patron and mentor, proposed having a look at
+the close, which Tom, athirst for knowledge, gladly assented to;
+and they went out through the quadrangle and past the big fives
+court, into the great playground.
+
+"That's the chapel, you see," said East; "and there, just behind
+it, is the place for fights.  You see it's most out of the way
+of the masters, who all live on the other side, and don't come
+by here after first lesson or callings-over.  That's when the
+fights come off.  And all this part where we are is the little-
+side ground, right up to the trees; and on the other side of the
+trees is the big-side ground, where the great matches are
+played.  And there's the island in the farthest corner; you'll
+know that well enough next half, when there's island fagging.  I
+say, it's horrid cold; let's have a run across."  And away went
+East, Tom close behind him.  East was evidently putting his best
+foot foremost; and Tom, who was mighty proud of his running, and
+not a little anxious to show his friend that, although a new
+boy, he was no milksop, laid himself down to work in his very
+best style.  Right across the close they went, each doing all he
+knew, and there wasn't a yard between them when they pulled up
+at the island moat.
+
+"I say," said East, as soon as he got his wind, looking with
+much increased respect at Tom, "you ain't a bad scud, not by no
+means.  Well, I'm as warm as a toast now."
+
+"But why do you wear white trousers in November?" said Tom.  He
+had been struck by this peculiarity in the costume of almost all
+the School-house boys.
+
+"Why, bless us, don't you know?  No; I forgot.  Why, to-day's
+the School-house match.  Our house plays the whole of the School
+at football.  And we all wear white trousers, to show 'em we
+don't care for hacks.  You're in luck to come to-day.  You just
+will see a match; and Brooke's going to let me play in quarters.
+That's more than he'll do for any other lower-school boy, except
+James, and he's fourteen."
+
+"Who's Brooke?"
+
+"Why, that big fellow who called over at dinner, to be sure.
+He's cock of the school, and head of the School-house side, and
+the best kick and charger in Rugby."
+
+"Oh, but do show me where they play.  And tell me about it.  I
+love football so, and have played all my life.  Won't Brooke let
+me play?"
+
+"Not he," said East, with some indignation.  "Why, you don't
+know the rules; you'll be a month learning them.  And then it's
+no joke playing-up in a match, I can tell you--quite another
+thing from your private school games.  Why, there's been two
+collar-bones broken this half, and a dozen fellows lamed.  And
+last year a fellow had his leg broken."
+
+Tom listened with the profoundest respect to this chapter of
+accidents, and followed East across the level ground till they
+came to a sort of gigantic gallows of two poles, eighteen feet
+high, fixed upright in the ground some fourteen feet apart, with
+a cross-bar running from one to the other at the height of ten
+feet or thereabouts.
+
+"This is one of the goals," said East, "and you see the other,
+across there, right opposite, under the Doctor's wall.  Well,
+the match is for the best of three goals; whichever side kicks
+two goals wins:  and it won't do, you see, just to kick the ball
+through these posts--it must go over the cross-bar; any
+height'll do, so long as it's between the posts.  You'll have to
+stay in goal to touch the ball when it rolls behind the posts,
+because if the other side touch it they have a try at goal.
+Then we fellows in quarters, we play just about in front of goal
+here, and have to turn the ball and kick it back before the big
+fellows on the other side can follow it up.  And in front of us
+all the big fellows play, and that's where the scrummages are
+mostly."
+
+Tom's respect increased as he struggled to make out his friend's
+technicalities, and the other set to work to explain the
+mysteries of "off your side," "drop-kicks," "punts," "places,"
+and the other intricacies of the great science of football.
+
+"But how do you keep the ball between the goals?" said he; "I
+can't see why it mightn't go right down to the chapel."
+
+"Why; that's out of play," answered East.  "You see this gravel-
+walk running down all along this side of the playing-ground, and
+the line of elms opposite on the other?  Well, they're the
+bounds. As soon as the ball gets past them, it's in touch, and
+out of play.  And then whoever first touches it has to knock it
+straight out amongst the players-up, who make two lines with a
+space between them, every fellow going on his own side.  Ain't
+there just fine scrummages then!  And the three trees you see
+there which come out into the play, that's a tremendous place
+when the ball hangs there, for you get thrown against the trees,
+and that's worse than any hack."
+
+Tom wondered within himself, as they strolled back again towards
+the fives court, whether the matches were really such break-neck
+affairs as East represented, and whether, if they were, he
+should ever get to like them and play up well,
+
+He hadn't long to wonder, however, for next minute East cried
+out, "Hurrah! here's the punt-about; come along and try your
+hand at a kick."  The punt-about is the practice-ball, which is
+just brought out and kicked about anyhow from one boy to another
+before callings-over and dinner, and at other odd times.  They
+joined the boys who had brought it out, all small School-house
+fellows, friends of East; and Tom had the pleasure of trying his
+skill, and performed very creditably, after first driving his
+foot three inches into the ground, and then nearly kicking his
+leg into the air, in vigorous efforts to accomplish a drop-kick
+after the manner of East.
+
+Presently more boys and bigger came out, and boys from other
+houses on their way to calling-over, and more balls were sent
+for.  The crowd thickened as three o'clock approached; and when
+the hour struck, one hundred and fifty boys were hard at work.
+Then the balls were held, the master of the week came down in
+cap and gown to calling-over, and the whole school of three
+hundred boys swept into the big school to answer to their names.
+
+"I may come in, mayn't I?" said Tom, catching East by the arm,
+and longing to feel one of them.
+
+"Yes, come along; nobody'll say anything.  You won't be so eager
+to get into calling-over after a month," replied his friend; and
+they marched into the big school together, and up to the farther
+end, where that illustrious form, the lower fourth, which had
+the honour of East's patronage for the time being, stood.
+
+The master mounted into the high desk by the door, and one of
+the prepostors of the week stood by him on the steps, the other
+three marching up and down the middle of the school with their
+canes, calling out, "Silence, silence!"  The sixth form stood
+close by the door on the left, some thirty in number, mostly
+great big grown men, as Tom thought, surveying them from a
+distance with awe; the fifth form behind them, twice their
+number, and not quite so big.  These on the left; and on the
+right the lower fifth, shell, and all the junior forms in order;
+while up the middle marched the three prepostors.
+
+Then the prepostor who stands by the master calls out the names,
+beginning with the sixth form; and as he calls each boy answers
+"here" to his name, and walks out.  Some of the sixth stop at
+the door to turn the whole string of boys into the close.  It is
+a great match-day, and every boy in the school, will he, nill
+he, must be there.  The rest of the sixth go forwards into the
+close, to see that no one escapes by any of the side gates.
+
+To-day, however, being the School-house match, none of the
+School-house prepostors stay by the door to watch for truants of
+their side; there is carte blanche to the School-house fags to
+go where they like.  "They trust to our honour," as East proudly
+informs Tom; "they know very well that no School-house boy would
+cut the match.  If he did, we'd very soon cut him, I can tell
+you."
+
+The master of the week being short-sighted, and the prepostors
+of the week small and not well up to their work, the lower-
+school boys employ the ten minutes which elapse before their
+names are called in pelting one another vigorously with acorns,
+which fly about in all directions.  The small prepostors dash in
+every now and then, and generally chastise some quiet, timid boy
+who is equally afraid of acorns and canes, while the principal
+performers get dexterously out of the way.  And so calling-over
+rolls on somehow, much like the big world, punishments lighting
+on wrong shoulders, and matters going generally in a queer,
+cross-grained way, but the end coming somehow, which is, after
+all, the great point.  And now the master of the week has
+finished, and locked up the big school; and the prepostors of
+the week come out, sweeping the last remnant of the school fags,
+who had been loafing about the corners by the fives court, in
+hopes of a chance of bolting, before them into the close.
+
+"Hold the punt-about!"  "To the goals!" are the cries; and all
+stray balls are impounded by the authorities, and the whole mass
+of boys moves up towards the two goals, dividing as they go into
+three bodies.  That little band on the left, consisting of from
+fifteen to twenty boys, Tom amongst them, who are making for the
+goal under the School-house wall, are the School-house boys who
+are not to play up, and have to stay in goal.  The larger body
+moving to the island goal are the School boys in a like
+predicament.  The great mass in the middle are the players-up,
+both sides mingled together; they are hanging their jackets (and
+all who mean real work), their hats, waistcoats, neck-
+handkerchiefs, and braces, on the railings round the small
+trees; and there they go by twos and threes up to their
+respective grounds.  There is none of the colour and tastiness
+of get-up, you will perceive, which lends such a life to the
+present game at Rugby, making the dullest and worst-fought match
+a pretty sight.  Now each house has its own uniform of cap and
+jersey, of some lively colour; but at the time we are speaking
+of plush caps have not yet come in, or uniforms of any sort,
+except the School-house white trousers, which are abominably
+cold to-day.  Let us get to work, bare-headed, and girded with
+our plain leather straps.  But we mean business, gentlemen.
+
+And now that the two sides have fairly sundered, and each
+occupies its own ground, and we get a good look at them, what
+absurdity is this?  You don't mean to say that those fifty or
+sixty boys in white trousers, many of them quite small, are
+going to play that huge mass opposite?  Indeed I do, gentlemen.
+They're going to try, at any rate, and won't make such a bad
+fight of it either, mark my word; for hasn't old Brooke won the
+toss, with his lucky halfpenny, and got choice of goals and
+kick-off?  The new ball you may see lie there quite by itself,
+in the middle, pointing towards the School or island goal; in
+another minute it will be well on its way there.  Use that
+minute in remarking how the Schoolhouse side is drilled.  You
+will see, in the first place, that the sixth-form boy, who has
+the charge of goal, has spread his force (the goalkeepers) so as
+to occupy the whole space behind the goal-posts, at distances of
+about five yards apart.  A safe and well-kept goal is the
+foundation of all good play.  Old Brooke is talking to the
+captain of quarters, and now he moves away.  See how that
+youngster spreads his men (the light brigade) carefully over the
+ground, half-way between their own goal and the body of their
+own players-up (the heavy brigade).  These again play in several
+bodies.  There is young Brooke and the bull-dogs.  Mark them
+well.  They are the "fighting brigade," the "die-hards," larking
+about at leap-frog to keep themselves warm, and playing tricks
+on one another.  And on each side of old Brooke, who is now
+standing in the middle of the ground and just going to kick off,
+you see a separate wing of players-up, each with a boy of
+acknowledged prowess to look to--here Warner, and there Hedge;
+but over all is old Brooke, absolute as he of Russia, but wisely
+and bravely ruling over willing and worshipping subjects, a true
+football king.  His face is earnest and careful as he glances a
+last time over his array, but full of pluck and hope--the sort
+of look I hope to see in my general when I go out to fight.
+
+The School side is not organized in the same way.  The goal-
+keepers are all in lumps, anyhow and nohow; you can't
+distinguish between the players-up and the boys in quarters, and
+there is divided leadership.  But with such odds in strength and
+weight it must take more than that to hinder them from winning;
+and so their leaders seem to think, for they let the players-up
+manage themselves.
+
+But now look! there is a slight move forward of the School-house
+wings, a shout of "Are you ready?" and loud affirmative reply.
+Old Brooke takes half a dozen quick steps, and away goes the
+ball spinning towards the School goal, seventy yards before it
+touches ground, and at no point above twelve or fifteen feet
+high, a model kick-off; and the School-house cheer and rush on.
+The ball is returned, and they meet it and drive it back amongst
+the masses of the School already in motion.  Then the two sides
+close, and you can see nothing for minutes but a swaying crowd
+of boys, at one point violently agitated.  That is where the
+ball is, and there are the keen players to be met, and the glory
+and the hard knocks to be got.  You hear the dull thud, thud of
+the ball, and the shouts of "Off your side," "Down with him,"
+"Put him over," "Bravo."  This is what we call "a scrummage,"
+gentlemen, and the first scrummage in a School-house match was
+no joke in the consulship of Plancus.
+
+But see! it has broken; the ball is driven out on the School-
+house side, and a rush of the School carries it past the School-
+house players-up.  "Look out in quarters," Brooke's and twenty
+other voices ring out.  No need to call, though:  the School-
+house captain of quarters has caught it on the bound, dodges the
+foremost School boys, who are heading the rush, and sends it
+back with a good drop-kick well into the enemy's country.  And
+then follows rush upon rush, and scrummage upon scrummage, the
+ball now driven through into the School-house quarters, and now
+into the School goal; for the School-house have not lost the
+advantage which the kick-off and a slight wind gave them at the
+outset, and are slightly "penning" their adversaries.  You say
+you don't see much in it all--nothing but a struggling mass of
+boys, and a leather ball which seems to excite them all to great
+fury, as a red rag does a bull.  My dear sir, a battle would
+look much the same to you, except that the boys would be men,
+and the balls iron; but a battle would be worth your looking at
+for all that, and so is a football match.  You can't be expected
+to appreciate the delicate strokes of play, the turns by which a
+game is lost and won--it takes an old player to do that; but
+the broad philosophy of football you can understand if you will.
+Come along with me a little nearer, and let us consider it
+together.
+
+The ball has just fallen again where the two sides are thickest,
+and they close rapidly around it in a scrummage.  It must be
+driven through now by force or skill, till it flies out on one
+side or the other.  Look how differently the boys face it!  Here
+come two of the bulldogs, bursting through the outsiders; in
+they go, straight to the heart of the scrummage, bent on driving
+that ball out on the opposite side.  That is what they mean to
+do.  My sons, my sons! you are too hot; you have gone past the
+ball, and must struggle now right through the scrummage, and get
+round and back again to your own side, before you can be of any
+further use.  Here comes young Brooke; he goes in as straight as
+you, but keeps his head, and backs and bends, holding himself
+still behind the ball, and driving it furiously when he gets the
+chance.  Take a leaf out of his book, you young chargers.  Here
+comes Speedicut, and Flashman the School-house bully, with
+shouts and great action.  Won't you two come up to young Brooke,
+after locking-up, by the School-house fire, with "Old fellow,
+wasn't that just a splendid scrummage by the three trees?"  But
+he knows you, and so do we.  You don't really want to drive that
+ball through that scrummage, chancing all hurt for the glory of
+the School-house, but to make us think that's what you want--a
+vastly different thing; and fellows of your kidney will never go
+through more than the skirts of a scrummage, where it's all push
+and no kicking.  We respect boys who keep out of it, and don't
+sham going in; but you--we had rather not say what we think of
+you.
+
+Then the boys who are bending and watching on the outside, mark
+them:  they are most useful players, the dodgers, who seize on
+the ball the moment it rolls out from amongst the chargers, and
+away with it across to the opposite goal.  They seldom go into
+the scrummage, but must have more coolness than the chargers.
+As endless as are boys' characters, so are their ways of facing
+or not facing a scrummage at football.
+
+Three-quarters of an hour are gone; first winds are failing, and
+weight and numbers beginning to tell.  Yard by yard the School-
+house have been driven back, contesting every inch of ground.
+The bull-dogs are the colour of mother earth from shoulder to
+ankle, except young Brooke, who has a marvellous knack of
+keeping his legs.  The School-house are being penned in their
+turn, and now the ball is behind their goal, under the Doctor's
+wall.  The Doctor and some of his family are there looking on,
+and seem as anxious as any boy for the success of the School-
+house.  We get a minute's breathing-time before old Brooke kicks
+out, and he gives the word to play strongly for touch, by the
+three trees.  Away goes the ball, and the bull-dogs after it,
+and in another minute there is shout of "In touch!" "Our ball!"
+Now's your time, old Brooke, while your men are still fresh.  He
+stands with the ball in his hand, while the two sides form in
+deep lines opposite one another; he must strike it straight out
+between them.  The lines are thickest close to him, but young
+Brooke and two or three of his men are shifting up farther,
+where the opposite line is weak.  Old Brooke strikes it out
+straight and strong, and it falls opposite his brother.  Hurrah!
+that rush has taken it right through the School line, and away
+past the three trees, far into their quarters, and young Brooke
+and the bull-dogs are close upon it.  The School leaders rush
+back, shouting, "Look out in goal!" and strain every nerve to
+catch him, but they are after the fleetest foot in Rugby.  There
+they go straight for the School goal-posts, quarters scattering
+before them.  One after another the bull-dogs go down, but young
+Brooke holds on.  "He is down."  No! a long stagger, but the
+danger is past.  That was the shock of Crew, the most dangerous
+of dodgers.  And now he is close to the School goal, the ball
+not three yards before him.  There is a hurried rush of the
+School fags to the spot, but no one throws himself on the ball,
+the only chance, and young Brooke has touched it right under the
+School goal-posts.
+
+The School leaders come up furious, and administer toco to the
+wretched fags nearest at hand.  They may well be angry, for it
+is all Lombard Street to a china orange that the School-house
+kick a goal with the ball touched in such a good place.  Old
+Brooke, of course, will kick it out, but who shall catch and
+place it?  Call Crab Jones.  Here he comes, sauntering along
+with a straw in his mouth, the queerest, coolest fish in Rugby.
+If he were tumbled into the moon this minute, he would just pick
+himself up without taking his hands out of his pockets or
+turning a hair.  But it is a moment when the boldest charger's
+heart beats quick.  Old Brooke stands with the ball under his
+arm motioning the School back; he will not kick out till they
+are all in goal, behind the posts.  They are all edging
+forwards, inch by inch, to get nearer for the rush at Crab
+Jones, who stands there in front of old Brooke to catch the
+ball.  If they can reach and destroy him before he catches, the
+danger is over; and with one and the same rush they will carry
+it right away to the School-house goal.  Fond hope! it is kicked
+out and caught beautifully.  Crab strikes his heel into the
+ground, to mark the spot where the ball was caught, beyond which
+the school line may not advance; but there they stand, five
+deep, ready to rush the moment the ball touches the ground.
+Take plenty of room.  Don't give the rush a chance of reaching
+you.  Place it true and steady.  Trust Crab Jones.  He has made
+a small hole with his heel for the ball to lie on, by which he
+is resting on one knee, with his eye on old Brooke.  "Now!"
+Crab places the ball at the word, old Brooke kicks, and it rises
+slowly and truly as the School rush forward.
+
+Then a moment's pause, while both sides look up at the spinning
+ball.  There it flies, straight between the two posts, some five
+feet above the cross-bar, an unquestioned goal; and a shout of
+real, genuine joy rings out from the School-house players-up,
+and a faint echo of it comes over the close from the goal-
+keepers under the Doctor's wall.  A goal in the first hour--
+such a thing hasn't been done in the School-house match these
+five years.
+
+"Over!" is the cry.  The two sides change goals, and the School-
+house goal-keepers come threading their way across through the
+masses of the School, the most openly triumphant of them--
+amongst whom is Tom, a School-house boy of two hours' standing--
+getting their ears boxed in the transit.  Tom indeed is excited
+beyond measure, and it is all the sixth-form boy, kindest and
+safest of goal-keepers, has been able to do, to keep him from
+rushing out whenever the ball has been near their goal.  So he
+holds him by his side, and instructs him in the science of
+touching.
+
+At this moment Griffith, the itinerant vender of oranges from
+Hill Morton, enters the close with his heavy baskets.  There is
+a rush of small boys upon the little pale-faced man, the two
+sides mingling together, subdued by the great goddess Thirst,
+like the English and French by the streams in the Pyrenees.  The
+leaders are past oranges and apples, but some of them visit
+their coats, and apply innocent-looking ginger-beer bottles to
+their mouths.  It is no ginger-beer though, I fear, and will do
+you no good.  One short mad rush, and then a stitch in the side,
+and no more honest play.  That's what comes of those bottles.
+
+But now Griffith's baskets are empty, the ball is placed again
+midway, and the School are going to kick off.  Their leaders
+have sent their lumber into goal, and rated the rest soundly,
+and one hundred and twenty picked players-up are there, bent on
+retrieving the game.  They are to keep the ball in front of the
+School-house goal, and then to drive it in by sheer strength and
+weight.  They mean heavy play and no mistake, and so old Brooke
+sees, and places Crab Jones in quarters just before the goal,
+with four or five picked players who are to keep the ball away
+to the sides, where a try at goal, if obtained, will be less
+dangerous than in front.  He himself, and Warner and Hedge, who
+have saved themselves till now, will lead the charges.
+
+"Are you ready?"  "Yes."  And away comes the ball, kicked high
+in the air, to give the School time to rush on and catch it as
+it falls.  And here they are amongst us.  Meet them like
+Englishmen, you Schoolhouse boys, and charge them home.  Now is
+the time to show what mettle is in you; and there shall be a
+warm seat by the hall fire, and honour, and lots of bottled beer
+to-night for him who does his duty in the next half-hour.  And
+they are well met.  Again and again the cloud of their players-
+up gathers before our goal, and comes threatening on, and Warner
+or Hedge, with young Brooke and the relics of the bull-dogs,
+break through and carry the ball back; and old Brooke ranges the
+field like Job's war-horse.  The thickest scrummage parts
+asunder before his rush, like the waves before a clipper's bows;
+his cheery voice rings out over the field, and his eye is
+everywhere.  And if these miss the ball, and it rolls
+dangerously in front of our goal, Crab Jones and his men have
+seized it and sent it away towards the sides with the unerring
+drop-kick.  This is worth living for--the whole sum of school-
+boy existence gathered up into one straining, struggling half-
+hour, a half-hour worth a year of common life.
+
+The quarter to five has struck, and the play slackens for a
+minute before goal; but there is Crew, the artful dodger,
+driving the ball in behind our goal, on the island side, where
+our quarters are weakest.  Is there no one to meet him?  Yes;
+look at little East!  The ball is just at equal distances
+between the two, and they rush together, the young man of
+seventeen and the boy of twelve, and kick it at the same moment.
+Crew passes on without a stagger; East is hurled forward by the
+shock, and plunges on his shoulder, as if he would bury himself
+in the ground; but the ball rises straight into the air, and
+falls behind Crew's back, while the "bravoes" of the School-
+house attest the pluckiest charge of all that hard-fought day.
+Warner picks East up lame and half stunned, and he hobbles back
+into goal, conscious of having played the man.
+
+And now the last minutes are come, and the School gather for
+their last rush, every boy of the hundred and twenty who has a
+run left in him.  Reckless of the defence of their own goal, on
+they come across the level big-side ground, the ball well down
+amongst them, straight for our goal, like the column of the Old
+Guard up the slope at Waterloo.  All former charges have been
+child's play to this.  Warner and Hedge have met them, but still
+on they come.  The bull-dogs rush in for the last time; they are
+hurled over or carried back, striving hand, foot, and eyelids.
+Old Brooke comes sweeping round the skirts of the play, and
+turning short round, picks out the very heart of the scrummage,
+and plunges in.  It wavers for a moment; he has the ball.  No,
+it has passed him, and his voice rings out clear over the
+advancing tide, "Look out in goal!"  Crab Jones catches it for a
+moment; but before he can kick, the rush is upon him and passes
+over him; and he picks himself up behind them with his straw in
+his mouth, a little dirtier, but as cool as ever.
+
+The ball rolls slowly in behind the School-house goal, not three
+yards in front of a dozen of the biggest School players-up.
+
+There stands the School-house prepostor, safest of goal-keepers,
+and Tom Brown by his side, who has learned his trade by this
+time.  Now is your time, Tom.  The blood of all the Browns is
+up, and the two rush in together, and throw themselves on the
+ball, under the very feet of the advancing column--the
+prepostor on his hands and knees, arching his back, and Tom all
+along on his face.  Over them topple the leaders of the rush,
+shooting over the back of the prepostor, but falling flat on
+Tom, and knocking all the wind out of his small carcass.  "Our
+ball," says the prepostor, rising with his prize; "but get up
+there; there's a little fellow under you."  They are hauled and
+roll off him, and Tom is discovered, a motionless body.
+
+Old Brooke picks him up.  "Stand back, give him air," he says;
+and then feeling his limbs, adds, "No bones broken. --How do
+you feel, young un?"
+
+"Hah-hah!" gasps Tom, as his wind comes back; "pretty well,
+thank you--all right."
+
+"Who is he?" says Brooke.
+
+"Oh, it's Brown; he's a new boy; I know him," says East, coming
+up.
+
+"Well, he is a plucky youngster, and will make a player," says
+Brooke.
+
+And five o'clock strikes.  "No side" is called, and the first
+day of the School-house match is over.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI - AFTER THE MATCH.
+
+
+
+"Some food we had." - Shakespeare.
+[Greek text] - Theocr. Id.
+
+
+As the boys scattered away from the ground, and East, leaning on
+Tom's arm, and limping along, was beginning to consider what
+luxury they should go and buy for tea to celebrate that glorious
+victory, the two Brookes came striding by.  Old Brooke caught
+sight of East, and stopped; put his hand kindly on his shoulder,
+and said, "Bravo, youngster; you played famously.  Not much the
+matter, I hope?"
+
+"No, nothing at all," said East--" only a little twist from
+that charge."
+
+"Well, mind and get all right for next Saturday."  And the
+leader passed on, leaving East better for those few words than
+all the opodeldoc in England would have made him, and Tom ready
+to give one of his ears for as much notice.  Ah! light words of
+those whom we love and honour, what a power ye are, and how
+carelessly wielded by those who can use you!  Surely for these
+things also God will ask an account.
+
+"Tea's directly after locking-up, you see," said East, hobbling
+along as fast as he could, "so you come along down to Sally
+Harrowell's; that's our School-house tuck-shop.  She bakes such
+stunning murphies, we'll have a penn'orth each for tea.  Come
+along, or they'll all be gone."
+
+Tom's new purse and money burnt in his pocket; he wondered, as
+they toddled through the quadrangle and along the street,
+whether East would be insulted if he suggested further
+extravagance, as he had not sufficient faith in a pennyworth of
+potatoes. At last he blurted out, -
+
+"I say, East, can't we get something else besides potatoes?
+I've got lots of money, you know."
+
+"Bless us, yes; I forgot," said East, "you've only just come.
+You see all my tin's been gone this twelve weeks--it hardly
+ever lasts beyond the first fortnight; and our allowances were
+all stopped this morning for broken windows, so I haven't got a
+penny.  I've got a tick at Sally's, of course; but then I hate
+running it high, you see, towards the end of the half, 'cause
+one has to shell out for it all directly one comes back, and
+that's a bore."
+
+Tom didn't understand much of this talk, but seized on the fact
+that East had no money, and was denying himself some little pet
+luxury in consequence.  "Well, what shall I buy?" said he, "I'm
+uncommon hungry."
+
+"I say," said East, stopping to look at him and rest his leg,
+"you're a trump, Brown.  I'll do the same by you next half.
+Let's have a pound of sausages then.  That's the best grub for
+tea I know of."
+
+"Very well," said Tom, as pleased as possible; "where do they
+sell them?"
+
+"Oh, over here, just opposite."  And they crossed the street and
+walked into the cleanest little front room of a small house,
+half parlour, half shop, and bought a pound of most particular
+sausages, East talking pleasantly to Mrs. Porter while she put
+them in paper, and Tom doing the paying part.
+
+From Porter's they adjourned to Sally Harrowell's, where they
+found a lot of School-house boys waiting for the roast potatoes,
+and relating their own exploits in the day's match at the top of
+their voices.  The street opened at once into Sally's kitchen, a
+low brick-floored room, with large recess for fire, and chimney-
+corner seats.  Poor little Sally, the most good-natured and
+much-enduring of womankind, was bustling about, with a napkin in
+her hand, from her own oven to those of the neighbours' cottages
+up the yard at the back of the house.  Stumps, her husband, a
+short, easy-going shoemaker, with a beery, humorous eye and
+ponderous calves, who lived mostly on his wife's earnings, stood
+in a corner of the room, exchanging shots of the roughest
+description of repartee with every boy in turn.  "Stumps, you
+lout, you've had too much beer again to-day."  "'Twasn't of your
+paying for, then."  "Stumps's calves are running down into his
+ankles; they want to get to grass."  "Better be doing that than
+gone altogether like yours," etc.  Very poor stuff it was, but
+it served to make time pass; and every now and then Sally
+arrived in the middle with a smoking tin of potatoes, which was
+cleared off in a few seconds, each boy as he seized his lot
+running off to the house with "Put me down two-penn'orth,
+Sally;" "Put down three-penn'orth between me and Davis," etc.
+How she ever kept the accounts so straight as she did, in her
+head and on her slate, was a perfect wonder.
+
+East and Tom got served at last, and started back for the
+School-house, just as the locking-up bell began to ring, East on
+the way recounting the life and adventures of Stumps, who was a
+character.  Amongst his other small avocations, he was the hind
+carrier of a sedan-chair, the last of its race, in which the
+Rugby ladies still went out to tea, and in which, when he was
+fairly harnessed and carrying a load, it was the delight of
+small and mischievous boys to follow him and whip his calves.
+This was too much for the temper even of Stumps, and he would
+pursue his tormentors in a vindictive and apoplectic manner when
+released, but was easily pacified by twopence to buy beer with.
+
+The lower-school boys of the School-house, some fifteen in
+number, had tea in the lower-fifth school, and were presided
+over by the old verger or head-porter.  Each boy had a quarter
+of a loaf of bread and pat of butter, and as much tea as he
+pleased; and there was scarcely one who didn't add to this some
+further luxury, such as baked potatoes, a herring, sprats, or
+something of the sort.  But few at this period of the half-year
+could live up to a pound of Porter's sausages, and East was in
+great magnificence upon the strength of theirs.  He had produced
+a toasting-fork from his study, and set Tom to toast the
+sausages, while he mounted guard over their butter and potatoes.
+"'Cause," as he explained, "you're a new boy, and they'll play
+you some trick and get our butter; but you can toast just as
+well as I."  So Tom, in the midst of three or four more urchins
+similarly employed, toasted his face and the sausages at the
+same time before the huge fire, till the latter cracked; when
+East from his watch-tower shouted that they were done, and then
+the feast proceeded, and the festive cups of tea were filled and
+emptied, and Tom imparted of the sausages in small bits to many
+neighbours, and thought he had never tasted such good potatoes
+or seen such jolly boys.  They on their parts waived all
+ceremony, and pegged away at the sausages and potatoes, and
+remembering Tom's performance in goal, voted East's new crony a
+brick.  After tea, and while the things were being cleared away,
+they gathered round the fire, and the talk on the match still
+went on; and those who had them to show pulled up their trousers
+and showed the hacks they had received in the good cause.
+
+They were soon, however, all turned out of the school; and East
+conducted Tom up to his bedroom, that he might get on clean
+things, and wash himself before singing.
+
+"What's singing?" said Tom, taking his head out of his basin,
+where he had been plunging it in cold water.
+
+"Well, you are jolly green," answered his friend, from a
+neighbouring basin.  "Why, the last six Saturdays of every half
+we sing of course; and this is the first of them.  No first
+lesson to do, you know, and lie in bed to-morrow morning."
+
+"But who sings?"
+
+"Why, everybody, of course; you'll see soon enough.  We begin
+directly after supper, and sing till bed-time.  It ain't such
+good fun now, though, as in the summer half; 'cause then we sing
+in the little fives court, under the library, you know.  We take
+out tables, and the big boys sit round and drink beer--double
+allowance on Saturday nights; and we cut about the quadrangle
+between the songs, and it looks like a lot of robbers in a cave.
+And the louts come and pound at the great gates, and we pound
+back again, and shout at them.  But this half we only sing in
+the hall.  Come along down to my study."
+
+Their principal employment in the study was to clear out East's
+table; removing the drawers and ornaments and tablecloth; for he
+lived in the bottom passage, and his table was in requisition
+for the singing.
+
+Supper came in due course at seven o'clock, consisting of bread
+and cheese and beer, which was all saved for the singing; and
+directly afterwards the fags went to work to prepare the hall.
+The School-house hall, as has been said, is a great long high
+room, with two large fires on one side, and two large iron-bound
+tables, one running down the middle, and the other along the
+wall opposite the fireplaces.  Around the upper fire the fags
+placed the tables in the form of a horse-shoe, and upon them the
+jugs with the Saturday night's allowance of beer.  Then the big
+boys used to drop in and take their seats, bringing with them
+bottled beer and song books; for although they all knew the
+songs by heart, it was the thing to have an old manuscript book
+descended from some departed hero, in which they were all
+carefully written out.
+
+The sixth-form boys had not yet appeared; so, to fill up the
+gap, an interesting and time-honoured ceremony was gone through.
+Each new boy was placed on the table in turn, and made to sing a
+solo, under the penalty of drinking a large mug of salt and
+water if he resisted or broke down.  However, the new boys all
+sing like nightingales to-night, and the salt water is not in
+requisition--Tom, as his part, performing the old west-country
+song of "The Leather Bottel" with considerable applause.  And at
+the half-hour down come the sixth and fifth form boys, and take
+their places at the tables, which are filled up by the next
+biggest boys, the rest, for whom there is no room at the table,
+standing round outside.
+
+The glasses and mugs are filled, and then the fugleman strikes
+up the old sea-song,
+
+
+"A wet sheet and a flowing sea,
+And a wind that follows fast," etc.,
+
+
+which is the invariable first song in the School-house; and all
+the seventy voices join in, not mindful of harmony, but bent on
+noise, which they attain decidedly, but the general effect isn't
+bad.  And then follow "The British Grenadiers," "Billy Taylor,"
+"The Siege of Seringapatam," "Three Jolly Postboys," and other
+vociferous songs in rapid succession, including "The Chesapeake
+and Shannon," a song lately introduced in honour of old Brooke;
+and when they come to the words,
+
+
+"Brave Broke he waved his sword, crying, Now, my lads, aboard,
+And we'll stop their playing Yankee-doodle-dandy oh!"
+
+
+you expect the roof to come down.  The sixth and fifth know that
+"brave Broke" of the Shannon was no sort of relation to our old
+Brooke.  The fourth form are uncertain in their belief, but for
+the most part hold that old Brooke was a midshipman then on
+board his uncle's ship.  And the lower school never doubt for a
+moment that it was our old Brooke who led the boarders, in what
+capacity they care not a straw.  During the pauses the bottled-
+beer corks fly rapidly, and the talk is fast and merry, and the
+big boys--at least all of them who have a fellow-feeling for
+dry throats--hand their mugs over their shoulders to be emptied
+by the small ones who stand round behind.
+
+Then Warner, the head of the house, gets up and wants to speak;
+but he can't, for every boy knows what's coming.  And the big
+boys who sit at the tables pound them and cheer; and the small
+boys who stand behind pound one another, and cheer, and rush
+about the hall cheering.  Then silence being made, Warner
+reminds them of the old School-house custom of drinking the
+healths, on the first night of singing, of those who are going
+to leave at the end of the half.  "He sees that they know what
+he is going to say already" (loud cheers), "and so won't keep
+them, but only ask them to treat the toast as it deserves.  It
+is the head of the eleven, the head of big-side football, their
+leader on this glorious day--Pater Brooke!"
+
+And away goes the pounding and cheering again, becoming
+deafening when old Brooke gets on his legs; till, a table having
+broken down, and a gallon or so of beer been upset, and all
+throats getting dry, silence ensues, and the hero speaks,
+leaning his hands on the table, and bending a little forwards.
+No action, no tricks of oratory--plain, strong, and straight,
+like his play.
+
+"Gentlemen of the School-house!  I am very proud of the way in
+which you have received my name, and I wish I could say all I
+should like in return.  But I know I shan't.  However, I'll do
+the best I can to say what seems to me ought to be said by a
+fellow who's just going to leave, and who has spent a good slice
+of his life here.  Eight years it is, and eight such years as I
+can never hope to have again.  So now I hope you'll all listen
+to me" (loud cheers of "That we will"), "for I'm going to talk
+seriously.  You're bound to listen to me for what's the use of
+calling me 'pater,' and all that, if you don't mind what I say?
+And I'm going to talk seriously, because I feel so.  It's a
+jolly time, too, getting to the end of the half, and a goal
+kicked by us first day" (tremendous applause), "after one of the
+hardest and fiercest day's play I can remember in eight years."
+(Frantic shoutings.)  "The School played splendidly, too, I will
+say, and kept it up to the last.  That last charge of theirs
+would have carried away a house.  I never thought to see
+anything again of old Crab there, except little pieces, when I
+saw him tumbled over by it."  (Laughter and shouting, and great
+slapping on the back of Jones by the boys nearest him.)  "Well,
+but we beat 'em."  (Cheers.)  "Ay, but why did we beat 'em?
+Answer me that."  (Shouts of "Your play.")  "Nonsense!  'Twasn't
+the wind and kick-off either--that wouldn't do it.  'Twasn't
+because we've half a dozen of the best players in the school, as
+we have.  I wouldn't change Warner, and Hedge, and Crab, and the
+young un, for any six on their side."  (Violent cheers.)  "But
+half a dozen fellows can't keep it up for two hours against two
+hundred.  Why is it, then?  I'll tell you what I think.  It's
+because we've more reliance on one another, more of a house
+feeling, more fellowship than the School can have.  Each of us
+knows and can depend on his next-hand man better.  That's why we
+beat 'em to-day.  We've union, they've division--there's the
+secret."  (Cheers.)  "But how's this to be kept up?  How's it to
+be improved?  That's the question.  For I take it we're all in
+earnest about beating the School, whatever else we care about.
+I know I'd sooner win two School-house matches running than get
+the Balliol scholarship any day."  (Frantic cheers.)
+
+"Now, I'm as proud of the house as any one.  I believe it's the
+best house in the school, out and out."  (Cheers.)  "But it's a
+long way from what I want to see it.  First, there's a deal of
+bullying going on.  I know it well.  I don't pry about and
+interfere; that only makes it more underhand, and encourages the
+small boys to come to us with their fingers in their eyes
+telling tales, and so we should be worse off than ever.  It's
+very little kindness for the sixth to meddle generally--you
+youngsters mind that.  You'll be all the better football players
+for learning to stand it, and to take your own parts, and fight
+it through.  But depend on it, there's nothing breaks up a house
+like bullying.  Bullies are cowards, and one coward makes many;
+so good-bye to the School-house match if bullying gets ahead
+here."  (Loud applause from the small boys, who look meaningly
+at Flashman and other boys at the tables.)  "Then there's
+fuddling about in the public-house, and drinking bad spirits,
+and punch, and such rot-gut stuff.  That won't make good drop-
+kicks or chargers of you, take my word for it.  You get plenty
+of good beer here, and that's enough for you; and drinking isn't
+fine or manly, whatever some of you may think of it.
+
+"One other thing I must have a word about.  A lot of you think
+and say, for I've heard you, 'There's this new Doctor hasn't
+been here so long as some of us, and he's changing all the old
+customs.  Rugby, and the Schoolhouse especially, are going to
+the dogs.  Stand up for the good old ways, and down with the
+Doctor!'  Now I'm as fond of old Rugby customs and ways as any
+of you, and I've been here longer than any of you, and I'll give
+you a word of advice in time, for I shouldn't like to see any of
+you getting sacked.  'Down with the Doctor's' easier said than
+done.  You'll find him pretty tight on his perch, I take it, and
+an awkwardish customer to handle in that line.  Besides now,
+what customs has he put down?  There was the good old custom of
+taking the linchpins out of the farmers' and bagmen's gigs at
+the fairs, and a cowardly, blackguard custom it was.  We all
+know what came of it, and no wonder the Doctor objected to it.
+But come now, any of you, name a custom that he has put down."
+
+"The hounds," calls out a fifth-form boy, clad in a green
+cutaway with brass buttons and cord trousers, the leader of the
+sporting interest, and reputed a great rider and keen hand
+generally.
+
+"Well, we had six or seven mangy harriers and beagles belonging
+to the house, I'll allow, and had had them for years, and that
+the Doctor put them down.  But what good ever came of them?
+Only rows with all the keepers for ten miles round; and big-side
+hare-and-hounds is better fun ten times over.  What else?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Well, I won't go on.  Think it over for yourselves.  You'll
+find, I believe, that he don't meddle with any one that's worth
+keeping.  And mind now, I say again, look out for squalls if you
+will go your own way, and that way ain't the Doctor's, for it'll
+lead to grief.  You all know that I'm not the fellow to back a
+master through thick and thin.  If I saw him stopping football,
+or cricket, or bathing, or sparring, I'd be as ready as any
+fellow to stand up about it.  But he don't; he encourages them.
+Didn't you see him out to-day for half an hour watching us?"
+(loud cheers for the Doctor); "and he's a strong, true man, and
+a wise one too, and a public-school man too" (cheers), "and so
+let's stick to him, and talk no more rot, and drink his health
+as the head of the house."  (Loud cheers.)  "And now I've done
+blowing up, and very glad I am to have done.  But it's a solemn
+thing to be thinking of leaving a place which one has lived in
+and loved for eight years; and if one can say a word for the
+good of the old house at such a time, why, it should be said,
+whether bitter or sweet.  If I hadn't been proud of the house
+and you--ay, no one knows how proud--I shouldn't be blowing
+you up.  And now let's get to singing.  But before I sit down I
+must give you a toast to be drunk with three-times-three and all
+the honours.  It's a toast which I hope every one of us,
+wherever he may go hereafter, will never fail to drink when he
+thinks of the brave, bright days of his boyhood.  It's a toast
+which should bind us all together, and to those who've gone
+before and who'll come after us here.  It is the dear old
+School-house--the best house of the best school in England!"
+
+My dear boys, old and young, you who have belonged, or do
+belong, to other schools and other houses, don't begin throwing
+my poor little book about the room, and abusing me and it, and
+vowing you'll read no more when you get to this point.  I allow
+you've provocation for it.  But come now--would you, any of
+you, give a fig for a fellow who didn't believe in and stand up
+for his own house and his own school?  You know you wouldn't.
+Then don't object to me cracking up the old School house, Rugby.
+Haven't I a right to do it, when I'm taking all the trouble of
+writing this true history for all of your benefits?  If you
+ain't satisfied, go and write the history of your own houses in
+your own times, and say all you know for your own schools and
+houses, provided it's true, and I'll read it without abusing
+you.
+
+The last few words hit the audience in their weakest place.
+They had been not altogether enthusiastic at several parts of
+old Brooke's speech; but "the best house of the best school in
+England" was too much for them all, and carried even the
+sporting and drinking interests off their legs into rapturous
+applause, and (it is to be hoped} resolutions to lead a new life
+and remember old Brooke's words--which, however, they didn't
+altogether do, as will appear hereafter.
+
+But it required all old Brooke's popularity to carry down parts
+of his speech--especially that relating to the Doctor.  For
+there are no such bigoted holders by established forms and
+customs, be they never so foolish or meaningless, as English
+school-boys--at least, as the school-boys of our generation.
+We magnified into heroes every boy who had left, and looked upon
+him with awe and reverence when he revisited the place a year or
+so afterwards, on his way to or from Oxford or Cambridge; and
+happy was the boy who remembered him, and sure of an audience as
+he expounded what he used to do and say, though it were sad
+enough stuff to make angels, not to say head-masters, weep.
+
+We looked upon every trumpery little custom and habit which had
+obtained in the School as though it had been a law of the Medes
+and Persians, and regarded the infringement or variation of it
+as a sort of sacrilege.  And the Doctor, than whom no man or boy
+had a stronger liking for old school customs which were good and
+sensible, had, as has already been hinted, come into most
+decided collision with several which were neither the one nor
+the other.  And as old Brooke had said, when he came into
+collision with boys or customs, there was nothing for them but
+to give in or take themselves off; because what he said had to
+be done, and no mistake about it.  And this was beginning to be
+pretty clearly understood.  The boys felt that there was a
+strong man over them, who would have things his own way, and
+hadn't yet learnt that he was a wise and loving man also.  His
+personal character and influence had not had time to make itself
+felt, except by a very few of the bigger boys with whom he came
+more directly into contact; and he was looked upon with great
+fear and dislike by the great majority even of his own house.
+For he had found School and School-house in a state of monstrous
+license and misrule, and was still employed in the necessary but
+unpopular work of setting up order with a strong hand.
+
+However, as has been said, old Brooke triumphed, and the boys
+cheered him and then the Doctor.  And then more songs came, and
+the healths of the other boys about to leave, who each made a
+speech, one flowery, another maudlin, a third prosy, and so on,
+which are not necessary to be here recorded.
+
+Half-past nine struck in the middle of the performance of "Auld
+Lang Syne," a most obstreperous proceeding, during which there
+was an immense amount of standing with one foot on the table,
+knocking mugs together and shaking hands, without which
+accompaniments it seems impossible for the youths of Britain to
+take part in that famous old song.  The under-porter of the
+School-house entered during the performance, bearing five or six
+long wooden candlesticks with lighted dips in them, which he
+proceeded to stick into their holes in such part of the great
+tables as he could get at; and then stood outside the ring till
+the end of the song, when he was hailed with shouts.
+
+"Bill you old muff, the half-hour hasn't struck."  "Here, Bill,
+drink some cocktail."  "Sing us a song, old boy."  "Don't you
+wish you may get the table?"  Bill drank the proffered cocktail
+not unwillingly, and putting down the empty glass, remonstrated.
+"Now gentlemen, there's only ten minutes to prayers, and we must
+get the hall straight."
+
+Shouts of "No, no!" and a violent effort to strike up "Billy
+Taylor" for the third time.  Bill looked appealingly to old
+Brooke, who got up and stopped the noise.  "Now then, lend a
+hand, you youngsters, and get the tables back; clear away the
+jugs and glasses.  Bill's right.  Open the windows, Warner."
+The boy addressed, who sat by the long ropes, proceeded to pull
+up the great windows, and let in a clear, fresh rush of night
+air, which made the candles flicker and gutter, and the fires
+roar.  The circle broke up, each collaring his own jug, glass,
+and song-book; Bill pounced on the big table, and began to
+rattle it away to its place outside the buttery door.  The
+lower-passage boys carried off their small tables, aided by
+their friends; while above all, standing on the great hall-
+table, a knot of untiring sons of harmony made night doleful by
+a prolonged performance of "God Save the King."  His Majesty
+King William the Fourth then reigned over us, a monarch
+deservedly popular amongst the boys addicted to melody, to whom
+he was chiefly known from the beginning of that excellent if
+slightly vulgar song in which they much delighted, -
+
+
+"Come, neighbours all, both great and small,
+Perform your duties here,
+And loudly sing, 'Live Billy, our king,'
+For bating the tax upon veer."
+
+
+Others of the more learned in songs also celebrated his praises
+in a sort of ballad, which I take to have been written by some
+Irish loyalist.  I have forgotten all but the chorus, which ran,
+-
+
+
+"God save our good King William, be his name for ever blest;
+He's the father of all his people, and the guardian of all the
+rest."
+
+
+In troth we were loyal subjects in those days, in a rough way.
+I trust that our successors make as much of her present Majesty,
+and, having regard to the greater refinement of the times, have
+adopted or written other songs equally hearty, but more
+civilized, in her honour.
+
+Then the quarter to ten struck, and the prayer-bell rang.  The
+sixth and fifth form boys ranged themselves in their school
+order along the wall, on either side of the great fires, the
+middle-fifth and upper-school boys round the long table in the
+middle of the hall, and the lower-school boys round the upper
+part of the second long table, which ran down the side of the
+hall farthest from the fires.  Here Tom found himself at the
+bottom of all, in a state of mind and body not at all fit for
+prayers, as he thought; and so tried hard to make himself
+serious, but couldn't, for the life of him, do anything but
+repeat in his head the choruses of some of the songs, and stare
+at all the boys opposite, wondering at the brilliancy of their
+waistcoats, and speculating what sort of fellows they were.  The
+steps of the head-porter are heard on the stairs, and a light
+gleams at the door.  "Hush!" from the fifth-form boys who stand
+there, and then in strides the Doctor, cap on head, book in one
+hand, and gathering up his gown in the other.  He walks up the
+middle, and takes his post by Warner, who begins calling over
+the names.  The Doctor takes no notice of anything, but quietly
+turns over his book and finds the place, and then stands, cap in
+hand and finger in book, looking straight before his nose.  He
+knows better than any one when to look, and when to see nothing.
+To-night is singing night, and there's been lots of noise and no
+harm done--nothing but beer drunk, and nobody the worse for it,
+though some of them do look hot and excited.  So the Doctor sees
+nothing, but fascinates Tom in a horrible manner as he stands
+there, and reads out the psalm, in that deep, ringing, searching
+voice of his.  Prayers are over, and Tom still stares open-
+mouthed after the Doctor's retiring figure, when he feels a pull
+at his sleeve, and turning round, sees East.
+
+"I say, were you ever tossed in a blanket?"
+
+"No," said Tom; "why?"
+
+"'Cause there'll be tossing to-night, most likely, before the
+sixth come up to bed.  So if you funk, you just come along and
+hide, or else they'll catch you and toss you."
+
+"Were you ever tossed?  Does it hurt?" inquired Tom.
+
+"Oh yes, bless you, a dozen times," said East, as he hobbled
+along by Tom's side upstairs.  "It don't hurt unless you fall on
+the floor.  But most fellows don't like it."
+
+They stopped at the fireplace in the top passage, where were a
+crowd of small boys whispering together, and evidently unwilling
+to go up into the bedrooms.  In a minute, however, a study door
+opened, and a sixth-form boy came out, and off they all scuttled
+up the stairs, and then noiselessly dispersed to their different
+rooms.  Tom's heart beat rather quick as he and East reached
+their room, but he had made up his mind.  "I shan't hide, East,"
+said he.
+
+"Very well, old fellow," replied East, evidently pleased; "no
+more shall I.  They'll be here for us directly."
+
+The room was a great big one, with a dozen beds in it, but not a
+boy that Tom could see except East and himself. East pulled off
+his coat and waistcoat, and then sat on the bottom of his bed
+whistling and pulling off his boots.  Tom followed his example.
+
+A noise and steps are heard in the passage, the door opens, and
+in rush four or five great fifth-form boys, headed by Flashman
+in his glory.
+
+Tom and East slept in the farther corner of the room, and were
+not seen at first.
+
+" Gone to ground, eh?" roared Flashman.  "Push 'em out then,
+boys; look under the beds."  And he pulled up the little white
+curtain of the one nearest him.  "Who-o-op!" he roared, pulling
+away at the leg of a small boy, who held on tight to the leg of
+the bed, and sang out lustily for mercy.
+
+"Here, lend a hand, one of you, and help me pull out this young
+howling brute. --Hold your tongue, sir, or I'll kill you."
+
+"Oh, please, Flashman, please, Walker, don't toss me!  I'll fag
+for you--I'll do anything--only don't toss me."
+
+"You be hanged," said Flashman, lugging the wretched boy along;
+"'twon't hurt you,--you !--Come along, boys; here he is."
+
+"I say, Flashey," sang out another of the big boys; "drop that;
+you heard what old Pater Brooke said to-night.  I'll be hanged
+if we'll toss any one against their will.  No more bullying.
+Let him go, I say."
+
+Flashman, with an oath and a kick, released his prey, who rushed
+headlong under his bed again, for fear they should change their
+minds, and crept along underneath the other beds, till he got
+under that of the sixth-form boy, which he knew they daren't
+disturb.
+
+"There's plenty of youngsters don't care about it," said Walker.
+"Here, here's Scud East--you'll be tossed, won't you, young
+un?"  Scud was East's nickname, or Black, as we called it,
+gained by his fleetness of foot.
+
+"Yes," said East, "if you like, only mind my foot."
+
+"And here's another who didn't hide. --Hullo! new boy; what's
+your name, sir?"
+
+"Brown."
+
+"Well, Whitey Brown, you don't mind being tossed?"
+
+"No," said Tom, setting his teeth.
+
+"Come along then, boys," sang out Walker; and away they all
+went, carrying along Tom and East, to the intense relief of four
+or five other small boys, who crept out from under the beds and
+behind them.
+
+"What a trump Scud is!" said one.  "They won't come back here
+now."
+
+"And that new boy, too; he must be a good-plucked one."
+
+"Ah! wait till he has been tossed on to the floor; see how he'll
+like it then!"
+
+Meantime the procession went down the passage to Number 7, the
+largest room, and the scene of the tossing, in the middle of
+which was a great open space.  Here they joined other parties of
+the bigger boys, each with a captive or two, some willing to be
+tossed, some sullen, and some frightened to death.  At Walker's
+suggestion all who were afraid were let off, in honour of Pater
+Brooke's speech.
+
+Then a dozen big boys seized hold of a blanket, dragged from one
+of the beds.  "In with Scud; quick! there's no time to lose."
+East was chucked into the blanket.  "Once, twice, thrice, and
+away!"  Up he went like a shuttlecock, but not quite up to the
+ceiling.
+
+"Now, boys, with a will," cried Walker; "once, twice, thrice,
+and away!"  This time he went clean up, and kept himself from
+touching the ceiling with his hand, and so again a third time,
+when he was turned out, and up went another boy.  And then came
+Tom's turn.  He lay quite still, by East's advice, and didn't
+dislike the "once, twice, thrice;" but the "away" wasn't so
+pleasant.  They were in good wind now, and sent him slap up to
+the ceiling first time, against which his knees came rather
+sharply.  But the moment's pause before descending was the rub--
+the feeling of utter helplessness and of leaving his whole
+inside behind him sticking to the ceiling.  Tom was very near
+shouting to be set down when he found himself back in the
+blanket, but thought of East, and didn't; and so took his three
+tosses without a kick or a cry, and was called a young trump for
+his pains.
+
+He and East, having earned it, stood now looking on.  No
+catastrophe happened, as all the captives were cool hands, and
+didn't struggle.  This didn't suit Flashman.  What your real
+bully likes in tossing is when the boys kick and struggle, or
+hold on to one side of the blanket, and so get pitched bodily on
+to the floor; it's no fun to him when no one is hurt or
+frightened.
+
+"Let's toss two of them together, Walker," suggested he.
+
+"What a cursed bully you are, Flashey!" rejoined the other.  "Up
+with another one."
+
+And so now two boys were tossed together, the peculiar hardship
+of which is, that it's too much for human nature to lie still
+then and share troubles; and so the wretched pair of small boys
+struggle in the air which shall fall a-top in the descent, to
+the no small risk of both falling out of the blanket, and the
+huge delight of brutes like Flashman.
+
+But now there's a cry that the prepostor of the room is coming;
+so the tossing stops, and all scatter to their different rooms;
+and Tom is left to turn in, with the first day's experience of a
+public school to meditate upon.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII - SETTLING TO THE COLLAR.
+
+
+
+"Says Giles, ''Tis mortal hard to go,
+But if so be's I must
+I means to follow arter he
+As goes hisself the fust.'" - Ballad.
+
+
+Everybody, I suppose, knows the dreamy, delicious state in which
+one lies, half asleep, half awake, while consciousness begins to
+return after a sound night's rest in a new place which we are
+glad to be in, following upon a day of unwonted excitement and
+exertion.  There are few pleasanter pieces of life.  The worst
+of it is that they last such a short time; for nurse them as you
+will, by lying perfectly passive in mind and body, you can't
+make more than five minutes or so of them.  After which time the
+stupid, obtrusive, wakeful entity which we call "I", as
+impatient as he is stiff-necked, spite of our teeth will force
+himself back again, and take possession of us down to our very
+toes.
+
+It was in this state that Master Tom lay at half-past seven on
+the morning following the day of his arrival, and from his clean
+little white bed watched the movements of Bogle (the generic
+name by which the successive shoeblacks of the School-house were
+known), as he marched round from bed to bed, collecting the
+dirty shoes and boots, and depositing clean ones in their
+places.
+
+There he lay, half doubtful as to where exactly in the universe
+he was, but conscious that he had made a step in life which he
+had been anxious to make.  It was only just light as he looked
+lazily out of the wide windows, and saw the tops of the great
+elms, and the rooks circling about and cawing remonstrances to
+the lazy ones of their commonwealth before starting in a body
+for the neighbouring ploughed fields.  The noise of the room-
+door closing behind Bogle, as he made his exit with the
+shoebasket under his arm, roused him thoroughly, and he sat up
+in bed and looked round the room.  What in the world could be
+the matter with his shoulders and loins?  He felt as if he had
+been severely beaten all down his back--the natural results of
+his performance at his first match.  He drew up his knees and
+rested his chin on them, and went over all the events of
+yesterday, rejoicing in his new life, what he had seen of it,
+and all that was to come.
+
+Presently one or two of the other boys roused themselves, and
+began to sit up and talk to one another in low tones.  Then
+East, after a roll or two, came to an anchor also, and nodding
+to Tom, began examining his ankle.
+
+"What a pull," said he, "that it's lie-in-bed, for I shall be as
+lame as a tree, I think."
+
+It was Sunday morning, and Sunday lectures had not yet been
+established; so that nothing but breakfast intervened between
+bed and eleven o'clock chapel--a gap by no means easy to fill
+up:  in fact, though received with the correct amount of
+grumbling, the first lecture instituted by the Doctor shortly
+afterwards was a great boon to the School.  It was lie-in-bed,
+and no one was in a hurry to get up, especially in rooms where
+the sixth-form boy was a good-tempered fellow, as was the case
+in Tom's room, and allowed the small boys to talk and laugh and
+do pretty much what they pleased, so long as they didn't disturb
+him.  His bed was a bigger one than the rest, standing in the
+corner by the fireplace, with a washing-stand and large basin by
+the side, where he lay in state with his white curtains tucked
+in so as to form a retiring place--an awful subject of
+contemplation to Tom, who slept nearly opposite, and watched the
+great man rouse himself and take a book from under his pillow,
+and begin reading, leaning his head on his hand, and turning his
+back to the room.  Soon, however, a noise of striving urchins
+arose, and muttered encouragements from the neighbouring boys of
+"Go it, Tadpole!"  "Now, young Green!"  "Haul away his blanket!"
+"Slipper him on the hands!"  Young Green and little Hall,
+commonly called Tadpole, from his great black head and thin
+legs, slept side by side far away by the door, and were for ever
+playing one another tricks, which usually ended, as on this
+morning, in open and violent collision; and now, unmindful of
+all order and authority, there they were, each hauling away at
+the other's bedclothes with one hand, and with the other, armed
+with a slipper, belabouring whatever portion of the body of his
+adversary came within reach.
+
+"Hold that noise up in the corner," called out the prepostor,
+sitting up and looking round his curtains; and the Tadpole and
+young Green sank down into their disordered beds; and then,
+looking at his watch, added, "Hullo! past eight.  Whose turn for
+hot water?"
+
+(Where the prepostor was particular in his ablutions, the fags
+in his room had to descend in turn to the kitchen, and beg or
+steal hot water for him; and often the custom extended farther,
+and two boys went down every morning to get a supply for the
+whole room.)
+
+"East's and Tadpole's," answered the senior fag, who kept the
+rota.
+
+"I can't go," said East; "I'm dead lame."
+
+"Well, be quick some of you, that's all," said the great man, as
+he turned out of bed, and putting on his slippers, went out into
+the great passage, which runs the whole length of the bedrooms,
+to get his Sunday habiliments out of his portmanteau.
+
+"Let me go for you," said Tom to East; "I should like it."
+
+"Well, thank 'ee, that's a good fellow.  Just pull on your
+trousers, and take your jug and mine.  Tadpole will show you the
+way."
+
+And so Tom and the Tadpole, in nightshirts and trousers, started
+off downstairs, and through "Thos's hole," as the little
+buttery, where candles and beer and bread and cheese were served
+out at night, was called, across the School-house court, down a
+long passage, and into the kitchen; where, after some parley
+with the stalwart, handsome cook, who declared that she had
+filled a dozen jugs already, they got their hot water, and
+returned with all speed and great caution.  As it was, they
+narrowly escaped capture by some privateers from the fifth-form
+rooms, who were on the lookout for the hot-water convoys, and
+pursued them up to the very door of their room, making them
+spill half their load in the passage.
+
+"Better than going down again though," as Tadpole remarked, "as
+we should have had to do if those beggars had caught us."
+
+By the time that the calling-over bell rang, Tom and his new
+comrades were all down, dressed in their best clothes, and he
+had the satisfaction of answering "here" to his name for the
+first time, the prepostor of the week having put it in at the
+bottom of his list.  And then came breakfast and a saunter about
+the close and town with East, whose lameness only became severe
+when any fagging had to be done.  And so they whiled away the
+time until morning chapel.
+
+It was a fine November morning, and the close soon became alive
+with boys of all ages, who sauntered about on the grass, or
+walked round the gravel walk, in parties of two or three.  East,
+still doing the cicerone, pointed out all the remarkable
+characters to Tom as they passed:  Osbert, who could throw a
+cricket-ball from the little-side ground over the rook-trees to
+the Doctor's wall; Gray, who had got the Balliol scholarship,
+and, what East evidently thought of much more importance, a
+half-holiday for the School by his success; Thorne, who had run
+ten miles in two minutes over the hour; Black, who had held his
+own against the cock of the town in the last row with the louts;
+and many more heroes, who then and there walked about and were
+worshipped, all trace of whom has long since vanished from the
+scene of their fame.  And the fourth-form boy who reads their
+names rudely cut on the old hall tables, or painted upon the
+big-side cupboard (if hall tables and big-side cupboards still
+exist), wonders what manner of boys they were.  It will be the
+same with you who wonder, my sons, whatever your prowess may be
+in cricket, or scholarship, or football.  Two or three years,
+more or less, and then the steadily advancing, blessed wave will
+pass over your names as it has passed over ours.  Nevertheless,
+play your games and do your work manfully--see only that that
+be done--and let the remembrance of it take care of itself.
+
+The chapel-bell began to ring at a quarter to eleven, and Tom
+got in early and took his place in the lowest row, and watched
+all the other boys come in and take their places, filling row
+after row; and tried to construe the Greek text which was
+inscribed over the door with the slightest possible success, and
+wondered which of the masters, who walked down the chapel and
+took their seats in the exalted boxes at the end, would be his
+lord.  And then came the closing of the doors, and the Doctor in
+his robes, and the service, which, however, didn't impress him
+much, for his feeling of wonder and curiosity was too strong.
+And the boy on one side of him was scratching his name on the
+oak panelling in front, and he couldn't help watching to see
+what the name was, and whether it was well scratched; and the
+boy on the other side went to sleep, and kept falling against
+him; and on the whole, though many boys even in that part of the
+school were serious and attentive, the general atmosphere was by
+no means devotional; and when he got out into the close again,
+he didn't feel at all comfortable, or as if he had been to
+church.
+
+But at afternoon chapel it was quite another thing.  He had
+spent the time after dinner in writing home to his mother, and
+so was in a better frame of mind; and his first curiosity was
+over, and he could attend more to the service.  As the hymn
+after the prayers was being sung, and the chapel was getting a
+little dark, he was beginning to feel that he had been really
+worshipping.  And then came that great event in his, as in every
+Rugby boy's life of that day--the first sermon from the Doctor.
+
+More worthy pens than mine have described that scene--the oak
+pulpit standing out by itself above the School seats; the tall,
+gallant form, the kindling eye, the voice, now soft as the low
+notes of a flute, now clear and stirring as the call of the
+light-infantry bugle, of him who stood there Sunday after
+Sunday, witnessing and pleading for his Lord, the King of
+righteousness and love and glory, with whose Spirit he was
+filled, and in whose power he spoke; the long lines of young
+faces, rising tier above tier down the whole length of the
+chapel, from the little boy's who had just left his mother to
+the young man's who was going out next week into the great
+world, rejoicing in his strength.  It was a great and solemn
+sight, and never more so than at this time of year, when the
+only lights in the chapel were in the pulpit and at the seats of
+the prepostors of the week, and the soft twilight stole over the
+rest of the chapel, deepening into darkness in the high gallery
+behind the organ.
+
+But what was it, after all, which seized and held these three
+hundred boys, dragging them out of themselves, willing or
+unwilling, for twenty minutes, on Sunday afternoons?  True,
+there always were boys scattered up and down the School, who in
+heart and head were worthy to hear and able to carry away the
+deepest and wisest words there spoken.  But these were a
+minority always, generally a very small one, often so small a
+one as to be countable on the fingers of your hand.  What was it
+that moved and held us, the rest of the three hundred reckless,
+childish boys, who feared the Doctor with all our hearts, and
+very little besides in heaven or earth; who thought more of our
+sets in the School than of the Church of Christ, and put the
+traditions of Rugby and the public opinion of boys in our daily
+life above the laws of God?  We couldn't enter into half that we
+heard; we hadn't the knowledge of our own hearts or the
+knowledge of one another, and little enough of the faith, hope,
+and love needed to that end.  But we listened, as all boys in
+their better moods will listen (ay, and men too for the matter
+of that), to a man whom we felt to be, with all his heart and
+soul and strength, striving against whatever was mean and
+unmanly and unrighteous in our little world.  It was not the
+cold, clear voice of one giving advice and warning from serene
+heights to those who were struggling and sinning below, but the
+warm, living voice of one who was fighting for us and by our
+sides, and calling on us to help him and ourselves and one
+another.  And so, wearily and little by little, but surely and
+steadily on the whole, was brought home to the young boy, for
+the first time, the meaning of his life--that it was no fool's
+or sluggard's paradise into which he had wandered by chance, but
+a battlefield ordained from of old, where there are no
+spectators, but the youngest must take his side, and the stakes
+are life and death.  And he who roused this consciousness in
+them showed them at the same time, by every word he spoke in the
+pulpit, and by his whole daily life, how that battle was to be
+fought, and stood there before them their fellow-soldier and the
+captain of their band--the true sort of captain, too, for a
+boy's army--one who had no misgivings, and gave no uncertain
+word of command, and, let who would yield or make truce, would
+fight the fight out (so every boy felt) to the last gasp and the
+last drop of blood.  Other sides of his character might take
+hold of and influence boys here and there; but it was this
+thoroughness and undaunted courage which, more than anything
+else, won his way to the hearts of the great mass of those on
+whom he left his mark, and made them believe first in him and
+then in his Master.
+
+It was this quality above all others which moved such boys as
+our hero, who had nothing whatever remarkable about him except
+excess of boyishness--by which I mean animal life in its
+fullest measure, good nature and honest impulses, hatred of
+injustice and meanness, and thoughtlessness enough to sink a
+three-decker.  And so, during the next two years, in which it
+was more than doubtful whether he would get good or evil from
+the School, and before any steady purpose or principle grew up
+in him, whatever his week's sins and shortcomings might have
+been, he hardly ever left the chapel on Sunday evenings without
+a serious resolve to stand by and follow the Doctor, and a
+feeling that it was only cowardice (the incarnation of all other
+sins in such a boy's mind) which hindered him from doing so with
+all his heart.
+
+The next day Tom was duly placed in the third form, and began
+his lessons in a corner of the big School.  He found the work
+very easy, as he had been well grounded, and knew his grammar by
+heart; and, as he had no intimate companions to make him idle
+(East and his other School-house friends being in the lower
+fourth, the form above him), soon gained golden opinions from
+his master, who said he was placed too low, and should be put
+out at the end of the half-year.  So all went well with him in
+School, and he wrote the most flourishing letters home to his
+mother, full of his own success and the unspeakable delights of
+a public school.
+
+In the house, too, all went well.  The end of the half-year was
+drawing near, which kept everybody in a good humour, and the
+house was ruled well and strongly by Warner and Brooke.  True,
+the general system was rough and hard, and there was bullying in
+nooks and corners--bad signs for the future; but it never got
+farther, or dared show itself openly, stalking about the
+passages and hall and bedrooms, and making the life of the small
+boys a continual fear.
+
+Tom, as a new boy, was of right excused fagging for the first
+month, but in his enthusiasm for his new life this privilege
+hardly pleased him; and East and others of his young friends,
+discovering this, kindly allowed him to indulge his fancy, and
+take their turns at night fagging and cleaning studies.  These
+were the principal duties of the fags in the house.  From supper
+until nine o'clock three fags taken in order stood in the
+passages, and answered any prepostor who called "Fag," racing to
+the door, the last comer having to do the work.  This consisted
+generally of going to the buttery for beer and bread and cheese
+(for the great men did not sup with the rest, but had each his
+own allowance in his study or the fifth-form room), cleaning
+candlesticks and putting in new candles, toasting cheese,
+bottling beer, and carrying messages about the house; and Tom,
+in the first blush of his hero-worship, felt it a high privilege
+to receive orders from and be the bearer of the supper of old
+Brooke.  And besides this night-work, each prepostor had three
+or four fags specially allotted to him, of whom he was supposed
+to be the guide, philosopher, and friend, and who in return for
+these good offices had to clean out his study every morning by
+turns, directly after first lesson and before he returned from
+breakfast.  And the pleasure of seeing the great men's studies,
+and looking at their pictures, and peeping into their books,
+made Tom a ready substitute for any boy who was too lazy to do
+his own work.  And so he soon gained the character of a good-
+natured, willing fellow, who was ready to do a turn for any one.
+
+In all the games, too, he joined with all his heart, and soon
+became well versed in all the mysteries of football, by
+continual practice at the School-house little-side, which played
+daily.
+
+The only incident worth recording here, however, was his first
+run at hare-and-hounds.  On the last Tuesday but one of the
+half-year he was passing through the hall after dinner, when he
+was hailed with shouts from Tadpole and several other fags
+seated at one of the long tables, the chorus of which was, "Come
+and help us tear up scent."
+
+Tom approached the table in obedience to the mysterious summons,
+always ready to help, and found the party engaged in tearing up
+old newspapers, copy-books, and magazines, into small pieces,
+with which they were filling four large canvas bags.
+
+"It's the turn of our house to find scent for big-side hare-and-
+hounds," exclaimed Tadpole.  "Tear away; there's no time to lose
+before calling-over."
+
+"I think it's a great shame," said another small boy, "to have
+such a hard run for the last day."
+
+"Which run is it?" said Tadpole.
+
+"Oh, the Barby run, I hear," answered the other; "nine miles at
+least, and hard ground; no chance of getting in at the finish,
+unless you're a first-rate scud."
+
+"Well, I'm going to have a try," said Tadpole; "it's the last
+run of the half, and if a fellow gets in at the end big-side
+stands ale and bread and cheese and a bowl of punch; and the
+Cock's such a famous place for ale."
+
+"I should like to try too," said Tom.
+
+"Well, then, leave your waistcoat behind, and listen at the
+door, after calling-over, and you'll hear where the meet is."
+
+After calling-over, sure enough there were two boys at the door,
+calling out, "Big-side hare-and-hounds meet at White Hall;" and
+Tom, having girded himself with leather strap, and left all
+superfluous clothing behind, set off for White Hall, an old
+gable-ended house some quarter of a mile from the town, with
+East, whom he had persuaded to join, notwithstanding his
+prophecy that they could never get in, as it was the hardest run
+of the year.
+
+At the meet they found some forty or fifty boys, and Tom felt
+sure, from having seen many of them run at football, that he and
+East were more likely to get in than they.
+
+After a few minutes' waiting, two well-known runners, chosen for
+the hares, buckled on the four bags filled with scent, compared
+their watches with those of young Brooke and Thorne, and started
+off at a long, slinging trot across the fields in the direction
+of Barby.
+
+Then the hounds clustered round Thorne, who explained shortly,
+"They're to have six minutes' law.  We run into the Cock, and
+every one who comes in within a quarter of an hour of the
+hares'll be counted, if he has been round Barby church."  Then
+came a minute's pause or so, and then the watches are pocketed,
+and the pack is led through the gateway into the field which the
+hares had first crossed.  Here they break into a trot,
+scattering over the field to find the first traces of the scent
+which the hares throw out as they go along.  The old hounds make
+straight for the likely points, and in a minute a cry of
+"Forward" comes from one of them, and the whole pack, quickening
+their pace, make for the spot, while the boy who hit the scent
+first, and the two or three nearest to him, are over the first
+fence, and making play along the hedgerow in the long grass-
+field beyond.  The rest of the pack rush at the gap already
+made, and scramble through, jostling one another.  "Forward"
+again, before they are half through.  The pace quickens into a
+sharp run, the tail hounds all straining to get up to the lucky
+leaders.  They are gallant hares, and the scent lies thick right
+across another meadow and into a ploughed field, where the pace
+begins to tell; then over a good wattle with a ditch on the
+other side, and down a large pasture studded with old thorns,
+which slopes down to the first brook.  The great Leicestershire
+sheep charge away across the field as the pack comes racing down
+the slope.  The brook is a small one, and the scent lies right
+ahead up the opposite slope, and as thick as ever--not a turn
+or a check to favour the tail hounds, who strain on, now
+trailing in a long line, many a youngster beginning to drag his
+legs heavily, and feel his heart beat like a hammer, and the
+bad-plucked ones thinking that after all it isn't worth while to
+keep it up.
+
+Tom, East, and the Tadpole had a good start, and are well up for
+such young hands, and after rising the slope and crossing the
+next field, find themselves up with the leading hounds, who have
+overrun the scent, and are trying back.  They have come a mile
+and a half in about eleven minutes, a pace which shows that it
+is the last day.  About twenty-five of the original starters
+only show here, the rest having already given in; the leaders
+are busy making casts into the fields on the left and right, and
+the others get their second winds.
+
+Then comes the cry of "Forward" again from young Brooke, from
+the extreme left, and the pack settles down to work again
+steadily and doggedly, the whole keeping pretty well together.
+The scent, though still good, is not so thick; there is no need
+of that, for in this part of the run every one knows the line
+which must be taken, and so there are no casts to be made, but
+good downright running and fencing to be done.  All who are now
+up mean coming in, and they come to the foot of Barby Hill
+without losing more than two or three more of the pack.  This
+last straight two miles and a half is always a vantage ground
+for the hounds, and the hares know it well; they are generally
+viewed on the side of Barby Hill, and all eyes are on the
+lookout for them to-day.  But not a sign of them appears, so now
+will be the hard work for the hounds, and there is nothing for
+it but to cast about for the scent, for it is now the hares'
+turn, and they may baffle the pack dreadfully in the next two
+miles.
+
+Ill fares it now with our youngsters, that they are School-house
+boys, and so follow young Brooke, for he takes the wide casts
+round to the left, conscious of his own powers, and loving the
+hard work.  For if you would consider for a moment, you small
+boys, you would remember that the Cock, where the run ends and
+the good ale will be going, lies far out to the right on the
+Dunchurch road, so that every cast you take to the left is so
+much extra work.  And at this stage of the run, when the evening
+is closing in already, no one remarks whether you run a little
+cunning or not; so you should stick to those crafty hounds who
+keep edging away to the right, and not follow a prodigal like
+young Brooke, whose legs are twice as long as yours and of cast-
+iron, wholly indifferent to one or two miles more or less.
+However, they struggle after him, sobbing and plunging along,
+Tom and East pretty close, and Tadpole, whose big head begins to
+pull him down, some thirty yards behind.
+
+Now comes a brook, with stiff clay banks, from which they can
+hardly drag their legs, and they hear faint cries for help from
+the wretched Tadpole, who has fairly stuck fast.  But they have
+too little run left in themselves to pull up for their own
+brothers.  Three fields more, and another check, and then
+"Forward" called away to the extreme right.
+
+The two boys' souls die within them; they can never do it.
+Young Brooke thinks so too, and says kindly, "You'll cross a
+lane after next field; keep down it, and you'll hit the
+Dunchurch road below the Cock," and then steams away for the run
+in, in which he's sure to be first, as if he were just starting.
+They struggle on across the next field, the "forwards" getting
+fainter and fainter, and then ceasing.  The whole hunt is out of
+ear-shot, and all hope of coming in is over.
+
+"Hang it all!" broke out East, as soon as he had got wind
+enough, pulling off his hat and mopping at his face, all
+spattered with dirt and lined with sweat, from which went up a
+thick steam into the still, cold air.  "I told you how it would
+be.  What a thick I was to come!  Here we are, dead beat, and
+yet I know we're close to the run in, if we knew the country."
+
+"Well," said Tom, mopping away, and gulping down his
+disappointment, "it can't be helped.  We did our best anyhow.
+Hadn't we better find this lane, and go down it, as young Brooke
+told us?"
+
+"I suppose so--nothing else for it," grunted East.  "If ever I
+go out last day again."  Growl, growl, growl.
+
+So they tried back slowly and sorrowfully, and found the lane,
+and went limping down it, plashing in the cold puddly ruts, and
+beginning to feel how the run had taken it out of them.  The
+evening closed in fast, and clouded over, dark, cold, and
+dreary.
+
+"I say, it must be locking-up, I should think," remarked East,
+breaking the silence--"it's so dark."
+
+"What if we're late?" said Tom.
+
+"No tea, and sent up to the Doctor," answered East.
+
+The thought didn't add to their cheerfulness.  Presently a faint
+halloo was heard from an adjoining field.  They answered it and
+stopped, hoping for some competent rustic to guide them, when
+over a gate some twenty yards ahead crawled the wretched
+Tadpole, in a state of collapse.  He had lost a shoe in the
+brook, and had been groping after it up to his elbows in the
+stiff, wet clay, and a more miserable creature in the shape of
+boy seldom has been seen.
+
+The sight of him, notwithstanding, cheered them, for he was some
+degrees more wretched than they.  They also cheered him, as he
+was no longer under the dread of passing his night alone in the
+fields.  And so, in better heart, the three plashed painfully
+down the never-ending lane.  At last it widened, just as utter
+darkness set in, and they came out on a turnpike road, and there
+paused, bewildered, for they had lost all bearings, and knew not
+whether to turn to the right or left.
+
+Luckily for them they had not to decide, for lumbering along the
+road, with one lamp lighted and two spavined horses in the
+shafts, came a heavy coach, which after a moment's suspense they
+recognized as the Oxford coach, the redoubtable Pig and Whistle.
+
+It lumbered slowly up, and the boys, mustering their last run,
+caught it as it passed, and began clambering up behind, in which
+exploit East missed his footing and fell flat on his nose along
+the road.  Then the others hailed the old scarecrow of a
+coachman, who pulled up and agreed to take them in for a
+shilling; so there they sat on the back seat, drubbing with
+their heels, and their teeth chattering with cold, and jogged
+into Rugby some forty minutes after locking-up.
+
+Five minutes afterwards three small, limping, shivering figures
+steal along through the Doctor's garden, and into the house by
+the servants' entrance (all the other gates have been closed
+long since), where the first thing they light upon in the
+passage is old Thomas, ambling along, candle in one hand and
+keys in the other.
+
+He stops and examines their condition with a grim smile.  "Ah!
+East, Hall, and Brown, late for locking-up.  Must go up to the
+Doctor's study at once."
+
+"Well but, Thomas, mayn't we go and wash first?  You can put
+down the time, you know."
+
+"Doctor's study d'rectly you come in--that's the orders,"
+replied old Thomas, motioning towards the stairs at the end of
+the passage which led up into the Doctor's house; and the boys
+turned ruefully down it, not cheered by the old verger's
+muttered remark, "What a pickle they boys be in!"  Thomas
+referred to their faces and habiliments, but they construed it
+as indicating the Doctor's state of mind.  Upon the short flight
+of stairs they paused to hold counsel.
+
+"Who'll go in first?" inquires Tadpole.
+
+"You--you're the senior," answered East.
+
+"Catch me.  Look at the state I'm in," rejoined Hall, showing
+the arms of his jacket.  "I must get behind you two."
+
+"Well, but look at me," said East, indicating the mass of clay
+behind which he was standing; "I'm worse than you, two to one.
+You might grow cabbages on my trousers."
+
+"That's all down below, and you can keep your legs behind the
+sofa," said Hall.
+
+"Here, Brown; you're the show-figure.  You must lead."
+
+"But my face is all muddy," argued Tom.
+
+"Oh, we're all in one boat for that matter; but come on; we're
+only making it worse, dawdling here."
+
+"Well, just give us a brush then," said Tom.  And they began
+trying to rub off the superfluous dirt from each other's
+jackets; but it was not dry enough, and the rubbing made them
+worse; so in despair they pushed through the swing-door at the
+head of the stairs, and found themselves in the Doctor's hall.
+
+"That's the library door," said East in a whisper, pushing Tom
+forwards.  The sound of merry voices and laughter came from
+within, and his first hesitating knock was unanswered.  But at
+the second, the Doctor's voice said, "Come in;" and Tom turned
+the handle, and he, with the others behind him, sidled into the
+room.
+
+The Doctor looked up from his task; he was working away with a
+great chisel at the bottom of a boy's sailing boat, the lines of
+which he was no doubt fashioning on the model of one of Nicias's
+galleys.  Round him stood three or four children; the candles
+burnt brightly on a large table at the farther end, covered with
+books and papers, and a great fire threw a ruddy glow over the
+rest of the room.  All looked so kindly, and homely, and
+comfortable that the boys took heart in a moment, and Tom
+advanced from behind the shelter of the great sofa.  The Doctor
+nodded to the children, who went out, casting curious and amused
+glances at the three young scarecrows.
+
+"Well, my little fellows," began the Doctor, drawing himself up
+with his back to the fire, the chisel in one hand and his coat-
+tails in the other, and his eyes twinkling as he looked them
+over; "what makes you so late?"
+
+"Please, sir, we've been out big-side hare-and-hounds, and lost
+our way."
+
+"Hah! you couldn't keep up, I suppose?"
+
+"Well, sir," said East, stepping out, and not liking that the
+Doctor should think lightly of his running powers, "we got round
+Barby all right; but then -"
+
+"Why, what a state you're in, my boy!" interrupted the Doctor,
+as the pitiful condition of East's garments was fully revealed
+to him.
+
+"That's the fall I got, sir, in the road," said East, looking
+down at himself; "the Old Pig came by -"
+
+"The what?" said the Doctor.
+
+"The Oxford coach, sir," explained Hall.
+
+"Hah! yes, the Regulator," said the Doctor.
+
+"And I tumbled on my face, trying to get up behind," went on
+East.
+
+"You're not hurt, I hope?" said the Doctor.
+
+"Oh no, sir."
+
+"Well now, run upstairs, all three of you, and get clean things
+on, and then tell the housekeeper to give you some tea.  You're
+too young to try such long runs.  Let Warner know I've seen you.
+Good-night."
+
+"Good-night, sir."  And away scuttled the three boys in high
+glee.
+
+"What a brick, not to give us even twenty lines to learn!" said
+the Tadpole, as they reached their bedroom; and in half an hour
+afterwards they were sitting by the fire in the housekeeper's
+room at a sumptuous tea, with cold meat--"Twice as good a grub
+as we should have got in the hall," as the Tadpole remarked with
+a grin, his mouth full of buttered toast.  All their grievances
+were forgotten, and they were resolving to go out the first big-
+side next half, and thinking hare-and-hounds the most delightful
+of games.
+
+A day or two afterwards the great passage outside the bedrooms
+was cleared of the boxes and portmanteaus, which went down to be
+packed by the matron, and great games of chariot-racing, and
+cock-fighting, and bolstering went on in the vacant space, the
+sure sign of a closing half-year.
+
+Then came the making up of parties for the journey home, and Tom
+joined a party who were to hire a coach, and post with four
+horses to Oxford.
+
+Then the last Saturday, on which the Doctor came round to each
+form to give out the prizes, and hear the master's last reports
+of how they and their charges had been conducting themselves;
+and Tom, to his huge delight, was praised, and got his remove
+into the lower fourth, in which all his School-house friends
+were.
+
+On the next Tuesday morning at four o'clock hot coffee was going
+on in the housekeeper's and matron's rooms; boys wrapped in
+great-coats and mufflers were swallowing hasty mouthfuls,
+rushing about, tumbling over luggage, and asking questions all
+at once of the matron; outside the School-gates were drawn up
+several chaises and the four-horse coach which Tom's party had
+chartered, the postboys in their best jackets and breeches, and
+a cornopean player, hired for the occasion, blowing away "A
+southerly wind and a cloudy sky," waking all peaceful
+inhabitants half-way down the High Street.
+
+Every minute the bustle and hubbub increased:  porters staggered
+about with boxes and bags, the cornopean played louder.  Old
+Thomas sat in his den with a great yellow bag by his side, out
+of which he was paying journey-money to each boy, comparing by
+the light of a solitary dip the dirty, crabbed little list in
+his own handwriting with the Doctor's list and the amount of his
+cash; his head was on one side, his mouth screwed up, and his
+spectacles dim from early toil.  He had prudently locked the
+door, and carried on his operations solely through the window,
+or he would have been driven wild and lost all his money.
+
+"Thomas, do be quick; we shall never catch the Highflyer at
+Dunchurch."
+
+"That's your money all right, Green."
+
+"Hullo, Thomas, the Doctor said I was to have two pound ten;
+you've only given me two pound."  (I fear that Master Green is
+not confining himself strictly to truth.)  Thomas turns his head
+more on one side than ever, and spells away at the dirty list.
+Green is forced away from the window.
+
+"Here, Thomas--never mind him; mine's thirty shillings."  "And
+mine too,"  "And mine," shouted others.
+
+One way or another, the party to which Tom belonged all got
+packed and paid, and sallied out to the gates, the cornopean
+playing frantically "Drops of Brandy," in allusion, probably, to
+the slight potations in which the musician and postboys had been
+already indulging.  All luggage was carefully stowed away inside
+the coach and in the front and hind boots, so that not a hat-box
+was visible outside.  Five or six small boys, with pea-shooters,
+and the cornopean player, got up behind; in front the big boys,
+mostly smoking, not for pleasure, but because they are now
+gentlemen at large, and this is the most correct public method
+of notifying the fact.
+
+"Robinson's coach will be down the road in a minute; it has gone
+up to Bird's to pick up.  We'll wait till they're close, and
+make a race of it," says the leader.  "Now, boys, half a
+sovereign apiece if you beat 'em into Dunchurch by one hundred
+yards."
+
+"All right, sir," shouted the grinning postboys.
+
+Down comes Robinson's coach in a minute or two, with a rival
+cornopean, and away go the two vehicles, horses galloping, boys
+cheering, horns playing loud.  There is a special providence
+over school-boys as well as sailors, or they must have upset
+twenty times in the first five miles--sometimes actually
+abreast of one another, and the boys on the roofs exchanging
+volleys of peas; now nearly running over a post-chaise which had
+started before them; now half-way up a bank; now with a wheel
+and a half over a yawning ditch:  and all this in a dark morning,
+with nothing but their own lamps to guide them.  However, it's
+all over at last, and they have run over nothing but an old pig
+in Southam Street.  The last peas are distributed in the Corn
+Market at Oxford, where they arrive between eleven and twelve,
+and sit down to a sumptuous breakfast at the Angel, which they
+are made to pay for accordingly.  Here the party breaks up, all
+going now different ways; and Tom orders out a chaise and pair
+as grand as a lord, though he has scarcely five shillings left
+in his pocket, and more than twenty miles to get home.
+
+"Where to, sir?"
+
+"Red Lion, Farringdon," says Tom, giving hostler a shilling.
+
+"All right, sir.--Red Lion, Jem," to the postboy; and Tom
+rattles away towards home.  At Farringdon, being known to the
+innkeeper, he gets that worthy to pay for the Oxford horses, and
+forward him in another chaise at once; and so the gorgeous young
+gentleman arrives at the paternal mansion, and Squire Brown
+looks rather blue at having to pay two pound ten shillings for
+the posting expenses from Oxford.  But the boy's intense joy at
+getting home, and the wonderful health he is in, and the good
+character he brings, and the brave stories he tells of Rugby,
+its doings and delights, soon mollify the Squire, and three
+happier people didn't sit down to dinner that day in England (it
+is the boy's first dinner at six o'clock at home--great
+promotion already) than the Squire and his wife and Tom Brown,
+at the end of his first half-year at Rugby.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII - THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.
+
+
+
+"They are slaves who will not choose
+Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
+Rather than in silence shrink
+From the truth they needs must think;
+They are slaves who dare not be
+
+In the right with two or three."
+LOWELL, Stanzas on Freedom.
+
+
+The lower-fourth form, in which Tom found himself at the
+beginning of the next half-year, was the largest form in the
+lower school, and numbered upwards of forty boys.  Young
+gentlemen of all ages from nine to fifteen were to be found
+there, who expended such part of their energies as was devoted
+to Latin and Greek upon a book of Livy, the "Bucolics" of
+Virgil, and the "Hecuba" of Euripides, which were ground out in
+small daily portions.  The driving of this unlucky lower-fourth
+must have been grievous work to the unfortunate master, for it
+was the most unhappily constituted of any in the school.  Here
+stuck the great stupid boys, who, for the life of them, could
+never master the accidence--the objects alternately of mirth
+and terror to the youngsters, who were daily taking them up and
+laughing at them in lesson, and getting kicked by them for so
+doing in play-hours.  There were no less than three unhappy
+fellows in tail coats, with incipient down on their chins, whom
+the Doctor and the master of the form were always endeavouring
+to hoist into the upper school, but whose parsing and construing
+resisted the most well-meant shoves.  Then came the mass of the
+form, boys of eleven and twelve, the most mischievous and
+reckless age of British youth, of whom East and Tom Brown were
+fair specimens.  As full of tricks as monkeys, and of excuses as
+Irishwomen, making fun of their master, one another, and their
+lessons, Argus himself would have been puzzled to keep an eye on
+them; and as for making them steady or serious for half an hour
+together, it was simply hopeless.  The remainder of the form
+consisted of young prodigies of nine and ten, who were going up
+the school at the rate of a form a half-year, all boys' hands
+and wits being against them in their progress.  It would have
+been one man's work to see that the precocious youngsters had
+fair play; and as the master had a good deal besides to do, they
+hadn't, and were for ever being shoved down three or four
+places, their verses stolen, their books inked, their jackets
+whitened, and their lives otherwise made a burden to them.
+
+The lower-fourth, and all the forms below it, were heard in the
+great school, and were not trusted to prepare their lessons
+before coming in, but were whipped into school three-quarters of
+an hour before the lesson began by their respective masters, and
+there, scattered about on the benches, with dictionary and
+grammar, hammered out their twenty lines of Virgil and Euripides
+in the midst of babel.  The masters of the lower school walked
+up and down the great school together during this three-quarters
+of an hour, or sat in their desks reading or looking over
+copies, and keeping such order as was possible.  But the lower-
+fourth was just now an overgrown form, too large for any one man
+to attend to properly, and consequently the elysium or ideal
+form of the young scapegraces who formed the staple of it.
+
+Tom, as has been said, had come up from the third with a good
+character, but the temptations of the lower-fourth soon proved
+too strong for him, and he rapidly fell away, and became as
+unmanageable as the rest.  For some weeks, indeed, he succeeded
+in maintaining the appearance of steadiness, and was looked upon
+favourably by his new master, whose eyes were first opened by
+the following little incident.
+
+Besides the desk which the master himself occupied, there was
+another large unoccupied desk in the corner of the great school,
+which was untenanted. To rush and seize upon this desk, which
+was ascended by three steps and held four boys, was the great
+object of ambition of the lower-fourthers; and the contentions
+for the occupation of it bred such disorder that at last the
+master forbade its use altogether.  This, of course, was a
+challenge to the more adventurous spirits to occupy it; and as
+it was capacious enough for two boys to lie hid there
+completely, it was seldom that it remained empty,
+notwithstanding the veto.  Small holes were cut in the front,
+through which the occupants watched the masters as they walked
+up and down; and as lesson time approached, one boy at a time
+stole out and down the steps, as the masters' backs were turned,
+and mingled with the general crowd on the forms below.  Tom and
+East had successfully occupied the desk some half-dozen times,
+and were grown so reckless that they were in the habit of
+playing small games with fives balls inside when the masters
+were at the other end of the big school.  One day, as ill-luck
+would have it, the game became more exciting than usual, and the
+ball slipped through East's fingers, and rolled slowly down the
+steps and out into the middle of the school, just as the masters
+turned in their walk and faced round upon the desk.  The young
+delinquents watched their master, through the lookout holes,
+march slowly down the school straight upon their retreat, while
+all the boys in the neighbourhood, of course, stopped their work
+to look on; and not only were they ignominiously drawn out, and
+caned over the hand then and there, but their characters for
+steadiness were gone from that time.  However, as they only
+shared the fate of some three-fourths of the rest of the form,
+this did not weigh heavily upon them.
+
+In fact, the only occasions on which they cared about the matter
+were the monthly examinations, when the Doctor came round to
+examine their form, for one long, awful hour, in the work which
+they had done in the preceding month.  The second monthly
+examination came round soon after Tom's fall, and it was with
+anything but lively anticipations that he and the other lower-
+fourth boys came in to prayers on the morning of the examination
+day.
+
+Prayers and calling-over seemed twice as short as usual, and
+before they could get construes of a tithe of the hard passages
+marked in the margin of their books, they were all seated round,
+and the Doctor was standing in the middle, talking in whispers
+to the master.  Tom couldn't hear a word which passed, and never
+lifted his eyes from his book; but he knew by a sort of magnetic
+instinct that the Doctor's under-lip was coming out, and his eye
+beginning to burn, and his gown getting gathered up more and
+more tightly in his left hand.  The suspense was agonizing, and
+Tom knew that he was sure on such occasions to make an example
+of the School-house boys.  "If he would only begin," thought
+Tom, "I shouldn't mind."
+
+At last the whispering ceased, and the name which was called out
+was not Brown.  He looked up for a moment, but the Doctor's face
+was too awful; Tom wouldn't have met his eye for all he was
+worth, and buried himself in his book again.
+
+The boy who was called up first was a clever, merry School-house
+boy, one of their set; he was some connection of the Doctor's,
+and a great favourite, and ran in and out of his house as he
+liked, and so was selected for the first victim.
+
+"Triste lupus stabulis," began the luckless youngster, and
+stammered through some eight or ten lines.
+
+"There, that will do," said the Doctor; "now construe."
+
+On common occasions the boy could have construed the passage
+well enough probably, but now his head was gone.
+
+"Triste lupus, the sorrowful wolf," he began.
+
+A shudder ran through the whole form, and the Doctor's wrath
+fairly boiled over.  He made three steps up to the construer,
+and gave him a good box on the ear.  The blow was not a hard
+one, but the boy was so taken by surprise that he started back;
+the form caught the back of his knees, and over he went on to
+the floor behind.  There was a dead silence over the whole
+school.  Never before and never again while Tom was at school
+did the Doctor strike a boy in lesson.  The provocation must
+have been great.  However, the victim had saved his form for
+that occasion, for the Doctor turned to the top bench, and put
+on the best boys for the rest of the hour and though, at the end
+of the lesson, he gave them all such a rating as they did not
+forget, this terrible field-day passed over without any severe
+visitations in the shape of punishments or floggings.  Forty
+young scapegraces expressed their thanks to the "sorrowful wolf"
+in their different ways before second lesson.
+
+But a character for steadiness once gone is not easily
+recovered, as Tom found; and for years afterwards he went up the
+school without it, and the masters' hands were against him, and
+his against them.  And he regarded them, as a matter of course,
+as his natural enemies.
+
+Matters were not so comfortable, either, in the house as they
+had been; for old Brooke left at Christmas, and one or two
+others of the sixth-form boys at the following Easter.  Their
+rule had been rough, but strong and just in the main, and a
+higher standard was beginning to be set up; in fact, there had
+been a short foretaste of the good time which followed some
+years later.  Just now, however, all threatened to return into
+darkness and chaos again.  For the new prepostors were either
+small young boys, whose cleverness had carried them up to the
+top of the school, while in strength of body and character they
+were not yet fit for a share in the government; or else big
+fellows of the wrong sort--boys whose friendships and tastes
+had a downward tendency, who had not caught the meaning of their
+position and work, and felt none of its responsibilities.  So
+under this no-government the School-house began to see bad
+times.  The big fifth-form boys, who were a sporting and
+drinking set, soon began to usurp power, and to fag the little
+boys as if they were prepostors, and to bully and oppress any
+who showed signs of resistance.  The bigger sort of sixth-form
+boys just described soon made common cause with the fifth, while
+the smaller sort, hampered by their colleagues' desertion to the
+enemy, could not make head against them.  So the fags were
+without their lawful masters and protectors, and ridden over
+rough-shod by a set of boys whom they were not bound to obey,
+and whose only right over them stood in their bodily powers;
+and, as old Brooke had prophesied, the house by degrees broke up
+into small sets and parties, and lost the strong feeling of
+fellowship which he set so much store by, and with it much of
+the prowess in games and the lead in all school matters which he
+had done so much to keep up.
+
+In no place in the world has individual character more weight
+than at a public school.  Remember this, I beseech you, all you
+boys who are getting into the upper forms.  Now is the time in
+all your lives, probably, when you may have more wide influence
+for good or evil on the society you live in than you ever can
+have again.  Quit yourselves like men, then; speak up, and
+strike out if necessary, for whatsoever is true, and manly, and
+lovely, and of good report; never try to be popular, but only to
+do your duty and help others to do theirs, and you may leave the
+tone of feeling in the school higher than you found it, and so
+be doing good which no living soul can measure to generations of
+your countrymen yet unborn.  For boys follow one another in
+herds like sheep, for good or evil; they hate thinking, and have
+rarely any settled principles.  Every school, indeed, has its
+own traditionary standard of right and wrong, which cannot be
+transgressed with impunity, marking certain things as low and
+blackguard, and certain others as lawful and right.  This
+standard is ever varying, though it changes only slowly and
+little by little; and, subject only to such standard, it is the
+leading boys for the time being who give the tone to all the
+rest, and make the School either a noble institution for the
+training of Christian Englishmen, or a place where a young boy
+will get more evil than he would if he were turned out to make
+his way in London streets, or anything between these two
+extremes.
+
+The change for the worse in the School-house, however, didn't
+press very heavily on our youngsters for some time.  They were
+in a good bedroom, where slept the only prepostor left who was
+able to keep thorough order, and their study was in his passage.
+So, though they were fagged more or less, and occasionally
+kicked or cuffed by the bullies, they were, on the whole, well
+off; and the fresh, brave school-life, so full of games,
+adventures, and good-fellowship, so ready at forgetting, so
+capacious at enjoying, so bright at forecasting, outweighed a
+thousand-fold their troubles with the master of their form, and
+the occasional ill-usage of the big boys in the house.  It
+wasn't till some year or so after the events recorded above that
+the prepostor of their room and passage left.  None of the other
+sixth-form boys would move into their passage, and, to the
+disgust and indignation of Tom and East, one morning after
+breakfast they were seized upon by Flashman, and made to carry
+down his books and furniture into the unoccupied study, which he
+had taken.  From this time they began to feel the weight of the
+tyranny of Flashman and his friends, and, now that trouble had
+come home to their own doors, began to look out for sympathizers
+and partners amongst the rest of the fags; and meetings of the
+oppressed began to be held, and murmurs to arise, and plots to
+be laid as to how they should free themselves and be avenged on
+their enemies.
+
+While matters were in this state, East and Tom were one evening
+sitting in their study.  They had done their work for first
+lesson, and Tom was in a brown study, brooding, like a young
+William Tell, upon the wrongs of fags in general, and his own in
+particular.
+
+"I say, Scud," said he at last, rousing himself to snuff the
+candle, "what right have the fifth-form boys to fag us as they
+do?"
+
+"No more right than you have to fag them," answered East,
+without looking up from an early number of "Pickwick," which was
+just coming out, and which he was luxuriously devouring,
+stretched on his back on the sofa.
+
+Tom relapsed into his brown study, and East went on reading and
+chuckling.  The contrast of the boys' faces would have given
+infinite amusement to a looker-on--the one so solemn and big
+with mighty purpose, the other radiant and bubbling over with
+fun.
+
+"Do you know, old fellow, I've been thinking it over a good
+deal," began Tom again.
+
+"Oh yes, I know--fagging you are thinking of.  Hang it all!
+But listen here, Tom--here's fun.  Mr. Winkle's horse--"
+
+"And I've made up my mind," broke in Tom, "that I won't fag
+except for the sixth."
+
+"Quite right too, my boy," cried East, putting his finger on the
+place and looking up; "but a pretty peck of troubles you'll get
+into, if you're going to play that game.  However, I'm all for a
+strike myself, if we can get others to join.  It's getting too
+bad."
+
+"Can't we get some sixth-form fellow to take it up?" asked Tom.
+
+"Well, perhaps we might.  Morgan would interfere, I think.
+Only," added East, after a moment's pause, "you see, we should
+have to tell him about it, and that's against School principles.
+Don't you remember what old Brooke said about learning to take
+our own parts?"
+
+"Ah, I wish old Brooke were back again.  It was all right in his
+time."
+
+"Why, yes, you see, then the strongest and best fellows were in
+the sixth, and the fifth-form fellows were afraid of them, and
+they kept good order; but now our sixth-form fellows are too
+small, and the fifth don't care for them, and do what they like
+in the house."
+
+"And so we get a double set of masters," cried Tom indignantly--
+"the lawful ones, who are responsible to the Doctor at any rate,
+and the unlawful, the tyrants, who are responsible to nobody."
+
+"Down with the tyrants!" cried East; "I'm all for law and order,
+and hurrah for a revolution."
+
+"I shouldn't mind if it were only for young Brooke now," said
+Tom; "he's such a good-hearted, gentlemanly fellow, and ought to
+be in the sixth.  I'd do anything for him.  But that blackguard
+Flashman, who never speaks to one without a kick or an oath--"
+
+"The cowardly brute," broke in East--"how I hate him!  And he
+knows it too; he knows that you and I think him a coward.  What
+a bore that he's got a study in this passage!  Don't you hear
+them now at supper in his den?  Brandy-punch going, I'll bet.  I
+wish the Doctor would come out and catch him.  We must change
+our study as soon as we can."
+
+"Change or no change, I'll never fag for him again," said Tom,
+thumping the table.
+
+"Fa-a-a-ag!" sounded along the passage from Flashman's study.
+The two boys looked at one another in silence.  It had struck
+nine, so the regular night-fags had left duty, and they were the
+nearest to the supper-party.  East sat up, and began to look
+comical, as he always did under difficulties.
+
+"Fa-a-a-ag!" again.  No answer.
+
+"Here, Brown! East! you cursed young skulks," roared out
+Flashman, coming to his open door; "I know you're in; no
+shirking."
+
+Tom stole to their door, and drew the bolts as noiselessly as he
+could; East blew out the candle.
+
+"Barricade the first," whispered he.  "Now, Tom, mind, no
+surrender."
+
+"Trust me for that," said Tom between his teeth.
+
+In another minute they heard the supper-party turn out and come
+down the passage to their door.  They held their breaths, and
+heard whispering, of which they only made out Flashman's words,
+"I know the young brutes are in."
+
+Then came summonses to open, which being unanswered, the assault
+commenced.  Luckily the door was a good strong oak one, and
+resisted the united weight of Flashman's party.  A pause
+followed, and they heard a besieger remark, "They're in safe
+enough.  Don't you see how the door holds at top and bottom?  So
+the bolts must be drawn.  We should have forced the lock long
+ago."  East gave Tom a nudge, to call attention to this
+scientific remark.
+
+Then came attacks on particular panels, one of which at last
+gave way to the repeated kicks; but it broke inwards, and the
+broken pieces got jammed across (the door being lined with green
+baize), and couldn't easily be removed from outside:  and the
+besieged, scorning further concealment, strengthened their
+defences by pressing the end of their sofa against the door.
+So, after one or two more ineffectual efforts, Flashman and
+Company retired, vowing vengeance in no mild terms.
+
+The first danger over, it only remained for the besieged to
+effect a safe retreat, as it was now near bed-time.  They
+listened intently, and heard the supper-party resettle
+themselves, and then gently drew back first one bolt and then
+the other.  Presently the convivial noises began again steadily.
+"Now then, stand by for a run," said East, throwing the door
+wide open and rushing into the passage, closely followed by Tom.
+They were too quick to be caught; but Flashman was on the
+lookout, and sent an empty pickle-jar whizzing after them, which
+narrowly missed Tom's head, and broke into twenty pieces at the
+end of the passage.  "He wouldn't mind killing one, if he wasn't
+caught," said East, as they turned the corner.
+
+There was no pursuit, so the two turned into the hall, where
+they found a knot of small boys round the fire.  Their story was
+told.  The war of independence had broken out.  Who would join
+the revolutionary forces?  Several others present bound
+themselves not to fag for the fifth form at once.  One or two
+only edged off, and left the rebels.  What else could they do?
+"I've a good mind to go to the Doctor straight," said Tom.
+
+"That'll never do.  Don't you remember the levy of the school
+last half?" put in another.
+
+In fact, the solemn assembly, a levy of the School, had been
+held, at which the captain of the School had got up, and after
+premising that several instances had occurred of matters having
+been reported to the masters; that this was against public
+morality and School tradition; that a levy of the sixth had been
+held on the subject, and they had resolved that the practice
+must be stopped at once; and given out that any boy, in whatever
+form, who should thenceforth appeal to a master, without having
+first gone to some prepostor and laid the case before him,
+should be thrashed publicly, and sent to Coventry.
+
+"Well, then, let's try the sixth.  Try Morgan," suggested
+another.  "No use"--"Blabbing won't do," was the general
+feeling.
+
+"I'll give you fellows a piece of advice," said a voice from the
+end of the hall.  They all turned round with a start, and the
+speaker got up from a bench on which he had been lying
+unobserved, and gave himself a shake.  He was a big, loose-made
+fellow, with huge limbs which had grown too far through his
+jacket and trousers.  "Don't you go to anybody at all--you just
+stand out; say you won't fag.  They'll soon get tired of licking
+you.  I've tried it on years ago with their forerunners."
+
+"No!  Did you?  Tell us how it was?" cried a chorus of voices,
+as they clustered round him.
+
+"Well, just as it is with you.  The fifth form would fag us, and
+I and some more struck, and we beat 'em.  The good fellows left
+off directly, and the bullies who kept on soon got afraid."
+
+"Was Flashman here then?"
+
+"Yes; and a dirty, little, snivelling, sneaking fellow he was
+too.  He never dared join us, and used to toady the bullies by
+offering to fag for them, and peaching against the rest of us."
+
+"Why wasn't he cut, then?" said East.
+
+"Oh, toadies never get cut; they're too useful.  Besides, he has
+no end of great hampers from home, with wine and game in them;
+so he toadied and fed himself into favour."
+
+The quarter-to-ten bell now rang, and the small boys went off
+upstairs, still consulting together, and praising their new
+counsellor, who stretched himself out on the bench before the
+hall fire again.  There he lay, a very queer specimen of
+boyhood, by name Diggs, and familiarly called "the Mucker."  He
+was young for his size, and a very clever fellow, nearly at the
+top of the fifth.  His friends at home, having regard, I
+suppose, to his age, and not to his size and place in the
+school, hadn't put him into tails; and even his jackets were
+always too small; and he had a talent for destroying clothes and
+making himself look shabby.  He wasn't on terms with Flashman's
+set, who sneered at his dress and ways behind his back; which he
+knew, and revenged himself by asking Flashman the most
+disagreeable questions, and treating him familiarly whenever a
+crowd of boys were round him.  Neither was he intimate with any
+of the other bigger boys, who were warned off by his oddnesses,
+for he was a very queer fellow; besides, amongst other failings,
+he had that of impecuniosity in a remarkable degree.  He brought
+as much money as other boys to school, but got rid of it in no
+time, no one knew how; and then, being also reckless, borrowed
+from any one; and when his debts accumulated and creditors
+pressed, would have an auction in the hall of everything he
+possessed in the world, selling even his school-books,
+candlestick, and study table.  For weeks after one of these
+auctions, having rendered his study uninhabitable, he would live
+about in the fifth-form room and hall, doing his verses on old
+letter-backs and odd scraps of paper, and learning his lessons
+no one knew how.  He never meddled with any little boy, and was
+popular with them, though they all looked on him with a sort of
+compassion, and called him "Poor Diggs," not being able to
+resist appearances, or to disregard wholly even the sneers of
+their enemy Flashman.  However, he seemed equally indifferent to
+the sneers of big boys and the pity of small ones, and lived his
+own queer life with much apparent enjoyment to himself.  It is
+necessary to introduce Diggs thus particularly, as he not only
+did Tom and East good service in their present warfare, as is
+about to be told, but soon afterwards, when he got into the
+sixth, chose them for his fags, and excused them from study-
+fagging, thereby earning unto himself eternal gratitude from
+them and all who are interested in their history.
+
+And seldom had small boys more need of a friend, for the morning
+after the siege the storm burst upon the rebels in all its
+violence.  Flashman laid wait, and caught Tom before second
+lesson, and receiving a point-blank "No" when told to fetch his
+hat, seized him and twisted his arm, and went through the other
+methods of torture in use.  "He couldn't make me cry, though,"
+as Tom said triumphantly to the rest of the rebels; "and I
+kicked his shins well, I know."  And soon it crept out that a
+lot of the fags were in league, and Flashman excited his
+associates to join him in bringing the young vagabonds to their
+senses; and the house was filled with constant chasings, and
+sieges, and lickings of all sorts; and in return, the bullies'
+beds were pulled to pieces and drenched with water, and their
+names written up on the walls with every insulting epithet which
+the fag invention could furnish.  The war, in short, raged
+fiercely; but soon, as Diggs had told them, all the better
+fellows in the fifth gave up trying to fag them, and public
+feeling began to set against Flashman and his two or three
+intimates, and they were obliged to keep their doings more
+secret, but being thorough bad fellows, missed no opportunity of
+torturing in private.  Flashman was an adept in all ways, but
+above all in the power of saying cutting and cruel things, and
+could often bring tears to the eyes of boys in this way, which
+all the thrashings in the world wouldn't have wrung from them.
+
+And as his operations were being cut short in other directions,
+he now devoted himself chiefly to Tom and East, who lived at his
+own door, and would force himself into their study whenever he
+found a chance, and sit there, sometimes alone, and sometimes
+with a companion, interrupting all their work, and exulting in
+the evident pain which every now and then he could see he was
+inflicting on one or the other.
+
+The storm had cleared the air for the rest of the house, and a
+better state of things now began than there had been since old
+Brooke had left; but an angry, dark spot of thunder-cloud still
+hung over the end of the passage where Flashman's study and that
+of East and Tom lay.
+
+He felt that they had been the first rebels, and that the
+rebellion had been to a great extent successful; but what above
+all stirred the hatred and bitterness of his heart against them
+was that in the frequent collisions which there had been of late
+they had openly called him coward and sneak.  The taunts were
+too true to be forgiven.  While he was in the act of thrashing
+them, they would roar out instances of his funking at football,
+or shirking some encounter with a lout of half his own size.
+These things were all well enough known in the house, but to
+have his own disgrace shouted out by small boys, to feel that
+they despised him, to be unable to silence them by any amount of
+torture, and to see the open laugh and sneer of his own
+associates (who were looking on, and took no trouble to hide
+their scorn from him, though they neither interfered with his
+bullying nor lived a bit the less intimately with him), made him
+beside himself.  Come what might, he would make those boys'
+lives miserable.  So the strife settled down into a personal
+affair between Flashman and our youngsters--a war to the knife,
+to be fought out in the little cockpit at the end of the bottom
+passage.
+
+Flashman, be it said, was about seventeen years old, and big and
+strong of his age.  He played well at all games where pluck
+wasn't much wanted, and managed generally to keep up appearances
+where it was; and having a bluff, off-hand manner, which passed
+for heartiness, and considerable powers of being pleasant when
+he liked, went down with the school in general for a good fellow
+enough.  Even in the School-house, by dint of his command of
+money, the constant supply of good things which he kept up, and
+his adroit toadyism, he had managed to make himself not only
+tolerated, but rather popular amongst his own contemporaries;
+although young Brooke scarcely spoke to him, and one or two
+others of the right sort showed their opinions of him whenever a
+chance offered.  But the wrong sort happened to be in the
+ascendant just now, and so Flashman was a formidable enemy for
+small boys.  This soon became plain enough. Flashman left no
+slander unspoken, and no deed undone, which could in any way
+hurt his victims, or isolate them from the rest of the house.
+One by one most of the other rebels fell away from them, while
+Flashman's cause prospered, and several other fifth-form boys
+began to look black at them and ill-treat them as they passed
+about the house.  By keeping out of bounds, or at all events out
+of the house and quadrangle, all day, and carefully barring
+themselves in at night, East and Tom managed to hold on without
+feeling very miserable; but it was as much as they could do.
+Greatly were they drawn then towards old Diggs, who, in an
+uncouth way, began to take a good deal of notice of them, and
+once or twice came to their study when Flashman was there, who
+immediately decamped in consequence.  The boys thought that
+Diggs must have been watching.
+
+When therefore, about this time, an auction was one night
+announced to take place in the hall, at which, amongst the
+superfluities of other boys, all Diggs's penates for the time
+being were going to the hammer, East and Tom laid their heads
+together, and resolved to devote their ready cash (some four
+shillings sterling) to redeem such articles as that sum would
+cover.  Accordingly, they duly attended to bid, and Tom became
+the owner of two lots of Diggs's things: --Lot 1, price one-and-
+threepence, consisting (as the auctioneer remarked) of a
+"valuable assortment of old metals," in the shape of a mouse-
+trap, a cheese-toaster without a handle, and a saucepan:  Lot 2,
+of a villainous dirty table-cloth and green-baize curtain; while
+East, for one-and-sixpence, purchased a leather paper-case, with
+a lock but no key, once handsome, but now much the worse for
+wear.  But they had still the point to settle of how to get
+Diggs to take the things without hurting his feelings.  This
+they solved by leaving them in his study, which was never locked
+when he was out.  Diggs, who had attended the auction,
+remembered who had bought the lots, and came to their study soon
+after, and sat silent for some time, cracking his great red
+finger-joints.  Then he laid hold of their verses, and began
+looking over and altering them, and at last got up, and turning
+his back to them, said, "You're uncommon good-hearted little
+beggars, you two.  I value that paper-case; my sister gave it to
+me last holidays.  I won't forget."  And so he tumbled out into
+the passage, leaving them somewhat embarrassed, but not sorry
+that he knew what they had done.
+
+The next morning was Saturday, the day on which the allowances
+of one shilling a week were paid--an important event to
+spendthrift youngsters; and great was the disgust amongst the
+small fry to hear that all the allowances had been impounded for
+the Derby lottery.  That great event in the English year, the
+Derby, was celebrated at Rugby in those days by many lotteries.
+It was not an improving custom, I own, gentle reader, and led to
+making books, and betting, and other objectionable results; but
+when our great Houses of Palaver think it right to stop the
+nation's business on that day and many of the members bet
+heavily themselves, can you blame us boys for following the
+example of our betters?  At any rate we did follow it.  First
+there was the great school lottery, where the first prize was
+six or seven pounds; then each house had one or more separate
+lotteries.  These were all nominally voluntary, no boy being
+compelled to put in his shilling who didn't choose to do so.
+But besides Flashman, there were three or four other fast,
+sporting young gentlemen in the Schoolhouse, who considered
+subscription a matter of duty and necessity; and so, to make
+their duty come easy to the small boys, quietly secured the
+allowances in a lump when given out for distribution, and kept
+them.  It was no use grumbling--so many fewer tartlets and
+apples were eaten and fives balls bought on that Saturday; and
+after locking-up, when the money would otherwise have been
+spent, consolation was carried to many a small boy by the sound
+of the night-fags shouting along the passages, "Gentlemen
+sportsmen of the School-house; the lottery's going to be drawn
+in the hall."  It was pleasant to be called a gentleman
+sportsman, also to have a chance of drawing a favourite horse.
+
+The hall was full of boys, and at the head of one of the long
+tables stood the sporting interest, with a hat before them, in
+which were the tickets folded up.  One of them then began
+calling out the list of the house.  Each boy as his name was
+called drew a ticket from the hat, and opened it; and most of
+the bigger boys, after drawing, left the hall directly to go
+back to their studies or the fifth-form room.  The sporting
+interest had all drawn blanks, and they were sulky accordingly;
+neither of the favourites had yet been drawn, and it had come
+down to the upper-fourth.  So now, as each small boy came up and
+drew his ticket, it was seized and opened by Flashman, or some
+other of the standers-by.  But no great favourite is drawn until
+it comes to the Tadpole's turn, and he shuffles up and draws,
+and tries to make off, but is caught, and his ticket is opened
+like the rest.
+
+"Here you are!  Wanderer--the third favourite!" shouts the
+opener.
+
+"I say, just give me my ticket, please," remonstrates Tadpole.
+
+"Hullo! don't be in a hurry," breaks in Flashman; "what'll you
+sell Wanderer for now?"
+
+"I don't want to sell," rejoins Tadpole.
+
+"Oh, don't you!  Now listen, you young fool:  you don't know
+anything about it; the horse is no use to you.  He won't win,
+but I want him as a hedge.  Now, I'll give you half a crown for
+him."  Tadpole holds out, but between threats and cajoleries at
+length sells half for one shilling and sixpence--about a fifth
+of its fair market value; however, he is glad to realize
+anything, and, as he wisely remarks, "Wanderer mayn't win, and
+the tizzy is safe anyhow."
+
+East presently comes up and draws a blank.  Soon after comes
+Tom's turn.  His ticket, like the others, is seized and opened.
+"Here you are then," shouts the opener, holding it up--
+"Harkaway!--By Jove, Flashey, your young friend's in luck."
+
+"Give me the ticket," says Flashman, with an oath, leaning
+across the table with open hand and his face black with rage.
+
+"Wouldn't you like it?" replies the opener, not a bad fellow at
+the bottom, and no admirer of Flashman.  "Here, Brown, catch
+hold."  And he hands the ticket to Tom, who pockets it.
+Whereupon Flashman makes for the door at once, that Tom and the
+ticket may not escape, and there keeps watch until the drawing
+is over and all the boys are gone, except the sporting set of
+five or six, who stay to compare books, make bets, and so on;
+Tom, who doesn't choose to move while Flashman is at the door;
+and East, who stays by his friend, anticipating trouble.  The
+sporting set now gathered round Tom.  Public opinion wouldn't
+allow them actually to rob him of his ticket, but any humbug or
+intimidation by which he could be driven to sell the whole or
+part at an undervalue was lawful.
+
+"Now, young Brown, come, what'll you sell me Harkaway for?  I
+hear he isn't going to start.  I'll give you five shillings for
+him," begins the boy who had opened the ticket.  Tom,
+remembering his good deed, and moreover in his forlorn state
+wishing to make a friend, is about to accept the offer, when
+another cries out, "I'll give you seven shillings."  Tom
+hesitated and looked from one to the other.
+
+"No, no!" said Flashman, pushing in, "leave me to deal with him;
+we'll draw lots for it afterwards.  Now sir, you know me:  you'll
+sell Harkaway to us for five shillings, or you'll repent it."
+
+"I won't sell a bit of him," answered Tom shortly.
+
+"You hear that now!" said Flashman, turning to the others.
+"He's the coxiest young blackguard in the house.  I always told
+you so.  We're to have all the trouble and risk of getting up
+the lotteries for the benefit of such fellows as he."
+
+Flashman forgets to explain what risk they ran, but he speaks to
+willing ears.  Gambling makes boys selfish and cruel as well as
+men.
+
+"That's true. We always draw blanks," cried one. --"Now, sir,
+you shall sell half, at any rate."
+
+"I won't," said Tom, flushing up to his hair, and lumping them
+all in his mind with his sworn enemy.
+
+"Very well then; let's roast him," cried Flashman, and catches
+hold of Tom by the collar.  One or two boys hesitate, but the
+rest join in.  East seizes Tom's arm, and tries to pull him
+away, but is knocked back by one of the boys, and Tom is dragged
+along struggling.  His shoulders are pushed against the
+mantelpiece, and he is held by main force before the fire,
+Flashman drawing his trousers tight by way of extra torture.
+Poor East, in more pain even than Tom, suddenly thinks of Diggs,
+and darts off to find him.  "Will you sell now for ten
+shillings?" says one boy who is relenting.
+
+Tom only answers by groans and struggles.
+
+"I say, Flashey, he has had enough," says the same boy, dropping
+the arm he holds.
+
+"No, no; another turn'll do it," answers Flashman.  But poor Tom
+is done already, turns deadly pale, and his head falls forward
+on his breast, just as Diggs, in frantic excitement, rushes into
+the hall with East at his heels.
+
+"You cowardly brutes!" is all he can say, as he catches Tom from
+them and supports him to the hall table.  "Good God! he's dying.
+Here, get some cold water--run for the housekeeper."
+
+Flashman and one or two others slink away; the rest, ashamed and
+sorry, bend over Tom or run for water, while East darts off for
+the housekeeper.  Water comes, and they throw it on his hands
+and face, and he begins to come to.  "Mother!"--the words came
+feebly and slowly--"it's very cold to-night."  Poor old Diggs
+is blubbering like a child.  "Where am I?" goes on Tom, opening
+his eyes, "Ah!  I remember now."  And he shut his eyes again and
+groaned.
+
+"I say," is whispered, "we can't do any good, and the
+housekeeper will be here in a minute."  And all but one steal
+away. He stays with Diggs, silent and sorrowful, and fans Tom's
+face.
+
+The housekeeper comes in with strong salts, and Tom soon
+recovers enough to sit up.  There is a smell of burning.  She
+examines his clothes, and looks up inquiringly.  The boys are
+silent.
+
+"How did he come so?"  No answer.  "There's been some bad work
+here," she adds, looking very serious, "and I shall speak to the
+Doctor about it."  Still no answer.
+
+"Hadn't we better carry him to the sick-room?" suggests Diggs.
+
+"Oh, I can walk now," says Tom; and, supported by East and the
+housekeeper, goes to the sick-room.  The boy who held his ground
+is soon amongst the rest, who are all in fear of their lives.
+"Did he peach?"  "Does she know about it?"
+
+"Not a word; he's a stanch little fellow."  And pausing a
+moment, he adds, "I'm sick of this work; what brutes we've
+been!"
+
+Meantime Tom is stretched on the sofa in the housekeeper's room,
+with East by his side, while she gets wine and water and other
+restoratives.
+
+"Are you much hurt, dear old boy?" whispers East.
+
+"Only the back of my legs," answers Tom.  They are indeed badly
+scorched, and part of his trousers burnt through.  But soon he
+is in bed with cold bandages.  At first he feels broken, and
+thinks of writing home and getting taken away; and the verse of
+a hymn he had learned years ago sings through his head, and he
+goes to sleep, murmuring, -
+
+
+"Where the wicked cease from troubling,
+And the weary are at rest."
+
+
+But after a sound night's rest, the old boy-spirit comes back
+again.  East comes in, reporting that the whole house is with
+him; and he forgets everything, except their old resolve never
+to be beaten by that bully Flashman.
+
+Not a word could the housekeeper extract from either of them,
+and though the Doctor knew all that she knew that morning, he
+never knew any more.
+
+I trust and believe that such scenes are not possible now at
+school, and that lotteries and betting-books have gone out; but
+I am writing of schools as they were in our time, and must give
+the evil with the good.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX - A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS.
+
+
+
+"Wherein I [speak] of most disastrous chances,
+Of moving accidents by flood and field,
+Of hair-breadth 'scapes." - SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+When Tom came back into school after a couple of days in the
+sick-room, he found matters much changed for the better, as East
+had led him to expect.  Flashman's brutality had disgusted most
+even of his intimate friends, and his cowardice had once more
+been made plain to the house; for Diggs had encountered him on
+the morning after the lottery, and after high words on both
+sides, had struck him, and the blow was not returned.  However,
+Flashey was not unused to this sort of thing, and had lived
+through as awkward affairs before, and, as Diggs had said, fed
+and toadied himself back into favour again.  Two or three of the
+boys who had helped to roast Tom came up and begged his pardon,
+and thanked him for not telling anything.  Morgan sent for him,
+and was inclined to take the matter up warmly, but Tom begged
+him not to do it; to which he agreed, on Tom's promising to come
+to him at once in future--a promise which, I regret to say, he
+didn't keep.  Tom kept Harkaway all to himself, and won the
+second prize in the lottery, some thirty shillings, which he and
+East contrived to spend in about three days in the purchase of
+pictures for their study, two new bats and a cricket-ball--all
+the best that could be got--and a supper of sausages, kidneys,
+and beef-steak pies to all the rebels.  Light come, light go;
+they wouldn't have been comfortable with money in their pockets
+in the middle of the half.
+
+The embers of Flashman's wrath, however, were still smouldering,
+and burst out every now and then in sly blows and taunts, and
+they both felt that they hadn't quite done with him yet.  It
+wasn't long, however, before the last act of that drama came,
+and with it the end of bullying for Tom and East at Rugby.  They
+now often stole out into the hall at nights, incited thereto
+partly by the hope of finding Diggs there and having a talk with
+him, partly by the excitement of doing something which was
+against rules; for, sad to say, both of our youngsters, since
+their loss of character for steadiness in their form, had got
+into the habit of doing things which were forbidden, as a matter
+of adventure,--just in the same way, I should fancy, as men
+fall into smuggling, and for the same sort of reasons--
+thoughtlessness in the first place.  It never occurred to them
+to consider why such and such rules were laid down:  the reason
+was nothing to them, and they only looked upon rules as a sort
+of challenge from the rule-makers, which it would be rather bad
+pluck in them not to accept; and then again, in the lower parts
+of the school they hadn't enough to do.  The work of the form
+they could manage to get through pretty easily, keeping a good
+enough place to get their regular yearly remove; and not having
+much ambition beyond this, their whole superfluous steam was
+available for games and scrapes.  Now, one rule of the house
+which it was a daily pleasure of all such boys to break was that
+after supper all fags, except the three on duty in the passages,
+should remain in their own studies until nine o'clock; and if
+caught about the passages or hall, or in one another's studies,
+they were liable to punishments or caning.  The rule was
+stricter than its observance; for most of the sixth spent their
+evenings in the fifth-form room, where the library was, and the
+lessons were learnt in common.  Every now and then, however, a
+prepostor would be seized with a fit of district visiting, and
+would make a tour of the passages and hall and the fags'
+studies.  Then, if the owner were entertaining a friend or two,
+the first kick at the door and ominous "Open here" had the
+effect of the shadow of a hawk over a chicken-yard:  every one
+cut to cover--one small boy diving under the sofa, another
+under the table, while the owner would hastily pull down a book
+or two and open them, and cry out in a meek voice, "Hullo, who's
+there?" casting an anxious eye round to see that no protruding
+leg or elbow could betray the hidden boys.  "Open, sir,
+directly; it's Snooks."  "Oh, I'm very sorry; I didn't know it
+was you, Snooks."  And then with well-feigned zeal the door
+would be opened, young hopeful praying that that beast Snooks
+mightn't have heard the scuffle caused by his coming.  If a
+study was empty, Snooks proceeded to draw the passages and hall
+to find the truants.
+
+Well, one evening, in forbidden hours, Tom and East were in the
+hall.  They occupied the seats before the fire nearest the door,
+while Diggs sprawled as usual before the farther fire.  He was
+busy with a copy of verses, and East and Tom were chatting
+together in whispers by the light of the fire, and splicing a
+favourite old fives bat which had sprung.  Presently a step came
+down the bottom passage.  They listened a moment, assured
+themselves that it wasn't a prepostor, and then went on with
+their work, and the door swung open, and in walked Flashman.  He
+didn't see Diggs, and thought it a good chance to keep his hand
+in; and as the boys didn't move for him, struck one of them, to
+make them get out of his way.
+
+"What's that for?" growled the assaulted one.
+
+"Because I choose.  You've no business here.  Go to your study."
+
+"You can't send us."
+
+"Can't I?  Then I'll thrash you if you stay," said Flashman
+savagely.
+
+"I say, you two," said Diggs, from the end of the hall, rousing
+up and resting himself on his elbow--"you'll never get rid of
+that fellow till you lick him.  Go in at him, both of you.  I'll
+see fair play."
+
+Flashman was taken aback, and retreated two steps.  East looked
+at Tom.  "Shall we try!" said he.  "Yes," said Tom desperately.
+So the two advanced on Flashman, with clenched fists and beating
+hearts.  They were about up to his shoulder, but tough boys of
+their age, and in perfect training; while he, though strong and
+big, was in poor condition from his monstrous habit of stuffing
+and want of exercise.  Coward as he was, however, Flashman
+couldn't swallow such an insult as this; besides, he was
+confident of having easy work, and so faced the boys, saying,
+"You impudent young blackguards!"  Before he could finish his
+abuse, they rushed in on him, and began pummelling at all of him
+which they could reach.  He hit out wildly and savagely; but the
+full force of his blows didn't tell--they were too near to him.
+It was long odds, though, in point of strength; and in another
+minute Tom went spinning backwards over a form, and Flashman
+turned to demolish East with a savage grin.  But now Diggs
+jumped down from the table on which he had seated himself.
+"Stop there," shouted he; "the round's over--half-minute time
+allowed."
+
+"What the --- is it to you?" faltered Flashman, who began to
+lose heart.
+
+"I'm going to see fair, I tell you," said Diggs, with a grin,
+and snapping his great red fingers; "'taint fair for you to be
+fighting one of them at a time. --Are you ready, Brown?  Time's
+up."
+
+The small boys rushed in again.  Closing, they saw, was their
+best chance, and Flashman was wilder and more flurried than
+ever:  he caught East by the throat, and tried to force him back
+on the iron-bound table.  Tom grasped his waist, and remembering
+the old throw he had learned in the Vale from Harry Winburn,
+crooked his leg inside Flashman's, and threw his whole weight
+forward.  The three tottered for a moment, and then over they
+went on to the floor, Flashman striking his head against a form
+in the hall.
+
+The two youngsters sprang to their legs, but he lay there still.
+They began to be frightened.  Tom stooped down, and then cried
+out, scared out of his wits, "He's bleeding awfully.  Come here,
+East!  Diggs, he's dying!"
+
+"Not he," said Diggs, getting leisurely off the table; "it's all
+sham; he's only afraid to fight it out."
+
+East was as frightened as Tom.  Diggs lifted Flashman's head,
+and he groaned.
+
+"What's the matter?" shouted Diggs.
+
+"My skull's fractured," sobbed Flashman.
+
+"Oh, let me run for the housekeeper!" cried Tom.  "What shall we
+do?"
+
+"Fiddlesticks!  It's nothing but the skin broken," said the
+relentless Diggs, feeling his head.  "Cold water and a bit of
+rag's all he'll want."
+
+"Let me go," said Flashman surlily, sitting up; "I don't want
+your help."
+
+"We're really very sorry--" began East.
+
+"Hang your sorrow!" answered Flashman, holding his handkerchief
+to the place; "you shall pay for this, I can tell you, both of
+you."  And he walked out of the hall.
+
+"He can't be very bad," said Tom, with a deep sigh, much
+relieved to see his enemy march so well.
+
+"Not he," said Diggs; "and you'll see you won't be troubled with
+him any more.  But, I say, your head's broken too; your collar
+is covered with blood."
+
+"Is it though?" said Tom, putting up his hand; "I didn't know
+it."
+
+"Well, mop it up, or you'll have your jacket spoilt.  And you
+have got a nasty eye, Scud.  You'd better go and bathe it well
+in cold water."
+
+"Cheap enough too, if we're done with our old friend Flashey,"
+said East, as they made off upstairs to bathe their wounds.
+
+They had done with Flashman in one sense, for he never laid
+finger on either of them again; but whatever harm a spiteful
+heart and venomous tongue could do them, he took care should be
+done.  Only throw dirt enough, and some of it is sure to stick;
+and so it was with the fifth form and the bigger boys in
+general, with whom he associated more or less, and they not at
+all.  Flashman managed to get Tom and East into disfavour, which
+did not wear off for some time after the author of it had
+disappeared from the School world.  This event, much prayed for
+by the small fry in general, took place a few months after the
+above encounter.  One fine summer evening Flashman had been
+regaling himself on gin-punch, at Brownsover; and, having
+exceeded his usual limits, started home uproarious.  He fell in
+with a friend or two coming back from bathing, proposed a glass
+of beer, to which they assented, the weather being hot, and they
+thirsty souls, and unaware of the quantity of drink which
+Flashman had already on board.  The short result was, that
+Flashey became beastly drunk.  They tried to get him along, but
+couldn't; so they chartered a hurdle and two men to carry him.
+One of the masters came upon them, and they naturally enough
+fled.  The flight of the rest raised the master's suspicions,
+and the good angel of the fags incited him to examine the
+freight, and, after examination, to convoy the hurdle himself up
+to the School-house; and the Doctor, who had long had his eye on
+Flashman, arranged for his withdrawal next morning.
+
+The evil that men and boys too do lives after them:  Flashman was
+gone, but our boys, as hinted above, still felt the effects of
+his hate.  Besides, they had been the movers of the strike
+against unlawful fagging.  The cause was righteous--the result
+had been triumphant to a great extent; but the best of the fifth
+- even those who had never fagged the small boys, or had given
+up the practice cheerfully--couldn't help feeling a small
+grudge against the first rebels.  After all, their form had been
+defied, on just grounds, no doubt--so just, indeed, that they
+had at once acknowledged the wrong, and remained passive in the
+strife.  Had they sided with Flashman and his set, the rebels
+must have given way at once.  They couldn't help, on the whole,
+being glad that they had so acted, and that the resistance had
+been successful against such of their own form as had shown
+fight; they felt that law and order had gained thereby, but the
+ringleaders they couldn't quite pardon at once.  "Confoundedly
+coxy those young rascals will get, if we don't mind," was the
+general feeling.
+
+So it is, and must be always, my dear boys.  If the angel
+Gabriel were to come down from heaven, and head a successful
+rise against the most abominable and unrighteous vested interest
+which this poor old world groans under, he would most certainly
+lose his character for many years, probably for centuries, not
+only with the upholders of said vested interest, but with the
+respectable mass of the people whom he had delivered.  They
+wouldn't ask him to dinner, or let their names appear with his
+in the papers; they would be very careful how they spoke of him
+in the Palaver, or at their clubs.  What can we expect, then,
+when we have only poor gallant blundering men like Kossuth,
+Garibaldi, Mazzini, and righteous causes which do not triumph in
+their hands--men who have holes enough in their armour, God
+knows, easy to be hit by respectabilities sitting in their
+lounging chairs, and having large balances at their bankers'?
+But you are brave, gallant boys, who hate easy-chairs, and have
+no balances or bankers.  You only want to have your heads set
+straight, to take the right side; so bear in mind that
+majorities, especially respectable ones, are nine times out of
+ten in the wrong; and that if you see a man or boy striving
+earnestly on the weak side, however wrong-headed or blundering
+he may be, you are not to go and join the cry against him.  If
+you can't join him and help him, and make him wiser, at any rate
+remember that he has found something in the world which he will
+fight and suffer for, which is just what you have got to do for
+yourselves; and so think and speak of him tenderly.
+
+So East and Tom, the Tadpole, and one or two more, became a sort
+of young Ishmaelites, their hands against every one, and every
+one's hand against them.  It has been already told how they got
+to war with the masters and the fifth form, and with the sixth
+it was much the same.  They saw the prepostors cowed by or
+joining with the fifth and shirking their own duties; so they
+didn't respect them, and rendered no willing obedience.  It had
+been one thing to clean out studies for sons of heroes like old
+Brooke, but was quite another to do the like for Snooks and
+Green, who had never faced a good scrummage at football, and
+couldn't keep the passages in order at night.  So they only
+slurred through their fagging just well enough to escape a
+licking, and not always that, and got the character of sulky,
+unwilling fags.  In the fifth-form room, after supper, when such
+matters were often discussed and arranged, their names were for
+ever coming up.
+
+"I say, Green," Snooks began one night, "isn't that new boy,
+Harrison, your fag?"
+
+"Yes; why?"
+
+"Oh, I know something of him at home, and should like to excuse
+him.  Will you swop?"
+
+"Who will you give me?"
+
+"Well, let's see.  There's Willis, Johnson.  No, that won't do.
+Yes, I have it.  There's young East; I'll give you him."
+
+"Don't you wish you may get it?" replied Green. "I'll give you
+two for Willis, if you like."
+
+"Who, then?" asked Snooks.  "Hall and Brown."
+
+"Wouldn't have 'em at a gift."
+
+"Better than East, though; for they ain't quite so sharp," said
+Green, getting up and leaning his back against the mantelpiece.
+He wasn't a bad fellow, and couldn't help not being able to put
+down the unruly fifth form.  His eye twinkled as he went on,
+"Did I ever tell you how the young vagabond sold me last half?"
+
+"No; how?"
+
+"Well, he never half cleaned my study out--only just stuck the
+candlesticks in the cupboard, and swept the crumbs on to the
+floor.  So at last I was mortal angry, and had him up, and made
+him go through the whole performance under my eyes.  The dust
+the young scamp made nearly choked me, and showed that he hadn't
+swept the carpet before.  Well, when it was all finished, 'Now,
+young gentleman,' says I, 'mind, I expect this to be done every
+morning--floor swept, table-cloth taken off and shaken, and
+everything dusted.'  'Very well,' grunts he.  Not a bit of it
+though.  I was quite sure, in a day or two, that he never took
+the table-cloth off even.  So I laid a trap for him.  I tore up
+some paper, and put half a dozen bits on my table one night, and
+the cloth over them as usual.  Next morning after breakfast up I
+came, pulled off the cloth, and, sure enough, there was the
+paper, which fluttered down on to the floor.  I was in a
+towering rage.  'I've got you now,' thought I, and sent for him,
+while I got out my cane.  Up he came as cool as you please, with
+his hands in his pockets.  'Didn't I tell you to shake my table-
+cloth every morning?' roared I.  'Yes,' says he.  'Did you do it
+this morning?'  'Yes.'  'You young liar!  I put these pieces of
+paper on the table last night, and if you'd taken the table-
+cloth off you'd have seen them, so I'm going to give you a good
+licking.'  Then my youngster takes one hand out of his pocket,
+and just stoops down and picks up two of the bits of paper, and
+holds them out to me.  There was written on each, in great round
+text, 'Harry East, his mark.'  The young rogue had found my trap
+out, taken away my paper, and put some of his there, every bit
+ear-marked.  I'd a great mind to lick him for his impudence;
+but, after all, one has no right to be laying traps, so I
+didn't.  Of course I was at his mercy till the end of the half,
+and in his weeks my study was so frowzy I couldn't sit in it."
+
+"They spoil one's things so, too," chimed in a third boy.  "Hall
+and Brown were night-fags last week.  I called 'fag,' and gave
+them my candlesticks to clean.  Away they went, and didn't
+appear again.  When they'd had time enough to clean them three
+times over, I went out to look after them.  They weren't in the
+passages so down I went into the hall, where I heard music; and
+there I found them sitting on the table, listening to Johnson,
+who was playing the flute, and my candlesticks stuck between the
+bars well into the fire, red-hot, clean spoiled.  They've never
+stood straight since, and I must get some more.  However, I gave
+them a good licking; that's one comfort."
+
+Such were the sort of scrapes they were always getting into; and
+so, partly by their own faults, partly from circumstances,
+partly from the faults of others, they found themselves outlaws,
+ticket-of-leave men, or what you will in that line--in short,
+dangerous parties--and lived the sort of hand-to-mouth, wild,
+reckless life which such parties generally have to put up with.
+Nevertheless they never quite lost favour with young Brooke, who
+was now the cock of the house, and just getting into the sixth;
+and Diggs stuck to them like a man, and gave them store of good
+advice, by which they never in the least profited.
+
+And even after the house mended, and law and order had been
+restored, which soon happened after young Brooke and Diggs got
+into the sixth, they couldn't easily or at once return into the
+paths of steadiness, and many of the old, wild, out-of-bounds
+habits stuck to them as firmly as ever.  While they had been
+quite little boys, the scrapes they got into in the School
+hadn't much mattered to any one; but now they were in the upper
+school, all wrong-doers from which were sent up straight to the
+Doctor at once.  So they began to come under his notice; and as
+they were a sort of leaders in a small way amongst their own
+contemporaries, his eye, which was everywhere, was upon them.
+
+It was a toss-up whether they turned out well or ill, and so
+they were just the boys who caused most anxiety to such a
+master.  You have been told of the first occasion on which they
+were sent up to the Doctor, and the remembrance of it was so
+pleasant that they had much less fear of him than most boys of
+their standing had.  "It's all his look," Tom used to say to
+East, "that frightens fellows.  Don't you remember, he never
+said anything to us my first half-year for being an hour late
+for locking-up?"
+
+The next time that Tom came before him, however, the interview
+was of a very different kind.  It happened just about the time
+at which we have now arrived, and was the first of a series of
+scrapes into which our hero managed now to tumble.
+
+The river Avon at Rugby is a slow and not very clear stream, in
+which chub, dace, roach, and other coarse fish are (or were)
+plentiful enough, together with a fair sprinkling of small jack,
+but no fish worth sixpence either for sport or food.  It is,
+however, a capital river for bathing, as it has many nice small
+pools and several good reaches for swimming, all within about a
+mile of one another, and at an easy twenty minutes' walk from
+the school.  This mile of water is rented, or used to be rented,
+for bathing purposes by the trustees of the School, for the
+boys.  The footpath to Brownsover crosses the river by "the
+Planks," a curious old single-plank bridge running for fifty or
+sixty yards into the flat meadows on each side of the river--
+for in the winter there are frequent floods.  Above the Planks
+were the bathing-places for the smaller boys--Sleath's, the
+first bathing-place, where all new boys had to begin, until they
+had proved to the bathing men (three steady individuals, who
+were paid to attend daily through the summer to prevent
+accidents) that they could swim pretty decently, when they were
+allowed to go on to Anstey's, about one hundred and fifty yards
+below.  Here there was a hole about six feet deep and twelve
+feet across, over which the puffing urchins struggled to the
+opposite side, and thought no small beer of themselves for
+having been out of their depths.  Below the Planks came larger
+and deeper holes, the first of which was Wratislaw's, and the
+last Swift's, a famous hole, ten or twelve feet deep in parts,
+and thirty yards across, from which there was a fine swimming
+reach right down to the mill.  Swift's was reserved for the
+sixth and fifth forms, and had a spring board and two sets of
+steps:  the others had one set of steps each, and were used
+indifferently by all the lower boys, though each house addicted
+itself more to one hole than to another.  The School-house at
+this time affected Wratislaw's hole, and Tom and East, who had
+learnt to swim like fishes, were to be found there as regular as
+the clock through the summer, always twice, and often three
+times a day.
+
+Now the boys either had, or fancied they had, a right also to
+fish at their pleasure over the whole of this part of the river,
+and would not understand that the right (if any) only extended
+to the Rugby side.  As ill-luck would have it, the gentleman who
+owned the opposite bank, after allowing it for some time without
+interference, had ordered his keepers not to let the boys fish
+on his side--the consequence of which had been that there had
+been first wranglings and then fights between the keepers and
+boys; and so keen had the quarrel become that the landlord and
+his keepers, after a ducking had been inflicted on one of the
+latter, and a fierce fight ensued thereon, had been up to the
+great school at calling-over to identify the delinquents, and it
+was all the Doctor himself and five or six masters could do to
+keep the peace.  Not even his authority could prevent the
+hissing; and so strong was the feeling that the four prepostors
+of the week walked up the school with their canes, shouting "S-
+s-s-s-i-lenc-c-c-c-e" at the top of their voices.  However, the
+chief offenders for the time were flogged and kept in bounds;
+but the victorious party had brought a nice hornet's nest about
+their ears.  The landlord was hissed at the School-gates as he
+rode past, and when he charged his horse at the mob of boys, and
+tried to thrash them with his whip, was driven back by cricket-
+bats and wickets, and pursued with pebbles and fives balls;
+while the wretched keepers' lives were a burden to them, from
+having to watch the waters so closely.
+
+The School-house boys of Tom's standing, one and all, as a
+protest against this tyranny and cutting short of their lawful
+amusements, took to fishing in all ways, and especially by means
+of night-lines.  The little tacklemaker at the bottom of the
+town would soon have made his fortune had the rage lasted, and
+several of the barbers began to lay in fishing-tackle.  The boys
+had this great advantage over their enemies, that they spent a
+large portion of the day in nature's garb by the river-side, and
+so, when tired of swimming, would get out on the other side and
+fish, or set night-lines, till the keepers hove in sight, and
+then plunge in and swim back and mix with the other bathers, and
+the keepers were too wise to follow across the stream.
+
+While things were in this state, one day Tom and three or four
+others were bathing at Wratislaw's, and had, as a matter of
+course, been taking up and re-setting night-lines.  They had all
+left the water, and were sitting or standing about at their
+toilets, in all costumes, from a shirt upwards, when they were
+aware of a man in a velveteen shooting-coat approaching from the
+other side.  He was a new keeper, so they didn't recognize or
+notice him, till he pulled up right opposite, and began:
+
+"I see'd some of you young gentlemen over this side a-fishing
+just now."
+
+"Hullo! who are you?  What business is that of yours, old
+Velveteens?"
+
+"I'm the new under-keeper, and master's told me to keep a sharp
+lookout on all o' you young chaps.  And I tells 'ee I means
+business, and you'd better keep on your own side, or we shall
+fall out."
+
+"Well, that's right, Velveteens; speak out, and let's know your
+mind at once."
+
+"Look here, old boy," cried East, holding up a miserable, coarse
+fish or two and a small jack; "would you like to smell 'em and
+see which bank they lived under?"
+
+"I'll give you a bit of advice, keeper," shouted Tom, who was
+sitting in his shirt paddling with his feet in the river:  "you'd
+better go down there to Swift's, where the big boys are; they're
+beggars at setting lines, and'll put you up to a wrinkle or two
+for catching the five-pounders."  Tom was nearest to the keeper,
+and that officer, who was getting angry at the chaff, fixed his
+eyes on our hero, as if to take a note of him for future use.
+Tom returned his gaze with a steady stare, and then broke into a
+laugh, and struck into the middle of a favourite School-house
+song, -
+
+
+"As I and my companions
+Were setting of a snare
+The gamekeeper was watching us;
+For him we did not care:
+For we can wrestle and fight, my boys,
+And jump out anywhere.
+For it's my delight of a likely night,
+In the season of the year."
+
+
+The chorus was taken up by the other boys with shouts of
+laughter, and the keeper turned away with a grunt, but evidently
+bent on mischief.  The boys thought no more of the matter.
+
+But now came on the May-fly season; the soft, hazy summer
+weather lay sleepily along the rich meadows by Avon side, and
+the green and gray flies flickered with their graceful, lazy up-
+and-down flight over the reeds and the water and the meadows, in
+myriads upon myriads.  The May-flies must surely be the lotus-
+eaters of the ephemerae--the happiest, laziest, carelessest fly
+that dances and dreams out his few hours of sunshiny life by
+English rivers.
+
+Every little pitiful, coarse fish in the Avon was on the alert
+for the flies, and gorging his wretched carcass with hundreds
+daily, the gluttonous rogues! and every lover of the gentle
+craft was out to avenge the poor May-flies.
+
+So one fine Thursday afternoon, Tom, having borrowed East's new
+rod, started by himself to the river.  He fished for some time
+with small success--not a fish would rise at him; but as he
+prowled along the bank, he was presently aware of mighty ones
+feeding in a pool on the opposite side, under the shade of a
+huge willow-tree.  The stream was deep here, but some fifty
+yards below was a shallow, for which he made off hot-foot; and
+forgetting landlords, keepers, solemn prohibitions of the
+Doctor, and everything else, pulled up his trousers, plunged
+across, and in three minutes was creeping along on all fours
+towards the clump of willows.
+
+It isn't often that great chub, or any other coarse fish, are in
+earnest about anything; but just then they were thoroughly bent
+on feeding, and in half an hour Master Tom had deposited three
+thumping fellows at the foot of the giant willow.  As he was
+baiting for a fourth pounder, and just going to throw in again,
+he became aware of a man coming up the bank not one hundred
+yards off.  Another look told him that it was the under-keeper.
+Could he reach the shallow before him?  No, not carrying his
+rod.  Nothing for it but the tree.  So Tom laid his bones to it,
+shinning up as fast as he could, and dragging up his rod after
+him.  He had just time to reach and crouch along upon a huge
+branch some ten feet up, which stretched out over the river,
+when the keeper arrived at the clump.  Tom's heart beat fast as
+he came under the tree; two steps more and he would have passed,
+when, as ill-luck would have it, the gleam on the scales of the
+dead fish caught his eye, and he made a dead point at the foot
+of the tree.  He picked up the fish one by one; his eye and
+touch told him that they had been alive and feeding within the
+hour.  Tom crouched lower along the branch, and heard the keeper
+beating the clump.  "If I could only get the rod hidden,"
+thought he, and began gently shifting it to get it alongside of
+him; "willowtrees don't throw out straight hickory shoots twelve
+feet long, with no leaves, worse luck."  Alas! the keeper
+catches the rustle, and then a sight of the rod, and then of
+Tom's hand and arm.
+
+"Oh, be up ther', be 'ee?" says he, running under the tree.
+"Now you come down this minute."
+
+"Tree'd at last," thinks Tom, making no answer, and keeping as
+close as possible, but working away at the rod, which he takes
+to pieces.  "I'm in for it, unless I can starve him out."  And
+then he begins to meditate getting along the branch for a
+plunge, and scramble to the other side; but the small branches
+are so thick, and the opposite bank so difficult, that the
+keeper will have lots of time to get round by the ford before he
+can get out, so he gives that up.  And now he hears the keeper
+beginning to scramble up the trunk.  That will never do; so he
+scrambles himself back to where his branch joins the trunk; and
+stands with lifted rod.
+
+"Hullo, Velveteens; mind your fingers if you come any higher."
+
+The keeper stops and looks up, and then with a grin says, "Oh!
+be you, be it, young measter?  Well, here's luck.  Now I tells
+'ee to come down at once, and 't'll be best for 'ee."
+
+"Thank 'ee, Velveteens; I'm very comfortable," said Tom,
+shortening the rod in his hand, and preparing for battle.
+
+"Werry well; please yourself," says the keeper, descending,
+however, to the ground again, and taking his seat on the bank.
+"I bean't in no hurry, so you may take your time.  I'll l'arn
+'ee to gee honest folk names afore I've done with 'ee."
+
+"My luck as usual," thinks Tom; "what a fool I was to give him a
+black!  If I'd called him 'keeper,' now, I might get off.  The
+return match is all his way."
+
+The keeper quietly proceeded to take out his pipe, fill, and
+light it, keeping an eye on Tom, who now sat disconsolately
+across the branch, looking at keeper--a pitiful sight for men
+and fishes.  The more he thought of it the less he liked it.
+"It must be getting near second calling-over," thinks he.
+Keeper smokes on stolidly.  "If he takes me up, I shall be
+flogged safe enough.  I can't sit here all night.  Wonder if
+he'll rise at silver."
+
+"I say, keeper," said he meekly, "let me go for two bob?"
+
+"Not for twenty neither," grunts his persecutor.
+
+And so they sat on till long past second calling-over, and the
+sun came slanting in through the willow-branches, and telling of
+locking-up near at hand.
+
+"I'm coming down, keeper," said Tom at last, with a sigh, fairly
+tired out.  "Now what are you going to do?"
+
+"Walk 'ee up to School, and give 'ee over to the Doctor; them's
+my orders," says Velveteens, knocking the ashes out of his
+fourth pipe, and standing up and shaking himself.
+
+"Very good," said Tom; "but hands off, you know.  I'll go with
+you quietly, so no collaring or that sort of thing."
+
+Keeper looked at him a minute.  "Werry good," said he at last.
+And so Tom descended, and wended his way drearily by the side of
+the keeper, up to the Schoolhouse, where they arrived just at
+locking-up.  As they passed the School-gates, the Tadpole and
+several others who were standing there caught the state of
+things, and rushed out, crying, "Rescue!"  But Tom shook his
+head; so they only followed to the Doctor's gate, and went back
+sorely puzzled.
+
+How changed and stern the Doctor seemed from the last time that
+Tom was up there, as the keeper told the story, not omitting to
+state how Tom had called him blackguard names.  "Indeed, sir,"
+broke in the culprit, "it was only Velveteens."  The Doctor only
+asked one question.
+
+"You know the rule about the banks, Brown?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Then wait for me to-morrow, after first lesson."
+
+"I thought so," muttered Tom.
+
+"And about the rod, sir?" went on the keeper.  "Master's told we
+as we might have all the rods--"
+
+"Oh, please, sir," broke in Tom, "the rod isn't mine."
+
+The Doctor looked puzzled; but the keeper, who was a good-
+hearted fellow, and melted at Tom's evident distress, gave up
+his claim.  Tom was flogged next morning, and a few days
+afterwards met Velveteens, and presented him with half a crown
+for giving up the rod claim, and they became sworn friends; and
+I regret to say that Tom had many more fish from under the
+willow that May-fly season, and was never caught again by
+Velveteens.
+
+It wasn't three weeks before Tom, and now East by his side, were
+again in the awful presence.  This time, however, the Doctor was
+not so terrible.  A few days before, they had been fagged at
+fives to fetch the balls that went off the court.  While
+standing watching the game, they saw five or six nearly new
+balls hit on the top of the School.  "I say, Tom," said East,
+when they were dismissed, "couldn't we get those balls somehow?"
+
+"Let's try, anyhow."
+
+So they reconnoitred the walls carefully, borrowed a coal-hammer
+from old Stumps, bought some big nails, and after one or two
+attempts, scaled the Schools, and possessed themselves of huge
+quantities of fives balls.  The place pleased them so much that
+they spent all their spare time there, scratching and cutting
+their names on the top of every tower; and at last, having
+exhausted all other places, finished up with inscribing H.EAST,
+T.BROWN, on the minute-hand of the great clock; in the doing of
+which they held the minute-hand, and disturbed the clock's
+economy.  So next morning, when masters and boys came trooping
+down to prayers, and entered the quadrangle, the injured minute-
+hand was indicating three minutes to the hour.  They all pulled
+up, and took their time.  When the hour struck, doors were
+closed, and half the school late.  Thomas being set to make
+inquiry, discovers their names on the minute-hand, and reports
+accordingly; and they are sent for, a knot of their friends
+making derisive and pantomimic allusions to what their fate will
+be as they walk off.
+
+But the Doctor, after hearing their story, doesn't make much of
+it, and only gives them thirty lines of Homer to learn by heart,
+and a lecture on the likelihood of such exploits ending in
+broken bones.
+
+Alas! almost the next day was one of the great fairs in the
+town; and as several rows and other disagreeable accidents had
+of late taken place on these occasions, the Doctor gives out,
+after prayers in the morning, that no boy is to go down into the
+town.  Wherefore East and Tom, for no earthly pleasure except
+that of doing what they are told not to do, start away, after
+second lesson, and making a short circuit through the fields,
+strike a back lane which leads into the town, go down it, and
+run plump upon one of the masters as they emerge into the High
+Street.  The master in question, though a very clever, is not a
+righteous man.  He has already caught several of his own pupils,
+and gives them lines to learn, while he sends East and Tom, who
+are not his pupils, up to the Doctor, who, on learning that they
+had been at prayers in the morning, flogs them soundly.
+
+The flogging did them no good at the time, for the injustice of
+their captor was rankling in their minds; but it was just the
+end of the half, and on the next evening but one Thomas knocks
+at their door, and says the Doctor wants to see them.  They look
+at one another in silent dismay.  What can it be now?  Which of
+their countless wrong-doings can he have heard of officially?
+However, it's no use delaying, so up they go to the study.
+There they find the Doctor, not angry, but very graver.  "He has
+sent for them to speak to very seriously before they go home.
+They have each been flogged several times in the half-year for
+direct and wilful breaches of rules.  This cannot go on.  They
+are doing no good to themselves or others, and now they are
+getting up in the School, and have influence.  They seem to
+think that rules are made capriciously, and for the pleasure of
+the masters; but this is not so.  They are made for the good of
+the whole School, and must and shall be obeyed.  Those who
+thoughtlessly or wilfully break them will not be allowed to stay
+at the School.  He should be sorry if they had to leave, as the
+School might do them both much good, and wishes them to think
+very seriously in the holidays over what he has said.  Good-
+night."
+
+And so the two hurry off horribly scared; the idea of having to
+leave has never crossed their minds, and is quite unbearable.
+
+As they go out, they meet at the door old Holmes, a sturdy,
+cheery prepostor of another house, who goes in to the Doctor;
+and they hear his genial, hearty greeting of the newcomer, so
+different to their own reception, as the door closes, and return
+to their study with heavy hearts, and tremendous resolves to
+break no more rules.
+
+Five minutes afterwards the master of their form--a late
+arrival and a model young master--knocks at the Doctor's study-
+door.  "Come in!"  And as he enters, the Doctor goes on, to
+Holmes--"You see, I do not know anything of the case
+officially, and if I take any notice of it at all, I must
+publicly expel the boy.  I don't wish to do that, for I think
+there is some good in him.  There's nothing for it but a good
+sound thrashing."  He paused to shake hands with the master,
+which Holmes does also, and then prepares to leave.
+
+"I understand.  Good-night, sir."
+
+"Good-night, Holmes.  And remember," added the Doctor,
+emphasizing the words, "a good sound thrashing before the whole
+house."
+
+The door closed on Holmes; and the Doctor, in answer to the
+puzzled look of his lieutenant, explained shortly.  "A gross
+case of bullying. Wharton, the head of the house, is a very good
+fellow, but slight and weak, and severe physical pain is the
+only way to deal with such a case; so I have asked Holmes to
+take it up.  He is very careful and trustworthy, and has plenty
+of strength.  I wish all the sixth had as much.  We must have it
+here, if we are to keep order at all."
+
+Now I don't want any wiseacres to read this book, but if they
+should, of course they will prick up their long ears, and howl,
+or rather bray, at the above story.  Very good--I don't object;
+but what I have to add for you boys is this, that Holmes called
+a levy of his house after breakfast next morning, made them a
+speech on the case of bullying in question, and then gave the
+bully a "good sound thrashing;" and that years afterwards, that
+boy sought out Holmes, and thanked him, saying it had been the
+kindest act which had ever been done upon him, and the turning-
+point in his character; and a very good fellow he became, and a
+credit to his School.
+
+After some other talk between them, the Doctor said, "I want to
+speak to you about two boys in your form, East and Brown.  I
+have just been speaking to them.  What do you think of them?"
+
+"Well, they are not hard workers, and very thoughtless and full
+of spirits; but I can't help liking them.  I think they are
+sound, good fellows at the bottom."
+
+"I'm glad of it.  I think so too:  But they make me very uneasy.
+They are taking the lead a good deal amongst the fags in my
+house, for they are very active, bold fellows.  I should be
+sorry to lose them, but I shan't let them stay if I don't see
+them gaining character and manliness.  In another year they may
+do great harm to all the younger boys."
+
+"Oh, I hope you won't send them away," pleaded their master.
+
+"Not if I can help it.  But now I never feel sure, after any
+half-holiday, that I shan't have to flog one of them next
+morning, for some foolish, thoughtless scrape.  I quite dread
+seeing either of them."
+
+They were both silent for a minute.  Presently the Doctor began
+again:-
+
+"They don't feel that they have any duty or work to do in the
+school, and how is one to make them feel it?"
+
+"I think if either of them had some little boy to take care of,
+it would steady them.  Brown is the most reckless of the two, I
+should say.  East wouldn't get into so many scrapes without
+him."
+
+"Well," said the Doctor, with something like a sigh, "I'll think
+of it."  And they went on to talk of other subjects.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+
+
+
+"I [hold] it truth, with him who sings,
+To one clear harp in divers tones,
+That men may rise on stepping-stones
+Of their dead selves to higher things."
+TENNYSON.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I - HOW THE TIDE TURNED.
+
+
+
+"Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
+In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil
+side.
+* * * * *
+Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
+Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified."
+- LOWELL.
+
+
+The turning-point in our hero's school career had now come, and
+the manner of it was as follows.  On the evening of the first
+day of the next half-year, Tom, East, and another School-house
+boy, who had just been dropped at the Spread Eagle by the old
+Regulator, rushed into the matron's room in high spirits, such
+as all real boys are in when they first get back, however fond
+they may be of home.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Wixie," shouted one, seizing on the methodical,
+active, little dark-eyed woman, who was busy stowing away the
+linen of the boys who had already arrived into their several
+pigeon-holes, "here we are again, you see, as jolly as ever.
+Let us help you put the things away."
+
+"And, Mary," cried another (she was called indifferently by
+either name), "who's come back?  Has the Doctor made old Jones
+leave?  How many new boys are there?"
+
+"Am I and East to have Gray's study?  You know you promised to
+get it for us if you could," shouted Tom.
+
+"And am I to sleep in Number 4?" roared East.
+
+"How's old Sam, and Bogle, and Sally?"
+
+"Bless the boys!" cries Mary, at last getting in a word; "why,
+you'll shake me to death.  There, now, do go away up to the
+housekeeper's room and get your suppers; you know I haven't time
+to talk.  You'll find plenty more in the house. --Now, Master
+East, do let those things alone.  You're mixing up three new
+boys' things."  And she rushed at East, who escaped round the
+open trunks holding up a prize.
+
+"Hullo! look here, Tommy," shouted he; "here's fun!" and he
+brandished above his head some pretty little night-caps,
+beautifully made and marked, the work of loving fingers in some
+distant country home.  The kind mother and sisters who sewed
+that delicate stitching with aching hearts little thought of the
+trouble they might be bringing on the young head for which they
+were meant.  The little matron was wiser, and snatched the caps
+from East before he could look at the name on them.
+
+"Now, Master East, I shall be very angry if you don't go," said
+she; "there's some capital cold beef and pickles upstairs, and I
+won't have you old boys in my room first night."
+
+"Hurrah for the pickles!  Come along, Tommy--come along, Smith.
+We shall find out who the young count is, I'll be bound.  I hope
+he'll sleep in my room.  Mary's always vicious first week."
+
+As the boys turned to leave the room, the matron touched Tom's
+arm, and said, "Master Brown, please stop a minute; I want to
+speak to you."
+
+"Very well, Mary.  I'll come in a minute, East.  Don't finish
+the pickles."
+
+"O Master Brown," went on the little matron, when the rest had
+gone, "you're to have Gray's study, Mrs. Arnold says.  And she
+wants you to take in this young gentleman.  He's a new boy, and
+thirteen years old though he don't look it.  He's very delicate,
+and has never been from home before.  And I told Mrs. Arnold I
+thought you'd be kind to him, and see that they don't bully him
+at first.  He's put into your form, and I've given him the bed
+next to yours in Number 4; so East can't sleep there this half."
+
+Tom was rather put about by this speech.  He had got the double
+study which he coveted, but here were conditions attached which
+greatly moderated his joy.  He looked across the room, and in
+the far corner of the sofa was aware of a slight, pale boy, with
+large blue eyes and light fair hair, who seemed ready to shrink
+through the floor.  He saw at a glance that the little stranger
+was just the boy whose first half-year at a public school would
+be misery to himself if he were left alone, or constant anxiety
+to any one who meant to see him through his troubles.  Tom was
+too honest to take in the youngster, and then let him shift for
+himself; and if he took him as his chum instead of East, where
+were all his pet plans of having a bottled-beer cellar under his
+window, and making night-lines and slings, and plotting
+expeditions to Brownsover Mills and Caldecott's Spinney?  East
+and he had made up their minds to get this study, and then every
+night from locking-up till ten they would be together to talk
+about fishing, drink bottled-beer, read Marryat's novels, and
+sort birds' eggs.  And this new boy would most likely never go
+out of the close, and would be afraid of wet feet, and always
+getting laughed at, and called Molly, or Jenny, or some
+derogatory feminine nickname.
+
+The matron watched him for a moment, and saw what was passing in
+his mind, and so, like a wise negotiator, threw in an appeal to
+his warm heart.  "Poor little fellow," said she, in almost a
+whisper; "his father's dead, and he's got no brothers.  And his
+mamma--such a kind, sweet lady--almost broke her heart at
+leaving him this morning; and she said one of his sisters was
+like to die of decline, and so--"
+
+"Well, well," burst in Tom, with something like a sigh at the
+effort, "I suppose I must give up East. --Come along, young un.
+What's your name?  We'll go and have some supper, and then I'll
+show you our study."
+
+"His name's George Arthur," said the matron, walking up to him
+with Tom, who grasped his little delicate hand as the proper
+preliminary to making a chum of him, and felt as if he could
+have blown him away.  "I've had his books and things put into
+the study, which his mamma has had new papered, and the sofa
+covered, and new green-baize curtains over the door" (the
+diplomatic matron threw this in, to show that the new boy was
+contributing largely to the partnership comforts).  "And Mrs.
+Arnold told me to say," she added, "that she should like you
+both to come up to tea with her.  You know the way, Master
+Brown, and the things are just gone up, I know."
+
+Here was an announcement for Master Tom!  He was to go up to tea
+the first night, just as if he were a sixth or fifth form boy,
+and of importance in the School world, instead of the most
+reckless young scapegrace amongst the fags.  He felt himself
+lifted on to a higher social and moral platform at once.
+Nevertheless he couldn't give up without a sigh the idea of the
+jolly supper in the housekeeper's room with East and the rest,
+and a rush round to all the studies of his friends afterwards,
+to pour out the deeds and wonders of the holidays, to plot fifty
+plans for the coming half-year, and to gather news of who had
+left and what new boys had come, who had got who's study, and
+where the new prepostors slept.  However, Tom consoled himself
+with thinking that he couldn't have done all this with the new
+boy at his heels, and so marched off along the passages to the
+Doctor's private house with his young charge in tow, in
+monstrous good-humour with himself and all the world.
+
+It is needless, and would be impertinent, to tell how the two
+young boys were received in that drawing-room.  The lady who
+presided there is still living, and has carried with her to her
+peaceful home in the north the respect and love of all those who
+ever felt and shared that gentle and high-bred hospitality.  Ay,
+many is the brave heart, now doing its work and bearing its load
+in country curacies, London chambers, under the Indian sun, and
+in Australian towns and clearings, which looks back with fond
+and grateful memory to that School-house drawing-room, and dates
+much of its highest and best training to the lessons learnt
+there.
+
+Besides Mrs. Arnold and one or two of the elder children, there
+were one of the younger masters, young Brooke (who was now in
+the sixth, and had succeeded to his brother's position and
+influence), and another sixth-form boy, talking together before
+the fire.  The master and young Brooke, now a great strapping
+fellow six feet high, eighteen years old, and powerful as a
+coal-heaver, nodded kindly to Tom, to his intense glory, and
+then went on talking.  The other did not notice them.  The
+hostess, after a few kind words, which led the boys at once and
+insensibly to feel at their ease and to begin talking to one
+another, left them with her own children while she finished a
+letter.  The young ones got on fast and well, Tom holding forth
+about a prodigious pony he had been riding out hunting, and
+hearing stories of the winter glories of the lakes, when tea
+came in, and immediately after the Doctor himself.
+
+How frank, and kind, and manly was his greeting to the party by
+the fire!  It did Tom's heart good to see him and young Brooke
+shake hands, and look one another in the face; and he didn't
+fail to remark that Brooke was nearly as tall and quite as broad
+as the Doctor.  And his cup was full when in another moment his
+master turned to him with another warm shake of the hand, and,
+seemingly oblivious of all the late scrapes which he had been
+getting into, said, "Ah, Brown, you here!  I hope you left your
+father and all well at home?"
+
+"Yes, sir, quite well."
+
+"And this is the little fellow who is to share your study.
+Well, he doesn't look as we should like to see him.  He wants
+some Rugby air, and cricket.  And you must take him some good
+long walks, to Bilton Grange, and Caldecott's Spinney, and show
+him what a little pretty country we have about here."
+
+Tom wondered if the Doctor knew that his visits to Bilton Grange
+were for the purpose of taking rooks' nests (a proceeding
+strongly discountenanced by the owner thereof), and those to
+Caldecott's Spinney were prompted chiefly by the conveniences
+for setting night-lines.  What didn't the Doctor know?  And what
+a noble use he always made of it!  He almost resolved to abjure
+rook-pies and night-lines for ever.  The tea went merrily off,
+the Doctor now talking of holiday doings, and then of the
+prospects of the half-year--what chance there was for the
+Balliol scholarship, whether the eleven would be a good one.
+Everybody was at his ease, and everybody felt that he, young as
+he might be, was of some use in the little School world, and had
+a work to do there.
+
+Soon after tea the Doctor went off to his study, and the young
+boys a few minutes afterwards took their leave and went out of
+the private door which led from the Doctor's house into the
+middle passage.
+
+At the fire, at the farther end of the passage, was a crowd of
+boys in loud talk and laughter.  There was a sudden pause when
+the door opened, and then a great shout of greeting, as Tom was
+recognized marching down the passage.
+
+"Hullo, Brown! where do you come from?"
+
+"Oh, I've been to tea with the Doctor," says Tom, with great
+dignity.
+
+"My eye!" cried East, "Oh! so that's why Mary called you back,
+and you didn't come to supper.  You lost something.  That beef
+and pickles was no end good."
+
+"I say, young fellow," cried Hall, detecting Arthur and catching
+him by the collar, "what's your name?  Where do you come from?
+How old are you?"
+
+Tom saw Arthur shrink back and look scared as all the group
+turned to him, but thought it best to let him answer, just
+standing by his side to support in case of need.
+
+"Arthur, sir.  I come from Devonshire."
+
+"Don't call me 'sir,' you young muff.  How old are you?"
+
+"Thirteen."
+
+"Can you sing?"
+
+The poor boy was trembling and hesitating.  Tom struck in--"You
+be hanged, Tadpole.  He'll have to sing, whether he can or not,
+Saturday twelve weeks, and that's long enough off yet."
+
+"Do you know him at home, Brown?"
+
+"No; but he's my chum in Gray's old study, and it's near prayer-
+time, and I haven't had a look at it yet. --Come along,
+Arthur."
+
+Away went the two, Tom longing to get his charge safe under
+cover, where he might advise him on his deportment.
+
+"What a queer chum for Tom Brown," was the comment at the fire;
+and it must be confessed so thought Tom himself, as he lighted
+his candle, and surveyed the new green-baize curtains and the
+carpet and sofa with much satisfaction.
+
+"I say, Arthur, what a brick your mother is to make us so cozy!
+But look here now; you must answer straight up when the fellows
+speak to you, and don't be afraid.  If you're afraid, you'll get
+bullied.  And don't you say you can sing; and don't you ever
+talk about home, or your mother and sisters."
+
+Poor little Arthur looked ready to cry.
+
+"But, please," said he, "mayn't I talk about--about home to
+you?"
+
+"Oh yes; I like it.  But don't talk to boys you don't know, or
+they'll call you home-sick, or mamma's darling, or some such
+stuff.  What a jolly desk!  Is that yours?  And what stunning
+binding!  Why, your school-books look like novels."
+
+And Tom was soon deep in Arthur's goods and chattels, all new,
+and good enough for a fifth-form boy, and hardly thought of his
+friends outside till the prayer-bell rang.
+
+I have already described the School-house prayers.  They were
+the same on the first night as on the other nights, save for the
+gaps caused by the absence of those boys who came late, and the
+line of new boys who stood all together at the farther table--
+of all sorts and sizes, like young bears with all their troubles
+to come, as Tom's father had said to him when he was in the same
+position.  He thought of it as he looked at the line, and poor
+little slight Arthur standing with them, and as he was leading
+him upstairs to Number 4, directly after prayers, and showing
+him his bed.  It was a huge, high, airy room, with two large
+windows looking on to the School close.  There were twelve beds
+in the room.  The one in the farthest corner by the fireplace,
+occupied by the sixth-form boy, who was responsible for the
+discipline of the room, and the rest by boys in the lower-fifth
+and other junior forms, all fags (for the fifth-form boys, as
+has been said, slept in rooms by themselves).  Being fags, the
+eldest of them was not more than about sixteen years old, and
+were all bound to be up and in bed by ten.  The sixth-form boys
+came to bed from ten to a quarter-past (at which time the old
+verger came round to put the candles out), except when they sat
+up to read.
+
+Within a few minutes therefore of their entry, all the other
+boys who slept in Number 4 had come up.  The little fellows went
+quietly to their own beds, and began undressing, and talking to
+each other in whispers; while the elder, amongst whom was Tom,
+sat chatting about on one another's beds, with their jackets and
+waistcoats off.  Poor little Arthur was overwhelmed with the
+novelty of his position.  The idea of sleeping in the room with
+strange boys had clearly never crossed his mind before, and was
+as painful as it was strange to him.  He could hardly bear to
+take his jacket off; however, presently, with an effort, off it
+came, and then he paused and looked at Tom, who was sitting at
+the bottom of his bed talking and laughing.
+
+"Please, Brown," he whispered, "may I wash my face and hands?"
+
+"Of course, if you like," said Tom, staring; "that's your
+washhand-stand, under the window, second from your bed.  You'll
+have to go down for more water in the morning if you use it
+all."  And on he went with his talk, while Arthur stole timidly
+from between the beds out to his washhand-stand, and began his
+ablutions, thereby drawing for a moment on himself the attention
+of the room.
+
+On went the talk and laughter.  Arthur finished his washing and
+undressing, and put on his night-gown.  He then looked round
+more nervously than ever.  Two or three of the little boys were
+already in bed, sitting up with their chins on their knees.  The
+light burned clear, the noise went on.  It was a trying moment
+for the poor little lonely boy; however, this time he didn't ask
+Tom what he might or might not do, but dropped on his knees by
+his bedside, as he had done every day from his childhood, to
+open his heart to Him who heareth the cry and beareth the
+sorrows of the tender child, and the strong man in agony.
+
+Tom was sitting at the bottom of his bed unlacing his boots, so
+that his back was towards Arthur, and he didn't see what had
+happened, and looked up in wonder at the sudden silence.  Then
+two or three boys laughed and sneered, and a big, brutal fellow
+who was standing in the middle of the room picked up a slipper,
+and shied it at the kneeling boy, calling him a snivelling young
+shaver.  Then Tom saw the whole, and the next moment the boot he
+had just pulled off flew straight at the head of the bully, who
+had just time to throw up his arm and catch it on his elbow.
+
+"Confound you, Brown! what's that for?" roared he, stamping with
+pain.
+
+"Never mind what I mean," said Tom, stepping on to the floor,
+every drop of blood in his body tingling; "if any fellow wants
+the other boot, he knows how to get it."
+
+What would have been the result is doubtful, for at this moment
+the sixth-form boy came in, and not another word could be said.
+Tom and the rest rushed into bed and finished their unrobing
+there, and the old verger, as punctual as the clock, had put out
+the candle in another minute, and toddled on to the next room,
+shutting their door with his usual "Good-night, gen'lm'n."
+
+There were many boys in the room by whom that little scene was
+taken to heart before they slept.  But sleep seemed to have
+deserted the pillow of poor Tom.  For some time his excitement,
+and the flood of memories which chased one another through his
+brain, kept him from thinking or resolving.  His head throbbed,
+his heart leapt, and he could hardly keep himself from springing
+out of bed and rushing about the room.  Then the thought of his
+own mother came across him, and the promise he had made at her
+knee, years ago, never to forget to kneel by his bedside, and
+give himself up to his Father, before he laid his head on the
+pillow, from which it might never rise; and he lay down gently,
+and cried as if his heart would break.  He was only fourteen
+years old.
+
+It was no light act of courage in those days, my dear boys, for
+a little fellow to say his prayers publicly, even at Rugby.  A
+few years later, when Arnold's manly piety had begun to leaven
+the School, the tables turned; before he died, in the School-
+house at least, and I believe in the other house, the rule was
+the other way.  But poor Tom had come to school in other times.
+The first few nights after he came he did not kneel down because
+of the noise, but sat up in bed till the candle was out, and
+then stole out and said his prayers, in fear lest some one
+should find him out.  So did many another poor little fellow.
+Then he began to think that he might just as well say his
+prayers in bed, and then that it didn't matter whether he was
+kneeling, or sitting, or lying down.  And so it had come to pass
+with Tom, as with all who will not confess their Lord before
+men; and for the last year he had probably not said his prayers
+in earnest a dozen times.
+
+Poor Tom! the first and bitterest feeling which was like to
+break his heart was the sense of his own cowardice.  The vice of
+all others which he loathed was brought in and burnt in on his
+own soul.  He had lied to his mother, to his conscience, to his
+God.  How could he bear it?  And then the poor little weak boy,
+whom he had pitied and almost scorned for his weakness, had done
+that which he, braggart as he was, dared not do.  The first dawn
+of comfort came to him in swearing to himself that he would
+stand by that boy through thick and thin, and cheer him, and
+help him, and bear his burdens for the good deed done that
+night.  Then he resolved to write home next day and tell his
+mother all, and what a coward her son had been.  And then peace
+came to him as he resolved, lastly, to bear his testimony next
+morning.  The morning would be harder than the night to begin
+with, but he felt that he could not afford to let one chance
+slip.  Several times he faltered, for the devil showed him first
+all his old friends calling him "Saint" and "Square-toes," and a
+dozen hard names, and whispered to him that his motives would be
+misunderstood, and he would only be left alone with the new boy;
+whereas it was his duty to keep all means of influence, that he
+might do good to the largest number.  And then came the more
+subtle temptation, "Shall I not be showing myself braver than
+others by doing this?  Have I any right to begin it now?  Ought
+I not rather to pray in my own study, letting other boys know
+that I do so, and trying to lead them to it, while in public at
+least I should go on as I have done?"  However, his good angel
+was too strong that night, and he turned on his side and slept,
+tired of trying to reason, but resolved to follow the impulse
+which had been so strong, and in which he had found peace.
+
+Next morning he was up and washed and dressed, all but his
+jacket and waistcoat, just as the ten minutes' bell began to
+ring, and then in the face of the whole room knelt down to pray.
+Not five words could he say--the bell mocked him; he was
+listening for every whisper in the room--what were they all
+thinking of him?  He was ashamed to go on kneeling, ashamed to
+rise from his knees.  At last, as it were from his inmost heart,
+a still, small voice seemed to breathe forth the words of the
+publican, "God be merciful to me a sinner!"  He repeated them
+over and over, clinging to them as for his life, and rose from
+his knees comforted and humbled, and ready to face the whole
+world.  It was not needed:  two other boys besides Arthur had
+already followed his example, and he went down to the great
+School with a glimmering of another lesson in his heart--the
+lesson that he who has conquered his own coward spirit has
+conquered the whole outward world; and that other one which the
+old prophet learnt in the cave in Mount Horeb, when he hid his
+face, and the still, small voice asked, "What doest thou here,
+Elijah?" that however we may fancy ourselves alone on the side
+of good, the King and Lord of men is nowhere without His
+witnesses; for in every society, however seemingly corrupt and
+godless, there are those who have not bowed the knee to Baal.
+
+He found, too, how greatly he had exaggerated the effect to be
+produced by his act.  For a few nights there was a sneer or a
+laugh when he knelt down, but this passed off soon, and one by
+one all the other boys but three or four followed the lead.  I
+fear that this was in some measure owing to the fact that Tom
+could probably have thrashed any boy in the room except the
+prepostor; at any rate, every boy knew that he would try upon
+very slight provocation, and didn't choose to run the risk of a
+hard fight because Tom Brown had taken a fancy to say his
+prayers.  Some of the small boys of Number 4 communicated the
+new state of things to their chums, and in several other rooms
+the poor little fellows tried it on--in one instance or so,
+where the prepostor heard of it and interfered very decidedly,
+with partial success; but in the rest, after a short struggle,
+the confessors were bullied or laughed down, and the old state
+of things went on for some time longer.  Before either Tom Brown
+or Arthur left the School-house, there was no room in which it
+had not become the regular custom.  I trust it is so still, and
+that the old heathen state of things has gone out for ever.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II - THE NEW BOY.
+
+
+
+"And Heaven's rich instincts in him grew
+As effortless as woodland nooks
+Send violets up and paint them blue." - LOWELL.
+
+
+I do not mean to recount all the little troubles and annoyances
+which thronged upon Tom at the beginning of this half-year, in
+his new character of bear-leader to a gentle little boy straight
+from home.  He seemed to himself to have become a new boy again,
+without any of the long-suffering and meekness indispensable for
+supporting that character with moderate success.  From morning
+till night he had the feeling of responsibility on his mind, and
+even if he left Arthur in their study or in the close for an
+hour, was never at ease till he had him in sight again.  He
+waited for him at the doors of the school after every lesson and
+every calling-over; watched that no tricks were played him, and
+none but the regulation questions asked; kept his eye on his
+plate at dinner and breakfast, to see that no unfair
+depredations were made upon his viands; in short, as East
+remarked, cackled after him like a hen with one chick.
+
+Arthur took a long time thawing, too, which made it all the
+harder work; was sadly timid; scarcely ever spoke unless Tom
+spoke to him first; and, worst of all, would agree with him in
+everything--the hardest thing in the world for a Brown to bear.
+He got quite angry sometimes, as they sat together of a night in
+their study, at this provoking habit of agreement, and was on
+the point of breaking out a dozen times with a lecture upon the
+propriety of a fellow having a will of his own and speaking out,
+but managed to restrain himself by the thought that he might
+only frighten Arthur, and the remembrance of the lesson he had
+learnt from him on his first night at Number 4.  Then he would
+resolve to sit still and not say a word till Arthur began; but
+he was always beat at that game, and had presently to begin
+talking in despair, fearing lest Arthur might think he was vexed
+at something if he didn't, and dog-tired of sitting tongue-tied.
+
+It was hard work.  But Tom had taken it up, and meant to stick
+to it, and go through with it so as to satisfy himself; in which
+resolution he was much assisted by the chafing of East and his
+other old friends, who began to call him "dry-nurse," and
+otherwise to break their small wit on him.  But when they took
+other ground, as they did every now and then, Tom was sorely
+puzzled.
+
+"Tell you what, Tommy," East would say; "you'll spoil young
+Hopeful with too much coddling.  Why can't you let him go about
+by himself and find his own level?  He'll never be worth a
+button if you go on keeping him under your skirts."
+
+"Well, but he ain't fit to fight his own way yet; I'm trying to
+get him to it every day, but he's very odd.  Poor little beggar!
+I can't make him out a bit.  He ain't a bit like anything I've
+ever seen or heard of--he seems all over nerves; anything you
+say seems to hurt him like a cut or a blow."
+
+"That sort of boy's no use here," said East; "he'll only spoil.
+Now I'll tell you what to do, Tommy.  Go and get a nice large
+band-box made, and put him in with plenty of cotton-wool and a
+pap-bottle, labelled 'With care--this side up,' and send him
+back to mamma."
+
+"I think I shall make a hand of him though," said Tom, smiling,
+"say what you will.  There's something about him, every now and
+then, which shows me he's got pluck somewhere in him.  That's
+the only thing after all that'll wash, ain't it, old Scud?  But
+how to get at it and bring it out?"
+
+Tom took one hand out of his breeches-pocket and stuck it in his
+back hair for a scratch, giving his hat a tilt over his nose,
+his one method of invoking wisdom.  He stared at the ground with
+a ludicrously puzzled look, and presently looked up and met
+East's eyes.  That young gentleman slapped him on the back, and
+then put his arm round his shoulder, as they strolled through
+the quadrangle together.  "Tom," said he, "blest if you ain't
+the best old fellow ever was.  I do like to see you go into a
+thing.  Hang it, I wish I could take things as you do; but I
+never can get higher than a joke.  Everything's a joke.  If I
+was going to be flogged next minute, I should be in a blue funk,
+but I couldn't help laughing at it for the life of me."
+
+"Brown and East, you go and fag for Jones on the great fives
+court."
+
+"Hullo, though, that's past a joke," broke out East, springing
+at the young gentleman who addressed them, and catching him by
+the collar. --"Here, Tommy, catch hold of him t'other side
+before he can holla."
+
+The youth was seized, and dragged, struggling, out of the
+quadrangle into the School-house hall.  He was one of the
+miserable little pretty white-handed, curly-headed boys, petted
+and pampered by some of the big fellows, who wrote their verses
+for them, taught them to drink and use bad language, and did all
+they could to spoil them for everything * in this world and the
+next.  One of the avocations in which these young gentlemen took
+particular delight was in going about and getting fags for their
+protectors, when those heroes were playing any game.  They
+carried about pencil and paper with them, putting down the names
+of all the boys they sent, always sending five times as many as
+were wanted, and getting all those thrashed who didn't go.  The
+present youth belonged to a house which was very jealous of the
+School-house, and always picked out School-house fags when he
+could find them.  However, this time he'd got the wrong sow by
+the ear.  His captors slammed the great door of the hall, and
+East put his back against it, while Tom gave the prisoner a
+shake up, took away his list, and stood him up on the floor,
+while he proceeded leisurely to examine that document.
+
+
+* A kind and wise critic, an old Rugboean, notes here in the
+margin:  "The small friend system was not so utterly bad from
+1841-1847."  Before that, too, there were many noble friendships
+between big and little boys; but I can't strike out the passage.
+Many boys will know why it is left in.
+
+
+"Let me out, let me go!"  screamed the boy, in a furious
+passion.  "I'll go and tell Jones this minute, and he'll give
+you both the --- thrashing you ever had."
+
+"Pretty little dear," said East, patting the top of his hat. --
+"Hark how he swears, Tom.  Nicely brought up young man, ain't
+he, I don't think."
+
+"Let me alone, --- you," roared the boy, foaming with rage, and
+kicking at East, who quietly tripped him up, and deposited him
+on the floor in a place of safety.
+
+"Gently, young fellow," said he; "'tain't improving for little
+whippersnappers like you to be indulging in blasphemy; so you
+stop that, or you'll get something you won't like."
+
+"I'll have you both licked when I get out, that I will,"
+rejoined the boy, beginning to snivel.
+
+"Two can play at that game, mind you," said Tom, who had
+finished his examination of the list.  "Now you just listen
+here.  We've just come across the fives court, and Jones has
+four fags there already--two more than he wants.  If he'd
+wanted us to change, he'd have stopped us himself.  And here,
+you little blackguard, you've got seven names down on your list
+besides ours, and five of them School-house."  Tom walked up to
+him, and jerked him on to his legs; he was by this time whining
+like a whipped puppy.  "Now just listen to me.  We ain't going
+to fag for Jones.  If you tell him you've sent us, we'll each of
+us give you such a thrashing as you'll remember."  And Tom tore
+up the list and threw the pieces into the fire.
+
+"And mind you, too," said East, "don't let me catch you again
+sneaking about the School-house, and picking up our fags.  You
+haven't got the sort of hide to take a sound licking kindly."
+And he opened the door and sent the young gentleman flying into
+the quadrangle with a parting kick.
+
+"Nice boy, Tommy," said East, shoving his hands in his pockets,
+and strolling to the fire.
+
+"Worst sort we breed," responded Tom, following his example.
+"Thank goodness, no big fellow ever took to petting me."
+
+"You'd never have been like that," said East.  "I should like to
+have put him in a museum:  Christian young gentleman, nineteenth
+century, highly educated.  Stir him up with a long pole, Jack,
+and hear him swear like a drunken sailor.  He'd make a
+respectable public open its eyes, I think."
+
+"Think he'll tell Jones?" said Tom.
+
+"No," said East.  "Don't care if he does."
+
+"Nor I," said Tom.  And they went back to talk about Arthur.
+
+The young gentleman had brains enough not to tell Jones,
+reasoning that East and Brown, who were noted as some of the
+toughest fags in the School, wouldn't care three straws for any
+licking Jones might give them, and would be likely to keep their
+words as to passing it on with interest.
+
+After the above conversation, East came a good deal to their
+study, and took notice of Arthur, and soon allowed to Tom that
+he was a thorough little gentleman, and would get over his
+shyness all in good time; which much comforted our hero.  He
+felt every day, too, the value of having an object in his life--
+something that drew him out of himself; and it being the dull
+time of the year, and no games going about for which he much
+cared, was happier than he had ever yet been at school, which
+was saying a great deal.
+
+The time which Tom allowed himself away from his charge was from
+locking-up till supper-time.  During this hour or hour and a
+half he used to take his fling, going round to the studies of
+all his acquaintance, sparring or gossiping in the hall, now
+jumping the old iron-bound tables, or carving a bit of his name
+on them, then joining in some chorus of merry voices--in fact,
+blowing off his steam, as we should now call it.
+
+This process was so congenial to his temper, and Arthur showed
+himself so pleased at the arrangement, that it was several weeks
+before Tom was ever in their study before supper.  One evening,
+however, he rushed in to look for an old chisel, or some corks,
+or other article essential to his pursuit for the time being,
+and while rummaging about in the cupboards, looked up for a
+moment, and was caught at once by the figure of poor little
+Arthur.  The boy was sitting with his elbows on the table, and
+his head leaning on his hands, and before him an open book, on
+which his tears were falling fast.  Tom shut the door at once,
+and sat down on the sofa by Arthur, putting his arm round his
+neck.
+
+"Why, young un, what's the matter?" said he kindly; "you ain't
+unhappy, are you?"
+
+"Oh no, Brown," said the little boy, looking up with the great
+tears in his eyes; "you are so kind to me, I'm very happy."
+
+"Why don't you call me Tom?  Lots of boys do that I don't like
+half so much as you.  What are you reading, then?  Hang it! you
+must come about with me, and not mope yourself."  And Tom cast
+down his eyes on the book, and saw it was the Bible.  He was
+silent for a minute, and thought to himself, "Lesson Number 2,
+Tom Brown;" and then said gently, "I'm very glad to see this,
+Arthur, and ashamed that I don't read the Bible more myself.  Do
+you read it every night before supper while I'm out?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, I wish you'd wait till afterwards, and then we'd read
+together.  But, Arthur, why does it make you cry?"
+
+"Oh, it isn't that I'm unhappy.  But at home, while my father
+was alive, we always read the lessons after tea; and I love to
+read them over now, and try to remember what he said about them.
+I can't remember all and I think I scarcely understand a great
+deal of what I do remember.  But it all comes back to me so
+fresh that I can't help crying sometimes to think I shall never
+read them again with him."
+
+Arthur had never spoken of his home before, and Tom hadn't
+encouraged him to do so, as his blundering schoolboy reasoning
+made him think that Arthur would be softened and less manly for
+thinking of home.  But now he was fairly interested, and forgot
+all about chisels and bottled beer; while with very little
+encouragement Arthur launched into his home history, and the
+prayer-bell put them both out sadly when it rang to call them to
+the hall.
+
+From this time Arthur constantly spoke of his home, and above
+all, of his father, who had been dead about a year, and whose
+memory Tom soon got to love and reverence almost as much as his
+own son did.
+
+Arthur's father had been the clergyman of a parish in the
+Midland counties, which had risen into a large town during the
+war, and upon which the hard years which followed had fallen
+with fearful weight.  The trade had been half ruined; and then
+came the old, sad story, of masters reducing their
+establishments, men turned off and wandering about, hungry and
+wan in body, and fierce in soul, from the thought of wives and
+children starving at home, and the last sticks of furniture
+going to the pawnshop; children taken from school, and lounging
+about the dirty streets and courts, too listless almost to play,
+and squalid in rags and misery; and then the fearful struggle
+between the employers and men--lowerings of wages, strikes, and
+the long course of oft-repeated crime, ending every now and then
+with a riot, a fire, and the county yeomanry.  There is no need
+here to dwell upon such tales:  the Englishman into whose soul
+they have not sunk deep is not worthy the name.  You English
+boys, for whom this book is meant (God bless your bright faces
+and kind hearts!), will learn it all soon enough.
+
+Into such a parish and state of society Arthur's father had been
+thrown at the age of twenty-five--a young married parson, full
+of faith, hope, and love.  He had battled with it like a man,
+and had lots of fine Utopian ideas about the perfectibility of
+mankind, glorious humanity, and such-like, knocked out of his
+head, and a real, wholesome Christian love for the poor,
+struggling, sinning men, of whom he felt himself one, and with
+and for whom he spent fortune, and strength, and life, driven
+into his heart.  He had battled like a man, and gotten a man's
+reward--no silver tea-pots or salvers, with flowery
+inscriptions setting forth his virtues and the appreciation of a
+genteel parish; no fat living or stall, for which he never
+looked, and didn't care; no sighs and praises of comfortable
+dowagers and well-got-up young women, who worked him slippers,
+sugared his tea, and adored him as "a devoted man;" but a manly
+respect, wrung from the unwilling souls of men who fancied his
+order their natural enemies; the fear and hatred of every one
+who was false or unjust in the district, were he master or man;
+and the blessed sight of women and children daily becoming more
+human and more homely, a comfort to themselves and to their
+husbands and fathers.
+
+These things, of course, took time, and had to be fought for
+with toil and sweat of brain and heart, and with the life-blood
+poured out.  All that, Arthur had laid his account to give, and
+took as a matter of course, neither pitying himself, nor looking
+on himself as a martyr, when he felt the wear and tear making
+him feel old before his time, and the stifling air of fever-dens
+telling on his health.  His wife seconded him in everything.
+She had been rather fond of society, and much admired and run
+after before her marriage; and the London world to which she had
+belonged pitied poor Fanny Evelyn when she married the young
+clergyman, and went to settle in that smoky hole Turley; a very
+nest of Chartism and Atheism, in a part of the country which all
+the decent families had had to leave for years.  However,
+somehow or other she didn't seem to care.  If her husband's
+living had been amongst green fields and near pleasant
+neighbours she would have liked it better--that she never
+pretended to deny.  But there they were.  The air wasn't bad,
+after all; the people were very good sort of people--civil to
+you if you were civil to them, after the first brush; and they
+didn't expect to work miracles, and convert them all off-hand
+into model Christians.  So he and she went quietly among the
+folk, talking to and treating them just as they would have done
+people of their own rank.  They didn't feel that they were doing
+anything out of the common way, and so were perfectly natural,
+and had none of that condescension or consciousness of manner
+which so outrages the independent poor.  And thus they gradually
+won respect and confidence; and after sixteen years he was
+looked up to by the whole neighbourhood as the just man, the man
+to whom masters and men could go in their strikes, and in all
+their quarrels and difficulties, and by whom the right and true
+word would be said without fear or favour.  And the women had
+come round to take her advice, and go to her as a friend in all
+their troubles; while the children all worshipped the very
+ground she trod on.
+
+They had three children, two daughters and a son, little Arthur,
+who came between his sisters.  He had been a very delicate boy
+from his childhood; they thought he had a tendency to
+consumption, and so he had been kept at home and taught by his
+father, who had made a companion of him, and from whom he had
+gained good scholarship, and a knowledge of and interest in many
+subjects which boys in general never come across till they are
+many years older.
+
+Just as he reached his thirteenth year, and his father had
+settled that he was strong enough to go to school, and, after
+much debating with himself, had resolved to send him there, a
+desperate typhus fever broke out in the town.  Most of the other
+clergy, and almost all the doctors, ran away; the work fell with
+tenfold weight on those who stood to their work.  Arthur and his
+wife both caught the fever, of which he died in a few days; and
+she recovered, having been able to nurse him to the end, and
+store up his last words.  He was sensible to the last, and calm
+and happy, leaving his wife and children with fearless trust for
+a few years in the hands of the Lord and Friend who had lived
+and died for him, and for whom he, to the best of his power, had
+lived and died.  His widow's mourning was deep and gentle.  She
+was more affected by the request of the committee of a
+freethinking club, established in the town by some of the
+factory hands (which he had striven against with might and main,
+and nearly suppressed), that some of their number might be
+allowed to help bear the coffin, than by anything else.  Two of
+them were chosen, who, with six other labouring men, his own
+fellow-workmen and friends, bore him to his grave--a man who
+had fought the Lord's fight even unto the death.  The shops were
+closed and the factories shut that day in the parish, yet no
+master stopped the day's wages; but for many a year afterwards
+the townsfolk felt the want of that brave, hopeful, loving
+parson and his wife, who had lived to teach them mutual
+forbearance and helpfulness, and had almost at last given them a
+glimpse of what this old world would be if people would live for
+God and each other instead of for themselves.
+
+What has all this to do with our story?  Well, my dear boys, let
+a fellow go on his own way, or you won't get anything out of him
+worth having.  I must show you what sort of a man it was who had
+begotten and trained little Arthur, or else you won't believe in
+him, which I am resolved you shall do; and you won't see how he,
+the timid, weak boy, had points in him from which the bravest
+and strongest recoiled, and made his presence and example felt
+from the first on all sides, unconsciously to himself, and
+without the least attempt at proselytizing.  The spirit of his
+father was in him, and the Friend to whom his father had left
+him did not neglect the trust.
+
+After supper that night, and almost nightly for years
+afterwards, Tom and Arthur, and by degrees East occasionally,
+and sometimes one, sometimes another, of their friends, read a
+chapter of the Bible together, and talked it over afterwards.
+Tom was at first utterly astonished, and almost shocked, at the
+sort of way in which Arthur read the book and talked about the
+men and women whose lives were there told.  The first night they
+happened to fall on the chapters about the famine in Egypt, and
+Arthur began talking about Joseph as if he were a living
+statesman--just as he might have talked about Lord Grey and the
+Reform Bill, only that they were much more living realities to
+him.  The book was to him, Tom saw, the most vivid and
+delightful history of real people, who might do right or wrong,
+just like any one who was walking about in Rugby--the Doctor,
+or the masters, or the sixth-form boys.  But the astonishment
+soon passed off, the scales seemed to drop from his eyes, and
+the book became at once and for ever to him the great human and
+divine book, and the men and women, whom he had looked upon as
+something quite different from himself, became his friends and
+counsellors.
+
+For our purposes, however, the history of one night's reading
+will be sufficient, which must be told here, now we are on the
+subject, though it didn't happen till a year afterwards, and
+long after the events recorded in the next chapter of our story.
+
+Arthur, Tom, and East were together one night, and read the
+story of Naaman coming to Elisha to be cured of his leprosy.
+When the chapter was finished, Tom shut his Bible with a slap.
+
+"I can't stand that fellow Naaman," said he, "after what he'd
+seen and felt, going back and bowing himself down in the house
+of Rimmon, because his effeminate scoundrel of a master did it.
+I wonder Elisha took the trouble to heal him.  How he must have
+despised him!"
+
+"Yes; there you go off as usual, with a shell on your head,"
+struck in East, who always took the opposite side to Tom, half
+from love of argument, half from conviction.  "How do you know
+he didn't think better of it?  How do you know his master was a
+scoundrel?  His letter don't look like it, and the book don't
+say so."
+
+"I don't care," rejoined Tom; "why did Naaman talk about bowing
+down, then, if he didn't mean to do it?  He wasn't likely to get
+more in earnest when he got back to court, and away from the
+prophet."
+
+"Well, but, Tom," said Arthur, "look what Elisha says to him--
+'Go in peace.'  He wouldn't have said that if Naaman had been in
+the wrong."
+
+"I don't see that that means more than saying, 'You're not the
+man I took you for.'"
+
+"No, no; that won't do at all," said East.  "Read the words
+fairly, and take men as you find them.  I like Naaman, and think
+he was a very fine fellow."
+
+"I don't," said Tom positively.
+
+"Well, I think East is right," said Arthur; "I can't see but
+what it's right to do the best you can, though it mayn't be the
+best absolutely.  Every man isn't born to be a martyr."
+
+"Of course, of course," said East; "but he's on one of his pet
+hobbies. --How often have I told you, Tom, that you must drive
+a nail where it'll go."
+
+"And how often have I told you," rejoined Tom, "that it'll
+always go where you want, if you only stick to it and hit hard
+enough.  I hate half-measures and compromises."
+
+"Yes, he's a whole-hog man, is Tom.  Must have the whole animal-
+hair and teeth, claws and tail," laughed East.  "Sooner have no
+bread any day than half the loaf."
+
+"I don't know;" said Arthur--"it's rather puzzling; but ain't
+most right things got by proper compromises--I mean where the
+principle isn't given up?"
+
+"That's just the point," said Tom; "I don't object to a
+compromise, where you don't give up your principle."
+
+"Not you," said East laughingly.--"I know him of old, Arthur,
+and you'll find him out some day.  There isn't such a reasonable
+fellow in the world, to hear him talk.  He never wants anything
+but what's right and fair; only when you come to settle what's
+right and fair, it's everything that he wants, and nothing that
+you want.  And that's his idea of a compromise.  Give me the
+Brown compromise when I'm on his side."
+
+"Now, Harry," said Tom, "no more chaff.  I'm serious.  Look
+here.  This is what makes my blood tingle."  And he turned over
+the pages of his Bible and read, "Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-
+nego answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not
+careful to answer thee in this matter.  If it be so, our God
+whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery
+furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.  But
+if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve
+thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up."
+He read the last verse twice, emphasizing the nots, and dwelling
+on them as if they gave him actual pleasure, and were hard to
+part with.
+
+They were silent a minute, and then Arthur said, "Yes, that's a
+glorious story, but it don't prove your point, Tom, I think.
+There are times when there is only one way, and that the
+highest, and then the men are found to stand in the breach."
+
+"There's always a highest way, and it's always the right one,"
+said Tom.  "How many times has the Doctor told us that in his
+sermons in the last year, I should like to know?"
+
+"Well, you ain't going to convince us--is he, Arthur?  No Brown
+compromise to-night," said East, looking at his watch.  "But
+it's past eight, and we must go to first lesson.  What a bore!"
+
+So they took down their books and fell to work; but Arthur
+didn't forget, and thought long and often over the conversation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III - ARTHUR MAKES A FRIEND.
+
+
+
+"Let Nature be your teacher:
+Sweet is the lore which Nature brings.
+Our meddling intellect
+Misshapes the beauteous forms of things.
+We murder to dissect.
+Enough of Science and of Art:
+Close up those barren leaves;
+Come forth, and bring with you a heart
+That watches and receives." - WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+About six weeks after the beginning of the half, as Tom and
+Arthur were sitting one night before supper beginning their
+verses, Arthur suddenly stopped, and looked up, and said, "Tom,
+do you know anything of Martin?"
+
+"Yes," said Tom, taking his hand out of his back hair, and
+delighted to throw his Gradus ad Parnassum on to the sofa; "I
+know him pretty well.  He's a very good fellow, but as mad as a
+hatter.  He's called Madman, you know.  And never was such a
+fellow for getting all sorts of rum things about him.  He tamed
+two snakes last half, and used to carry them about in his
+pocket; and I'll be bound he's got some hedgehogs and rats in
+his cupboard now, and no one knows what besides."
+
+"I should like very much to know him," said Arthur; "he was next
+to me in the form to-day, and he'd lost his book and looked over
+mine, and he seemed so kind and gentle that I liked him very
+much."
+
+"Ah, poor old Madman, he's always losing his books," said Tom,
+"and getting called up and floored because he hasn't got them."
+
+"I like him all the better," said Arthur.
+
+"Well, he's great fun, I can tell you," said Tom, throwing
+himself back on the sofa, and chuckling at the remembrance.  "We
+had such a game with him one day last half.  He had been kicking
+up horrid stinks for some time in his study, till I suppose some
+fellow told Mary, and she told the Doctor.  Anyhow, one day a
+little before dinner, when he came down from the library, the
+Doctor, instead of going home, came striding into the hall.
+East and I and five or six other fellows were at the fire, and
+preciously we stared, for he don't come in like that once a
+year, unless it is a wet day and there's a fight in the hall.
+'East,' says he, 'just come and show me Martin's study.'  'Oh,
+here's a game,' whispered the rest of us; and we all cut
+upstairs after the Doctor, East leading.  As we got into the New
+Row, which was hardly wide enough to hold the Doctor and his
+gown, click, click, click, we heard in the old Madman's den.
+Then that stopped all of a sudden, and the bolts went to like
+fun.  The Madman knew East's step, and thought there was going
+to be a siege.
+
+"'It's the Doctor, Martin.  He's here and wants to see you,'
+sings out East.
+
+"Then the bolts went back slowly, and the door opened, and there
+was the old Madman standing, looking precious scared--his
+jacket off, his shirt-sleeves up to his elbows, and his long
+skinny arms all covered with anchors and arrows and letters,
+tattooed in with gunpowder like a sailor-boy's, and a stink fit
+to knock you down coming out.  'Twas all the Doctor could do to
+stand his ground, and East and I, who were looking in under his
+arms, held our noses tight.  The old magpie was standing on the
+window-sill, all his feathers drooping, and looking disgusted
+and half-poisoned.
+
+"'What can you be about, Martin?' says the Doctor.  'You really
+mustn't go on in this way; you're a nuisance to the whole
+passage.'
+
+"'Please, sir, I was only mixing up this powder; there isn't any
+harm in it.  And the Madman seized nervously on his pestle and
+mortar, to show the Doctor the harmlessness of his pursuits, and
+went on pounding--click, click, click.  He hadn't given six
+clicks before, puff! up went the whole into a great blaze, away
+went the pestle and mortar across the study, and back we tumbled
+into the passage.  The magpie fluttered down into the court,
+swearing, and the Madman danced out, howling, with his fingers
+in his mouth.  The Doctor caught hold of him, and called to us
+to fetch some water.  'There, you silly fellow,' said he, quite
+pleased, though, to find he wasn't much hurt, 'you see you don't
+know the least what you're doing with all these things; and now,
+mind, you must give up practising chemistry by yourself.'  Then
+he took hold of his arm and looked at it, and I saw he had to
+bite his lip, and his eyes twinkled; but he said, quite grave,
+'Here, you see, you've been making all these foolish marks on
+yourself, which you can never get out, and you'll be very sorry
+for it in a year or two.  Now come down to the housekeeper's
+room, and let us see if you are hurt.'  And away went the two,
+and we all stayed and had a regular turn-out of the den, till
+Martin came back with his hand bandaged and turned us out.
+However, I'll go and see what he's after, and tell him to come
+in after prayers to supper."  And away went Tom to find the boy
+in question, who dwelt in a little study by himself, in New Row.
+
+The aforesaid Martin, whom Arthur had taken such a fancy for,
+was one of those unfortunates who were at that time of day (and
+are, I fear, still) quite out of their places at a public
+school.  If we knew how to use our boys, Martin would have been
+seized upon and educated as a natural philosopher.  He had a
+passion for birds, beasts, and insects, and knew more of them
+and their habits than any one in Rugby--except perhaps the
+Doctor, who knew everything.  He was also an experimental
+chemist on a small scale, and had made unto himself an electric
+machine, from which it was his greatest pleasure and glory to
+administer small shocks to any small boys who were rash enough
+to venture into his study.  And this was by no means an
+adventure free from excitement; for besides the probability of a
+snake dropping on to your head or twining lovingly up your leg,
+or a rat getting into your breeches-pocket in search of food,
+there was the animal and chemical odour to be faced, which
+always hung about the den, and the chance of being blown up in
+some of the many experiments which Martin was always trying,
+with the most wondrous results in the shape of explosions and
+smells that mortal boy ever heard of.  Of course, poor Martin,
+in consequence of his pursuits, had become an Ishmaelite in the
+house.  In the first place, he half-poisoned all his neighbours,
+and they in turn were always on the lookout to pounce upon any
+of his numerous live-stock, and drive him frantic by enticing
+his pet old magpie out of his window into a neighbouring study,
+and making the disreputable old bird drunk on toast soaked in
+beer and sugar.  Then Martin, for his sins, inhabited a study
+looking into a small court some ten feet across, the window of
+which was completely commanded by those of the studies opposite
+in the Sick-room Row, these latter being at a slightly higher
+elevation.  East, and another boy of an equally tormenting and
+ingenious turn of mind, now lived exactly opposite, and had
+expended huge pains and time in the preparation of instruments
+of annoyance for the behoof of Martin and his live colony.  One
+morning an old basket made its appearance, suspended by a short
+cord outside Martin's window, in which were deposited an amateur
+nest containing four young hungry jackdaws, the pride and glory
+of Martin's life, for the time being, and which he was currently
+asserted to have hatched upon his own person.  Early in the
+morning and late at night he was to be seen half out of window,
+administering to the varied wants of his callow brood.  After
+deep cogitation, East and his chum had spliced a knife on to the
+end of a fishing-rod; and having watched Martin out, had, after
+half an hour's severe sawing, cut the string by which the basket
+was suspended, and tumbled it on to the pavement below, with
+hideous remonstrance from the occupants.  Poor Martin, returning
+from his short absence, collected the fragments and replaced his
+brood (except one whose neck had been broken in the descent) in
+their old location, suspending them this time by string and wire
+twisted together, defiant of any sharp instrument which his
+persecutors could command.  But, like the Russian engineers at
+Sebastopol, East and his chum had an answer for every move of
+the adversary, and the next day had mounted a gun in the shape
+of a pea-shooter upon the ledge of their window, trained so as
+to bear exactly upon the spot which Martin had to occupy while
+tending his nurslings.  The moment he began to feed they began
+to shoot.  In vain did the enemy himself invest in a pea-
+shooter, and endeavour to answer the fire while he fed the young
+birds with his other hand; his attention was divided, and his
+shots flew wild, while every one of theirs told on his face and
+hands, and drove him into howlings and imprecations.  He had
+been driven to ensconce the nest in a corner of his already too-
+well-filled den.
+
+His door was barricaded by a set of ingenious bolts of his own
+invention, for the sieges were frequent by the neighbours when
+any unusually ambrosial odour spread itself from the den to the
+neighbouring studies.  The door panels were in a normal state of
+smash, but the frame of the door resisted all besiegers, and
+behind it the owner carried on his varied pursuits--much in the
+same state of mind, I should fancy, as a border-farmer lived in,
+in the days of the moss-troopers, when his hold might be
+summoned or his cattle carried off at any minute of night or
+day.
+
+"Open, Martin, old boy; it's only I, Tom Brown."
+
+"Oh, very well; stop a moment."  One bolt went back.  "You're
+sure East isn't there?"
+
+"No, no; hang it, open."  Tom gave a kick, the other bolt
+creaked, and he entered the den.
+
+Den indeed it was--about five feet six inches long by five
+wide, and seven feet high.  About six tattered school-books, and
+a few chemical books, Taxidermy, Stanley on Birds, and an odd
+volume of Bewick, the latter in much better preservation,
+occupied the top shelves.  The other shelves, where they had not
+been cut away and used by the owner for other purposes, were
+fitted up for the abiding-places of birds, beasts, and reptiles.
+There was no attempt at carpet or curtain.  The table was
+entirely occupied by the great work of Martin, the electric
+machine, which was covered carefully with the remains of his
+table-cloth.  The jackdaw cage occupied one wall; and the other
+was adorned by a small hatchet, a pair of climbing irons, and
+his tin candle-box, in which he was for the time being
+endeavouring to raise a hopeful young family of field-mice.  As
+nothing should be let to lie useless, it was well that the
+candle-box was thus occupied, for candles Martin never had.  A
+pound was issued to him weekly, as to the other boys; but as
+candles were available capital, and easily exchangeable for
+birds' eggs or young birds, Martin's pound invariably found its
+way in a few hours to Howlett's the bird-fancier's, in the
+Bilton road, who would give a hawk's or nightingale's egg or
+young linnet in exchange.  Martin's ingenuity was therefore for
+ever on the rack to supply himself with a light.  Just now he
+had hit upon a grand invention, and the den was lighted by a
+flaring cotton wick issuing from a ginger-beer bottle full of
+some doleful composition.  When light altogether failed him,
+Martin would loaf about by the fires in the passages or hall,
+after the manner of Diggs, and try to do his verses or learn his
+lines by the firelight.
+
+"Well, old boy, you haven't got any sweeter in the den this
+half.  How that stuff in the bottle stinks!  Never mind; I ain't
+going to stop; but you come up after prayers to our study.  You
+know young Arthur.  We've got Gray's study.  We'll have a good
+supper and talk about bird-nesting."
+
+Martin was evidently highly pleased at the invitation, and
+promised to be up without fail.
+
+As soon as prayers were over, and the sixth and fifth form boys
+had withdrawn to the aristocratic seclusion of their own room,
+and the rest, or democracy, had sat down to their supper in the
+hall, Tom and Arthur, having secured their allowances of bread
+and cheese, started on their feet to catch the eye of the
+prepostor of the week, who remained in charge during supper,
+walking up and down the hall.  He happened to be an easy-going
+fellow, so they got a pleasant nod to their "Please may I go
+out?" and away they scrambled to prepare for Martin a sumptuous
+banquet.  This Tom had insisted on, for he was in great delight
+on the occasion, the reason of which delight must be expounded.
+The fact was that this was the first attempt at a friendship of
+his own which Arthur had made, and Tom hailed it as a grand
+step.  The ease with which he himself became hail-fellow-well-
+met with anybody, and blundered into and out of twenty
+friendships a half-year, made him sometimes sorry and sometimes
+angry at Arthur's reserve and loneliness.  True, Arthur was
+always pleasant, and even jolly, with any boys who came with Tom
+to their study; but Tom felt that it was only through him, as it
+were, that his chum associated with others, and that but for him
+Arthur would have been dwelling in a wilderness.  This increased
+his consciousness of responsibility; and though he hadn't
+reasoned it out and made it clear to himself yet somehow he knew
+that this responsibility, this trust which he had taken on him
+without thinking about it, head over heels in fact, was the
+centre and turning-point of his school-life, that which was to
+make him or mar him, his appointed work and trial for the time
+being.  And Tom was becoming a new boy, though with frequent
+tumbles in the dirt and perpetual hard battle with himself, and
+was daily growing in manfulness and thoughtfulness, as every
+high-couraged and well-principled boy must, when he finds
+himself for the first time consciously at grips with self and
+the devil.  Already he could turn almost without a sigh from the
+School-gates, from which had just scampered off East and three
+or four others of his own particular set, bound for some jolly
+lark not quite according to law, and involving probably a row
+with louts, keepers, or farm-labourers, the skipping dinner or
+calling-over, some of Phoebe Jennings's beer, and a very
+possible flogging at the end of all as a relish.  He had quite
+got over the stage in which he would grumble to himself--"Well,
+hang it, it's very hard of the Doctor to have saddled me with
+Arthur.  Why couldn't he have chummed him with Fogey, or
+Thomkin, or any of the fellows who never do anything but walk
+round the close, and finish their copies the first day they're
+set?"  But although all this was past, he longed, and felt that
+he was right in longing, for more time for the legitimate
+pastimes of cricket, fives, bathing, and fishing, within bounds,
+in which Arthur could not yet be his companion; and he felt that
+when the "young un" (as he now generally called him) had found a
+pursuit and some other friend for himself, he should be able to
+give more time to the education of his own body with a clear
+conscience.
+
+And now what he so wished for had come to pass; he almost hailed
+it as a special providence (as indeed it was, but not for the
+reasons he gave for it--what providences are?) that Arthur
+should have singled out Martin of all fellows for a friend.
+"The old Madman is the very fellow," thought he; "he will take
+him scrambling over half the country after birds' eggs and
+flowers, make him run and swim and climb like an Indian, and not
+teach him a word of anything bad, or keep him from his lessons.
+What luck!"  And so, with more than his usual heartiness, he
+dived into his cupboard, and hauled out an old knuckle-bone of
+ham, and two or three bottles of beer, together with the solemn
+pewter only used on state occasions; while Arthur, equally
+elated at the easy accomplishment of his first act of volition
+in the joint establishment, produced from his side a bottle of
+pickles and a pot of jam, and cleared the table.  In a minute or
+two the noise of the boys coming up from supper was heard, and
+Martin knocked and was admitted, bearing his bread and cheese;
+and the three fell to with hearty good-will upon the viands,
+talking faster than they ate, for all shyness disappeared in a
+moment before Tom's bottled-beer and hospitable ways.  "Here's
+Arthur, a regular young town-mouse, with a natural taste for the
+woods, Martin, longing to break his neck climbing trees, and
+with a passion for young snakes."
+
+"Well, I say," sputtered out Martin eagerly, "will you come to-
+morrow, both of you, to Caldecott's Spinney then? for I know of
+a kestrel's nest, up a fir-tree. I can't get at it without help;
+and, Brown, you can climb against any one."
+
+"Oh yes, do let us go," said Arthur; "I never saw a hawk's nest
+nor a hawk's egg."
+
+"You just come down to my study, then, and I'll show you five
+sorts," said Martin.
+
+"Ay, the old Madman has got the best collection in the house,
+out and out," said Tom; and then Martin, warming with
+unaccustomed good cheer and the chance of a convert, launched
+out into a proposed bird-nesting campaign, betraying all manner
+of important secrets--a golden-crested wren's nest near
+Butlin's Mound, a moor-hen who was sitting on nine eggs in a
+pond down the Barby road, and a kingfisher's nest in a corner of
+the old canal above Brownsover Mill.  He had heard, he said,
+that no one had ever got a kingfisher's nest out perfect, and
+that the British Museum, or the Government, or somebody, had
+offered 100 pounds to any one who could bring them a nest and eggs not
+damaged.  In the middle of which astounding announcement, to
+which the others were listening with open ears, and already
+considering the application of the 100 pounds, a knock came to the
+door, and East's voice was heard craving admittance.
+
+"There's Harry," said Tom; "we'll let him in.  I'll keep him
+steady, Martin.  I thought the old boy would smell out the
+supper."
+
+The fact was, that Tom's heart had already smitten him for not
+asking his fidus Achates to the feast, although only an
+extempore affair; and though prudence and the desire to get
+Martin and Arthur together alone at first had overcome his
+scruples, he was now heartily glad to open the door, broach
+another bottle of beer, and hand over the old ham-knuckle to the
+searching of his old friend's pocket-knife.
+
+"Ah, you greedy vagabonds," said East, with his mouth full, "I
+knew there was something going on when I saw you cut off out of
+hall so quick with your suppers.  What a stunning tap, Tom!  You
+are a wunner for bottling the swipes."
+
+"I've had practice enough for the sixth in my time, and it's
+hard if I haven't picked up a wrinkle or two for my own
+benefit."
+
+"Well, old Madman, and how goes the bird-nesting campaign?
+How's Howlett?  I expect the young rooks'll be out in another
+fortnight, and then my turn comes."
+
+"There'll be no young rooks fit for pies for a month yet; shows
+how much you know about it," rejoined Martin, who, though very
+good friends with East, regarded him with considerable suspicion
+for his propensity to practical jokes.
+
+"Scud knows nothing and cares for nothing but grub and
+mischief," said Tom; "but young rook pie, specially when you've
+had to climb for them, is very pretty eating. --However, I say,
+Scud, we're all going after a hawk's nest to-morrow, in
+Caldecott's Spinney; and if you'll come and behave yourself,
+we'll have a stunning climb."
+
+"And a bathe in Aganippe.  Hooray!  I'm your man."
+
+"No, no; no bathing in Aganippe; that's where our betters go."
+
+"Well, well, never mind.  I'm for the hawk's nest, and anything
+that turns up."
+
+And the bottled-beer being finished, and his hunger appeased,
+East departed to his study, "that sneak Jones," as he informed
+them, who had just got into the sixth, and occupied the next
+study, having instituted a nightly visitation upon East and his
+chum, to their no small discomfort.
+
+When he was gone Martin rose to follow, but Tom stopped him.
+"No one goes near New Row," said he, "so you may just as well
+stop here and do your verses, and then we'll have some more
+talk.  We'll be no end quiet.  Besides, no prepostor comes here
+now.  We haven't been visited once this half."
+
+So the table was cleared, the cloth restored, and the three fell
+to work with Gradus and dictionary upon the morning's vulgus.
+
+They were three very fair examples of the way in which such
+tasks were done at Rugby, in the consulship of Plancus.  And
+doubtless the method is little changed, for there is nothing new
+under the sun, especially at schools.
+
+Now be it known unto all you boys who are at schools which do
+not rejoice in the time-honoured institution of the vulgus
+(commonly supposed to have been established by William of
+Wykeham at Winchester, and imported to Rugby by Arnold more for
+the sake of the lines which were learnt by heart with it than
+for its own intrinsic value, as I've always understood), that it
+is a short exercise in Greek or Latin verse, on a given subject,
+the minimum number of lines being fixed for each form.
+
+The master of the form gave out at fourth lesson on the previous
+day the subject for next morning's vulgus, and at first lesson
+each boy had to bring his vulgus ready to be looked over; and
+with the vulgus, a certain number of lines from one of the Latin
+or Greek poets then being construed in the form had to be got by
+heart.  The master at first lesson called up each boy in the
+form in order, and put him on in the lines.  If he couldn't say
+them, or seem to say them, by reading them off the master's or
+some other boy's book who stood near, he was sent back, and went
+below all the boys who did so say or seem to say them; but in
+either case his vulgus was looked over by the master, who gave
+and entered in his book, to the credit or discredit of the boy,
+so many marks as the composition merited.  At Rugby vulgus and
+lines were the first lesson every other day in the week, on
+Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays; and as there were thirty-
+eight weeks in the school year, it is obvious to the meanest
+capacity that the master of each form had to set one hundred and
+fourteen subjects every year, two hundred and twenty-eight every
+two years, and so on.  Now, to persons of moderate invention
+this was a considerable task, and human nature being prone to
+repeat itself, it will not be wondered that the masters gave the
+same subjects sometimes over again after a certain lapse of
+time.  To meet and rebuke this bad habit of the masters, the
+schoolboy mind, with its accustomed ingenuity, had invented an
+elaborate system of tradition.  Almost every boy kept his own
+vulgus written out in a book, and these books were duly handed
+down from boy to boy, till (if the tradition has gone on till
+now) I suppose the popular boys, in whose hands bequeathed
+vulgus-books have accumulated, are prepared with three or four
+vulguses on any subject in heaven or earth, or in "more worlds
+than one," which an unfortunate master can pitch upon.  At any
+rate, such lucky fellows had generally one for themselves and
+one for a friend in my time.  The only objection to the
+traditionary method of doing your vulguses was the risk that the
+successions might have become confused, and so that you and
+another follower of traditions should show up the same identical
+vulgus some fine morning; in which case, when it happened,
+considerable grief was the result.  But when did such risk
+hinder boys or men from short cuts and pleasant paths?
+
+Now in the study that night Tom was the upholder of the
+traditionary method of vulgus doing.  He carefully produced two
+large vulgus-books, and began diving into them, and picking out
+a line here, and an ending there (tags, as they were vulgarly
+called), till he had gotten all that he thought he could make
+fit.  He then proceeded to patch his tags together with the help
+of his Gradus, producing an incongruous and feeble result of
+eight elegiac lines, the minimum quantity for his form, and
+finishing up with two highly moral lines extra, making ten in
+all, which he cribbed entire from one of his books, beginning "O
+genus humanum," and which he himself must have used a dozen
+times before, whenever an unfortunate or wicked hero, of
+whatever nation or language under the sun, was the subject.
+Indeed he began to have great doubts whether the master wouldn't
+remember them, and so only throw them in as extra lines, because
+in any case they would call off attention from the other tags,
+and if detected, being extra lines, he wouldn't be sent back to
+do more in their place, while if they passed muster again he
+would get marks for them.
+
+The second method, pursued by Martin, may be called the dogged
+or prosaic method.  He, no more than Tom, took any pleasure in
+the task, but having no old vulgus-books of his own, or any
+one's else, could not follow the traditionary method, for which
+too, as Tom remarked, he hadn't the genius.  Martin then
+proceeded to write down eight lines in English, of the most
+matter-of-fact kind, the first that came into his head; and to
+convert these, line by line, by main force of Gradus and
+dictionary into Latin that would scan.  This was all he cared
+for--to produce eight lines with no false quantities or
+concords:  whether the words were apt, or what the sense was,
+mattered nothing; and as the article was all new, not a line
+beyond the minimum did the followers of the dogged method ever
+produce.
+
+The third, or artistic method, was Arthur's.  He considered
+first what point in the character or event which was the subject
+could most neatly be brought out within the limits of a vulgus,
+trying always to get his idea into the eight lines, but not
+binding himself to ten or even twelve lines if he couldn't do
+this.  He then set to work as much as possible without Gradus or
+other help, to clothe his idea in appropriate Latin or Greek,
+and would not be satisfied till he had polished it well up with
+the aptest and most poetic words and phrases he could get at.
+
+A fourth method, indeed, was used in the school, but of too
+simple a kind to require a comment.  It may be called the
+vicarious method, obtained amongst big boys of lazy or bullying
+habits, and consisted simply in making clever boys whom they
+could thrash do their whole vulgus for them, and construe it to
+them afterwards; which latter is a method not to be encouraged,
+and which I strongly advise you all not to practise.  Of the
+others, you will find the traditionary most troublesome, unless
+you can steal your vulguses whole (experto crede), and that the
+artistic method pays the best both in marks and other ways.
+
+The vulguses being finished by nine o'clock, and Martin having
+rejoiced above measure in the abundance of light, and of Gradus
+and dictionary, and other conveniences almost unknown to him for
+getting through the work, and having been pressed by Arthur to
+come and do his verses there whenever he liked, the three boys
+went down to Martin's den, and Arthur was initiated into the
+lore of birds' eggs, to his great delight.  The exquisite
+colouring and forms astonished and charmed him, who had scarcely
+ever seen any but a hen's egg or an ostrich's, and by the time
+he was lugged away to bed he had learned the names of at least
+twenty sorts, and dreamed of the glorious perils of tree-
+climbing, and that he had found a roc's egg in the island as big
+as Sinbad's, and clouded like a tit-lark's, in blowing which
+Martin and he had nearly been drowned in the yolk.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV - THE BIRD-FANCIERS.
+
+
+
+"I have found out a gift for my fair -
+I have found where the wood-pigeons breed;
+But let me the plunder forbear,
+She would say 'twas a barbarous deed." - ROWE.
+
+
+"And now, my lad, take them five shilling,
+And on my advice in future think;
+So Billy pouched them all so willing,
+And got that night disguised in drink." - MS. Ballad.
+
+
+The next morning, at first lesson, Tom was turned back in his
+lines, and so had to wait till the second round; while Martin
+and Arthur said theirs all right, and got out of school at once.
+When Tom got out and ran down to breakfast at Harrowell's they
+were missing, and Stumps informed him that they had swallowed
+down their breakfasts and gone off together--where, he couldn't
+say.  Tom hurried over his own breakfast, and went first to
+Martin's study and then to his own; but no signs of the missing
+boys were to be found.  He felt half angry and jealous of
+Martin.  Where could they be gone?
+
+He learnt second lesson with East and the rest in no very good
+temper, and then went out into the quadrangle.  About ten
+minutes before school Martin and Arthur arrived in the
+quadrangle breathless; and catching sight of him, Arthur rushed
+up, all excitement, and with a bright glow on his face.
+
+"O Tom, look here!" cried he, holding out three moor-hen's eggs;
+"we've been down the Barby road, to the pool Martin told us of
+last night, and just see what we've got."
+
+Tom wouldn't be pleased, and only looked out for something to
+find fault with.
+
+"Why, young un," said he, "what have you been after?  You don't
+mean to say you've been wading?"
+
+The tone of reproach made poor little Arthur shrink up in a
+moment and look piteous; and Tom with a shrug of his shoulders
+turned his anger on Martin.
+
+"Well, I didn't think, Madman, that you'd have been such a muff
+as to let him be getting wet through at this time of day.  You
+might have done the wading yourself."
+
+"So I did, of course; only he would come in too, to see the
+nest.  We left six eggs in.  They'll be hatched in a day or
+two."
+
+"Hang the eggs!" said Tom; "a fellow can't turn his back for a
+moment but all his work's undone.  He'll be laid up for a week
+for this precious lark, I'll be bound."
+
+"Indeed, Tom, now," pleaded Arthur, "my feet ain't wet, for
+Martin made me take off my shoes and stockings and trousers."
+
+"But they are wet, and dirty too; can't I see?" answered Tom;
+"and you'll be called up and floored when the master sees what a
+state you're in.  You haven't looked at second lesson, you
+know."
+
+O Tom, you old humbug! you to be upbraiding any one with not
+learning their lessons!  If you hadn't been floored yourself now
+at first lesson, do you mean to say you wouldn't have been with
+them?  And you've taken away all poor little Arthur's joy and
+pride in his first birds' eggs, and he goes and puts them down
+in the study, and takes down his books with a sigh, thinking he
+has done something horribly wrong, whereas he has learnt on in
+advance much more than will be done at second lesson.
+
+But the old Madman hasn't, and gets called up, and makes some
+frightful shots, losing about ten places, and all but getting
+floored.  This somewhat appeases Tom's wrath, and by the end of
+the lesson he has regained his temper.  And afterwards in their
+study he begins to get right again, as he watches Arthur's
+intense joy at seeing Martin blowing the eggs and gluing them
+carefully on to bits of cardboard, and notes the anxious, loving
+looks which the little fellow casts sidelong at him.  And then
+he thinks, "What an ill-tempered beast I am!  Here's just what I
+was wishing for last night come about, and I'm spoiling it all,"
+and in another five minutes has swallowed the last mouthful of
+his bile, and is repaid by seeing his little sensitive plant
+expand again and sun itself in his smiles.
+
+After dinner the Madman is busy with the preparations for their
+expedition, fitting new straps on to his climbing-irons, filling
+large pill-boxes with cotton-wool, and sharpening East's small
+axe.  They carry all their munitions into calling-overs and
+directly afterwards, having dodged such prepostors as are on the
+lookout for fags at cricket, the four set off at a smart trot
+down the Lawford footpath, straight for Caldecott's Spinney and
+the hawk's nest.
+
+Martin leads the way in high feather; it is quite a new
+sensation to him, getting companions, and he finds it very
+pleasant, and means to show them all manner of proofs of his
+science and skill.  Brown and East may be better at cricket and
+football and games, thinks he, but out in the fields and woods
+see if I can't teach them something.  He has taken the
+leadership already, and strides away in front with his climbing-
+irons strapped under one arm, his pecking-bag under the other,
+and his pockets and hat full of pill-boxes, cotton-wool, and
+other etceteras.  Each of the others carries a pecking-bag, and
+East his hatchet.
+
+When they had crossed three or four fields without a check,
+Arthur began to lag; and Tom seeing this shouted to Martin to
+pull up a bit.  "We ain't out hare-and-hounds.  What's the good
+of grinding on at this rate?"
+
+"There's the Spinney," said Martin, pulling up on the brow of a
+slope at the bottom of which lay Lawford brook, and pointing to
+the top of the opposite slope; "the nest is in one of those high
+fir-trees at this end.  And down by the brook there I know of a
+sedge-bird's nest.  We'll go and look at it coming back."
+
+"Oh, come on, don't let us stop," said Arthur, who was getting
+excited at the sight of the wood.  So they broke into a trot
+again, and were soon across the brook, up the slope, and into
+the Spinney.  Here they advanced as noiselessly as possible,
+lest keepers or other enemies should be about, and stopped at
+the foot of a tall fir, at the top of which Martin pointed out
+with pride the kestrel's nest, the object of their quest.
+
+"Oh, where? which is it?" asks Arthur, gaping up in the air, and
+having the most vague idea of what it would be like.
+
+"There, don't you see?" said East, pointing to a lump of
+mistletoe in the next tree, which was a beech.  He saw that
+Martin and Tom were busy with the climbing-irons, and couldn't
+resist the temptation of hoaxing.  Arthur stared and wondered
+more than ever.
+
+"Well, how curious!  It doesn't look a bit like what I
+expected," said he.
+
+"Very odd birds, kestrels," said East, looking waggishly at his
+victim, who was still star-gazing.
+
+"But I thought it was in a fir-tree?" objected Arthur.
+
+"Ah, don't you know?  That's a new sort of fir which old
+Caldecott brought from the Himalayas."
+
+"Really!" said Arthur; "I'm glad I know that.  How unlike our
+firs they are!  They do very well too here, don't they?  The
+Spinney's full of them."
+
+"What's that humbug he's telling you?" cried Tom, looking up,
+having caught the word Himalayas, and suspecting what East was
+after.
+
+"Only about this fir," said Arthur, putting his hand on the stem
+of the beech.
+
+"Fir!" shouted Tom; "why, you don't mean to say, young un, you
+don't know a beech when you see one?"
+
+Poor little Arthur looked terribly ashamed, and East exploded in
+laughter which made the wood ring.
+
+"I've hardly ever seen any trees," faltered Arthur.
+
+"What a shame to hoax him, Scud!" cried Martin. --"Never mind,
+Arthur; you shall know more about trees than he does in a week
+or two."
+
+"And isn't that the kestrel's nest, then?" asked Arthur.  "That!
+Why, that's a piece of mistletoe.  There's the nest, that lump
+of sticks up this fir."
+
+"Don't believe him, Arthur," struck in the incorrigible East; "I
+just saw an old magpie go out of it."
+
+Martin did not deign to reply to this sally, except by a grunt,
+as he buckled the last buckle of his climbing-irons, and Arthur
+looked reproachfully at East without speaking.
+
+But now came the tug of war.  It was a very difficult tree to
+climb until the branches were reached, the first of which was
+some fourteen feet up, for the trunk was too large at the bottom
+to be swarmed; in fact, neither of the boys could reach more
+than half round it with their arms.  Martin and Tom, both of
+whom had irons on, tried it without success at first; the fir
+bark broke away where they stuck the irons in as soon as they
+leant any weight on their feet, and the grip of their arms
+wasn't enough to keep them up; so, after getting up three or
+four feet, down they came slithering to the ground, barking
+their arms and faces.  They were furious, and East sat by
+laughing and shouting at each failure, "Two to one on the old
+magpie!"
+
+"We must try a pyramid," said Tom at last.  "Now, Scud, you lazy
+rascal, stick yourself against the tree!"
+
+"I dare say! and have you standing on my shoulders with the
+irons on.  What do you think my skin's made of?"  However, up he
+got, and leant against the tree, putting his head down and
+clasping it with his arms as far as he could.
+
+"Now then, Madman," said Tom, "you next."
+
+"No, I'm lighter than you; you go next."  So Tom got on East's
+shoulders, and grasped the tree above, and then Martin scrambled
+up on to Tom's shoulders, amidst the totterings and groanings of
+the pyramid, and, with a spring which sent his supporters
+howling to the ground, clasped the stem some ten feet up, and
+remained clinging.  For a moment or two they thought he couldn't
+get up; but then, holding on with arms and teeth, he worked
+first one iron then the other firmly into the bark, got another
+grip with his arms, and in another minute had hold of the lowest
+branch.
+
+"All up with the old magpie now," said East; and after a
+minute's rest, up went Martin, hand over hand, watched by Arthur
+with fearful eagerness.
+
+"Isn't it very dangerous?" said he.
+
+"Not a bit," answered Tom; "you can't hurt if you only get good
+hand-hold.  Try every branch with a good pull before you trust
+it, and then up you go."
+
+Martin was now amongst the small branches close to the nest, and
+away dashed the old bird, and soared up above the trees,
+watching the intruder.
+
+"All right--four eggs!" shouted he.
+
+"Take 'em all!" shouted East; "that'll be one a-piece."
+
+"No, no; leave one, and then she won t care, said Tom.
+
+We boys had an idea that birds couldn't count, and were quite
+content as long as you left one egg.  I hope it is so.
+
+Martin carefully put one egg into each of his boxes and the
+third into his mouth, the only other place of safety, and came
+down like a lamplighter.  All went well till he was within ten
+feet of the ground, when, as the trunk enlarged, his hold got
+less and less firm, and at last down he came with a run,
+tumbling on to his back on the turf, spluttering and spitting
+out the remains of the great egg, which had broken by the jar of
+his fall.
+
+"Ugh, ugh! something to drink--ugh! it was addled," spluttered
+he, while the wood rang again with the merry laughter of East
+and Tom.
+
+Then they examined the prizes, gathered up their things, and
+went off to the brook, where Martin swallowed huge draughts of
+water to get rid of the taste; and they visited the sedge-bird's
+nest, and from thence struck across the country in high glee,
+beating the hedges and brakes as they went along; and Arthur at
+last, to his intense delight, was allowed to climb a small
+hedgerow oak for a magpie's nest with Tom, who kept all round
+him like a mother, and showed him where to hold and how to throw
+his weight; and though he was in a great fright, didn't show it,
+and was applauded by all for his lissomness.
+
+They crossed a road soon afterwards, and there, close to them,
+lay a great heap of charming pebbles.
+
+"Look here," shouted East; "here's luck!  I've been longing for
+some good, honest pecking this half-hour.  Let's fill the bags,
+and have no more of this foozling bird-nesting."
+
+No one objected, so each boy filled the fustian bag he carried
+full of stones.  They crossed into the next field, Tom and East
+taking one side of the hedges, and the other two the other side.
+Noise enough they made certainly, but it was too early in the
+season for the young birds, and the old birds were too strong on
+the wing for our young marksmen, and flew out of shot after the
+first discharge.  But it was great fun, rushing along the
+hedgerows, and discharging stone after stone at blackbirds and
+chaffinches, though no result in the shape of slaughtered birds
+was obtained; and Arthur soon entered into it, and rushed to
+head back the birds, and shouted, and threw, and tumbled into
+ditches, and over and through hedges, as wild as the Madman
+himself.
+
+Presently the party, in full cry after an old blackbird (who was
+evidently used to the thing and enjoyed the fun, for he would
+wait till they came close to him, and then fly on for forty
+yards or so, and, with an impudent flicker of his tail, dart
+into the depths of the quickset), came beating down a high
+double hedge, two on each side.
+
+"There he is again," "Head him," "Let drive," "I had him there,"
+"Take care where you're throwing, Madman."  The shouts might
+have been heard a quarter of a mile off.  They were heard some
+two hundred yards off by a farmer and two of his shepherds, who
+were doctoring sheep in a fold in the next field.
+
+Now, the farmer in question rented a house and yard situate at
+the end of the field in which the young bird-fanciers had
+arrived, which house and yard he didn't occupy or keep any one
+else in.  Nevertheless, like a brainless and unreasoning Briton,
+he persisted in maintaining on the premises a large stock of
+cocks, hens, and other poultry.  Of course, all sorts of
+depredators visited the place from time to time:  foxes and
+gipsies wrought havoc in the night; while in the daytime, I
+regret to have to confess that visits from the Rugby boys, and
+consequent disappearances of ancient and respectable fowls were
+not unfrequent.  Tom and East had during the period of their
+outlawry visited the farm in question for felonious purposes,
+and on one occasion had conquered and slain a duck there, and
+borne away the carcass triumphantly, hidden in their
+handkerchiefs.  However, they were sickened of the practice by
+the trouble and anxiety which the wretched duck's body caused
+them.  They carried it to Sally Harrowell's, in hopes of a good
+supper; but she, after examining it, made a long face, and
+refused to dress or have anything to do with it.  Then they took
+it into their study, and began plucking it themselves; but what
+to do with the feathers, where to hide them?
+
+"Good gracious, Tom, what a lot of feathers a duck has!" groaned
+East, holding a bagful in his hand, and looking disconsolately
+at the carcass, not yet half plucked.
+
+"And I do think he's getting high, too, already," said Tom,
+smelling at him cautiously, "so we must finish him up soon."
+
+"Yes, all very well; but how are we to cook him?  I'm sure I
+ain't going to try it on in the hall or passages; we can't
+afford to be roasting ducks about--our character's too bad."
+
+"I wish we were rid of the brute," said Tom, throwing him on the
+table in disgust.  And after a day or two more it became clear
+that got rid of he must be; so they packed him and sealed him up
+in brown paper, and put him in the cupboard of an unoccupied
+study, where he was found in the holidays by the matron, a
+gruesome body.
+
+They had never been duck-hunting there since, but others had,
+and the bold yeoman was very sore on the subject, and bent on
+making an example of the first boys he could catch.  So he and
+his shepherds crouched behind the hurdles, and watched the
+party, who were approaching all unconscious.  Why should that
+old guinea-fowl be lying out in the hedge just at this
+particular moment of all the year?  Who can say?  Guinea-fowls
+always are; so are all other things, animals, and persons,
+requisite for getting one into scrapes--always ready when any
+mischief can come of them.  At any rate, just under East's nose
+popped out the old guinea-hen, scuttling along and shrieking,
+"Come back, come back," at the top of her voice.  Either of the
+other three might perhaps have withstood the temptation, but
+East first lets drive the stone he has in his hand at her, and
+then rushes to turn her into the hedge again.  He succeeds, and
+then they are all at it for dear life, up and down the hedge in
+full cry, the "Come back, come back," getting shriller and
+fainter every minute.
+
+Meantime, the farmer and his men steal over the hurdles and
+creep down the hedge towards the scene of action.  They are
+almost within a stone's throw of Martin, who is pressing the
+unlucky chase hard, when Tom catches sight of them, and sings
+out, "Louts, 'ware louts, your side!  Madman, look ahead!" and
+then catching hold of Arthur, hurries him away across the field
+towards Rugby as hard as they can tear.  Had he been by himself,
+he would have stayed to see it out with the others, but now his
+heart sinks and all his pluck goes.  The idea of being led up to
+the Doctor with Arthur for bagging fowls quite unmans and takes
+half the run out of him.
+
+However, no boys are more able to take care of themselves than
+East and Martin; they dodge the pursuers, slip through a gap,
+and come pelting after Tom and Arthur, whom they catch up in no
+time.  The farmer and his men are making good running about a
+field behind.  Tom wishes to himself that they had made off in
+any other direction, but now they are all in for it together,
+and must see it out.
+
+"You won't leave the young un, will you?" says he, as they haul
+poor little Arthur, already losing wind from the fright, through
+the next hedge.  "Not we," is the answer from both.  The next
+hedge is a stiff one; the pursuers gain horribly on them, and
+they only just pull Arthur through, with two great rents in his
+trousers, as the foremost shepherd comes up on the other side.
+As they start into the next field, they are aware of two figures
+walking down the footpath in the middle of it, and recognize
+Holmes and Diggs taking a constitutional.  Those good-natured
+fellows immediately shout, "On."  "Let's go to them and
+surrender," pants Tom.  Agreed.  And in another minute the four
+boys, to the great astonishment of those worthies, rush
+breathless up to Holmes and Diggs, who pull up to see what is
+the matter; and then the whole is explained by the appearance of
+the farmer and his men, who unite their forces and bear down on
+the knot of boys.
+
+There is no time to explain, and Tom's heart beats frightfully
+quick, as he ponders, "Will they stand by us?"
+
+The farmer makes a rush at East and collars him; and that young
+gentleman, with unusual discretion, instead of kicking his
+shins, looks appealingly at Holmes, and stands still.
+
+"Hullo there; not so fast," says Holmes, who is bound to stand
+up for them till they are proved in the wrong.  "Now what's all
+this about?"
+
+"I've got the young varmint at last, have I," pants the farmer;
+"why, they've been a-skulking about my yard and stealing my
+fowls--that's where 'tis; and if I doan't have they flogged for
+it, every one on 'em, my name ain't Thompson."
+
+Holmes looks grave and Diggs's face falls.  They are quite ready
+to fight--no boys in the school more so; but they are
+prepostors, and understand their office, and can't uphold
+unrighteous causes.
+
+"I haven't been near his old barn this half," cries East.  "Nor
+I," "Nor I," chime in Tom and Martin.
+
+"Now, Willum, didn't you see 'em there last week?"
+
+"Ees, I seen 'em sure enough," says Willum, grasping a prong he
+carried, and preparing for action.
+
+The boys deny stoutly, and Willum is driven to admit that "if it
+worn't they 'twas chaps as like 'em as two peas'n;" and
+"leastways he'll swear he see'd them two in the yard last
+Martinmas," indicating East and Tom.
+
+Holmes has had time to meditate.  "Now, sir," says he to Willum,
+"you see you can't remember what you have seen, and I believe
+the boys."
+
+"I doan't care," blusters the farmer; "they was arter my fowls
+to-day--that's enough for I. --Willum, you catch hold o'
+t'other chap.  They've been a-sneaking about this two hours, I
+tells 'ee," shouted he, as Holmes stands between Martin and
+Willum, "and have druv a matter of a dozen young pullets pretty
+nigh to death."
+
+"Oh, there's a whacker!" cried East; "we haven't been within a
+hundred yards of his barn; we haven't been up here above ten
+minutes, and we've seen nothing but a tough old guinea-hen, who
+ran like a greyhound."
+
+"Indeed, that's all true, Holmes, upon my honour," added Tom;
+"we weren't after his fowls; guinea-hen ran out of the hedge
+under our feet, and we've seen nothing else."
+
+"Drat their talk.  Thee catch hold o' t'other, Willum, and come
+along wi' un."
+
+"Farmer Thompson," said Holmes, warning off Willum and the prong
+with his stick, while Diggs faced the other shepherd, cracking
+his fingers like pistol-shots, "now listen to reason.  The boys
+haven't been after your fowls, that's plain."
+
+"Tells 'ee I see'd'em.  Who be you, I should like to know?"
+
+"Never you mind, farmer," answered Holmes.  "And now I'll just
+tell you what it is:  you ought to be ashamed of yourself for
+leaving all that poultry about, with no one to watch it, so near
+the School.  You deserve to have it all stolen.  So if you
+choose to come up to the Doctor with them, I shall go with you,
+and tell him what I think of it."
+
+The farmer began to take Holmes for a master; besides, he wanted
+to get back to his flock.  Corporal punishment was out of the
+question, the odds were too great; so he began to hint at paying
+for the damage.  Arthur jumped at this, offering to pay
+anything, and the farmer immediately valued the guinea-hen at
+half a sovereign.
+
+"Half a sovereign!" cried East, now released from the farmer's
+grip; "well, that is a good one!  The old hen ain't hurt a bit,
+and she's seven years old, I know, and as tough as whipcord; she
+couldn't lay another egg to save her life."
+
+It was at last settled that they should pay the farmer two
+shillings, and his man one shilling; and so the matter ended, to
+the unspeakable relief of Tom, who hadn't been able to say a
+word, being sick at heart at the idea of what the Doctor would
+think of him; and now the whole party of boys marched off down
+the footpath towards Rugby.  Holmes, who was one of the best
+boys in the School, began to improve the occasion.  "Now, you
+youngsters," said he, as he marched along in the middle of them,
+"mind this; you're very well out of this scrape.  Don't you go
+near Thompson's barn again; do you hear?"
+
+Profuse promises from all, especially East.
+
+"Mind, I don't ask questions," went on Mentor, "but I rather
+think some of you have been there before this after his
+chickens.  Now, knocking over other people's chickens, and
+running off with them, is stealing.  It's a nasty word, but
+that's the plain English of it.  If the chickens were dead and
+lying in a shop, you wouldn't take them, I know that, any more
+than you would apples out of Griffith's basket; but there's no
+real difference between chickens running about and apples on a
+tree, and the same articles in a shop.  I wish our morals were
+sounder in such matters.  There's nothing so mischievous as
+these school distinctions, which jumble up right and wrong, and
+justify things in us for which poor boys would be sent to
+prison."  And good old Holmes delivered his soul on the walk
+home of many wise sayings, and, as the song says,
+
+
+"Gee'd 'em a sight of good advice;"
+
+
+which same sermon sank into them all, more or less, and very
+penitent they were for several hours.  But truth compels me to
+admit that East, at any rate, forgot it all in a week, but
+remembered the insult which had been put upon him by Farmer
+Thompson, and with the Tadpole and other hair-brained youngsters
+committed a raid on the barn soon afterwards, in which they were
+caught by the shepherds and severely handled, besides having to
+pay eight shillings--all the money they had in the world--to
+escape being taken up to the Doctor.
+
+Martin became a constant inmate in the joint study from this
+time, and Arthur took to him so kindly that Tom couldn't resist
+slight fits of jealousy, which, however, he managed to keep to
+himself.  The kestrel's eggs had not been broken, strange to
+say, and formed the nucleus of Arthur's collection, at which
+Martin worked heart and soul, and introduced Arthur to Howlett
+the bird-fancier, and instructed him in the rudiments of the art
+of stuffing.  In token of his gratitude, Arthur allowed Martin
+to tattoo a small anchor on one of his wrists; which decoration,
+however, he carefully concealed from Tom.  Before the end of the
+half-year he had trained into a bold climber and good runner,
+and, as Martin had foretold, knew twice as much about trees,
+birds, flowers, and many other things, as our good-hearted and
+facetious young friend Harry East.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V - THE FIGHT:
+
+
+
+"Surgebat Macnevisius
+Et mox jactabat ultro,
+Pugnabo tua gratia
+Feroci hoc Mactwoltro." - Etonian.
+
+
+There is a certain sort of fellow--we who are used to studying
+boys all know him well enough--of whom you can predicate with
+almost positive certainty, after he has been a month at school,
+that he is sure to have a fight, and with almost equal certainty
+that he will have but one.  Tom Brown was one of these; and as
+it is our well-weighed intention to give a full, true, and
+correct account of Tom's only single combat with a school-fellow
+in the manner of our old friend Bell's Life, let those young
+persons whose stomachs are not strong, or who think a good set-
+to with the weapons which God has given us all an uncivilized,
+unchristian, or ungentlemanly affair, just skip this chapter at
+once, for it won't be to their taste.
+
+It was not at all usual in those days for two School-house boys
+to have a fight.  Of course there were exceptions, when some
+cross-grained, hard-headed fellow came up who would never be
+happy unless he was quarrelling with his nearest neighbours, or
+when there was some class-dispute, between the fifth form and
+the fags, for instance, which required blood-letting; and a
+champion was picked out on each side tacitly, who settled the
+matter by a good hearty mill.  But, for the most part, the
+constant use of those surest keepers of the peace, the boxing-
+gloves, kept the School-house boys from fighting one another.
+Two or three nights in every week the gloves were brought out,
+either in the hall or fifth-form room; and every boy who was
+ever likely to fight at all knew all his neighbours' prowess
+perfectly well, and could tell to a nicety what chance he would
+have in a stand-up fight with any other boy in the house.  But,
+of course, no such experience could be gotten as regarded boys
+in other houses; and as most of the other houses were more or
+less jealous of the School-house, collisions were frequent.
+
+After all, what would life be without fighting, I should like to
+know?  From the cradle to the grave, fighting, rightly
+understood, is the business, the real highest, honestest
+business of every son of man.  Every one who is worth his salt
+has his enemies, who must be beaten, be they evil thoughts and
+habits in himself, or spiritual wickednesses in high places, or
+Russians, or Border-ruffians, or Bill, Tom, or Harry, who will
+not let him live his life in quiet till he has thrashed them.
+
+It is no good for quakers, or any other body of men, to uplift
+their voices against fighting.  Human nature is too strong for
+them, and they don't follow their own precepts.  Every soul of
+them is doing his own piece of fighting, somehow and somewhere.
+The world might be a better world without fighting, for anything
+I know, but it wouldn't be our world; and therefore I am dead
+against crying peace when there is no peace, and isn't meant to
+be.  I am as sorry as any man to see folk fighting the wrong
+people and the wrong things, but I'd a deal sooner see them
+doing that than that they should have no fight in them.  So
+having recorded, and being about to record, my hero's fights of
+all sorts, with all sorts of enemies, I shall now proceed to
+give an account of his passage-at-arms with the only one of his
+school-fellows whom he ever had to encounter in this manner.
+
+It was drawing towards the close of Arthur's first half-year,
+and the May evenings were lengthening out.  Locking-up was not
+till eight o'clock, and everybody was beginning to talk about
+what he would do in the holidays.  The shell, in which form all
+our dramatis personae now are, were reading, amongst other
+things, the last book of Homer's "Iliad," and had worked through
+it as far as the speeches of the women over Hector's body.  It
+is a whole school-day, and four or five of the School-house boys
+(amongst whom are Arthur, Tom, and East) are preparing third
+lesson together.  They have finished the regulation forty lines,
+and are for the most part getting very tired, notwithstanding
+the exquisite pathos of Helen's lamentation.  And now several
+long four-syllabled words come together, and the boy with the
+dictionary strikes work.
+
+"I am not going to look out any more words," says he; "we've
+done the quantity.  Ten to one we shan't get so far.  Let's go
+out into the close."
+
+"Come along, boys," cries East, always ready to leave "the
+grind," as he called it; "our old coach is laid up, you know,
+and we shall have one of the new masters, who's sure to go slow
+and let us down easy."
+
+So an adjournment to the close was carried nem. con., little
+Arthur not daring to uplift his voice; but, being deeply
+interested in what they were reading, stayed quietly behind, and
+learnt on for his own pleasure.
+
+As East had said, the regular master of the form was unwell, and
+they were to be heard by one of the new masters--quite a young
+man, who had only just left the university.  Certainly it would
+be hard lines if, by dawdling as much as possible in coming in
+and taking their places, entering into long-winded explanations
+of what was the usual course of the regular master of the form,
+and others of the stock contrivances of boys for wasting time in
+school, they could not spin out the lesson so that he should not
+work them through more than the forty lines.  As to which
+quantity there was a perpetual fight going on between the master
+and his form--the latter insisting, and enforcing by passive
+resistance, that it was the prescribed quantity of Homer for a
+shell lesson; the former, that there was no fixed quantity, but
+that they must always be ready to go on to fifty or sixty lines
+if there were time within the hour.  However, notwithstanding
+all their efforts, the new master got on horribly quick.  He
+seemed to have the bad taste to be really interested in the
+lesson, and to be trying to work them up into something like
+appreciation of it, giving them good, spirited English words,
+instead of the wretched bald stuff into which they rendered poor
+old Homer, and construing over each piece himself to them, after
+each boy, to show them how it should be done.
+
+Now the clock strikes the three-quarters; there is only a
+quarter of an hour more, but the forty lines are all but done.
+So the boys, one after another, who are called up, stick more
+and more, and make balder and ever more bald work of it.  The
+poor young master is pretty near beat by this time, and feels
+ready to knock his head against the wall, or his fingers against
+somebody else's head.  So he gives up altogether the lower and
+middle parts of the form, and looks round in despair at the boys
+on the top bench, to see if there is one out of whom he can
+strike a spark or two, and who will be too chivalrous to murder
+the most beautiful utterances of the most beautiful woman of the
+old world.  His eye rests on Arthur, and he calls him up to
+finish construing Helen's speech.  Whereupon all the other boys
+draw long breaths, and begin to stare about and take it easy.
+They are all safe:  Arthur is the head of the form, and sure to
+be able to construe, and that will tide on safely till the hour
+strikes.
+
+Arthur proceeds to read out the passage in Greek before
+construing it, as the custom is.  Tom, who isn't paying much
+attention, is suddenly caught by the falter in his voice as he
+reads the two lines --
+
+[greek text deleted]
+
+He looks up at Arthur.  "Why, bless us," thinks he, "what can be
+the matter with the young un?  He's never going to get floored.
+He's sure to have learnt to the end."  Next moment he is
+reassured by the spirited tone in which Arthur begins
+construing, and betakes himself to drawing dogs' heads in his
+notebook, while the master, evidently enjoying the change, turns
+his back on the middle bench and stands before Arthur, beating a
+sort of time with his hand and foot, and saying; "Yes, yes,"
+"Very well," as Arthur goes on.
+
+But as he nears the fatal two lines, Tom catches that falter,
+and again looks up.  He sees that there is something the matter;
+Arthur can hardly get on at all.  What can it be?
+
+Suddenly at this point Arthur breaks down altogether, and fairly
+bursts out crying, and dashes the cuff of his jacket across his
+eyes, blushing up to the roots of his hair, and feeling as if he
+should like to go down suddenly through the floor.  The whole
+form are taken aback; most of them stare stupidly at him, while
+those who are gifted with presence of mind find their places and
+look steadily at their books, in hopes of not catching the
+master's eye and getting called up in Arthur's place.
+
+The master looks puzzled for a moment, and then seeing, as the
+fact is, that the boy is really affected to tears by the most
+touching thing in Homer, perhaps in all profane poetry put
+together, steps up to him and lays his hand kindly on his
+shoulder, saying, "Never mind, my little man, you've construed
+very well.  Stop a minute; there's no hurry."
+
+Now, as luck would have it, there sat next above Tom on that
+day, in the middle bench of the form, a big boy, by name
+Williams, generally supposed to be the cock of the shell,
+therefore of all the school below the fifths.  The small boys,
+who are great speculators on the prowess of their elders, used
+to hold forth to one another about Williams's great strength,
+and to discuss whether East or Brown would take a licking from
+him.  He was called Slogger Williams, from the force with which
+it was supposed he could hit.  In the main, he was a rough,
+goodnatured fellow enough, but very much alive to his own
+dignity.  He reckoned himself the king of the form, and kept up
+his position with the strong hand, especially in the matter of
+forcing boys not to construe more than the legitimate forty
+lines.  He had already grunted and grumbled to himself when
+Arthur went on reading beyond the forty lines; but now that he
+had broken down just in the middle of all the long words, the
+Slogger's wrath was fairly roused.
+
+"Sneaking little brute," muttered he, regardless of prudence--
+"clapping on the water-works just in the hardest place; see if I
+don't punch his head after fourth lesson."
+
+"Whose?" said Tom, to whom the remark seemed to be addressed.
+
+"Why, that little sneak, Arthur's," replied Williams.
+
+"No, you shan't," said Tom.
+
+"Hullo!" exclaimed Williams, looking at Tom with great surprise
+for a moment, and then giving him a sudden dig in the ribs with
+his elbow, which sent Tom's books flying on to the floor, and
+called the attention of the master, who turned suddenly round,
+and seeing the state of things, said, -
+
+"Williams, go down three places, and then go on."
+
+The Slogger found his legs very slowly, and proceeded to go
+below Tom and two other boys with great disgust; and then,
+turning round and facing the master, said, "I haven't learnt any
+more, sir; our lesson is only forty lines."
+
+"Is that so?" said the master, appealing generally to the top
+bench.  No answer.
+
+"Who is the head boy of the form?" said he, waxing wroth.
+
+"Arthur, sir," answered three or four boys, indicating our
+friend.
+
+"Oh, your name's Arthur.  Well, now, what is the length of your
+regular lesson?"
+
+Arthur hesitated a moment, and then said, "We call it only forty
+lines, sir."
+
+"How do you mean--you call it?"
+
+"Well, sir, Mr. Graham says we ain't to stop there when there's
+time to construe more."
+
+"I understand," said the master. --"Williams, go down three
+more places, and write me out the lesson in Greek and English.
+And now, Arthur, finish construing."
+
+"Oh! would I be in Arthur's shoes after fourth lesson?" said the
+little boys to one another; but Arthur finished Helen's speech
+without any further catastrophe, and the clock struck four,
+which ended third lesson.
+
+Another hour was occupied in preparing and saying fourth lesson,
+during which Williams was bottling up his wrath; and when five
+struck, and the lessons for the day were over, he prepared to
+take summary vengeance on the innocent cause of his misfortune.
+
+Tom was detained in school a few minutes after the rest, and on
+coming out into the quadrangle, the first thing he saw was a
+small ring of boys, applauding Williams, who was holding Arthur
+by the collar.
+
+"There, you young sneak," said he, giving Arthur a cuff on the
+head with his other hand; "what made you say that--"
+
+"Hullo!" said Tom, shouldering into the crowd; "you drop that,
+Williams; you shan't touch him."
+
+"Who'll stop me?" said the Slogger, raising his hand again.
+
+"I," said Tom; and suiting the action to the word he struck the
+arm which held Arthur's arm so sharply that the Slogger dropped
+it with a start, and turned the full current of his wrath on
+Tom.
+
+"Will you fight?"
+
+"Yes, of course."
+
+"Huzza!  There's going to be a fight between Slogger Williams
+and Tom Brown!"
+
+The news ran like wildfire about, and many boys who were on
+their way to tea at their several houses turned back, and sought
+the back of the chapel, where the fights come off.
+
+"Just run and tell East to come and back me," said Tom to a
+small School-house boy, who was off like a rocket to
+Harrowell's, just stopping for a moment to poke his head into
+the School-house hall, where the lower boys were already at tea,
+and sing out, "Fight!  Tom Brown and Slogger Williams."
+
+Up start half the boys at once, leaving bread, eggs, butter,
+sprats, and all the rest to take care of themselves.  The
+greater part of the remainder follow in a minute, after
+swallowing their tea, carrying their food in their hands to
+consume as they go.  Three or four only remain, who steal the
+butter of the more impetuous, and make to themselves an unctuous
+feast.
+
+In another minute East and Martin tear through the quadrangle,
+carrying a sponge, and arrive at the scene of action just as the
+combatants are beginning to strip.
+
+Tom felt he had got his work cut out for him, as he stripped off
+his jacket, waistcoat, and braces.  East tied his handkerchief
+round his waist, and rolled up his shirtsleeves for him.  "Now,
+old boy, don't you open your mouth to say a word, or try to help
+yourself a bit--we'll do all that; you keep all your breath and
+strength for the Slogger."  Martin meanwhile folded the clothes,
+and put them under the chapel rails; and now Tom, with East to
+handle him, and Martin to give him a knee, steps out on the
+turf, and is ready for all that may come; and here is the
+Slogger too, all stripped, and thirsting for the fray.
+
+It doesn't look a fair match at first glance:  Williams is nearly
+two inches taller, and probably a long year older than his
+opponent, and he is very strongly made about the arms and
+shoulders--"peels well," as the little knot of big fifth-form
+boys, the amateurs, say, who stand outside the ring of little
+boys, looking complacently on, but taking no active part in the
+proceedings.  But down below he is not so good by any means--no
+spring from the loins, and feeblish, not to say shipwrecky,
+about the knees.  Tom, on the contrary, though not half so
+strong in the arms, is good all over, straight, hard, and
+springy, from neck to ankle, better perhaps in his legs than
+anywhere.  Besides, you can see by the clear white of his eye,
+and fresh, bright look of his skin, that he is in tip-top
+training, able to do all he knows; while the Slogger looks
+rather sodden, as if he didn't take much exercise and ate too
+much tuck.  The time-keeper is chosen, a large ring made, and
+the two stand up opposite one another for a moment, giving us
+time just to make our little observations.
+
+"If Tom'll only condescend to fight with his head and heels," as
+East mutters to Martin, "we shall do."
+
+But seemingly he won't, for there he goes in, making play with
+both hands.  Hard all is the word; the two stand to one another
+like men; rally follows rally in quick succession, each fighting
+as if he thought to finish the whole thing out of hand.  "Can't
+last at this rate," say the knowing ones, while the partisans of
+each make the air ring with their shouts and counter-shouts of
+encouragement, approval, and defiance.
+
+"Take it easy, take it easy; keep away; let him come after you,"
+implores East, as he wipes Tom's face after the first round with
+a wet sponge, while he sits back on Martin's knee, supported by
+the Madman's long arms which tremble a little from excitement.
+
+"Time's up," calls the time-keeper.
+
+"There he goes again, hang it all!" growls East, as his man is
+at it again, as hard as ever.  A very severe round follows, in
+which Tom gets out and out the worst of it, and is at last hit
+clean off his legs, and deposited on the grass by a right-hander
+from the Slogger.
+
+Loud shouts rise from the boys of Slogger's house, and the
+School-house are silent and vicious, ready to pick quarrels
+anywhere.
+
+"Two to one in half-crowns on the big un," says Rattle, one of
+the amateurs, a tall fellow, in thunder-and-lightning waistcoat,
+and puffy, good-natured face.
+
+"Done!" says Groove, another amateur of quieter look, taking out
+his notebook to enter it, for our friend Rattle sometimes
+forgets these little things.
+
+Meantime East is freshening up Tom with the sponges for next
+round, and has set two other boys to rub his hands.
+
+"Tom, old boy," whispers he, "this may be fun for you, but it's
+death to me.  He'll hit all the fight out of you in another five
+minutes, and then I shall go and drown myself in the island
+ditch.  Feint him; use your legs; draw him about.  He'll lose
+his wind then in no time, and you can go into him.  Hit at his
+body too; we'll take care of his frontispiece by-and-by."
+
+Tom felt the wisdom of the counsel, and saw already that he
+couldn't go in and finish the Slogger off at mere hammer and
+tongs, so changed his tactics completely in the third round.  He
+now fights cautiously, getting away from and parrying the
+Slogger's lunging hits, instead of trying to counter, and
+leading his enemy a dance all round the ring after him.  "He's
+funking; go in, Williams," "Catch him up," "Finish him off,"
+scream the small boys of the Slogger party.
+
+"Just what we want," thinks East, chuckling to himself, as he
+sees Williams, excited by these shouts, and thinking the game in
+his own hands, blowing himself in his exertions to get to close
+quarters again, while Tom is keeping away with perfect ease.
+
+They quarter over the ground again and again, Tom always on the
+defensive.
+
+The Slogger pulls up at last for a moment, fairly blown.
+
+"Now, then, Tom," sings out East, dancing with delight.  Tom
+goes in in a twinkling, and hits two heavy body blows, and gets
+away again before the Slogger can catch his wind, which when he
+does he rushes with blind fury at Tom, and being skilfully
+parried and avoided, overreaches himself and falls on his face,
+amidst terrific cheers from the School-house boys.
+
+"Double your two to one?" says Groove to Rattle, notebook in
+hand.
+
+"Stop a bit," says that hero, looking uncomfortably at Williams,
+who is puffing away on his second's knee, winded enough, but
+little the worse in any other way.
+
+After another round the Slogger too seems to see that he can't
+go in and win right off, and has met his match or thereabouts.
+So he too begins to use his head, and tries to make Tom lose his
+patience, and come in before his time.  And so the fight sways
+on, now one and now the other getting a trifling pull.
+
+Tom's face begins to look very one-sided--there are little
+queer bumps on his forehead, and his mouth is bleeding; but East
+keeps the wet sponge going so scientifically that he comes up
+looking as fresh and bright as ever.  Williams is only slightly
+marked in the face, but by the nervous movement of his elbows
+you can see that Tom's body blows are telling.  In fact, half
+the vice of the Slogger's hitting is neutralized, for he daren't
+lunge out freely for fear of exposing his sides.  It is too
+interesting by this time for much shouting, and the whole ring
+is very quiet.
+
+"All right, Tommy," whispers East; "hold on's the horse that's
+to win.  We've got the last.  Keep your head, old boy."
+
+But where is Arthur all this time?  Words cannot paint the poor
+little fellow's distress.  He couldn't muster courage to come up
+to the ring, but wandered up and down from the great fives court
+to the corner of the chapel rails, now trying to make up his
+mind to throw himself between them, and try to stop them; then
+thinking of running in and telling his friend Mary, who, he
+knew, would instantly report to the Doctor.  The stories he had
+heard of men being killed in prize-fights rose up horribly
+before him.
+
+Once only, when the shouts of "Well done, Brown!" "Huzza for the
+School-house!" rose higher than ever, he ventured up to the
+ring, thinking the victory was won.  Catching sight of Tom's
+face in the state I have described, all fear of consequences
+vanishing out of his mind; he rushed straight off to the
+matron's room, beseeching her to get the fight stopped, or he
+should die.
+
+But it's time for us to get back to the close.  What is this
+fierce tumult and confusion?  The ring is broken, and high and
+angry words are being bandied about.  "It's all fair"--"It
+isn't"--"No hugging!"  The fight is stopped.  The combatants,
+however, sit there quietly, tended by their seconds, while their
+adherents wrangle in the middle.  East can't help shouting
+challenges to two or three of the other side, though he never
+leaves Tom for a moment, and plies the sponges as fast as ever.
+
+The fact is, that at the end of the last round, Tom, seeing a
+good opening, had closed with his opponent, and after a moment's
+struggle, had thrown him heavily, by help of the fall he had
+learnt from his village rival in the Vale of White Horse.
+Williams hadn't the ghost of a chance with Tom at wrestling; and
+the conviction broke at once on the Slogger faction that if this
+were allowed their man must be licked.  There was a strong
+feeling in the School against catching hold and throwing, though
+it was generally ruled all fair within limits; so the ring was
+broken and the fight stopped.
+
+The School-house are overruled--the fight is on again, but
+there is to be no throwing; and East, in high wrath, threatens
+to take his man away after next round (which he don't mean to
+do, by the way), when suddenly young Brooke comes through the
+small gate at the end of the chapel.  The School-house faction
+rush to him.  "Oh, hurrah! now we shall get fair play."
+
+"Please, Brooke, come up.  They won't let Tom Brown throw him."
+
+"Throw whom?" says Brooke, coming up to the ring.  "Oh!
+Williams, I see.  Nonsense!  Of course he may throw him, if he
+catches him fairly above the waist."
+
+Now, young Brooke, you're in the sixth, you know, and you ought
+to stop all fights.  He looks hard at both boys.  "Anything
+wrong?" says he to East, nodding at Tom.
+
+"Not a bit."
+
+"Not beat at all?"
+
+"Bless you, no!  Heaps of fight in him. --Ain't there, Tom?"
+
+Tom looks at Brooke and grins.
+
+"How's he?" nodding at Williams.
+
+"So so; rather done, I think, since his last fall.  He won't
+stand above two more."
+
+"Time's up!"  The boys rise again and face one another.  Brooke
+can't find it in his heart to stop them just yet, so the round
+goes on, the Slogger waiting for Tom, and reserving all his
+strength to hit him out should he come in for the wrestling
+dodge again, for he feels that that must be stopped, or his
+sponge will soon go up in the air.
+
+And now another newcomer appears on the field, to wit, the
+under-porter, with his long brush and great wooden receptacle
+for dust under his arm.  He has been sweeping out the schools.
+
+"You'd better stop, gentlemen," he says; "the Doctor knows that
+Brown's fighting--he'll be out in a minute."
+
+"You go to Bath, Bill," is all that that excellent servitor gets
+by his advice; and being a man of his hands, and a stanch
+upholder of the School-house, can't help stopping to look on for
+a bit, and see Tom Brown, their pet craftsman, fight a round.
+
+It is grim earnest now, and no mistake.  Both boys feel this,
+and summon every power of head, hand, and eye to their aid.  A
+piece of luck on either side, a foot slipping, a blow getting
+well home, or another fall, may decide it.  Tom works slowly
+round for an opening; he has all the legs, and can choose his
+own time.  The Slogger waits for the attack, and hopes to finish
+it by some heavy right-handed blow.  As they quarter slowly over
+the ground, the evening sun comes out from behind a cloud and
+falls full on Williams's face.  Tom darts in; the heavy right
+hand is delivered, but only grazes his head.  A short rally at
+close quarters, and they close; in another moment the Slogger is
+thrown again heavily for the third time.
+
+"I'll give you three or two on the little one in half-crowns,"
+said Groove to Rattle.
+
+"No, thank 'ee," answers the other, diving his hands farther
+into his coat-tails.
+
+Just at this stage of the proceedings, the door of the turret
+which leads to the Doctor's library suddenly opens, and he steps
+into the close, and makes straight for the ring, in which Brown
+and the Slogger are both seated on their seconds' knees for the
+last time.
+
+"The Doctor! the Doctor!" shouts some small boy who catches
+sight of him, and the ring melts away in a few seconds, the
+small boys tearing off, Tom collaring his jacket and waistcoat,
+and slipping through the little gate by the chapel, and round
+the corner to Harrowell's with his backers, as lively as need
+be; Williams and his backers making off not quite so fast across
+the close; Groove, Rattle, and the other bigger fellows trying
+to combine dignity and prudence in a comical manner, and walking
+off fast enough, they hope, not to be recognized, and not fast
+enough to look like running away.
+
+Young Brooke alone remains on the ground by the time the Doctor
+gets there, and touches his hat, not without a slight inward
+qualm.
+
+"Hah!  Brooke.  I am surprised to see you here.  Don't you know
+that I expect the sixth to stop fighting?"
+
+Brooke felt much more uncomfortable than he had expected, but he
+was rather a favourite with the Doctor for his openness and
+plainness of speech, so blurted out, as he walked by the
+Doctor's side, who had already turned back, -
+
+"Yes, sir, generally.  But I thought you wished us to exercise a
+discretion in the matter too--not to interfere too soon."
+
+"But they have been fighting this half-hour and more," said the
+Doctor.
+
+"Yes, sir; but neither was hurt.  And they're the sort of boys
+who'll be all the better friends now, which they wouldn't have
+been if they had been stopped, any earlier--before it was so
+equal."
+
+"Who was fighting with Brown?" said the Doctor.
+
+"Williams, sir, of Thompson's.  He is bigger than Brown, and had
+the best of it at first, but not when you came up, sir.  There's
+a good deal of jealousy between our house and Thompson's, and
+there would have been more fights if this hadn't been let go on,
+or if either of them had had much the worst of it."
+
+"Well but, Brooke," said the Doctor, "doesn't this look a little
+as if you exercised your discretion by only stopping a fight
+when the School-house boy is getting the worst of it?"
+
+Brooke, it must be confessed, felt rather gravelled.
+
+"Now remember," added the Doctor, as he stopped at the turret-
+door, "this fight is not to go on; you'll see to that.  And I
+expect you to stop all fights in future at once."
+
+"Very well, sir," said young Brooke, touching his hat, and not
+sorry to see the turret-door close behind the Doctor's back.
+
+Meantime Tom and the stanchest of his adherents had reached
+Harrowell's, and Sally was bustling about to get them a late
+tea, while Stumps had been sent off to Tew, the butcher, to get
+a piece of raw beef for Tom's eye, which was to be healed off-
+hand, so that he might show well in the morning.  He was not a
+bit the worse, except a slight difficulty in his vision, a
+singing in his ears, and a sprained thumb, which he kept in a
+cold-water bandage, while he drank lots of tea, and listened to
+the babel of voices talking and speculating of nothing but the
+fight, and how Williams would have given in after another fall
+(which he didn't in the least believe), and how on earth the
+Doctor could have got to know of it--such bad luck!  He
+couldn't help thinking to himself that he was glad he hadn't
+won; he liked it better as it was, and felt very friendly to the
+Slogger.  And then poor little Arthur crept in and sat down
+quietly near him, and kept looking at him and the raw beef with
+such plaintive looks that Tom at last burst out laughing.
+
+"Don't make such eyes, young un," said he; "there's nothing the
+matter."
+
+"Oh, but, Tom, are you much hurt?  I can't bear thinking it was
+all for me."
+
+"Not a bit of it; don't flatter yourself.  We were sure to have
+had it out sooner or later."
+
+"Well, but you won't go on, will you?  You'll promise me you
+won't go on?"
+
+"Can't tell about that--all depends on the houses.  We're in
+the hands of our countrymen, you know.  Must fight for the
+School-house flag, if so be."
+
+However, the lovers of the science were doomed to disappointment
+this time.  Directly after locking-up, one of the night-fags
+knocked at Tom's door.
+
+"Brown, young Brooke wants you in the sixth-form room."
+
+Up went Tom to the summons, and found the magnates sitting at
+their supper.
+
+"Well, Brown," said young Brooke, nodding to him , "how do you
+feel?"
+
+"Oh, very well, thank you, only I've sprained my thumb, I
+think."
+
+"Sure to do that in a fight.  Well, you hadn't the worst of it,
+I could see.  Where did you learn that throw?"
+
+"Down in the country when I was a boy."
+
+"Hullo! why, what are you now?  Well, never mind, you're a
+plucky fellow.  Sit down and have some supper."
+
+Tom obeyed, by no means loath.  And the fifth-form boy next
+filled him a tumbler of bottled beer, and he ate and drank,
+listening to the pleasant talk, and wondering how soon he should
+be in the fifth, and one of that much-envied society.
+
+As he got up to leave, Brooke said, "You must shake hands to-
+morrow morning; I shall come and see that done after first
+lesson."
+
+And so he did.  And Tom and the Slogger shook hands with great
+satisfaction and mutual respect.  And for the next year or two,
+whenever fights were being talked of, the small boys who had
+been present shook their heads wisely, saying, "Ah! but you
+should just have seen the fight between Slogger Williams and Tom
+Brown!"
+
+And now, boys all, three words before we quit the subject.  I
+have put in this chapter on fighting of malice prepense, partly
+because I want to give you a true picture of what everyday
+school life was in my time, and not a kid-glove and go-to-
+meeting-coat picture, and partly because of the cant and twaddle
+that's talked of boxing and fighting with fists nowadays.  Even
+Thackeray has given in to it; and only a few weeks ago there was
+some rampant stuff in the Times on the subject, in an article on
+field sports.
+
+Boys will quarrel, and when they quarrel will sometimes fight.
+Fighting with fists is the natural and English way for English
+boys to settle their quarrels.  What substitute for it is there,
+or ever was there, amongst any nation under the sun?  What would
+you like to see take its place?
+
+Learn to box, then, as you learn to play cricket and football.
+Not one of you will be the worse, but very much the better, for
+learning to box well.  Should you never have to use it in
+earnest, there's no exercise in the world so good for the temper
+and for the muscles of the back and legs.
+
+As to fighting, keep out of it if you can, by all means.  When
+the time comes, if it ever should, that you have to say "Yes" or
+"No" to a challenge to fight, say "No" if you can--only take
+care you make it clear to yourselves why you say "No."  It's a
+proof of the highest courage, if done from true Christian
+motives.  It's quite right and justifiable, if done from a
+simple aversion to physical pain and danger.  But don't say "No"
+because you fear a licking, and say or think it's because you
+fear God, for that's neither Christian nor honest.  And if you
+do fight, fight it out; and don't give in while you can stand
+and see.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI - FEVER IN THE SCHOOL.
+
+
+
+"This our hope for all that's mortal
+And we too shall burst the bond;
+Death keeps watch beside the portal,
+But 'tis life that dwells beyond."
+JOHN STERLING.
+
+
+Two years have passed since the events recorded in the last
+chapter, and the end of the summer half-year is again drawing
+on.  Martin has left and gone on a cruise in the South Pacific,
+in one of his uncle's ships; the old magpie, as disreputable as
+ever, his last bequest to Arthur, lives in the joint study.
+Arthur is nearly sixteen, and at the head of the twenty, having
+gone up the school at the rate of a form a half-year.  East and
+Tom have been much more deliberate in their progress, and are
+only a little way up the fifth form.  Great strapping boys they
+are, but still thorough boys, filling about the same place in
+the house that young Brooke filled when they were new boys, and
+much the same sort of fellows.  Constant intercourse with Arthur
+has done much for both of them, especially for Tom; but much
+remains yet to be done, if they are to get all the good out of
+Rugby which is to be got there in these times.  Arthur is still
+frail and delicate, with more spirit than body; but, thanks to
+his intimacy with them and Martin, has learned to swim, and run,
+and play cricket, and has never hurt himself by too much
+reading.
+
+One evening, as they were all sitting down to supper in the
+fifth-form room, some one started a report that a fever had
+broken out at one of the boarding-houses.  "They say," he added,
+"that Thompson is very ill, and that Dr. Robertson has been sent
+for from Northampton."
+
+"Then we shall all be sent home," cried another.  "Hurrah! five
+weeks' extra holidays, and no fifth-form examination!"
+
+"I hope not," said Tom; "there'll be no Marylebone match then at
+the end of the half."
+
+Some thought one thing, some another, many didn't believe the
+report; but the next day, Tuesday, Dr. Robertson arrived, and
+stayed all day, and had long conferences with the Doctor.
+
+On Wednesday morning, after prayers, the Doctor addressed the
+whole school.  There were several cases of fever in different
+houses, he said; but Dr. Robertson, after the most careful
+examination, had assured him that it was not infectious, and
+that if proper care were taken, there could be no reason for
+stopping the school-work at present.  The examinations were just
+coming on, and it would be very unadvisable to break up now.
+However, any boys who chose to do so were at liberty to write
+home, and, if their parents wished it, to leave at once.  He
+should send the whole school home if the fever spread.
+
+The next day Arthur sickened, but there was no other case.
+Before the end of the week thirty or forty boys had gone, but
+the rest stayed on.  There was a general wish to please the
+Doctor, and a feeling that it was cowardly to run away.
+
+On the Saturday Thompson died, in the bright afternoon, while
+the cricket-match was going on as usual on the big-side ground.
+The Doctor, coming from his deathbed, passed along the gravel-
+walk at the side of the close, but no one knew what had happened
+till the next day.  At morning lecture it began to be rumoured,
+and by afternoon chapel was known generally; and a feeling of
+seriousness and awe at the actual presence of death among them
+came over the whole school.  In all the long years of his
+ministry the Doctor perhaps never spoke words which sank deeper
+than some of those in that day's sermon.
+
+"When I came yesterday from visiting all but the very death-bed
+of him who has been taken from us, and looked around upon all
+the familiar objects and scenes within our own ground, where
+your common amusements were going on with your common
+cheerfulness and activity, I felt there was nothing painful in
+witnessing that; it did not seem in any way shocking or out of
+tune with those feelings which the sight of a dying Christian
+must be supposed to awaken.  The unsuitableness in point of
+natural feeling between scenes of mourning and scenes of
+liveliness did not at all present itself.  But I did feel that
+if at that moment any of those faults had been brought before me
+which sometimes occur amongst us; had I heard that any of you
+had been guilty of falsehood, or of drunkenness, or of any other
+such sin; had I heard from any quarter the language of
+profaneness, or of unkindness, or of indecency; had I heard or
+seen any signs of that wretched folly which courts the laugh of
+fools by affecting not to dread evil and not to care for good,
+then the unsuitableness of any of these things with the scene I
+had just quitted would indeed have been most intensely painful.
+And why?  Not because such things would really have been worse
+than at any other time, but because at such a moment the eyes
+are opened really to know good and evil, because we then feel
+what it is so to live as that death becomes an infinite
+blessing, and what it is so to live also that it were good for
+us if we had never been born."
+
+Tom had gone into chapel in sickening anxiety about Arthur, but
+he came out cheered and strengthened by those grand words, and
+walked up alone to their study.  And when he sat down and looked
+round, and saw Arthur's straw hat and cricket-jacket hanging on
+their pegs, and marked all his little neat arrangements, not one
+of which had been disturbed, the tears indeed rolled down his
+cheeks; but they were calm and blessed tears, and he repeated to
+himself, "Yes, Geordie's eyes are opened; he knows what it is so
+to live as that death becomes an infinite blessing.  But do I?
+O God, can I bear to lose him?"
+
+The week passed mournfully away.  No more boys sickened, but
+Arthur was reported worse each day, and his mother arrived early
+in the week.  Tom made many appeals to be allowed to see him,
+and several times tried to get up to the sick-room; but the
+housekeeper was always in the way, and at last spoke to the
+Doctor, who kindly but peremptorily forbade him.
+
+Thompson was buried on the Tuesday, and the burial service, so
+soothing and grand always, but beyond all words solemn when read
+over a boy's grave to his companions, brought him much comfort,
+and many strange new thoughts and longings.  He went back to his
+regular life, and played cricket and bathed as usual.  It seemed
+to him that this was the right thing to do, and the new thoughts
+and longings became more brave and healthy for the effort.  The
+crisis came on Saturday; the day week that Thompson had died;
+and during that long afternoon Tom sat in his study reading his
+Bible, and going every half-hour to the housekeeper's room,
+expecting each time to hear that the gentle and brave little
+spirit had gone home.  But God had work for Arthur to do.  The
+crisis passed:  on Sunday evening he was declared out of danger;
+on Monday he sent a message to Tom that he was almost well, had
+changed his room, and was to be allowed to see him the next day.
+
+It was evening when the housekeeper summoned him to the sick-
+room.  Arthur was lying on the sofa by the open window, through
+which the rays of the western sun stole gently, lighting up his
+white face and golden hair.  Tom remembered a German picture of
+an angel which he knew; often had he thought how transparent and
+golden and spirit-like it was; and he shuddered, to think how
+like it Arthur looked, and felt a shock as if his blood had all
+stopped short, as he realized how near the other world his
+friend must have been to look like that.  Never till that moment
+had he felt how his little chum had twined himself round his
+heart-strings, and as he stole gently across the room and knelt
+down, and put his arm round Arthur's head on the pillow, felt
+ashamed and half-angry at his own red and brown face, and the
+bounding sense of health and power which filled every fibre of
+his body, and made every movement of mere living a joy to him.
+He needn't have troubled himself:  it was this very strength and
+power so different from his own which drew Arthur so to him.
+
+Arthur laid his thin, white hand, on which the blue veins stood
+out so plainly, on Tom's great brown fist, and smiled at him;
+and then looked out of the window again, as if he couldn't bear
+to lose a moment of the sunset, into the tops of the great
+feathery elms, round which the rooks were circling and clanging,
+returning in flocks from their evening's foraging parties.  The
+elms rustled, the sparrows in the ivy just outside the window
+chirped and fluttered about, quarrelling, and making it up
+again; the rooks, young and old, talked in chorus, and the merry
+shouts of the boys and the sweet click of the cricket-bats came
+up cheerily from below.
+
+"Dear George," said Tom, "I am so glad to be let up to see you
+at last.  I've tried hard to come so often, but they wouldn't
+let me before."
+
+"Oh, I know, Tom; Mary has told me every day about you, and how
+she was obliged to make the Doctor speak to you to keep you
+away.  I'm very glad you didn't get up, for you might have
+caught it; and you couldn't stand being ill, with all the
+matches going on.  And you're in the eleven, too, I hear.  I'm
+so glad."
+
+"Yes; ain't it jolly?" said Tom proudly.  "I'm ninth too.  I
+made forty at the last pie-match, and caught three fellows out.
+So I was put in above Jones and Tucker.  Tucker's so savage, for
+he was head of the twenty-two."
+
+"Well, I think you ought to be higher yet," said Arthur, who was
+as jealous for the renown of Tom in games as Tom was for his as
+a scholar.
+
+"Never mind.  I don't care about cricket or anything now you're
+getting well, Geordie; and I shouldn't have hurt, I know, if
+they'd have let me come up.  Nothing hurts me.  But you'll get
+about now directly, won't you?  You won't believe how clean I've
+kept the study.  All your things are just as you left them; and
+I feed the old magpie just when you used, though I have to come
+in from big-side for him, the old rip.  He won't look pleased
+all I can do, and sticks his head first on one side and then on
+the other, and blinks at me before he'll begin to eat, till I'm
+half inclined to box his ears.  And whenever East comes in, you
+should see him hop off to the window, dot and go one, though
+Harry wouldn't touch a feather of him now."
+
+Arthur laughed.  "Old Gravey has a good memory; he can't forget
+the sieges of poor Martin's den in old times."  He paused a
+moment, and then went on:  "You can't think how often I've been
+thinking of old Martin since I've been ill.  I suppose one's
+mind gets restless, and likes to wander off to strange, unknown
+places.  I wonder what queer new pets the old boy has got.  How
+he must be revelling in the thousand new birds, beasts, and
+fishes!"
+
+Tom felt a pang of jealousy, but kicked it out in a moment.
+"Fancy him on a South Sea island, with the Cherokees, or
+Patagonians, or some such wild niggers!"  (Tom's ethnology and
+geography were faulty, but sufficient for his needs.)  "They'll
+make the old Madman cock medicine-man, and tattoo him all over.
+Perhaps he's cutting about now all blue, and has a squaw and a
+wigwam.  He'll improve their boomerangs, and be able to throw
+them too, without having old Thomas sent after him by the Doctor
+to take them away."
+
+Arthur laughed at the remembrance of the boomerang story, but
+then looked grave again, and said, "He'll convert all the
+island, I know."
+
+"Yes, if he don't blow it up first."
+
+"Do you remember, Tom, how you and East used to laugh at him and
+chaff him, because he said he was sure the rooks all had
+calling-over or prayers, or something of the sort, when the
+locking-up bell rang?  Well, I declare," said Arthur, looking up
+seriously into Tom's laughing eyes, "I do think he was right.
+Since I've been lying here, I've watched them every night; and,
+do you know, they really do come and perch, all of them, just
+about locking-up time; and then first there's a regular chorus
+of caws; and then they stop a bit, and one old fellow, or
+perhaps two or three in different trees, caw solos; and then off
+they all go again, fluttering about and cawing anyhow till they
+roost."
+
+"I wonder if the old blackies do talk," said Tom, looking up at
+them.  "How they must abuse me and East, and pray for the Doctor
+for stopping the slinging!"
+
+"There! look, look!" cried Arthur; "don't you see the old fellow
+without a tail coming up?  Martin used to call him the 'clerk.'
+He can't steer himself.  You never saw such fun as he is in a
+high wind, when he can't steer himself home, and gets carried
+right past the trees, and has to bear up again and again before
+he can perch."
+
+The locking-up bell began to toll, and the two boys were silent,
+and listened to it.  The sound soon carried Tom off to the river
+and the woods, and he began to go over in his mind the many
+occasions on which he had heard that toll coming faintly down
+the breeze, and had to pack his rod in a hurry and make a run
+for it, to get in before the gates were shut.  He was roused
+with a start from his memories by Arthur's voice, gentle and
+weak from his late illness.
+
+"Tom, will you be angry if I talk to you very seriously?"
+
+"No, dear old boy, not I.  But ain't you faint, Arthur, or ill?
+What can I get you?  Don't say anything to hurt yourself now--
+you are very weak; let me come up again."
+
+"No, no; I shan't hurt myself.  I'd sooner speak to you now, if
+you don't mind.  I've asked Mary to tell the Doctor that you are
+with me, so you needn't go down to calling-over; and I mayn't
+have another chance, for I shall most likely have to go home for
+change of air to get well, and mayn't come back this half."
+
+"Oh, do you think you must go away before the end of the half?
+I'm so sorry. It's more than five weeks yet to the holidays, and
+all the fifth-form examination and half the cricket-matches to
+come yet.  And what shall I do all that time alone in our study?
+Why, Arthur, it will be more than twelve weeks before I see you
+again.  Oh, hang it, I can't stand that!  Besides who's to keep
+me up to working at the examination books?  I shall come out
+bottom of the form, as sure as eggs is eggs."
+
+Tom was rattling on, half in joke, half in earnest, for he
+wanted to get Arthur out of his serious vein, thinking it would
+do him harm; but Arthur broke in, -
+
+"Oh, please, Tom, stop, or you'll drive all I had to say out of
+my head.  And I'm already horribly afraid I'm going to make you
+angry."
+
+"Don't gammon, young un," rejoined Tom (the use of the old name,
+dear to him from old recollections, made Arthur start and smile
+and feel quite happy); "you know you ain't afraid, and you've
+never made me angry since the first month we chummed together.
+Now I'm going to be quite sober for a quarter of an hour, which
+is more than I am once in a year; so make the most of it; heave
+ahead, and pitch into me right and left."
+
+"Dear Tom, I ain't going to pitch into you," said Arthur
+piteously; "and it seems so cocky in me to be advising you,
+who've been my backbone ever since I've been at Rugby, and have
+made the school a paradise to me.  Ah, I see I shall never do
+it, unless I go head over heels at once, as you said when you
+taught me to swim.  Tom, I want you to give up using vulgus-
+books and cribs."
+
+Arthur sank back on to his pillow with a sigh, as if the effort
+had been great; but the worst was now over, and he looked
+straight at Tom, who was evidently taken aback.  He leant his
+elbows on his knees, and stuck his hands into his hair, whistled
+a verse of "Billy Taylor," and then was quite silent for another
+minute.  Not a shade crossed his face, but he was clearly
+puzzled.  At last he looked up, and caught Arthur's anxious
+look, took his hand, and said simply, -
+
+"Why, young un?"
+
+"Because you're the honestest boy in Rugby, and that ain't
+honest."
+
+"I don't see that."
+
+"What were you sent to Rugby for?"
+
+"Well, I don't know exactly--nobody ever told me.  I suppose
+because all boys are sent to a public school in England."
+
+"But what do you think yourself?  What do you want to do here,
+and to carry away?"
+
+Tom thought a minute.  "I want to be A1 at cricket and football,
+and all the other games, and to make my hands keep my head
+against any fellow, lout or gentleman.  I want to get into the
+sixth before I leave, and to please the Doctor; and I want to
+carry away just as much Latin and Greek as will take me through
+Oxford respectably.  There, now, young un; I never thought of it
+before, but that's pretty much about my figure.  Ain't it all on
+the square?  What have you got to say to that?"
+
+"Why, that you are pretty sure to do all that you want, then."
+
+"Well, I hope so.  But you've forgot one thing--what I want to
+leave behind me.  I want to leave behind me," said Tom, speaking
+slow, and looking much moved, "the name of a fellow who never
+bullied a little boy, or turned his back on a big one."
+
+Arthur pressed his hand, and after a moment's silence went on,
+"You say, Tom, you want to please the Doctor.  Now, do you want
+to please him by what he thinks you do, or by what you really
+do?"
+
+"By what I really do, of course."
+
+"Does he think you use cribs and vulgus-books?"
+
+Tom felt at once that his flank was turned, but he couldn't give
+in.  "He was at Winchester himself," said he; "he knows all
+about it."
+
+"Yes; but does he think you use them?  Do you think he approves
+of it?"
+
+"You young villain!" said Tom, shaking his fist at Arthur, half
+vexed and half pleased, "I never think about it.  Hang it!
+there, perhaps he don't.  Well, I suppose he don't."
+
+Arthur saw that he had got his point; he knew his friend well,
+and was wise in silence as in speech.  He only said, "I would
+sooner have the doctor's good opinion of me as I really am than
+any man's in the world."
+
+After another minute, Tom began again, "Look here, young un.
+How on earth am I to get time to play the matches this half if I
+give up cribs?  We're in the middle of that long crabbed chorus
+in the Agamemnon.  I can only just make head or tail of it with
+the crib.  Then there's Pericles's speech coming on in
+Thucydides, and 'The Birds' to get up for the examination,
+besides the Tacitus."  Tom groaned at the thought of his
+accumulated labours.  "I say, young un, there's only five weeks
+or so left to holidays.  Mayn't I go on as usual for this half?
+I'll tell the Doctor about it some day, or you may."
+
+Arthur looked out of the window.  The twilight had come on, and
+all was silent. He repeated in a low voice:  "In this thing the
+Lord pardon thy servant, that when my master goeth into the
+house of Rimmon to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and
+I bow down myself in the house of Rimmon, when I bow down myself
+in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon thy servant in this
+thing."
+
+Not a word more was said on the subject, and the boys were again
+silent--one of those blessed, short silences in which the
+resolves which colour a life are so often taken.
+
+Tom was the first to break it.  "You've been very ill indeed,
+haven't you, Geordie?" said he, with a mixture of awe and
+curiosity, feeling as if his friend had been 1n some strange
+place or scene, of which he could form no idea, and full of the
+memory of his own thoughts during the last week.
+
+"Yes, very.  I'm sure the Doctor thought I was going to die.  He
+gave me the Sacrament last Sunday, and you can't think what he
+is when one is ill.  He said such brave, and tender, and gentle
+things to me, I felt quite light and strong after it, and never
+had any more fear.  My mother brought our old medical man, who
+attended me when I was a poor sickly child.  He said my
+constitution was quite changed, and that I'm fit for anything
+now.  If it hadn't, I couldn't have stood three days of this
+illness.  That's all thanks to you, and the games you've made me
+fond of."
+
+"More thanks to old Martin," said Tom; "he's been your real
+friend."
+
+"Nonsense, Tom; he never could have done for me what you have."
+
+"Well, I don't know; I did little enough.  Did they tell you--
+you won't mind hearing it now, I know--that poor Thompson died
+last week?  The other three boys are getting quite round, like
+you."
+
+"Oh yes, I heard of it."
+
+Then Tom, who was quite full of it, told Arthur of the burial-
+service in the chapel, and how it had impressed him, and, he
+believed, all the other boys.  "And though the Doctor never said
+a word about it," said he, "and it was a half-holiday and match-
+day, there wasn't a game played in the close all the afternoon,
+and the boys all went about as if it were Sunday."
+
+"I'm very glad of it," said Arthur.  "But, Tom, I've had such
+strange thoughts about death lately.  I've never told a soul of
+them, not even my mother.  Sometimes I think they're wrong, but,
+do you know, I don't think in my heart I could be sorry at the
+death of any of my friends."
+
+Tom was taken quite aback.  "What in the world is the young un
+after now?" thought he; "I've swallowed a good many of his
+crotchets, but this altogether beats me.  He can't be quite
+right in his head."  He didn't want to say a word, and shifted
+about uneasily in the dark; however, Arthur seemed to be waiting
+for an answer, so at last he said, "I don't think I quite see
+what you mean, Geordie.  One's told so often to think about
+death that I've tried it on sometimes, especially this last
+week.  But we won't talk of it now.  I'd better go.  You're
+getting tired, and I shall do you harm."
+
+"No, no; indeed I ain't, Tom.  You must stop till nine; there's
+only twenty minutes.  I've settled you shall stop till nine.
+And oh! do let me talk to you--I must talk to you.  I see it's
+just as I feared.  You think I'm half mad.  Don't you, now?"
+
+"Well, I did think it odd what you said, Geordie, as you ask
+me."
+
+Arthur paused a moment, and then said quickly, "I'll tell you
+how it all happened.  At first, when I was sent to the sick-
+room, and found I had really got the fever, I was terribly
+frightened.  I thought I should die, and I could not face it for
+a moment.  I don't think it was sheer cowardice at first, but I
+thought how hard it was to be taken away from my mother and
+sisters and you all, just as I was beginning to see my way to
+many things, and to feel that I might be a man and do a man's
+work.  To die without having fought, and worked, and given one's
+life away, was too hard to bear.  I got terribly impatient, and
+accused God of injustice, and strove to justify myself.  And the
+harder I strove the deeper I sank.  Then the image of my dear
+father often came across me, but I turned from it.  Whenever it
+came, a heavy, numbing throb seemed to take hold of my heart,
+and say, 'Dead-dead-dead.'  And I cried out, 'The living, the
+living shall praise Thee, O God; the dead cannot praise thee.
+There is no work in the grave; in the night no man can work.
+But I can work.  I can do great things.  I will do great things.
+Why wilt thou slay me?'  And so I struggled and plunged, deeper
+and deeper, and went down into a living black tomb.  I was alone
+there, with no power to stir or think; alone with myself; beyond
+the reach of all human fellowship; beyond Christ's reach, I
+thought, in my nightmare.  You, who are brave and bright and
+strong, can have no idea of that agony.  Pray to God you never
+may.  Pray as for your life."
+
+Arthur stopped--from exhaustion, Tom thought; but what between
+his fear lest Arthur should hurt himself, his awe, and his
+longing for him to go on, he couldn't ask, or stir to help him.
+
+Presently he went on, but quite calm and slow.  "I don't know
+how long I was in that state--for more than a day, I know; for
+I was quite conscious, and lived my outer life all the time, and
+took my medicines, and spoke to my mother, and heard what they
+said.  But I didn't take much note of time.  I thought time was
+over for me, and that that tomb was what was beyond.  Well, on
+last Sunday morning, as I seemed to lie in that tomb, alone, as
+I thought, for ever and ever, the black, dead wall was cleft in
+two, and I was caught up and borne through into the light by
+some great power, some living, mighty spirit.  Tom, do you
+remember the living creatures and the wheels in Ezekiel?  It was
+just like that.  'When they went, I heard the noise of their
+wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the
+Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of an host; when
+they stood, they let down their wings.'  'And they went every
+one straight forward:  whither the spirit was to go, they went;
+and they turned not when they went.'  And we rushed through the
+bright air, which was full of myriads of living creatures, and
+paused on the brink of a great river.  And the power held me up,
+and I knew that that great river was the grave, and death dwelt
+there, but not the death I had met in the black tomb.  That, I
+felt, was gone for ever.  For on the other bank of the great
+river I saw men and women and children rising up pure and
+bright, and the tears were wiped from their eyes, and they put
+on glory and strength, and all weariness and pain fell away.
+And beyond were a multitude which no man could number, and they
+worked at some great work; and they who rose from the river went
+on and joined in the work.  They all worked, and each worked in
+a different way, but all at the same work.  And I saw there my
+father, and the men in the old town whom I knew when I was a
+child--many a hard, stern man, who never came to church, and
+whom they called atheist and infidel.  There they were, side by
+side with my father, whom I had seen toil and die for them, and
+women and little children, and the seal was on the foreheads of
+all.  And I longed to see what the work was, and could not; so I
+tried to plunge in the river, for I thought I would join them,
+but I could not.  Then I looked about to see how they got into
+the river.  And this I could not see, but I saw myriads on this
+side, and they too worked, and I knew that it was the same work,
+and the same seal was on their foreheads.  And though I saw that
+there was toil and anguish in the work of these, and that most
+that were working were blind and feeble, yet I longed no more to
+plunge into the river, but more and more to know what the work
+was.  And as I looked I saw my mother and my sisters, and I saw
+the Doctor, and you, Tom, and hundreds more whom I knew; and at
+last I saw myself too, and I was toiling and doing ever so
+little a piece of the great work.  Then it all melted away, and
+the power left me, and as it left me I thought I heard a voice
+say, 'The vision is for an appointed time; though it tarry, wait
+for it, for in the end it shall speak and not lie, it shall
+surely come, it shall not tarry.'  It was early morning I know,
+then--it was so quiet and cool, and my mother was fast asleep
+in the chair by my bedside; but it wasn't only a dream of mine.
+I know it wasn't a dream.  Then I fell into a deep sleep, and
+only woke after afternoon chapel; and the Doctor came and gave
+me the Sacrament, as I told you.  I told him and my mother I
+should get well--I knew I should; but I couldn't tell them why.
+Tom," said Arthur gently, after another minute, "do you see why
+I could not grieve now to see my dearest friend die?  It can't
+be--it isn't--all fever or illness.  God would never have let
+me see it so clear if it wasn't true.  I don't understand it all
+yet; it will take me my life and longer to do that--to find out
+what the work is."
+
+When Arthur stopped there was a long pause.  Tom could not
+speak; he was almost afraid to breathe, lest he should break the
+train of Arthur's thoughts.  He longed to hear more, and to ask
+questions.  In another minute nine o'clock struck, and a gentle
+tap at the door called them both back into the world again.
+They did not answer, however, for a moment; and so the door
+opened, and a lady came in carrying a candle.
+
+She went straight to the sofa, and took hold of Arthur's hand,
+and then stooped down and kissed him.
+
+"My dearest boy, you feel a little feverish again.  Why didn't
+you have lights?  You've talked too much, and excited yourself
+in the dark."
+
+"Oh no, mother; you can't think how well I feel.  I shall start
+with you to-morrow for Devonshire.  But, mother, here's my
+friend--here's Tom Brown.  You know him?"
+
+"Yes, indeed; I've known him for years," she said, and held out
+her hand to Tom, who was now standing up behind the sofa.  This
+was Arthur's mother:  tall and slight and fair, with masses of
+golden hair drawn back from the broad, white forehead, and the
+calm blue eye meeting his so deep and open--the eye that he
+knew so well, for it was his friend's over again, and the
+lovely, tender mouth that trembled while he looked--she stood
+there, a woman of thirty-eight, old enough to be his mother, and
+one whose face showed the lines which must be written on the
+faces of good men's wives and widows, but he thought he had
+never seen anything so beautiful.  He couldn't help wondering if
+Arthur's sisters were like her.
+
+Tom held her hand, and looked on straight in her face; he could
+neither let it go nor speak.
+
+"Now, Tom," said Arthur, laughing, "where are your manners?
+You'll stare my mother out of countenance."  Tom dropped the
+little hand with a sigh.  "There, sit down, both of you. --
+Here, dearest mother; there's room here."  And he made a place
+on the sofa for her. --"Tom, you needn't go; I'm sure you won't
+be called up at first lesson."  Tom felt that he would risk
+being floored at every lesson for the rest of his natural
+school-life sooner than go, so sat down.  "And now," said
+Arthur, "I have realized one of the dearest wishes of my life--
+to see you two together."
+
+And then he led away the talk to their home in Devonshire, and
+the red, bright earth, and the deep green combes, and the peat
+streams like cairngorm pebbles, and the wild moor with its high,
+cloudy tors for a giant background to the picture, till Tom got
+jealous, and stood up for the clear chalk streams, and the
+emerald water meadows and great elms and willows of the dear old
+royal county, as he gloried to call it.  And the mother sat on
+quiet and loving, rejoicing in their life.  The quarter to ten
+struck, and the bell rang for bed, before they had well begun
+their talk, as it seemed.
+
+Then Tom rose with a sigh to go.
+
+"Shall I see you in the morning, Geordie?" said he, as he shook
+his friend's hand.  "Never mind, though; you'll be back next
+half.  And I shan't forget the house of Rimmon."
+
+Arthur's mother got up and walked with him to the door, and
+there gave him her hand again; and again his eyes met that deep,
+loving look, which was like a spell upon him.  Her voice
+trembled slightly as she said, "Good-night.  You are one who
+knows what our Father has promised to the friend of the widow
+and the fatherless.  May He deal with you as you have dealt with
+me and mine!"
+
+Tom was quite upset; he mumbled something about owing everything
+good in him to Geordie, looked in her face again, pressed her
+hand to his lips, and rushed downstairs to his study, where he
+sat till old Thomas came kicking at the door, to tell him his
+allowance would be stopped if he didn't go off to bed.  (It
+would have been stopped anyhow, but that he was a great
+favourite with the old gentleman, who loved to come out in the
+afternoons into the close to Tom's wicket, and bowl slow
+twisters to him, and talk of the glories of bygone Surrey
+heroes, with whom he had played former generations.)  So Tom
+roused himself, and took up his candle to go to bed; and then
+for the first time was aware of a beautiful new fishing-rod,
+with old Eton's mark on it, and a splendidly-bound Bible, which
+lay on his table, on the title-page of which was written--"TOM
+BROWN, from his affectionate and grateful friends, Frances Jane
+Arthur; George Arthur."
+
+I leave you all to guess how he slept, and what he dreamt of.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII - HARRY EAST'S DILEMMAS AND DELIVERANCES.
+
+
+
+"The Holy Supper is kept indeed,
+In whatso we share with another's need
+Not that which we give, but what we share,
+For the gift without the giver is bare.
+Who bestows himself with his alms feeds three,
+Himself, his hungering neighbour and Me."
+LOWELL, The Vision of Sir Launfal.
+
+
+The next morning, after breakfast, Tom, East, and Gower met as
+usual to learn their second lesson together.  Tom had been
+considering how to break his proposal of giving up the crib to
+the others, and having found no better way (as indeed none
+better can ever be found by man or boy), told them simply what
+had happened; how he had been to see Arthur, who had talked to
+him upon the subject, and what he had said, and for his part he
+had made up his mind, and wasn't going to use cribs any more;
+and not being quite sure of his ground, took the high and
+pathetic tone, and was proceeding to say "how that, having
+learnt his lessons with them for so many years, it would grieve
+him much to put an end to the arrangement, and he hoped, at any
+rate, that if they wouldn't go on with him, they should still be
+just as good friends, and respect one another's motives; but--"
+
+Here the other boys, who had been listening with open eyes and
+ears, burst in, -
+
+"Stuff and nonsense!" cried Gower.  "Here, East, get down the
+crib and find the place."
+
+"O Tommy, Tommy!" said East, proceeding to do as he was bidden,
+"that it should ever have come to this!  I knew Arthur'd be the
+ruin of you some day, and you of me.  And now the time's come."
+And he made a doleful face.
+
+"I don't know about ruin," answered Tom; "I know that you and I
+would have had the sack long ago if it hadn't been for him.  And
+you know it as well as I."
+
+"Well, we were in a baddish way before he came, I own; but this
+new crotchet of his is past a joke."
+
+"Let's give it a trial, Harry; come.  You know how often he has
+been right and we wrong."
+
+"Now, don't you two be jawing away about young Square-toes,"
+struck in Gower.  "He's no end of a sucking wiseacre, I dare
+say; but we've no time to lose, and I've got the fives court at
+half-past nine."
+
+"I say, Gower," said Tom appealingly, "be a good fellow, and
+let's try if we can't get on without the crib."
+
+"What! in this chorus?  Why, we shan't get through ten lines."
+
+"I say, Tom," cried East, having hit on a new idea, "don't you
+remember, when we were in the upper fourth, and old Momus caught
+me construing off the leaf of a crib which I'd torn out and put
+in my book, and which would float out on to the floor, he sent
+me up to be flogged for it?"
+
+"Yes, I remember it very well."
+
+"Well, the Doctor, after he'd flogged me, told me himself that
+he didn't flog me for using a translation, but for taking it in
+to lesson, and using it there when I hadn't learnt a word before
+I came in.  He said there was no harm in using a translation to
+get a clue to hard passages, if you tried all you could first to
+make them out without."
+
+"Did he, though?" said Tom; "then Arthur must be wrong,"
+
+"Of course he is," said Gower--"the little prig.  We'll only
+use the crib when we can't construe without it. --Go ahead,
+East."
+
+And on this agreement they started--Tom, satisfied with having
+made his confession, and not sorry to have a locus penitentiae,
+and not to be deprived altogether of the use of his old and
+faithful friend.
+
+The boys went on as usual, each taking a sentence in turn, and
+the crib being handed to the one whose turn it was to construe.
+Of course Tom couldn't object to this, as, was it not simply
+lying there to be appealed to in case the sentence should prove
+too hard altogether for the construer?  But it must be owned
+that Gower and East did not make very tremendous exertions to
+conquer their sentences before having recourse to its help. Tom,
+however, with the most heroic virtue and gallantry, rushed into
+his sentence, searching in a high-minded manner for nominative
+and verb, and turning over his dictionary frantically for the
+first hard word that stopped him.  But in the meantime Gower,
+who was bent on getting to fives, would peep quietly into the
+crib, and then suggest, "Don't you think this is the meaning?"
+"I think you must take it this way, Brown."  And as Tom didn't
+see his way to not profiting by these suggestions, the lesson
+went on about as quickly as usual, and Gower was able to start
+for the fives court within five minutes of the half-hour.
+
+When Tom and East were left face to face, they looked at one
+another for a minute, Tom puzzled, and East chokefull of fun,
+and then burst into a roar of laughter.
+
+"Well, Tom," said East, recovering himself, "I don t see any
+objection to the new way.  It's about as good as the old one, I
+think, besides the advantage it gives one of feeling virtuous,
+and looking down on one's neighbours."
+
+Tom shoved his hand into his back hair.  "I ain't so sure," said
+he; "you two fellows carried me off my legs.  I don't think we
+really tried one sentence fairly.  Are you sure you remember
+what the Doctor said to you?"
+
+"Yes.  And I'll swear I couldn't make out one of my sentences
+to-day--no, nor ever could.  I really don't remember," said
+East, speaking slowly and impressively, "to have come across one
+Latin or Greek sentence this half that I could go and construe
+by the light of nature.  Whereby I am sure Providence intended
+cribs to be used."
+
+"The thing to find out," said Tom meditatively, "is how long one
+ought to grind at a sentence without looking at the crib.  Now I
+think if one fairly looks out all the words one don't know, and
+then can't hit it, that's enough."
+
+"To be sure, Tommy," said East demurely, but with a merry
+twinkle in his eye.  "Your new doctrine too, old fellow," added
+he, "when one comes to think of it, is a cutting at the root of
+all school morality.  You'll take away mutual help, brotherly
+love, or, in the vulgar tongue, giving construes, which I hold
+to be one of our highest virtues.  For how can you distinguish
+between getting a construe from another boy and using a crib?
+Hang it, Tom, if you're going to deprive all our school-fellows
+of the chance of exercising Christian benevolence and being good
+Samaritans, I shall cut the concern."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't joke about it, Harry; it's hard enough to
+see one's way--a precious sight harder than I thought last
+night.  But I suppose there's a use and an abuse of both, and
+one'll get straight enough somehow.  But you can't make out,
+anyhow, that one has a right to use old vulgus-books and copy-
+books."
+
+"Hullo, more heresy!  How fast a fellow goes downhill when he
+once gets his head before his legs.  Listen to me, Tom. Not use
+old vulgus-books!  Why, you Goth, ain't we to take the benefit
+of the wisdom and admire and use the work of past generations?
+Not use old copy-books!  Why, you might as well say we ought to
+pull down Westminster Abbey, and put up a go-to-meeting shop
+with churchwarden windows; or never read Shakespeare, but only
+Sheridan Knowles.  Think of all the work and labour that our
+predecessors have bestowed on these very books; and are we to
+make their work of no value?"
+
+"I say, Harry, please don't chaff; I'm really serious."
+
+"And then, is it not our duty to consult the pleasure of others
+rather than our own, and above all, that of our masters?  Fancy,
+then, the difference to them in looking over a vulgus which has
+been carefully touched and retouched by themselves and others,
+and which must bring them a sort of dreamy pleasure, as if
+they'd met the thought or expression of it somewhere or another
+- before they were born perhaps--and that of cutting up, and
+making picture-frames round all your and my false quantities,
+and other monstrosities.  Why, Tom, you wouldn't be so cruel as
+never to let old Momus hum over the 'O genus humanum' again, and
+then look up doubtingly through his spectacles, and end by
+smiling and giving three extra marks for it--just for old
+sake's sake, I suppose."
+
+"Well," said Tom, getting up in something as like a huff as he
+was capable of, "it's deuced hard that when a fellow's really
+trying to do what he ought, his best friends'll do nothing but
+chaff him and try to put him down."  And he stuck his books
+under his arm and his hat on his head, preparatory to rushing
+out into the quadrangle, to testify with his own soul of the
+faithlessness of friendships.
+
+"Now don't be an ass, Tom," said East, catching hold of him;
+"you know me well enough by this time; my bark's worse than my
+bite.  You can't expect to ride your new crotchet without
+anybody's trying to stick a nettle under his tail and make him
+kick you off--especially as we shall all have to go on foot
+still.  But now sit down, and let's go over it again.  I'll be
+as serious as a judge."
+
+Then Tom sat himself down on the table, and waxed eloquent about
+all the righteousnesses and advantages of the new plan, as was
+his wont whenever he took up anything, going into it as if his
+life depended upon it, and sparing no abuse which he could think
+of, of the opposite method, which he denounced as ungentlemanly,
+cowardly, mean, lying, and no one knows what besides.  "Very
+cool of Tom," as East thought, but didn't say, "seeing as how he
+only came out of Egypt himself last night at bedtime."
+
+"Well, Tom," said he at last, "you see, when you and I came to
+school there were none of these sort of notions.  You may be
+right--I dare say you are.  Only what one has always felt about
+the masters is, that it's a fair trial of skill and last between
+us and them--like a match at football or a battle.  We're
+natural enemies in school--that's the fact.  We've got to learn
+so much Latin and Greek, and do so many verses, and they've got
+to see that we do it.  If we can slip the collar and do so much
+less without getting caught, that's one to us.  If they can get
+more out of us, or catch us shirking, that's one to them.  All's
+fair in war but lying.  If I run my luck against theirs, and go
+into school without looking at my lessons, and don't get called
+up, why am I a snob or a sneak?  I don't tell the master I've
+learnt it.  He's got to find out whether I have or not.  What's
+he paid for?  If he calls me up and I get floored, he makes me
+write it out in Greek and English.  Very good.  He's caught me,
+and I don't grumble.  I grant you, if I go and snivel to him,
+and tell him I've really tried to learn it, but found it so hard
+without a translation, or say I've had a toothache, or any
+humbug of that kind, I'm a snob.  That's my school morality;
+it's served me, and you too, Tom, for the matter of that, these
+five years.  And it's all clear and fair, no mistake about it.
+We understand it, and they understand it, and I don't know what
+we're to come to with any other."
+
+Tom looked at him pleased and a little puzzled.  He had never
+heard East speak his mind seriously before, and couldn't help
+feeling how completely he had hit his own theory and practice up
+to that time.
+
+"Thank you, old fellow," said he.  "You're a good old brick to
+be serious, and not put out with me.  I said more than I meant,
+I dare say, only you see I know I'm right.  Whatever you and
+Gower and the rest do, I shall hold on.  I must.  And as it's
+all new and an uphill game, you see, one must hit hard and hold
+on tight at first."
+
+"Very good," said East; "hold on and hit away, only don't hit
+under the line."
+
+"But I must bring you over, Harry, or I shan't be comfortable.
+Now, I'll allow all you've said.  We've always been honourable
+enemies with the masters.  We found a state of war when we came,
+and went into it of course.  Only don't you think things are
+altered a good deal?  I don't feel as I used to the masters.
+They seem to me to treat one quite differently."
+
+"Yes, perhaps they do," said East; "there's a new set you see,
+mostly, who don't feel sure of themselves yet.  They don't want
+to fight till they know the ground."
+
+"I don't think it's only that," said Tom.  "And then the Doctor,
+he does treat one so openly, and like a gentleman, and as if one
+was working with him."
+
+"Well, so he does," said East; "he's a splendid fellow, and when
+I get into the sixth I shall act accordingly.  Only you know he
+has nothing to do with our lessons now, except examining us.  I
+say, though," looking at his watch, "it's just the quarter.
+Come along."
+
+As they walked out they got a message, to say that Arthur was
+just starting, and would like to say goodbye.  So they went down
+to the private entrance of the School-house, and found an open
+carriage, with Arthur propped up with pillows in it, looking
+already better, Tom thought.
+
+They jumped up on to the steps to shake hands with him, and Tom
+mumbled thanks for the presents he had found in his study, and
+looked round anxiously for Arthur's mother.
+
+East, who had fallen back into his usual humour, looked quaintly
+at Arthur, and said, -
+
+"So you've been at it again, through that hot-headed convert of
+yours there.  He's been making our lives a burden to us all the
+morning about using cribs.  I shall get floored to a certainty
+at second lesson, if I'm called up."
+
+Arthur blushed and looked down.  Tom struck in, -
+
+"Oh, it's all right.  He's converted already; he always comes
+through the mud after us, grumbling and sputtering."
+
+The clock struck, and they had to go off to school, wishing
+Arthur a pleasant holiday, Tom, lingering behind a moment to
+send his thanks and love to Arthur's mother.
+
+Tom renewed the discussion after second lesson, and succeeded so
+far as to get East to promise to give the new plan a fair trial.
+
+Encouraged by his success, in the evening, when they were
+sitting alone in the large study, where East lived now almost,
+"vice Arthur on leave," after examining the new fishing-rod,
+which both pronounced to be the genuine article ("play enough to
+throw a midge tied on a single hair against the wind, and
+strength enough to hold a grampus"), they naturally began
+talking about Arthur.  Tom, who was still bubbling over with
+last night's scene and all the thoughts of the last week, and
+wanting to clinch and fix the whole in his own mind, which he
+could never do without first going through the process of
+belabouring somebody else with it all, suddenly rushed into the
+subject of Arthur's illness, and what he had said about death.
+
+East had given him the desired opening.  After a serio-comic
+grumble, "that life wasn't worth having, now they were tied to a
+young beggar who was always 'raising his standard;' and that he,
+East, was like a prophet's donkey, who was obliged to struggle
+on after the donkey-man who went after the prophet; that he had
+none of the pleasure of starting the new crotchets, and didn't
+half understand them, but had to take the kicks and carry the
+luggage as if he had all the fun," he threw his legs up on to
+the sofa, and put his hands behind his head, and said, -
+
+"Well, after all, he's the most wonderful little fellow I ever
+came across.  There ain't such a meek, humble boy in the school.
+Hanged if I don't think now, really, Tom, that he believes
+himself a much worse fellow than you or I, and that he don't
+think he has more influence in the house than Dot Bowles, who
+came last quarter, and isn't ten yet.  But he turns you and me
+round his little finger, old boy--there's no mistake about
+that."  And East nodded at Tom sagaciously.
+
+"Now or never!" thought Tom; so, shutting his eyes and hardening
+his heart, he went straight at it, repeating all that Arthur had
+said, as near as he could remember it, in the very words, and
+all he had himself thought.  The life seemed to ooze out of it
+as he went on, and several times he felt inclined to stop, give
+it all up, and change the subject.  But somehow he was borne on;
+he had a necessity upon him to speak it all out, and did so.  At
+the end he looked at East with some anxiety, and was delighted
+to see that that young gentleman was thoughtful and attentive.
+The fact is, that in the stage of his inner life at which Tom
+had lately arrived, his intimacy with and friendship for East
+could not have lasted if he had not made him aware of, and a
+sharer in, the thoughts that were beginning to exercise him.
+Nor indeed could the friendship have lasted if East had shown no
+sympathy with these thoughts; so that it was a great relief to
+have unbosomed himself, and to have found that his friend could
+listen.
+
+Tom had always had a sort of instinct that East's levity was
+only skin-deep, and this instinct was a true one.  East had no
+want of reverence for anything he felt to be real; but his was
+one of those natures that burst into what is generally called
+recklessness and impiety the moment they feel that anything is
+being poured upon them for their good which does not come home
+to their inborn sense of right, or which appeals to anything
+like self-interest in them.  Daring and honest by nature, and
+outspoken to an extent which alarmed all respectabilities, with
+a constant fund of animal health and spirits which he did not
+feel bound to curb in any way, he had gained for himself with
+the steady part of the school (including as well those who
+wished to appear steady as those who really were so) the
+character of a boy with whom it would be dangerous to be
+intimate; while his own hatred of everything cruel, or
+underhand, or false, and his hearty respect for what he would
+see to be good and true, kept off the rest.
+
+Tom, besides being very like East in many points of character,
+had largely developed in his composition the capacity for taking
+the weakest side.  This is not putting it strongly enough:  it
+was a necessity with him; he couldn't help it any more than he
+could eating or drinking.  He could never play on the strongest
+side with any heart at football or cricket, and was sure to make
+friends with any boy who was unpopular, or down on his luck.
+
+Now, though East was not what is generally called unpopular, Tom
+felt more and more every day, as their characters developed,
+that he stood alone, and did not make friends among their
+contemporaries, and therefore sought him out.  Tom was himself
+much more popular, for his power of detecting humbug was much
+less acute, and his instincts were much more sociable.  He was
+at this period of his life, too, largely given to taking people
+for what they gave themselves out to be; but his singleness of
+heart, fearlessness, and honesty were just what East
+appreciated, and thus the two had been drawn into great
+intimacy.
+
+This intimacy had not been interrupted by Tom's guardianship of
+Arthur.
+
+East had often, as has been said, joined them in reading the
+Bible; but their discussions had almost always turned upon the
+characters of the men and women of whom they read, and not
+become personal to themselves.  In fact, the two had shrunk from
+personal religious discussion, not knowing how it might end, and
+fearful of risking a friendship very dear to both, and which
+they felt somehow, without quite knowing why, would never be the
+same, but either tenfold stronger or sapped at its foundation,
+after such a communing together.
+
+What a bother all this explaining is!  I wish we could get on
+without it.  But we can't.  However, you'll all find, if you
+haven't found it out already, that a time comes in every human
+friendship when you must go down into the depths of yourself,
+and lay bare what is there to your friend, and wait in fear for
+his answer.  A few moments may do it; and it may be (most likely
+will be, as you are English boys) that you will never do it but
+once.  But done it must be, if the friendship is to be worth the
+name.  You must find what is there, at the very root and bottom
+of one another's hearts; and if you are at one there, nothing on
+earth can or at least ought to sunder you.
+
+East had remained lying down until Tom finished speaking, as if
+fearing to interrupt him; he now sat up at the table, and leant
+his head on one hand, taking up a pencil with the other, and
+working little holes with it in the table-cover.  After a bit he
+looked up, stopped the pencil, and said, "Thank you very much,
+old fellow.  There's no other boy in the house would have done
+it for me but you or Arthur.  I can see well enough," he went
+on, after a pause, "all the best big fellows look on me with
+suspicion; they think I'm a devil-may-care, reckless young
+scamp.  So I am--eleven hours out of twelve, but not the
+twelfth.  Then all of our contemporaries worth knowing follow
+suit, of course:  we're very good friends at games and all that,
+but not a soul of them but you and Arthur ever tried to break
+through the crust, and see whether there was anything at the
+bottom of me; and then the bad ones I won't stand and they know
+that."
+
+"Don't you think that's half fancy, Harry?"
+
+"Not a bit of it," said East bitterly, pegging away with his
+pencil.  "I see it all plain enough.  Bless you, you think
+everybody's as straightforward and kindhearted as you are."
+
+"Well, but what's the reason of it?  There must be a reason.
+You can play all the games as well as any one and sing the best
+song, and are the best company in the house.  You fancy you're
+not liked, Harry.  It's all fancy."
+
+"I only wish it was, Tom.  I know I could be popular enough with
+all the bad ones, but that I won't have, and the good ones won't
+have me."
+
+"Why not?" persisted Tom; "you don't drink or swear, or get out
+at night; you never bully, or cheat at lessons.  If you only
+showed you liked it, you'd have all the best fellows in the
+house running after you."
+
+"Not I," said East.  Then with an effort he went on, "I'll tell
+you what it is.  I never stop the Sacrament.  I can see, from
+the Doctor downwards, how that tells against me."
+
+"Yes, I've seen that," said Tom, "and I've been very sorry for
+it, and Arthur and I have talked about it.  I've often thought
+of speaking to you, but it's so hard to begin on such subjects.
+I'm very glad you've opened it.  Now, why don't you?"
+
+"I've never been confirmed," said East.
+
+"Not been confirmed!" said Tom, in astonishment.  "I never
+thought of that.  Why weren't you confirmed with the rest of us
+nearly three years ago?  I always thought you'd been confirmed
+at home."
+
+"No," answered East sorrowfully; "you see this was how it
+happened.  Last Confirmation was soon after Arthur came, and you
+were so taken up with him I hardly saw either of you.  Well,
+when the Doctor sent round for us about it, I was living mostly
+with Green's set.  You know the sort.  They all went in.  I dare
+say it was all right, and they got good by it; I don't want to
+judge them.  Only all I could see of their reasons drove me just
+the other way.  'Twas 'because the Doctor liked it;' 'no boy got
+on who didn't stay the Sacrament;' it was the 'correct thing,'
+in fact, like having a good hat to wear on Sundays.  I couldn't
+stand it.  I didn't feel that I wanted to lead a different life.
+I was very well content as I was, and I wasn't going to sham
+religious to curry favour with the Doctor, or any one else."
+
+East stopped speaking, and pegged away more diligently than ever
+with his pencil.  Tom was ready to cry.  He felt half sorry at
+first that he had been confirmed himself.  He seemed to have
+deserted his earliest friend--to have left him by himself at
+his worst need for those long years.  He got up and went and sat
+by East, and put his arm over his shoulder.
+
+"Dear old boy," he said, "how careless and selfish I've been.
+But why didn't you come and talk to Arthur and me?"
+
+"I wish to Heaven I had," said East, "but I was a fool.  It's
+too late talking of it now."
+
+"Why too late?  You want to be confirmed now, don't you?"
+
+"I think so," said East.  "I've thought about it a good deal;
+only, often I fancy I must be changing, because I see it's to do
+me good here--just what stopped me last time.  And then I go
+back again."
+
+"I'll tell you now how 'twas with me," said Tom warmly.  "If it
+hadn't been for Arthur, I should have done just as you did.  I
+hope I should.  I honour you for it.  But then he made it out
+just as if it was taking the weak side before all the world--
+going in once for all against everything that's strong and rich,
+and proud and respectable, a little band of brothers against the
+whole world.  And the Doctor seemed to say so too, only he said
+a great deal more."
+
+"Ah!" groaned East, "but there again, that's just another of my
+difficulties whenever I think about the matter.  I don't want to
+be one of your saints, one of your elect, whatever the right
+phrase is.  My sympathies are all the other way--with the many,
+the poor devils who run about the streets and don't go to
+church.  Don't stare, Tom; mind, I'm telling you all that's in
+my heart--as far as I know it--but it's all a muddle.  You
+must be gentle with me if you want to land me.  Now I've seen a
+deal of this sort of religion; I was bred up in it, and I can't
+stand it.  If nineteen-twentieths of the world are to be left to
+uncovenanted mercies, and that sort of thing, which means in
+plain English to go to hell, and the other twentieth are to
+rejoice at it all, why--"
+
+"Oh! but, Harry, they ain't, they don't," broke in Tom, really
+shocked.  "Oh, how I wish Arthur hadn't gone!  I'm such a fool
+about these things.  But it's all you want too, East; it is
+indeed.  It cuts both ways somehow, being confirmed and taking
+the Sacrament.  It makes you feel on the side of all the good
+and all the bad too, of everybody in the world.  Only there's
+some great dark strong power, which is crushing you and
+everybody else.  That's what Christ conquered, and we've got to
+fight.  What a fool I am!  I can't explain.  If Arthur were only
+here!"
+
+"I begin to get a glimmering of what you mean," said East.
+
+"I say, now," said Tom eagerly, "do you remember how we both
+hated Flashman?"
+
+"Of course I do," said East; "I hate him still.  What then?"
+
+"Well, when I came to take the Sacrament, I had a great struggle
+about that.  I tried to put him out of my head; and when I
+couldn't do that, I tried to think of him as evil--as something
+that the Lord who was loving me hated, and which I might hate
+too.  But it wouldn't do.  I broke down; I believe Christ
+Himself broke me down.  And when the Doctor gave me the bread
+and wine, and leant over me praying, I prayed for poor Flashman,
+as if it had been you or Arthur."
+
+East buried his face in his hands on the table.  Tom could feel
+the table tremble.  At last he looked up.  "Thank you again,
+Tom," said he; "you don't know what you may have done for me to-
+night.  I think I see now how the right sort of sympathy with
+poor devils is got at."
+
+"And you'll stop the Sacrament next time, won't you?" said Tom.
+
+"Can I, before I'm confirmed?"
+
+"Go and ask the Doctor."
+
+"I will."
+
+That very night, after prayers, East followed the Doctor, and
+the old verger bearing the candle, upstairs.  Tom watched, and
+saw the Doctor turn round when he heard footsteps following him
+closer than usual, and say, "Hah, East!  Do you want to speak to
+me, my man?"
+
+"If you please, sir."  And the private door closed, and Tom went
+to his study in a state of great trouble of mind.
+
+It was almost an hour before East came back.  Then he rushed in
+breathless.
+
+"Well, it's all right," he shouted, seizing Tom by the hand.  "I
+feel as if a ton weight were off my mind."
+
+"Hurrah," said Tom.  "I knew it would be; but tell us all about
+it."
+
+"Well, I just told him all about it.  You can't think how kind
+and gentle he was, the great grim man, whom I've feared more
+than anybody on earth.  When I stuck, he lifted me just as if
+I'd been a little child.  And he seemed to know all I'd felt,
+and to have gone through it all.  And I burst out crying--more
+than I've done this five years; and he sat down by me, and
+stroked my head; and I went blundering on, and told him all--
+much worse things than I've told you.  And he wasn't shocked a
+bit, and didn't snub me, or tell me I was a fool, and it was all
+nothing but pride or wickedness, though I dare say it was.  And
+he didn't tell me not to follow out my thoughts, and he didn't
+give me any cut-and-dried explanation.  But when I'd done he
+just talked a bit.  I can hardly remember what he said yet; but
+it seemed to spread round me like healing, and strength, and
+light, and to bear me up, and plant me on a rock, where I could
+hold my footing and fight for myself.  I don't know what to do,
+I feel so happy.  And it's all owing to you, dear old boy!"  And
+he seized Tom's hand again.
+
+"And you're to come to the Communion?" said Tom.
+
+"Yes, and to be confirmed in the holidays."
+
+Tom's delight was as great as his friend's.  But he hadn't yet
+had out all his own talk, and was bent on improving the
+occasion:  so he proceeded to propound Arthur's theory about not
+being sorry for his friends' deaths, which he had hitherto kept
+in the background, and by which he was much exercised; for he
+didn't feel it honest to take what pleased him, and throw over
+the rest, and was trying vigorously to persuade himself that he
+should like all his best friends to die off-hand.
+
+But East's powers of remaining serious were exhausted, and in
+five minutes he was saying the most ridiculous things he could
+think of, till Tom was almost getting angry again.
+
+Despite of himself, however, he couldn't help laughing and
+giving it up, when East appealed to him with, "Well, Tom, you
+ain't going to punch my head, I hope, because I insist upon
+being sorry when you got to earth?"
+
+And so their talk finished for that time, and they tried to
+learn first lesson, with very poor success, as appeared next
+morning, when they were called up and narrowly escaped being
+floored, which ill-luck, however, did not sit heavily on either
+of their souls.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII - TOM BROWN'S LAST MATCH.
+
+
+
+"Heaven grant the manlier heart, that timely ere
+Youth fly, with life's real tempest would be coping;
+The fruit of dreamy hoping
+Is, waking, blank despair." - CLOUGH, Ambarvalia.
+
+
+The curtain now rises upon the last act of our little drama, for
+hard-hearted publishers warn me that a single volume must of
+necessity have an end.  Well, well! the pleasantest things must
+come to an end.  I little thought last long vacation, when I
+began these pages to help while away some spare time at a
+watering-place, how vividly many an old scene which had lain hid
+away for years in some dusty old corner of my brain, would come
+back again, and stand before me as clear and bright as if it had
+happened yesterday.  The book has been a most grateful task to
+me, and I only hope that all you, my dear young friends, who
+read it (friends assuredly you must be, if you get as far as
+this), will be half as sorry to come to the last stage as I am.
+
+Not but what there has been a solemn and a sad side to it.  As
+the old scenes became living, and the actors in them became
+living too, many a grave in the Crimea and distant India, as
+well as in the quiet churchyards of our dear old country, seemed
+to open and send forth their dead, and their voices and looks
+and ways were again in one's ears and eyes, as in the old
+School-days.  But this was not sad.  How should it be, if we
+believe as our Lord has taught us?  How should it be, when one
+more turn of the wheel, and we shall be by their sides again,
+learning from them again, perhaps, as we did when we were new
+boys.
+
+Then there were others of the old faces so dear to us once who
+had somehow or another just gone clean out of sight.  Are they
+dead or living?  We know not, but the thought of them brings no
+sadness with it.  Wherever they are, we can well believe they
+are doing God's work and getting His wages.
+
+But are there not some, whom we still see sometimes in the
+streets, whose haunts and homes we know, whom we could probably
+find almost any day in the week if we were set to do it, yet
+from whom we are really farther than we are from the dead, and
+from those who have gone out of our ken?  Yes, there are and
+must be such; and therein lies the sadness of old School
+memories.  Yet of these our old comrades, from whom more than
+time and space separate us, there are some by whose sides we can
+feel sure that we shall stand again when time shall be no more.
+We may think of one another now as dangerous fanatics or narrow
+bigots, with whom no truce is possible, from whom we shall only
+sever more and more to the end of our lives, whom it would be
+our respective duties to imprison or hang, if we had the power.
+We must go our way, and they theirs, as long as flesh and spirit
+hold together; but let our own Rugby poet speak words of healing
+for this trial:-
+
+
+"To veer how vain! on, onward strain,
+Brave barks, in light, in darkness too;
+Through winds and tides one compass guides,-
+To that, and your own selves, be true.
+
+"But, O blithe breeze, and O great seas,
+Though ne'er that earliest parting past,
+On your wide plain they join again;
+Together lead them home at last.
+
+"One port, methought, alike they sought,
+One purpose hold where'er they fare.
+O bounding breeze, O rushing seas,
+At last, at last, unite them there!" *
+
+
+* Clough, Ambarvalia.
+
+
+This is not mere longing; it is prophecy.  So over these too,
+our old friends, who are friends no more, we sorrow not as men
+without hope.  It is only for those who seem to us to have lost
+compass and purpose, and to be driven helplessly on rocks and
+quicksands, whose lives are spent in the service of the world,
+the flesh, and the devil, for self alone, and not for their
+fellow-men, their country, or their God, that we must mourn and
+pray without sure hope and without light, trusting only that He,
+in whose hands they as well as we are, who has died for them as
+well as for us, who sees all His creatures
+
+
+"With larger other eyes than ours,
+To make allowance for us all,"
+
+
+will, in His own way and at His own time, lead them also home.
+
+Another two years have passed, and it is again the end of the
+summer half-year at Rugby; in fact, the School has broken up.
+The fifth-form examinations were over last week, and upon them
+have followed the speeches, and the sixth-form examinations for
+exhibitions; and they too are over now.  The boys have gone to
+all the winds of heaven, except the town boys and the eleven,
+and the few enthusiasts besides who have asked leave to stay in
+their houses to see the result of the cricket matches.  For this
+year the Wellesburn return match and the Marylebone match are
+played at Rugby, to the great delight of the town and
+neighbourhood, and the sorrow of those aspiring young cricketers
+who have been reckoning for the last three months on showing off
+at Lord's ground.
+
+The Doctor started for the Lakes yesterday morning, after an
+interview with the captain of the eleven, in the presence of
+Thomas, at which he arranged in what school the cricket dinners
+were to be, and all other matters necessary for the satisfactory
+carrying out of the festivities, and warned them as to keeping
+all spirituous liquors out of the close, and having the gates
+closed by nine o'clock.
+
+The Wellesburn match was played out with great success
+yesterday, the School winning by three wickets; and to-day the
+great event of the cricketing year, the Marylebone match, is
+being played.  What a match it has been!  The London eleven came
+down by an afternoon train yesterday, in time to see the end of
+the Wellesburn match; and as soon as it was over, their leading
+men and umpire inspected the ground, criticising it rather
+unmercifully.  The captain of the School eleven, and one or two
+others, who had played the Lord's match before, and knew old Mr.
+Aislabie and several of the Lord's men, accompanied them; while
+the rest of the eleven looked on from under the Three Trees with
+admiring eyes, and asked one another the names of the
+illustrious strangers, and recounted how many runs each of them
+had made in the late matches in Bell's Life.  They looked such
+hard-bitten, wiry, whiskered fellows that their young
+adversaries felt rather desponding as to the result of the
+morrow's match.  The ground was at last chosen, and two men set
+to work upon it to water and roll; and then, there being yet
+some half-hour of daylight, some one had suggested a dance on
+the turf.  The close was half full of citizens and their
+families, and the idea was hailed with enthusiasm.  The
+cornopean player was still on the ground.  In five minutes the
+eleven and half a dozen of the Wellesburn and Marylebone men got
+partners somehow or another, and a merry country-dance was going
+on, to which every one flocked, and new couples joined in every
+minute, till there were a hundred of them going down the middle
+and up again; and the long line of school buildings looked
+gravely down on them, every window glowing with the last rays of
+the western sun; and the rooks clanged about in the tops of the
+old elms, greatly excited, and resolved on having their country-
+dance too; and the great flag flapped lazily in the gentle
+western breeze.  Altogether it was a sight which would have made
+glad the heart of our brave old founder, Lawrence Sheriff, if he
+were half as good a fellow as I take him to have been.  It was a
+cheerful sight to see.  But what made it so valuable in the
+sight of the captain of the School eleven was that he there saw
+his young hands shaking off their shyness and awe of the Lord's
+men, as they crossed hands and capered about on the grass
+together; for the strangers entered into it all, and threw away
+their cigars, and danced and shouted like boys; while old Mr.
+Aislabie stood by looking on in his white hat, leaning on a bat,
+in benevolent enjoyment.  "This hop will be worth thirty runs to
+us to-morrow, and will be the making of Raggles and Johnson,"
+thinks the young leader, as he revolves many things in his mind,
+standing by the side of Mr. Aislabie, whom he will not leave for
+a minute, for he feels that the character of the School for
+courtesy is resting on his shoulders.
+
+But when a quarter to nine struck, and he saw old Thomas
+beginning to fidget about with the keys in his hand, he thought
+of the Doctor's parting monition, and stopped the cornopean at
+once, notwithstanding the loud-voiced remonstrances from all
+sides; and the crowd scattered away from the close, the eleven
+all going into the School-house, where supper and beds were
+provided for them by the Doctor's orders.
+
+Deep had been the consultations at supper as to the order of
+going in, who should bowl the first over, whether it would be
+best to play steady or freely; and the youngest hands declared
+that they shouldn't be a bit nervous, and praised their
+opponents as the jolliest fellows in the world, except perhaps
+their old friends the Wellesburn men.  How far a little good-
+nature from their elders will go with the right sort of boys!
+
+The morning had dawned bright and warm, to the intense relief of
+many an anxious youngster, up betimes to mark the signs of the
+weather.  The eleven went down in a body before breakfast, for a
+plunge in the cold bath in a corner of the close.  The ground
+was in splendid order, and soon after ten o'clock, before
+spectators had arrived, all was ready, and two of the Lord's men
+took their places at the wickets--the School, with the usual
+liberality of young hands, having put their adversaries in
+first.  Old Bailey stepped up to the wicket, and called play,
+and the match has begun.
+
+"Oh, well bowled! well bowled, Johnson!" cries the captain,
+catching up the ball and sending it high above the rook trees,
+while the third Marylebone man walks away from the wicket, and
+old Bailey gravely sets up the middle stump again and puts the
+bails on.
+
+"How many runs?"  Away scamper three boys to the scoring table,
+and are back again in a minute amongst the rest of the eleven,
+who are collected together in a knot between wicket.  "Only
+eighteen runs, and three wickets down!"  "Huzza for old Rugby!"
+sings out Jack Raggles, the long-stop, toughest and burliest of
+boys, commonly called "Swiper Jack," and forthwith stands on his
+head, and brandishes his legs in the air in triumph, till the
+next boy catches hold of his heels, and throws him over on to
+his back.
+
+"Steady there; don't be such an ass, Jack," says the captain;
+"we haven't got the best wicket yet.  Ah, look out now at cover-
+point," adds he, as he sees a long-armed bare-headed, slashing-
+looking player coming to the wicket.  "And, Jack, mind your
+hits.  He steals more runs than any man in England."
+
+And they all find that they have got their work to do now.  The
+newcomer's off-hitting is tremendous, and his running like a
+flash of lightning.  He is never in his ground except when his
+wicket is down.  Nothing in the whole game so trying to boys.
+He has stolen three byes in the first ten minutes, and Jack
+Raggles is furious, and begins throwing over savagely to the
+farther wicket, until he is sternly stopped by the captain.  It
+is all that young gentlemen can do to keep his team steady, but
+he knows that everything depends on it, and faces his work
+bravely.  The score creeps up to fifty; the boys begin to look
+blank; and the spectators, who are now mustering strong, are
+very silent.  The ball flies off his bat to all parts of the
+field, and he gives no rest and no catches to any one.  But
+cricket is full of glorious chances, and the goddess who
+presides over it loves to bring down the most skilful players.
+Johnson, the young bowler, is getting wild, and bowls a ball
+almost wide to the off; the batter steps out and cuts it
+beautifully to where cover-point is standing very deep--in fact
+almost off the ground.  The ball comes skimming and twisting
+along about three feet from the ground; he rushes at it, and it
+sticks somehow or other in the fingers of his left hand, to the
+utter astonishment of himself and the whole field.  Such a catch
+hasn't been made in the close for years, and the cheering is
+maddening.  "Pretty cricket," says the captain, throwing himself
+on the ground by the deserted wicket with a long breath.  He
+feels that a crisis has passed.
+
+I wish I had space to describe the match--how the captain
+stumped the next man off a leg-shooter, and bowled small cobs to
+old Mr. Aislabie, who came in for the last wicket; how the
+Lord's men were out by half-past twelve o'clock for ninety-eight
+runs; how the captain of the School eleven went in first to give
+his men pluck, and scored twenty-five in beautiful style; how
+Rugby was only four behind in the first innings; what a glorious
+dinner they had in the fourth-form school; and how the cover-
+point hitter sang the most topping comic songs, and old Mr.
+Aislabie made the best speeches that ever were heard,
+afterwards.  But I haven't space--that's the fact; and so you
+must fancy it all, and carry yourselves on to half-past seven
+o'clock, when the School are again in, with five wickets down,
+and only thirty-two runs to make to win.  The Marylebone men
+played carelessly in their second innings, but they are working
+like horses now to save the match.
+
+There is much healthy, hearty, happy life scattered up and down
+the close; but the group to which I beg to call your especial
+attention is there, on the slope of the island, which looks
+towards the cricket-ground.  It consists of three figures; two
+are seated on a bench, and one on the ground at their feet.  The
+first, a tall, slight and rather gaunt man, with a bushy eyebrow
+and a dry, humorous smile, is evidently a clergyman.  He is
+carelessly dressed, and looks rather used up, which isn't much
+to be wondered at, seeing that he has just finished six weeks of
+examination work; but there he basks, and spreads himself out in
+the evening sun, bent on enjoying life, though he doesn't quite
+know what to do with his arms and legs.  Surely it is our friend
+the young master, whom we have had glimpses of before, but his
+face has gained a great deal since we last came across him.
+
+And by his side, in white flannel shirt and trousers, straw hat,
+the captain's belt, and the untanned yellow cricket shoes which
+all the eleven wear, sits a strapping figure, near six feet
+high, with ruddy, tanned face and whiskers, curly brown hair,
+and a laughing, dancing eye.  He is leaning forward with his
+elbows resting on his knees, and dandling his favourite bat,
+with which he has made thirty or forty runs to-day, in his
+strong brown hands.  It is Tom Brown, grown into a young man
+nineteen years old, a prepostor and captain of the eleven,
+spending his last day as a Rugby boy, and, let us hope, as much
+wiser as he is bigger, since we last had the pleasure of coming
+across him.
+
+And at their feet on the warm, dry ground, similarly dressed,
+sits Arthur, Turkish fashion, with his bat across his knees.  He
+too is no longer a boy--less of a boy, in fact, than Tom, if
+one may judge from the thoughtfulness of his face, which is
+somewhat paler, too, than one could wish; but his figure, though
+slight, is well knit and active, and all his old timidity has
+disappeared, and is replaced by silent, quaint fun, with which
+his face twinkles all over, as he listens to the broken talk
+between the other two, in which he joins every now and then.
+
+All three are watching the game eagerly, and joining in the
+cheering which follows every good hit.  It is pleasing to see
+the easy, friendly footing which the pupils are on with their
+master, perfectly respectful, yet with no reserve and nothing
+forced in their intercourse.  Tom has clearly abandoned the old
+theory of "natural enemies" in this case at any rate.
+
+But it is time to listen to what they are saying, and see what
+we can gather out of it.
+
+"I don't object to your theory," says the master, "and I allow
+you have made a fair case for yourself.  But now, in such books
+as Aristophanes, for instance, you've been reading a play this
+half with the Doctor, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes, the Knights," answered Tom.
+
+"Well, I'm sure you would have enjoyed the wonderful humour of
+it twice as much if you had taken more pains with your
+scholarship."
+
+"Well, sir, I don't believe any boy in the form enjoyed the
+sets-to between Cleon and the Sausage-seller more than I did--
+eh, Arthur?" said Tom, giving him a stir with his foot.
+
+"Yes, I must say he did," said Arthur. "I think, sir, you've hit
+upon the wrong book there."
+
+"Not a bit of it," said the master.  "Why, in those very
+passages of arms, how can you thoroughly appreciate them unless
+you are master of the weapons? and the weapons are the language,
+which you, Brown, have never half worked at; and so, as I say,
+you must have lost all the delicate shades of meaning which make
+the best part of the fun."
+
+"Oh, well played! bravo, Johnson!" shouted Arthur, dropping his
+bat and clapping furiously, and Tom joined in with a "Bravo,
+Johnson!" which might have been heard at the chapel.
+
+"Eh! what was it?  I didn't see," inquired the master.  "They
+only got one run, I thought?"
+
+"No, but such a ball, three-quarters length, and coming straight
+for his leg bail.  Nothing but that turn of the wrist could have
+saved him, and he drew it away to leg for a safe one. --Bravo,
+Johnson!"
+
+"How well they are bowling, though," said Arthur; "they don't
+mean to be beat, I can see."
+
+"There now," struck in the master; "you see that's just what I
+have been preaching this half-hour.  The delicate play is the
+true thing.  I don't understand cricket, so I don't enjoy those
+fine draws which you tell me are the best play, though when you
+or Raggles hit a ball hard away for six I am as delighted as any
+one.  Don't you see the analogy?"
+
+"Yes, sir," answered Tom, looking up roguishly, "I see; only the
+question remains whether I should have got most good by
+understanding Greek particles or cricket thoroughly.  I'm such a
+thick, I never should have had time for both."
+
+"I see you are an incorrigible," said the master, with a
+chuckle; "but I refute you by an example.  Arthur there has
+taken in Greek and cricket too."
+
+"Yes, but no thanks to him; Greek came natural to him.  Why,
+when he first came I remember he used to read Herodotus for
+pleasure as I did Don Quixote, and couldn't have made a false
+concord if he'd tried ever so hard; and then I looked after his
+cricket."
+
+"Out!  Bailey has given him out.  Do you see, Tom?" cries
+Arthur.  "How foolish of them to run so hard."
+
+"Well, it can't be helped; he has played very well.  Whose turn
+is it to go in?"
+
+"I don't know; they've got your list in the tent."
+
+"Let's go and see," said Tom, rising; but at this moment Jack
+Raggles and two or three more came running to the island moat.
+
+"O Brown, mayn't I go in next?" shouts the Swiper.
+
+"Whose name is next on the list?" says the captain.
+
+"Winter's, and then Arthur's," answers the boy who carries it;
+"but there are only twenty-six runs to get, and no time to lose.
+I heard Mr. Aislabie say that the stumps must be drawn at a
+quarter past eight exactly."
+
+"Oh, do let the Swiper go in," chorus the boys; so Tom yields
+against his better judgment.
+
+"I dare say now I've lost the match by this nonsense," he says,
+as he sits down again; "they'll be sure to get Jack's wicket in
+three or four minutes; however, you'll have the chance, sir, of
+seeing a hard hit or two," adds he, smiling, and turning to the
+master.
+
+"Come, none of your irony, Brown," answers the master.  "I'm
+beginning to understand the game scientifically.  What a noble
+game it is, too!"
+
+"Isn't it?  But it's more than a game.  It's an institution,"
+said Tom.
+
+"Yes," said Arthur--"the birthright of British boys old and
+young, as habeas corpus and trial by jury are of British men."
+
+"The discipline and reliance on one another which it teaches is
+so valuable, I think," went on the master, "it ought to be such
+an unselfish game.  It merges the individual in the eleven; he
+doesn't play that he may win, but that his side may."
+
+"That's very true," said Tom, "and that's why football and
+cricket, now one comes to think of it, are such much better
+games than fives or hare-and-hounds, or any others where the
+object is to come in first or to win for oneself, and not that
+one's side may win."
+
+"And then the captain of the eleven!" said the master; "what a
+post is his in our School-world! almost as hard as the Doctor's
+- requiring skill and gentleness and firmness, and I know not
+what other rare qualities."
+
+"Which don't he may wish he may get!" said Tom, laughing; "at
+any rate he hasn't got them yet, or he wouldn't have been such a
+flat to-night as to let Jack Raggles go in out of his turn."
+
+"Ah, the Doctor never would have done that," said Arthur
+demurely.  "Tom, you've a great deal to learn yet in the art of
+ruling."
+
+"Well, I wish you'd tell the Doctor so then, and get him to let
+me stop till I'm twenty.  I don't want to leave, I'm sure."
+
+"What a sight it is," broke in the master, "the Doctor as a
+ruler!  Perhaps ours is the only little corner of the British
+Empire which is thoroughly, wisely, and strongly ruled just now.
+I'm more and more thankful every day of my life that I came here
+to be under him."
+
+"So am I, I'm sure," said Tom, "and more and more sorry that
+I've got to leave."
+
+"Every place and thing one sees here reminds one of some wise
+act of his," went on the master.  "This island now--you
+remember the time, Brown, when it was laid out in small gardens,
+and cultivated by frost-bitten fags in February and March?"
+
+"Of course I do," said Tom; "didn't I hate spending two hours in
+the afternoon grubbing in the tough dirt with the stump of a
+fives bat?  But turf-cart was good fun enough."
+
+"I dare say it was, but it was always leading to fights with the
+townspeople; and then the stealing flowers out of all the
+gardens in Rugby for the Easter show was abominable."
+
+"Well, so it was," said Tom, looking down, "but we fags couldn't
+help ourselves.  But what has that to do with the Doctor's
+ruling?"
+
+"A great deal, I think," said the master; "what brought island-
+fagging to an end?"
+
+"Why, the Easter speeches were put off till midsummer," said
+Tom, "and the sixth had the gymnastic poles put up here."
+
+"Well, and who changed the time of the speeches, and put the
+idea of gymnastic poles into the heads of their worships the
+sixth form?" said the master.
+
+"The Doctor, I suppose," said Tom.  "I never thought of that."
+
+"Of course you didn't," said the master, "or else, fag as you
+were, you would have shouted with the whole school against
+putting down old customs.  And that's the way that all the
+Doctor's reforms have been carried out when he has been left to
+himself--quietly and naturally, putting a good thing in the
+place of a bad, and letting the bad die out; no wavering, and no
+hurry--the best thing that could be done for the time being,
+and patience for the rest."
+
+"Just Tom's own way," chimed in Arthur, nudging Tom with his
+elbow--"driving a nail where it will go;" to which allusion Tom
+answered by a sly kick.
+
+"Exactly so," said the master, innocent of the allusion and by-
+play.
+
+Meantime Jack Raggles, with his sleeves tucked up above his
+great brown elbows, scorning pads and gloves, has presented
+himself at the wicket; and having run one for a forward drive of
+Johnson's, is about to receive his first ball.  There are only
+twenty-four runs to make, and four wickets to go down--a
+winning match if they play decently steady.  The ball is a very
+swift one, and rises fast, catching Jack on the outside of the
+thigh, and bounding away as if from india-rubber, while they run
+two for a leg-bye amidst great applause and shouts from Jack's
+many admirers.  The next ball is a beautifully-pitched ball for
+the outer stump, which the reckless and unfeeling Jack catches
+hold of, and hits right round to leg for five, while the
+applause becomes deafening.  Only seventeen runs to get with
+four wickets!  The game is all but ours!
+
+It is over now, and Jack walks swaggering about his wicket, with
+his bat over his shoulder, while Mr. Aislabie holds a short
+parley with his men.  Then the cover-point hitter, that cunning
+man, goes on to bowl slow twisters.  Jack waves his hand
+triumphantly towards the tent, as much as to say, "See if I
+don't finish it all off now in three hits."
+
+Alas, my son Jack, the enemy is too old for thee.  The first
+ball of the over Jack steps out and meets, swiping with all his
+force.  If he had only allowed for the twist!  But he hasn't,
+and so the ball goes spinning up straight in the air, as if it
+would never come down again.  Away runs Jack, shouting and
+trusting to the chapter of accidents; but the bowler runs
+steadily under it, judging every spin, and calling out, "I have
+it," catches it, and playfully pitches it on to the back of the
+stalwart Jack, who is departing with a rueful countenance.
+
+"I knew how it would be," says Tom, rising.  "Come along; the
+game's getting very serious."
+
+So they leave the island and go to the tent; and after deep
+consultation, Arthur is sent in, and goes off to the wicket with
+a last exhortation from Tom to play steady and keep his bat
+straight.  To the suggestions that Winter is the best bat left,
+Tom only replies, "Arthur is the steadiest, and Johnson will
+make the runs if the wicket is only kept up."
+
+"I am surprised to see Arthur in the eleven," said the master,
+as they stood together in front of the dense crowd, which was
+now closing in round the ground.
+
+"Well, I'm not quite sure that he ought to be in for his play,"
+said Tom, "but I couldn't help putting him in.  It will do him
+so much good, and you can't think what I owe him."
+
+The master smiled.  The clock strikes eight, and the whole field
+becomes fevered with excitement.  Arthur, after two narrow
+escapes, scores one, and Johnson gets the ball.  The bowling and
+fielding are superb, and Johnson's batting worthy the occasion.
+He makes here a two, and there a one, managing to keep the ball
+to himself, and Arthur backs up and runs perfectly.  Only eleven
+runs to make now, and the crowd scarcely breathe.  At last
+Arthur gets the ball again, and actually drives it forward for
+two, and feels prouder than when he got the three best prizes,
+at hearing Tom's shout of joy, "Well played, well played, young
+un!"
+
+But the next ball is too much for the young hand, and his bails
+fly different ways.  Nine runs to make, and two wickets to go
+down:  it is too much for human nerves.
+
+Before Winter can get in, the omnibus which is to take the
+Lord's men to the train pulls up at the side of the close, and
+Mr. Aislabie and Tom consult, and give out that the stumps will
+be drawn after the next over.  And so ends the great match.
+Winter and Johnson carry out their bats, and, it being a one
+day's match, the Lord's men are declared the winners, they
+having scored the most in the first innings.
+
+But such a defeat is a victory:  so think Tom and all the School
+eleven, as they accompany their conquerors to the omnibus, and
+send them off with three ringing cheers, after Mr. Aislabie has
+shaken hands all round, saying to Tom, "I must compliment you,
+sir, on your eleven, and I hope we shall have you for a member
+if you come up to town."
+
+As Tom and the rest of the eleven were turning back into the
+close, and everybody was beginning to cry out for another
+country-dance, encouraged by the success of the night before,
+the young master, who was just leaving the close, stopped him,
+and asked him to come up to tea at half-past eight, adding, "I
+won't keep you more than half an hour, and ask Arthur to come up
+too."
+
+"I'll come up with you directly, if you'll let me," said Tom,
+"for I feel rather melancholy, and not quite up to the country-
+dance and supper with the rest."
+
+"Do, by all means," said the master; "I'll wait here for you."
+
+So Tom went off to get his boots and things from the tent, to
+tell Arthur of the invitation, and to speak to his second in
+command about stopping the dancing and shutting up the close as
+soon as it grew dusk.  Arthur promised to follow as soon as he
+had had a dance.  So Tom handed his things over to the man in
+charge of the tent, and walked quietly away to the gate where
+the master was waiting, and the two took their way together up
+the Hillmorton road.
+
+Of course they found the master's house locked up, and all the
+servants away in the close--about this time, no doubt, footing
+it away on the grass, with extreme delight to themselves, and in
+utter oblivion of the unfortunate bachelor their master, whose
+one enjoyment in the shape of meals was his "dish of tea" (as
+our grandmothers called it) in the evening; and the phrase was
+apt in his case, for he always poured his out into the saucer
+before drinking.  Great was the good man's horror at finding
+himself shut out of his own house.  Had he been alone he would
+have treated it as a matter of course, and would have strolled
+contentedly up and down his gravel walk until some one came
+home; but he was hurt at the stain on his character of host,
+especially as the guest was a pupil.  However, the guest seemed
+to think it a great joke, and presently, as they poked about
+round the house, mounted a wall, from which he could reach a
+passage window.  The window, as it turned out, was not bolted,
+so in another minute Tom was in the house and down at the front
+door, which he opened from inside.  The master chuckled grimly
+at this burglarious entry, and insisted on leaving the hall-door
+and two of the front windows open, to frighten the truants on
+their return; and then the two set about foraging for tea, in
+which operation the master was much at fault, having the
+faintest possible idea of where to find anything, and being,
+moreover, wondrously short-sighted; but Tom, by a sort of
+instinct, knew the right cupboards in the kitchen and pantry,
+and soon managed to place on the snuggery table better materials
+for a meal than had appeared there probably during the reign of
+his tutor, who was then and there initiated, amongst other
+things, into the excellence of that mysterious condiment, a
+dripping-cake.  The cake was newly baked, and all rich and
+flaky; Tom had found it reposing in the cook's private cupboard,
+awaiting her return; and as a warning to her they finished it to
+the last crumb.  The kettle sang away merrily on the hob of the
+snuggery, for, notwithstanding the time of year, they lighted a
+fire, throwing both the windows wide open at the same time; the
+heaps of books and papers were pushed away to the other end of
+the table, and the great solitary engraving of King's College
+Chapel over the mantelpiece looked less stiff than usual, as
+they settled themselves down in the twilight to the serious
+drinking of tea.
+
+After some talk on the match, and other indifferent subjects,
+the conversation came naturally back to Tom's approaching
+departure, over which he began again to make his moan.
+
+"Well, we shall all miss you quite as much as you will miss us,"
+said the master.  "You are the Nestor of the School now, are you
+not?"
+
+"Yes, ever since East left," answered Tom.  "By-the-bye, have
+you heard from him?"
+
+"Yes, I had a letter in February, just before he started for
+India to join his regiment."
+
+"He will make a capital officer."
+
+"Ay, won't he!" said Tom, brightening.  "No fellow could handle
+boys better, and I suppose soldiers are very like boys.  And
+he'll never tell them to go where he won't go himself.  No
+mistake about that.  A braver fellow never walked."
+
+"His year in the sixth will have taught him a good deal that
+will be useful to him now."
+
+"So it will,"' said Tom, staring into the fire.  "Poor dear
+Harry," he went on--"how well I remember the day we were put
+out of the twenty!  How he rose to the situation, and burnt his
+cigar-cases, and gave away his pistols, and pondered on the
+constitutional authority of the sixth, and his new duties to the
+Doctor, and the fifth form, and the fags!  Ay, and no fellow
+ever acted up to them better, though he was always a people's
+man--for the fags, and against constituted authorities.  He
+couldn't help that, you know.  I'm sure the Doctor must have
+liked him?" said Tom, looking up inquiringly.
+
+"The Doctor sees the good in every one, and appreciates it,"
+said the master dogmatically; "but I hope East will get a good
+colonel.  He won't do if he can't respect those above him.  How
+long it took him, even here, to learn the lesson of obeying!"
+
+"Well, I wish I were alongside of him," said Tom.  "If I can't
+be at Rugby, I want to be at work in the world, and not dawdling
+away three years at Oxford."
+
+"What do you mean by 'at work in the world'?" said the master,
+pausing with his lips close to his saucerful of tea, and peering
+at Tom over it.
+
+"Well, I mean real work--one's profession--whatever one will
+have really to do and make one's living by.  I want to be doing
+some real good, feeling that I am not only at play in the
+world," answered Tom, rather puzzled to find out himself what he
+really did mean.
+
+"You are mixing up two very different things in your head, I
+think, Brown," said the master, putting down the empty saucer,
+"and you ought to get clear about them.  You talk of 'working to
+get your living,' and 'doing some real good in the world,' in
+the same breath.  Now, you may be getting a very good living in
+a profession, and yet doing no good at all in the world, but
+quite the contrary, at the same time.  Keep the latter before
+you as your one object, and you will be right, whether you make
+a living or not; but if you dwell on the other, you'll very
+likely drop into mere money-making, and let the world take care
+of itself for good or evil.  Don't be in a hurry about finding
+your work in the world for yourself--you are not old enough to
+judge for yourself yet; but just look about you in the place you
+find yourself in, and try to make things a little better and
+honester there.  You'll find plenty to keep your hand in at
+Oxford, or wherever else you go.  And don't be led away to think
+this part of the world important and that unimportant.  Every
+corner of the world is important.  No man knows whether this
+part or that is most so, but every man may do some honest work
+in his own corner."  And then the good man went on to talk
+wisely to Tom of the sort of work which he might take up as an
+undergraduate, and warned him of the prevalent university sins,
+and explained to him the many and great differences between
+university and school life, till the twilight changed into
+darkness, and they heard the truant servants stealing in by the
+back entrance.
+
+"I wonder where Arthur can be," said Tom at last, looking at his
+watch; "why, it's nearly half-past nine already."
+
+"Oh, he is comfortably at supper with the eleven, forgetful of
+his oldest friends," said the master.  "Nothing has given me
+greater pleasure," he went on, "than your friendship for him; it
+has been the making of you both."
+
+"Of me, at any rate," answered Tom; "I should never have been
+here now but for him.  It was the luckiest chance in the world
+that sent him to Rugby and made him my chum."
+
+"Why do you talk of lucky chances?" said the master.  "I don't
+know that there are any such things in the world; at any rate,
+there was neither luck nor chance in that matter."
+
+Tom looked at him inquiringly, and he went on. "Do you remember
+when the Doctor lectured you and East at the end of one half-
+year, when you were in the shell, and had been getting into all
+sorts of scrapes?"
+
+"Yes, well enough," said Tom; "it was the half-year before
+Arthur came."
+
+"Exactly so," answered the master.  "Now, I was with him a few
+minutes afterwards, and he was in great distress about you two.
+And after some talk, we both agreed that you in particular
+wanted some object in the School beyond games and mischief; for
+it was quite clear that you never would make the regular school
+work your first object.  And so the Doctor, at the beginning of
+the next half-year, looked out the best of the new boys, and
+separated you and East, and put the young boy into your study,
+in the hope that when you had somebody to lean on you, you would
+begin to stand a little steadier yourself, and get manliness and
+thoughtfulness.  And I can assure you he has watched the
+experiment ever since with great satisfaction.  Ah! not one of
+you boys will ever know the anxiety you have given him, or the
+care with which he has watched over every step in your school
+lives."
+
+Up to this time Tom had never given wholly in to or understood
+the Doctor.  At first he had thoroughly feared him.  For some
+years, as I have tried to show, he had learnt to regard him with
+love and respect, and to think him a very great and wise and
+good man.  But as regarded his own position in the School, of
+which he was no little proud, Tom had no idea of giving any one
+credit for it but himself, and, truth to tell, was a very self-
+conceited young gentleman on the subject.  He was wont to boast
+that he had fought his own way fairly up the School, and had
+never made up to or been taken up by any big fellow or master,
+and that it was now quite a different place from what it was
+when he first came.  And, indeed, though he didn't actually
+boast of it, yet in his secret soul he did to a great extent
+believe that the great reform in the School had been owing quite
+as much to himself as to any one else.  Arthur, he acknowledged,
+had done him good, and taught him a good deal; so had other boys
+in different ways, but they had not had the same means of
+influence on the School in general.  And as for the Doctor, why,
+he was a splendid master; but every one knew that masters could
+do very little out of school hours.  In short, he felt on terms
+of equality with his chief, so far as the social state of the
+School was concerned, and thought that the Doctor would find it
+no easy matter to get on without him.  Moreover, his School
+Toryism was still strong, and he looked still with some jealousy
+on the Doctor, as somewhat of a fanatic in the matter of change,
+and thought it very desirable for the School that he should have
+some wise person (such as himself) to look sharply after vested
+School-rights, and see that nothing was done to the injury of
+the republic without due protest.
+
+It was a new light to him to find that, besides teaching the
+sixth, and governing and guiding the whole School, editing
+classics, and writing histories, the great headmaster had found
+time in those busy years to watch over the career even of him,
+Tom Brown, and his particular friends, and, no doubt, of fifty
+other boys at the same time, and all this without taking the
+least credit to himself, or seeming to know, or let any one else
+know, that he ever thought particularly of any boy at all.
+
+However, the Doctor's victory was complete from that moment over
+Tom Brown at any rate.  He gave way at all points, and the enemy
+marched right over him--cavalry, infantry, and artillery, and
+the land transport corps, and the camp followers.  It had taken
+eight long years to do it; but now it was done thoroughly, and
+there wasn't a corner of him left which didn't believe in the
+Doctor.  Had he returned to School again, and the Doctor begun
+the half-year by abolishing fagging, and football, and the
+Saturday half-holiday, or all or any of the most cherished
+School institutions, Tom would have supported him with the
+blindest faith.  And so, after a half confession of his previous
+shortcomings, and sorrowful adieus to his tutor, from whom he
+received two beautifully-bound volumes of the Doctor's sermons,
+as a parting present, he marched down to the Schoolhouse, a
+hero-worshipper, who would have satisfied the soul of Thomas
+Carlyle himself.
+
+There he found the eleven at high jinks after supper, Jack
+Raggles shouting comic songs and performing feats of strength,
+and was greeted by a chorus of mingled remonstrance at his
+desertion and joy at his reappearance.  And falling in with the
+humour of the evening, he was soon as great a boy as all the
+rest; and at ten o'clock was chaired round the quadrangle, on
+one of the hall benches, borne aloft by the eleven, shouting in
+chorus, "For he's a jolly good fellow," while old Thomas, in a
+melting mood, and the other School-house servants, stood looking
+on.
+
+And the next morning after breakfast he squared up all the
+cricketing accounts, went round to his tradesmen and other
+acquaintance, and said his hearty good-byes; and by twelve
+o'clock was in the train, and away for London, no longer a
+school-boy, and divided in his thoughts between hero-worship,
+honest regrets over the long stage of his life which was now
+slipping out of sight behind him, and hopes and resolves for the
+next stage upon which he was entering with all the confidence of
+a young traveller.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX - FINIS.
+
+
+
+"Strange friend, past, present, and to be;
+Loved deeplier, darklier understood;
+Behold I dream a dream of good,
+And mingle all the world with thee." - TENNYSON.
+
+
+In the summer of 1842, our hero stopped once again at the well-
+known station; and leaving his bag and fishing-rod with a
+porter, walked slowly and sadly up towards the town.  It was now
+July.  He had rushed away from Oxford the moment that term was
+over, for a fishing ramble in Scotland with two college friends,
+and had been for three weeks living on oatcake, mutton-hams, and
+whisky, in the wildest parts of Skye.  They had descended one
+sultry evening on the little inn at Kyle Rhea ferry; and while
+Tom and another of the party put their tackle together and began
+exploring the stream for a sea-trout for supper, the third
+strolled into the house to arrange for their entertainment.
+Presently he came out in a loose blouse and slippers, a short
+pipe in his mouth, and an old newspaper in his hand, and threw
+himself on the heathery scrub which met the shingle, within easy
+hail of the fishermen.  There he lay, the picture of free-and-
+easy, loafing, hand-to-mouth young England, "improving his
+mind," as he shouted to them, by the perusal of the fortnight-
+old weekly paper, soiled with the marks of toddy-glasses and
+tobacco-ashes, the legacy of the last traveller, which he had
+hunted out from the kitchen of the little hostelry, and, being a
+youth of a communicative turn of mind, began imparting the
+contents to the fishermen as he went on.
+
+"What a bother they are making about these wretched corn-laws!
+Here's three or four columns full of nothing but sliding scales
+and fixed duties.  Hang this tobacco, it's always going out!
+Ah, here's something better--a splendid match between Kent and
+England, Brown, Kent winning by three wickets.  Felix fifty-six
+runs without a chance, and not out!"
+
+Tom, intent on a fish which had risen at him twice, answered
+only with a grunt.
+
+"Anything about the Goodwood?" called out the third man.
+
+"Rory O'More drawn.  Butterfly colt amiss," shouted the student.
+
+"Just my luck," grumbled the inquirer, jerking his flies off the
+water, and throwing again with a heavy, sullen splash, and
+frightening Tom's fish.
+
+"I say, can't you throw lighter over there?  We ain't fishing
+for grampuses," shouted Tom across the stream.
+
+"Hullo, Brown! here's something for you," called out the reading
+man next moment.  "Why, your old master, Arnold of Rugby, is
+dead."
+
+Tom's hand stopped half-way in his cast, and his line and flies
+went all tangling round and round his rod; you might have
+knocked him over with a feather.  Neither of his companions took
+any notice of him, luckily; and with a violent effort he set to
+work mechanically to disentangle his line.  He felt completely
+carried off his moral and intellectual legs, as if he had lost
+his standing-point in the invisible world.  Besides which, the
+deep, loving loyalty which he felt for his old leader made the
+shock intensely painful.  It was the first great wrench of his
+life, the first gap which the angel Death had made in his
+circle, and he felt numbed, and beaten down, and spiritless.
+Well, well!  I believe it was good for him and for many others
+in like case, who had to learn by that loss that the soul of man
+cannot stand or lean upon any human prop, however strong, and
+wise, and good; but that He upon whom alone it can stand and
+lean will knock away all such props in His own wise and merciful
+way, until there is no ground or stay left but Himself, the Rock
+of Ages, upon whom alone a sure foundation for every soul of man
+is laid.
+
+As he wearily laboured at his line, the thought struck him, "It
+may be all false--a mere newspaper lie."  And he strode up to
+the recumbent smoker.
+
+"Let me look at the paper," said he.
+
+"Nothing else in it," answered the other, handing it up to him
+listlessly.  "Hullo, Brown! what's the matter, old fellow?
+Ain't you well?"
+
+"Where is it?" said Tom, turning over the leaves, his hands
+trembling, and his eyes swimming, so that he could not read.
+
+"What?  What are you looking for?" said his friend, jumping up
+and looking over his shoulder.
+
+"That--about Arnold," said Tom.
+
+"Oh, here," said the other, putting his finger on the paragraph.
+Tom read it over and over again.  There could be no mistake of
+identity, though the account was short enough.
+
+"Thank you," said he at last, dropping the paper.  "I shall go
+for a walk.  Don't you and Herbert wait supper for me."  And
+away he strode, up over the moor at the back of the house, to be
+alone, and master his grief if possible.
+
+His friend looked after him, sympathizing and wondering, and,
+knocking the ashes out of his pipe, walked over to Herbert.
+After a short parley they walked together up to the house.
+
+"I'm afraid that confounded newspaper has spoiled Brown's fun
+for this trip."
+
+"How odd that he should be so fond of his old master," said
+Herbert.  Yet they also were both public-school men.
+
+The two, however, notwithstanding Tom's prohibition, waited
+supper for him, and had everything ready when he came back some
+half an hour afterwards.  But he could not join in their
+cheerful talk, and the party was soon silent, notwithstanding
+the efforts of all three.  One thing only had Tom resolved, and
+that was, that he couldn't stay in Scotland any longer:  he felt
+an irresistible longing to get to Rugby, and then home, and soon
+broke it to the others, who had too much tact to oppose.
+
+So by daylight the next morning he was marching through Ross-
+shire, and in the evening hit the Caledonian Canal, took the
+next steamer, and travelled as fast as boat and railway could
+carry him to the Rugby station.
+
+As he walked up to the town, he felt shy and afraid of being
+seen, and took the back streets--why, he didn't know, but he
+followed his instinct.  At the School-gates he made a dead
+pause; there was not a soul in the quadrangle--all was lonely,
+and silent, and sad.  So with another effort he strode through
+the quadrangle, and into the School-house offices.
+
+He found the little matron in her room in deep mourning; shook
+her hand, tried to talk, and moved nervously about.  She was
+evidently thinking of the same subject as he, but he couldn't
+begin talking.
+
+"Where shall I find Thomas?" said he at last, getting desperate.
+
+"In the servants' hall, I think, sir.  But won't you take
+anything?" said the matron, looking rather disappointed.
+
+"No, thank you," said he, and strode off again to find the old
+verger, who was sitting in his little den, as of old, puzzling
+over hieroglyphics.
+
+He looked up through his spectacles as Tom seized his hand and
+wrung it.
+
+"Ah! you've heard all about it, sir, I see," said he.  Tom
+nodded, and then sat down on the shoe-board, while the old man
+told his tale, and wiped his spectacles, and fairly flowed over
+with quaint, homely, honest sorrow.
+
+By the time he had done Tom felt much better.
+
+"Where is he buried, Thomas?" said he at last.
+
+"Under the altar in the chapel, sir," answered Thomas.  "You'd
+like to have the key, I dare say?"
+
+"Thank you, Thomas--yes, I should, very much."
+
+And the old man fumbled among his bunch, and then got up, as
+though he would go with him; but after a few steps stopped
+short, and said, "Perhaps you'd like to go by yourself, sir?"
+
+Tom nodded, and the bunch of keys were handed to him, with an
+injunction to be sure and lock the door after him, and bring
+them back before eight o'clock.
+
+He walked quickly through the quadrangle and out into the close.
+The longing which had been upon him and driven him thus far,
+like the gad-fly in the Greek legends, giving him no rest in
+mind or body, seemed all of a sudden not to be satisfied, but to
+shrivel up and pall.  "Why should I go on?  It's no use," he
+thought, and threw himself at full length on the turf, and
+looked vaguely and listlessly at all the well-known objects.
+There were a few of the town boys playing cricket, their wicket
+pitched on the best piece in the middle of the big-side ground--
+a sin about equal to sacrilege in the eyes of a captain of the
+eleven.  He was very nearly getting up to go and send them off.
+"Pshaw! they won't remember me.  They've more right there than
+I," he muttered.  And the thought that his sceptre had departed,
+and his mark was wearing out, came home to him for the first
+time, and bitterly enough.  He was lying on the very spot where
+the fights came off--where he himself had fought six years ago
+his first and last battle.  He conjured up the scene till he
+could almost hear the shouts of the ring, and East's whisper in
+his ear; and looking across the close to the Doctor's private
+door, half expected to see it open, and the tall figure in cap
+and gown come striding under the elm-trees towards him.
+
+No, no; that sight could never be seen again.  There was no flag
+flying on the round tower; the School-house windows were all
+shuttered up; and when the flag went up again, and the shutters
+came down, it would be to welcome a stranger.  All that was left
+on earth of him whom he had honoured was lying cold and still
+under the chapel floor.  He would go in and see the place once
+more, and then leave it once for all.  New men and new methods
+might do for other people; let those who would, worship the
+rising star; he, at least, would be faithful to the sun which
+had set.  And so he got up, and walked to the chapel door, and
+unlocked it, fancying himself the only mourner in all the broad
+land, and feeding on his own selfish sorrow.
+
+He passed through the vestibule, and then paused for a moment to
+glance over the empty benches.  His heart was still proud and
+high, and he walked up to the seat which he had last occupied as
+a sixth-form boy, and sat himself down there to collect his
+thoughts.
+
+And, truth to tell, they needed collecting and setting in order
+not a little.  The memories of eight years were all dancing
+through his brain, and carrying him about whither they would;
+while, beneath them all, his heart was throbbing with the dull
+sense of a loss that could never be made up to him.  The rays of
+the evening sun came solemnly through the painted windows above
+his head, and fell in gorgeous colours on the opposite wall, and
+the perfect stillness soothed his spirit by little and little.
+And he turned to the pulpit, and looked at it, and then, leaning
+forward with his head on his hands, groaned aloud.  If he could
+only have seen the Doctor again for one five minutes--have told
+him all that was in his heart, what he owed to him, how he loved
+and reverenced him, and would, by God's help, follow his steps
+in life and death--he could have borne it all without a murmur.
+But that he should have gone away for ever without knowing it
+all, was too much to bear.  "But am I sure that he does not know
+it all?"  The thought made him start.  "May he not even now be
+near me, in this very chapel?  If he be, am I sorrowing as he
+would have me sorrow, as I should wish to have sorrowed when I
+shall meet him again?"
+
+He raised himself up and looked round, and after a minute rose
+and walked humbly down to the lowest bench, and sat down on the
+very seat which he had occupied on his first Sunday at Rugby.
+And then the old memories rushed back again, but softened and
+subdued, and soothing him as he let himself be carried away by
+them.  And he looked up at the great painted window above the
+altar, and remembered how, when a little boy, he used to try not
+to look through it at the elm-trees and the rooks, before the
+painted glass came; and the subscription for the painted glass,
+and the letter he wrote home for money to give to it.  And
+there, down below, was the very name of the boy who sat on his
+right hand on that first day, scratched rudely in the oak
+panelling.
+
+And then came the thought of all his old schoolfellows; and form
+after form of boys nobler, and braver, and purer than he rose up
+and seemed to rebuke him.  Could he not think of them, and what
+they had felt and were feeling--they who had honoured and loved
+from the first the man whom he had taken years to know and love?
+Could he not think of those yet dearer to him who was gone, who
+bore his name and shared his blood, and were now without a
+husband or a father?  Then the grief which he began to share
+with others became gentle and holy, and he rose up once more,
+and walked up the steps to the altar, and while the tears flowed
+freely down his cheeks, knelt down humbly and hopefully, to lay
+down there his share of a burden which had proved itself too
+heavy for him to bear in his own strength.
+
+Here let us leave him.  Where better could we leave him than at
+the altar before which he had first caught a glimpse of the
+glory of his birthright, and felt the drawing of the bond which
+links all living souls together in one brotherhood--at the
+grave beneath the altar of him who had opened his eyes to see
+that glory, and softened his heart till it could feel that bond?
+
+And let us not be hard on him, if at that moment his soul is
+fuller of the tomb and him who lies there than of the altar and
+Him of whom it speaks.  Such stages have to be gone through, I
+believe, by all young and brave souls, who must win their way
+through hero-worship to the worship of Him who is the King and
+Lord of heroes.  For it is only through our mysterious human
+relationships--through the love and tenderness and purity of
+mothers and sisters and wives, through the strength and courage
+and wisdom of fathers and brothers and teachers--that we can
+come to the knowledge of Him in whom alone the love, and the
+tenderness, and the purity, and the strength, and the courage,
+and the wisdom of all these dwell for ever and ever in perfect
+fullness.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext; Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes
+
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