uing, discover the state of the breeches' pockets of Tom and
his ally?

[47] #Humble bees#: "bumble-bees."

[48] #Bounds#: the school limits, beyond which boys are not to
go without permission.

THE REPROBATE.

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[49] 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
the doors of the rooms, by a sudden descent caught the performer in
his nightshirt, with a box of phosphorus[50] 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 folks covet much,--the very decided
fear of most of his companions.

[49] #Necromancer#: (one who communes with the dead) a
conjurer.

[50] #Phosphorus#: the yellowish, inflammable substance used
in making common matches--in a pure state it burns on exposure
to air. Matches--called "Lucifers" or "light-bringers"--were
invented in England about 1829. Previous to that time the only
way of striking a light was by flint and steel, the spark
being caught on a bit of tinder (half-burnt rag) which was
then blown into a blaze.

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 w