ooks, 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 afterward, when he got into the sixth,
chose them for his fags, and excused them from study-fagging,[28]
thereby earning unto himself eternal gratitude from them, and all who
are interested in their history.

[25] #The Mucker#: the sloven.

[26] #Tails#: a tail coat.

[27] #Impecuniosity#: want of money.

[28] #Study-fagging#: clearing up his study-room.

THE WAR RAGES.

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, tho'," 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
upon 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 opportunit