y 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 foot-ball, 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[29] at the end of the bottom passage.

[29] #Cockpit#: here, probably, a recess or small place.

THE WEAK TO THE WALL.

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-ha