gged
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 the 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.[1]

[1] #The half#: the half-year.

RULE BREAKING.

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 the 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