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 both a good licking; that's one comfort."

MISFORTUNE THICKENS.

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,[16] ticket-of-leave
men,[17] 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 have to put up with. Nevertheless, they never quite lost favor
with young Brooke, who was now the cock of the House,[18] 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.

[16] #Outlaws#: persons deprived of the protection of the law.

[17] #Ticket-of-leave men#: convicts allowed to go at large
upon their good behavior.

[18] #Cock of the House#: leader of the School.

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[19] whether they turned out well or ill, and so they
were just the boys who caused the 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
looks," Tom used to