pockets 'Didn't I tell you to shake my table-cloth
every morning?' roared I. 'Yes,' says he. 'Did you do it this morning?'
'Yes.' 'You young liar! I put these pieces of paper on the table last
night, and if you'd taken the table-cloth off' you'd have seen them, so
I'm going to give you a good licking.' Then my youngster takes one hand
out of his pocket, and just stoops down and picks up two of the bits of
paper, and holds them out to me. There was written on each, in great
round text, 'Harry East, his mark.' The young rogue had found my trap
out, taken away my paper, and put some of his there, every bit
ear-marked. I'd a great mind to lick him for his impudence, but after
all one has no right to be laying traps, so I didn't. Of course I was at
his mercy till the end of the half, and in his weeks my study was so
frowsy, I couldn't sit in it."

"They spoil one's things so, too," chimed in a third boy. "Hall and
Brown were night-fags last week: I called fag, and gave them my
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."

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, ticket-of-leave men, 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 generally
have to put up with. Nevertheless, they never quite lost favour with
young Brooke, who was now the cock of the house, 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.

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 q