as you please, with his hands in his 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 earmarked. 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
