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for candles Martin never had. A pound was issued to him weekly as to the other boys, but as candles were available capital, and easily exchangeable for birds'-eggs or young birds, Martin's pound invariably found its way in a few hours to Howlett's, the birdfancier's, in the Bilton road, who would give a hawk's or nightingale's egg, or young linnet, in exchange. Martin's ingenuity was therefore forever on the rack to supply himself with a light; just now he had hit upon a grand invention, and the den was lighted by a flaring cotton-wick issuing from a ginger-beer bottle full of some doleful composition. When light altogether failed him, Martin would loaf about by the fires in the passages or hall, after the manner of Diggs, and try to do his verses or learn his lines by the fire-light.

"Well, old boy, you haven't got any sweeter in the den this half. How that stuff in the bottle stinks. Never mind, I ain't going to stop, but you come up after prayers to our study; you know young Arthur, we've got Gray's study. We'll have a good supper and talk about birds'-nesting."

Martin was evidently highly pleased at the invitation, and promised to be up without fail.

As soon as prayers were over, and the sixth and fifth-form boys had withdrawn to the aristocratic seclusion of their own room, and the rest, or democracy, had sat down to their supper in the hall; Tom and Arthur, having secured their allowances of bread and cheese, started on their feet to catch the eye of the præpostor of the week, who remained in charge during supper, walking up and down the

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hall. He happened to be an easy-going fellow, so they got a pleasant nod to their "Please may I go out?" and away they scrambled to prepare for Martin a sumptuous banquet. This, Tom had insisted on, for he was in great delight on the occasion; the reason of which delight must be expounded. The fact was, that this was the first attempt at a friendship of his own which Arthur had made, and Tom hailed it as a grand step. The ease with which he himself became hail-fellow-well-met with anybody, and blundered into and out of twenty friendships a half-year, made him sometimes sorry and sometimes angry at Arthur's reserve and loneliness. True, Arthur was always pleasant, and even jolly, with any boys who came with Tom to their study; but Tom felt that it was only through him, as it were, that his chum associated with others, and that but for him Arthur would have been dwelling in a wilderness. This increased his consciousness of responsibility; and though he hadn't reasoned it out and made it clear to himself, yet somehow he knew that this responsibility, this trust which he had taken on him without thinking about it, head-over-heels in fact, was the centre and turning-point of his school-life, that which was to make him or mar him; his appointed work and trial for the time being. And Tom was becoming a new boy, though with frequent tumbles in the dirt and perpetual hard battle with himself, and was daily growing in manfulness, and thoughtfulness, as every highcouraged and well-principled boy must, when he finds himself for the first time consciously at grips with self

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and the devil. Already he could turn almost without a sigh from the school gates, from which had just scampered off East and three or four others of his own particular set, bound for some jolly lark not quite according to law, and involving probably a row with louts, keepers, or farm-labourers, the skipping dinner or calling-over, some of Phoebe Jennings's beer, and a very possible flogging at the end of all as a relish. He had quite got over the stage in which he would grumble to himself, "Well, hang it, it's very hard of the Doctor to have saddled me with Arthur. Why couldn't he have chummed him with Fogey, or Thomkin, or any of the fellows who never do anything but walk round the close, and finish their copies the first day they're set?" But although all this was past, he often longed, and felt that he was right in longing, for more time for the legitimate pastimes of cricket, fives, bathing, and fishing within bounds, in which Arthur could not yet be his companion; and he felt that when the young'un (as he now generally called him) had found a pursuit and some other friend for himself, he should be able to give more time to the education of his own body with a clear conscience.

And now what he so wished for had come to pass; he almost hailed it as a special providence, (as indeed it was, but not for the reasons he gave for it what providences are?) that Arthur should have singled out Martin of all fellows for a friend. "The old madman is the very fellow," thought he; "he will take him scrambling over half the country after birds' eggs and flowers, make him run and

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swim and climb like an Indian, and not teach him a word of any thing bad, or keep him from his lessons. What luck!" And so, with more than his usual heartiness, he dived into his cupboard, and hauled out an old knuckle-bone of ham, and two or three bottles of beer, together with the solemn pewter only used on state occasions; while Arthur, equally elated at the easy accomplishment of his first act of volition in the joint establishment, produced from his side a bottle of pickles, and a pot of jam, and cleared the table. In a minute or two the noise of the boys coming up from supper was heard, and Martin knocked and was admitted, bearing his bread and cheese, and the three fell to with hearty good will upon the viands, talking faster than they eat, for all shyness disappeared in a moment before Tom's bottled-beer and hospitable ways. "Here's Arthur, a regular young town-mouse, with a natural taste for the woods, Martin, longing to break his neck climbing trees, and with a passion for young snakes."

"Well, I say,” sputtered out Martin eagerly, "will you come to-morrow, both of you, to Caldecott's Spinney then, for I know of a kestrel's nest, up a fir tree I can't get at it without help; and, Brown, you can climb against any one."

"O yes, do let us go," said Arthur; "I never saw a hawk's nest or a hawk's egg."

"You just come down to my study then, and I’l. show you five sorts," said Martin.

"Aye, the old madman has got the best collection in the house, out-and-out," said Tom; and then

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Martin, warming with unaccustomed good cheer and the chance of a convert, launched out into a proposed birds'-nesting campaign, betraying all manner of important secrets; a golden-crested wren's nest near Butlin's Mound, a moor-hen who was sitting on fourteen eggs in a pond down the Barbyroad, and a kingfisher's nest in a corner of the old canal above Brownsover Mill. He had heard, he said, that no one had ever got a kingfisher's nest out perfect, and that the British Museum, or the Government, or somebody, had offered £100 to any one who could bring them a nest and eggs not damaged. In the middle of which astounding announcement, to which the others were listening with open ears, and already considering the application of the £100, a knock came to the door, and East's voice was heard craving admittance.

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"There's Harry," said Tom, "we'll let him in I'll keep him steady, Martin. I thought the old boy would smell out the supper."

The fact was, that Tom's heart had already smitten him for not asking his 'fidus Achates' to the feast, although only an extempore affair; and though prudence and the desire to get Martin and Arthur together alone at first, had overcome his scruples, he was now heartily glad to open the door, broach another bottle of beer, and hand over the old hamknuckle to the searching of his old friend's pocketknife.

"Ah, you greedy vagabonds," said East, with his mouth full, "I knew there was something going on when I saw you cut off out of the hall so quick with

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