Tom was duly placed in the Third Form, and found his work very easy; and as he had no intimate companion to make him idle (East being in the Lower Fourth), soon gained golden opinions from his master, and all went well with him in the school.  As a new boy he was, of course, excused fagging, but, in his enthusiasm, this hardly pleased him; and East and others of his young friends kindly allowed him to indulge his fancy, and take their turns at night, fagging and cleaning studies.  So he soon gained the character of a good-natured, willing fellow, ready to do a turn for anyone.

II.—­The War of Independence

The Lower Fourth was an overgrown Form, too large for any one man to attend to properly, consequently the elysium of the young scamps who formed the staple of it.  Tom had come up from the Third with a good character, but he rapidly fell away, and became as unmanageable as the rest.  By the time the second monthly examination came round, his character for steadiness was gone, and for years after, he went up the school without it, and regarded the masters, as a matter of course, as his natural enemies.  Matters were not so comfortable in the house, either.  The new praeposters of the Sixth Form were not strong, and the big Fifth Form boys soon began to usurp power, and to fag and bully the little boys.

One evening Tom and East were sitting in their study, Tom brooding over the wrongs of fags in general and his own in particular.

“I say, Scud,” said he at last, “what right have the Fifth Form boys to fag us as they do?”

“No more right than you have to fag them,” said East, without looking up from an early number of “Pickwick.”  Tom relapsed into his brown study, and East went on reading and chuckling.

“Do you know, old fellow, I’ve been thinking it over, and I’ve made up my mind I won’t fag except for the Sixth.”

“Quite right, too, my boy,” cried East.  “I’m all for a strike myself; it’s getting too bad.”

“I shouldn’t mind if it were only young Brooke now,” said Tom; “I’d do anything for him.  But that blackguard Flashman——­”

“The cowardly brute!” broke in East.

“Fa-a-ag!” sounded along the passage from Flashman’s study.

The two boys looked at one another.

“Fa-a-ag!” again.  No answer.

“Here, Brown!  East!  You young skulks!” roared Flashman.  “I know you’re in!  No shirking!”

Tom bolted the door, and East blew out the candle.

“Now, Tom, no surrender!”

Then the assault commenced.  One panel of the door gave way to repeated kicks, and the besieged strengthened their defences with the sofa.  Flashman & Co. at last retired, vowing vengeance, and when the convivial noises began again steadily, Tom and East rushed out.  They were too quick to be caught, but a pickle-jar, sent whizzing after them by Flashman narrowly missed Tom’s head.  Their story was soon told to a knot of small boys round the fire in the hall, who nearly all bound themselves not to fag for the Fifth, encouraged and advised thereto by Diggs—­a queer, very clever fellow, nearly at the top of the Fifth himself.  He stood by them all through and seldom have small boys had more need of a friend.