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 high-couraged and well-principled boy must, when he finds himself for the first time consciously at grips with self 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 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 swim and climb like an Indian, and not teach him a word of anything 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 ate, 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.”