“Well, then, let’s try the sixth.  Try Morgan,” suggested another.  “No use”—­“Blabbing won’t do,” was the general feeling.

“I’ll give you fellows a piece of advice,” said a voice from the end of the hall.  They all turned round with a start, and the speaker got up from a bench on which he had been lying unobserved, and gave himself a shake.  He was a big, loose-made fellow, with huge limbs which had grown too far through his jacket and trousers.  “Don’t you go to anybody at all—­you just stand out; say you won’t fag.  They’ll soon get tired of licking you.  I’ve tried it on years ago with their forerunners.”

“No!  Did you?  Tell us how it was?” cried a chorus of voices, as they clustered round him.

“Well, just as it is with you.  The fifth form would fag us, and I and some more struck, and we beat ’em.  The good fellows left off directly, and the bullies who kept on soon got afraid.”

“Was Flashman here then?”

“Yes; and a dirty, little, snivelling, sneaking fellow he was too.  He never dared join us, and used to toady the bullies by offering to fag for them, and peaching against the rest of us.”

“Why wasn’t he cut, then?” said East.

“Oh, toadies never get cut; they’re too useful.  Besides, he has no end of great hampers from home, with wine and game in them; so he toadied and fed himself into favour.”

The quarter-to-ten bell now rang, and the small boys went off upstairs, still consulting together, and praising their new counsellor, who stretched himself out on the bench before the hall fire again.  There he lay, a very queer specimen of boyhood, by name Diggs, and familiarly called “the Mucker.”  He was young for his size, and a very clever fellow, nearly at the top of the fifth.  His friends at home, having regard, I suppose, to his age, and not to his size and place in the school, hadn’t put him into tails; and even his jackets were always too small; and he had a talent for destroying clothes and making himself look shabby.  He wasn’t on terms with Flashman’s set, who sneered at his dress and ways behind his back; which he knew, and revenged himself by asking Flashman the most disagreeable questions, and treating him familiarly whenever a crowd of boys were round him.  Neither was he intimate with any of the other bigger boys, who were warned off by his oddnesses, for he was a very queer fellow; besides, amongst other failings, he had that of impecuniosity in a remarkable degree.  He brought as much money as other boys to school, but got rid of it in no time, no one knew how; and then, being also reckless, borrowed from any one; and when his debts accumulated and creditors pressed, would have an auction in the hall of everything he possessed in the world, selling even his school-books, candlestick, and study table.  For weeks after one of these auctions, having rendered his study uninhabitable, he would live about in the fifth-form room and hall,