He felt that they had been the first rebels, and that the rebellion had been to a great extent successful; but what above all stirred the hatred and bitterness of his heart against them was that in the frequent collisions which there had been of late they had openly called him coward and sneak.  The taunts were too true to be forgiven.  While he was in the act of thrashing them, they would roar out instances of his funking at football, or shirking some encounter with a lout of half his own size.  These things were all well enough known in the house, but to have his own disgrace shouted out by small boys, to feel that they despised him, to be unable to silence them by any amount of torture, and to see the open laugh and sneer of his own associates (who were looking on, and took no trouble to hide their scorn from him, though they neither interfered with his bullying nor lived a bit the less intimately with him), made him beside himself.  Come what might, he would make those boys’ lives miserable.  So the strife settled down into a personal affair between Flashman and our youngsters—­a war to the knife, to be fought out in the little cockpit at the end of the bottom passage.

Flashman, be it said, was about seventeen years old, and big and strong of his age.  He played well at all games where pluck wasn’t much wanted, and managed generally to keep up appearances where it was; and having a bluff, off-hand manner, which passed for heartiness, and considerable powers of being pleasant when he liked, went down with the school in general for a good fellow enough.  Even in the School-house, by dint of his command of money, the constant supply of good things which he kept up, and his adroit toadyism, he had managed to make himself not only tolerated, but rather popular amongst his own contemporaries; although young Brooke scarcely spoke to him, and one or two others of the right sort showed their opinions of him whenever a chance offered.  But the wrong sort happened to be in the ascendant just now, and so Flashman was a formidable enemy for small boys.  This soon became plain enough.  Flashman left no slander unspoken, and no deed undone, which could in any way hurt his victims, or isolate them from the rest of the house.  One by one most of the other rebels fell away from them, while Flashman’s cause prospered, and several other fifth-form boys began to look black at them and ill-treat them as they passed about the house.  By keeping out of bounds, or at all events out of the house and quadrangle, all day, and carefully barring themselves in at night, East and Tom managed to hold on without feeling very miserable; but it was as much as they could do.  Greatly were they drawn then towards old Diggs, who, in an uncouth way, began to take a good deal of notice of them, and once or twice came to their study when Flashman was there, who immediately decamped in consequence.  The boys thought that Diggs must have been watching.