against Flashman and his two or three intimates,
and they were obliged to keep their doings more secret, but being
thorough bad fellows, missed no opportunity of torturing in private.
Flashman was an adept in all ways, but above all in the power of saying
cutting and cruel things, and could often bring tears to the eyes of
boys in this way, which all the thrashings in the world wouldn't have
wrung from them.

And as his operations were being cut short in other directions, he now
devoted himself chiefly to Tom and East, who lived at his own door, and
would force himself into their study whenever he found a chance, and sit
there, sometimes alone, and sometimes with a companion, interrupting all
their work, and exulting in the evident pain which every now and then he
could see he was inflicting on one or the other.

The storm had cleared the air for the rest of the house, and a better
state of things now began than there had been since old Brooke had left;
but an angry, dark spot of thunder-cloud still hung over the end of the
passage where Flashman's study and that of East and Tom lay.

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 k