able capital, and easily exchangeable for birds'-eggs or young
birds, Martin's pound invariably found its way in a few hours to
Howlett's the bird-fancier's, in the Bilton Road, who would give a
hawk's or nightingale's egg or young linnet in exchange. Martin's
ingenuity was therefore for ever on the rack to supply himself with a
light; just now he had hit upon a grand invention, and the den was
lighted by a flaring cotton-wick issuing from a ginger-beer bottle full
of some doleful composition. When light altogether failed him, Martin
would loaf about by the fires in the passages or Hall, after the manner
of Diggs, and try to do his verses or learn his lines by the fire-light.

"Well, old boy, you haven't got any sweeter in the den this half. How
that stuff in the bottle stinks. Never mind, I ain't going to stop, but
you come up after prayers to our study; you know young Arthur; we've got
Gray's study. We'll have a good supper and talk about birds'-nesting."

Martin was evidently highly pleased at the invitation, and promised to
be up without fail.

As soon as prayers were over, and the sixth and fifth-form boys had
withdrawn to the aristocratic seclusion of their own room, and the rest,
or democracy, had sat down to their supper in the Hall, Tom and Arthur,
having secured their allowances of bread and cheese, started on their
feet to catch the eye of the praepostor of the week, who remained in
charge during supper, walking up and down the Hall. He happened to be an
easy-going fellow, so they got a pleasant nod to their "Please may I go
out?" and away they scrambled to prepare for Martin a sumptuous banquet.
This Tom had insisted on, for he was in great delight on the occasion;
the reason of which delight must be expounded. The fact was, this was
the first attempt at a friendship of his own which Arthur had made, and
Tom hailed it as a grand step. The ease with which he himself became
hail-fellow-well-met with anybody, and blundered into and out of twenty
friendships a half-year, made him sometimes sorry and sometimes angry at
Arthur's reserve and loneliness. True, Arthur was always pleasant, and
even jolly, with any boys who came with Tom to their study; but Tom felt
that it was only through him, as it were, that his chum associated with
others, and that but for him Arthur would have been dwelling in a
wilderness. This increased his consciousness of responsibility; and
though he hadn't reasoned it out and made it clear