Young Barbarians

"Nestie was standing in the centre of the large entrance hall."

Copyright, 1899 and 1900,
By The Curtis Publishing Company,
as
A SCOTS GRAMMAR SCHOOL.

Copyright, 1900,
By The Curtis Publishing Company.

Copyright, 1901,
By Dodd, Mead and Company.

First Edition, Published October, 1901

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"SPEUG"

I

Muirtown Seminary was an imposing building of the classical order, facing the north meadow and commanding from its upper windows a fine view of the river Tay running rapidly and cleanly upon its gravel bed. Behind the front building was the paved court where the boys played casual games in the breaks of five minutes between the hours of study, and this court had an entrance from a narrow back street along which, in snow time, a detachment of the enemy from the other schools might steal any hour and take us by disastrous surprise. There were those who wished that we had been completely walled up at the back, for then we had met the attack at a greater advantage from the front. But the braver souls of our commonwealth considered that this back way, affording opportunities for ambushes, sallies, subtle tactics, and endless vicissitudes, lent a peculiar flavour to the war we waged the whole winter through and most of the summer, and brought it nearer to the condition of Red Indian fighting, which was our favourite reading and our example of heroism. Again and again we studied the adventures of Bill Biddon, the Indian spy, not only on account of his hairbreadth escapes when he eluded the Indians after a miraculous fashion and detected the presence of the red varmint by the turning of a leaf on the ground, but also in order to find out new methods of deceit by which we could allure our Indians into narrow places, or daring methods of attack by which we could successfully outflank them on the broader street and drive them into their own retreats with public ignominy.

Within the building the glory of the Seminary was a massive stone stair, circular in shape, and having a "well" surrounded on the ground floor by a wall some three feet high. Down this stair the masters descended at nine o'clock for the opening of the school, with Bulldog, who was the mathematical master and the awful pride of the school, at their head, and it was strictly forbidden that any boy, should be found within the "well." As it was the most tempting of places for the deposit of anything in the shape of rubbish, from Highland bonnets to little boys, and especially as any boy found in the well was sure to be caned, there was an obvious and irresistible opportunity for enterprise. Peter McGuffie, commonly called the Sparrow, or in Scotch tongue "Speug," and one of the two heads of our commonwealth, used to wait with an expression of such demureness that it ought to have been a danger signal till Bulldog was halfway down the stair, and a row of boys were standing in expectation with their backs to the forbidden place. Then, passing swiftly along, he swept off half a dozen caps and threw them over, and suddenly seizing a tempting urchin landed him on the bed of caps which had been duly prepared. Without turning his head one-eighth of an inch, far less condescending to look over, Bulldog as he passed made a mental note of the prisoner's name, and identified the various bonnetless boys, and then, dividing his duty over the hours of the day, attended to each culprit separately and carefully. If any person, from the standpoint of this modern and philanthropic day, should ask why some innocent victim did not state his case and lay the blame upon the guilty, then it is enough to say that that person had never been a scholar at Muirtown Seminary, and has not the slightest knowledge of the character and methods of Peter McGuffie. Had any boy of our time given information to a master, or, in the Scotch tongue, "had clyped," he would have had the coldest reception at the hands of Bulldog, and when his conduct was known to the school he might be assured of such constant and ingenious attention at the hands of Speug that he would have been ready to drown himself in the Tay rather than continue his studies at Muirtown Seminary.

Speug's father was the leading horsedealer of the Scots Midlands, and a sporting man of established repute, a short, thick-set, red-faced, loud-voiced, clean-shaven man, with hair cut close to his head, whose calves and whose manner were the secret admiration of Muirtown. Quiet citizens of irreproachable respectability and religious orthodoxy regarded him with a pride which they would never confess; not because they would have spoken or acted as he did for a king's ransom, and not because they would have liked to stand in his shoes when he came to die—considering, as they did, that the future of a horsedealer and an owner of racing horses was dark in the extreme—but because he was a perfect specimen of his kind and had made the town of Muirtown to be known far and wide in sporting circles. Bailie McCallum, for instance, could have no dealings with McGuffie senior, and would have been scandalised had he attended the Bailie's kirk; but sitting in his shop and watching Muirtown life as it passed, the Bailie used to chuckle after an appreciative fashion at the sight of McGuffie, and to meditate with much inward satisfaction on stories of McGuffie's exploits—how he had encountered southern horsedealers and sent them home humbled with defeat, and had won hopeless races over the length and breadth of the land. "It's an awfu' trade," McCallum used to remark, "and McGuffie is no' the man for an elder; but sall, naebody ever got the better o' him at a bargain." Among the lads of the Seminary he was a local hero, and on their way home from school they loitered to study him, standing in the gateway of his stables, straddling his legs, chewing a straw, and shouting his views on the Muirtown races to friends at the distance of half a street. When he was in good humour he would nod to the lads and wink to them with such acuteness and drollery that they attempted to perform the same feat all the way home and were filled with despair. It did not matter that we were fed, by careful parents, with books containing the history of good men who began life with 2s. 11d., and died leaving a quarter of a million, made by selling soft goods and attending church, and with other books relating pathetic anecdotes of boys who died young and, before they died, delighted society with observations of the most edifying character on the shortness of life. We had rather have been a horsedealer and kept a stable.

Most of us regarded McGuffie senior as a model of all the virtues that were worthy of a boy's imitation, and his son with undisguised envy, because he had a father of such undeniable notoriety, because he had the run of the stables, because he was on terms of easy familiarity with his father's grooms, and because he was encouraged to do those things which we were not allowed to do, and never exhorted to do those things which he hated to do. All the good advice we ever got, and all the examples of those two excellent young gentlemen, the sons of the Rev. Dr. Dowbiggin, were blown to the winds when we saw Speug pass, sitting in the high dogcart beside his father, while that talented man was showing off to Muirtown a newly broken horse. Speug's position on that seat of unique dignity was more than human, and none of us would have dared to recognise him, but it is only just to add that Peter was quite unspoiled by his privileges, and would wink to his humble friends upon the street after his most roguish fashion and with a skill which proved him his father's son. Social pride and the love of exclusive society were not failings either of Mr. McGuffie senior or of his hopeful son. Both were willing to fight any person of their own size (or, indeed, much bigger), as well as to bargain with anybody, and at any time, about anything, from horses to marbles.

Mrs. McGuffie had been long dead, and during her lifetime was a woman of decided character, whom the grooms regarded with more terror than they did her husband, and whom her husband himself treated with great respect, a respect which grew into unaffected reverence when he was returning from a distant horse-race and was detained, by professional duties, to a late hour in the evening. As her afflicted husband refused to marry again, in decided terms, Peter, their only child, had been brought up from an early age among grooms and other people devoted to the care and study of horses. In this school he received an education which was perhaps more practical and varied than finished and polite. It was not to be wondered, therefore, that his manners were simple and natural to a degree, and that he was never the prey, either in any ordinary circumstances, of timidity or of modesty. Although a motherless lad, he was never helpless, and from the first was able to hold his own and to make his hands keep his head.

His orphan condition excited the compassion of respectable matrons, but their efforts to tend him in his loneliness were not always successful, nor even appreciated to the full by the young McGuffie. When Mrs. Dowbiggin, who had a deep interest in what was called the "work among children," and who got her cabs from McGuffie's stable, took pity on Peter's unprotected childhood, and invited him to play with her boys, who were a head taller and paragons of excellence, the result was unfortunate, and afforded Mrs. Dowbiggin the text for many an exhortation. Peter was brought back to the parental mansion by Dr. Dowbiggin's beadle within an hour, and received a cordial welcome from a congregation of grooms, to whom he related his experiences at the Manse with much detail and agreeable humour. During the brief space at his disposal he had put every toy of the Dowbiggins' in a thorough state of repair, and had blacked their innocent faces with burnt cork so that their mother did not recognise her children. He had also taught them a negro melody of a very taking description, and had reinforced their vocabulary with the very cream of the stable. From that day Mrs. Dowbiggin warned the mothers of Muirtown against allowing their boys to associate with Speug, and Speug could never see her pass on the street without an expression of open delight.

When Mr. McGuffie senior brought his son, being then ten years old, to the Seminary for admittance, it was a chance that he was not refused and that we did not miss our future champion. Mr. McGuffie's profession and reputation were a stumbling-block to the rector, who was a man of austere countenance and strict habits of life, and Peter himself was a very odd-looking piece of humanity and had already established his own record. He was under-sized and of exceptional breadth, almost flat in countenance, and with beady black eyes which on occasion lit up his face as when one illuminates the front of a house, but the occasions were rarely those which would commend themselves to the headmaster of a public school. How the dealer in horses removed the rector's difficulties was never accurately known, but boys passing the door of the rector's retiring-room when he was closeted with Mr. McGuffie overheard scraps of the conversation, and Muirtown was able to understand the situation. It was understood that in a conflict of words the rector, an absent-minded scholar of shrinking manner, was not likely to come off best, and it is certain that the head of the school ever afterwards referred to Mr. McGuffie as "a man of great resolution of character and endowed with the gift of forcible speech." As regards the son, his affectionate father gave him some brief directions before leaving, and in the presence of his fellow-scholars, of which this only was overheard, and seemed, indeed, to be the sum and substance: "Never give in, ye de'il's buckie." With these inspiriting words Mr. McGuffie senior departed through the front door amid a hush of admiration, leaving Peter to his fate not far from that "well" which was to be the scene of many of his future waggeries.

With the progress of civilisation school life in Scotland has taken on a high degree of refinement, and rumour has it—but what will people not say?—that a new boy will come in a cab to the Seminary and will receive a respectful welcome from the generation following Peter, and that the whole school will devote itself to his comfort for days—showing him where to hang his cap, initiating him into games, assisting him with his lessons, and treating his feelings with delicate respect. It has been my own proud satisfaction, as a relic of a former barbarian age, to read the rules, which, I believe, are now printed in black letters with red capitals and hung in the rooms of Muirtown Seminary. My feelings will not allow me to give them all, but the following have moved me almost to tears:—

Rule 1.—That every boy attending this school is expected to behave himself in speech and deed as a gentleman.

Rule 2.—That anyone writing upon a wall, or in any way marking the school furniture, will be considered to have committed an offence, and will be punished.

Rule 3.—That every boy is exhorted to treat every other with courtesy, and anyone guilty of rudeness to a fellow-scholar is to be reported to the headmaster.

Rule 4.—That it is expected of every boy to cultivate neatness of appearance, and especially to see that his clothes, collars, cuffs, and other articles of clothing be not soiled.

These admirable rules suggest a new atmosphere and one very different from that in which we passed our stormy youth, for no sentiment of this kind softened life in earlier days or affected our Spartan simplicity. The very sight of a newcomer in a speckless suit, with an irreproachable tie and both tails on his glengarry bonnet, excited a profound emotion in the school and carried it beyond self-control. What could be expected of a fellow so bedecked and preserved as if he had just stepped out of a bandbox or a tailor's shop? Left alone in his pride and perfection—the very beginning of a Pharisee—he would only go from bad to worse and come at last to a sad end. We hardly claimed to be philanthropists, but we did feel it was our duty to rescue this lad. It might be, of course, that we could not finally save him, but he ought at least to have a chance, and Speug had a quite peculiar satisfaction in at once removing the two offensive tails by one vigorous pull, while the rumpling of a collar was a work of missionary zeal. No system of philanthropy is successful with all cases, and we had our failures, which we think about unto this day, and which have only justified our sad predictions. Boys like the two Dowbiggins never improved, and were at last given up in despair even by Speug, their tails being renewed day by day and their faces remaining in all circumstances quite unmoved; but within a month the average boy had laid aside the last remnant of conventionality, and was only outdone by Peter himself in studied negligence of attire.

Peter's own course of discipline was sharp, but it did not last long, for certain practical reasons.

"What business have you here, ye son of a horse-couper?" was the encouraging salutation offered by a solicitor's son to the stumpy little figure bereft of its father and left to fight its battles alone.

"Mair business than you, spindleshanks, ye son o' a thievin' lawyer," and although Peter was four years younger and small for his age, he showed that he had not learned boxing from his father's grooms without profit, and his opponent attended no more classes that day. This encounter excited the deepest interest and revived the whole life of the school. One lad after another experimented on Peter and made as much of it as drawing a badger. He was often hurt, but he never uttered any cry. He gave rather more than he got, and lads going home in the afternoon could see him giving an account of the studies of the day to an admiring audience in the stable-yard. By-and-by he was left severely alone, and for the impudence of him, and his courage, and his endurance, and his general cockiness, and his extraordinary ingenuity in mischief, he was called "Speug," which is Scotch for a sparrow, and figuratively expressed the admiration of the school.

It would be brazen falsehood to say that Peter was a scholar, or, indeed, gave any voluntary attention to the course of learning laid down by the authorities of Muirtown Seminary. He sat unashamed at the foot of every class, maintaining a certain impenetrable front when a question came his length, and with the instinct of a chieftain never risking his position in the school by exposing himself to contempt. When Thomas John Dowbiggin was distinguishing himself after an unholy fashion by translating Cæsar into English like unto Macaulay's History, Speug used to watch him with keen interest, and employ his leisure time in arranging some little surprise to enliven the even tenor of Thomas John's life. So curious a being, however, is a boy, and so inconsistent, that as often as Duncan Robertson answered more promptly than Thomas John, and obtained the first place, Speug's face lit up with unaffected delight, and he was even known to smack his lips audibly. When the rector's back was turned he would convey his satisfaction over Thomas John's discomfiture with such delightful pantomime that the united class did him homage, and even Thomas John was shaken out of his equanimity; but then Duncan Robertson's father was colonel of a Highland regiment, and Duncan himself was a royal fighter, and had not in his Highland body the faintest trace of a prig, while Thomas John's face was a standing reproof of everything that was said and done outside of lesson time in Muirtown School.

Peter, however, had his own genius, and for captivating adventures none was to be compared with him. Was it not Speug who floated down the tunnel through which a swift running stream of clean water reached the Tay, and allured six others to follow him, none of whom, happily, were drowned? and did not the whole school, with the exception of the Dowbiggins, await his exit at the black mouth of the tunnel and reward his success with a cheer? Was it not Speug, with Duncan Robertson's military assistance, who constructed a large earth-work in a pit at the top of the Meadow, which was called the Redan and was blown up with gunpowder one Saturday afternoon, seven boys being temporarily buried beneath the ruins, and Peter himself losing both eyebrows? And when an old lady living next the school laid a vicious complaint against Speug and some other genial spirits for having broken one of her windows in a snowball fight, he made no sign and uttered no threat, but in the following autumn he was in a position to afford a ripe pear to each boy in the four upper forms—except the Dowbiggins, who declined politely—and to distribute a handful for a scramble among the little boys. There was much curiosity about the source of Peter's generosity, and it certainly was remarkable that the pear was of the same kind as the old lady cultivated with much pride, and that her fruit was gathered for her in the course of one dark night. Speug was capable of anything except telling a lie. He could swim the Tay at its broadest and almost at its swiftest, could ride any horse in his father's stable, could climb any tree in the meadows, and hold his own in every game, from marbles and "catch the keggie," a game based on smuggling, to football, where he was a very dangerous forward, and cricket, where his batting was fearsome for its force and obstinacy. There was nothing he could not do with his hands, and no one whom he was not ready to face.

Speug was a very vigorous barbarian indeed, and the exact type of a turbulent Lowland Scot, without whom the Seminary had missed its life and colour, and who by sheer force of courage and strength asserted himself as our chief captain. After many years have passed, Speug stands out a figure of size and reality from among the Dowbiggins and other poor fleeting shadows. Thomas John, no doubt, carried off medals, prizes, certificates of merit, and everything else which could be obtained in Muirtown Seminary by a lad who played no games and swatted all evening at next day's work. The town was weary of seeing Thomas John and his brother—each wearing the same smug expression, and each in faultlessly neat attire—processing up in turn to receive their honours from the hands of the Lord Provost, and the town would cheer with enthusiasm when Duncan Robertson made an occasional appearance, being glad to escape from the oppression of the Dowbiggin régime. Nor was the town altogether wrong in refusing to appreciate the Dowbiggins at their own value, and declining to believe that the strength of the country was after their fashion. When Thomas John reached the University he did not altogether fulfil the expectations of his family, and by the time he reached the pulpit no one could endure his unredeemed dulness. When last I heard of him he was secretary to a blameless society which has for its object the discovery of the lost Ten Tribes, and it occurs to me that it would have been a good thing for Thomas John to have been blown up in the destruction of the Redan: he might have become a man.

After the Seminary had done its best for Speug he retired upon his laurels and went to assist his father in the business of horsedealing, to which he brought an invincible courage and a large experience in bargaining. For years his old fellow-scholars saw him breaking in young horses on the roads round Muirtown, and he covered himself with glory in a steeplechase open to all the riders of Scotland. When Mr. McGuffie senior was killed by an Irish mare, Peter sold the establishment and went into foreign parts in search of adventure, reappearing at intervals of five years from Australia, Texas, the Plate, Cape of Good Hope, assured and reckless as ever, but always straightforward, masterful, open-handed, and gallant. His exploits are over now, and all England read his last, how he sent on in safety a settler's household through a narrow pass in Matabele Land, and with a handful of troopers held the savages in check until pursuit was vain.

"From the account of prisoners we learn," wrote the war correspondent, "that Captain McGuffie, of the Volunteer Horse, fought on after his men had been all killed and his last cartridge fired. With his back to a rock in a narrow place he defended himself with such skill and courage that the Matabele declared him the best fighting man they had ever met, and he was found with a mound of dead at his feet." Only last week two Seminary men were reading that account together and recalling Peter, and such is the inherent wickedness of human nature, that the death (from apoplexy) of Thomas John Dowbiggin would have been much less lamented. "That is just how Speug would have liked to die, for he dearly loved a fight and knew not fear." They revived the ancient memories of Peter's boyhood, and read the despatch of the commanding officer, with his reference to the gallant service of Captain McGuffie, and then they looked at Peter's likeness in the illustrated papers, the eyes as bold and mischievous as ever. "Well done, Speug!" said a doctor of divinity—may he be forgiven!—"well done, Speug, a terrier of the old Scots breed."

Peter's one rival in the idolatry of the school was Duncan Ronald Stewart Robertson, commonly known as Dunc, and Dunc was in everything except honesty, generosity, and courage, the exact opposite of Peter McGuffie. Robertson's ancestors had been lairds of Tomnahurich, a moor in Rannoch, with half a dozen farms, since the Deluge, as they believed, and certainly since history began. For hundreds of years they had been warriors, fighting other clans, fighting among themselves, fighting for Prince Charlie, and for more than a century fighting for England as officers in the Highland regiments. The present laird had been in the Crimean war and the Mutiny, besides occasional expeditions, and was colonel of the Perthshire Buffs. When he came to our examination in full uniform, having first inspected the local garrison on the meadow, it was the greatest day in our time. We cheered him when he came in, counting the medals on his breast, amidst which we failed not to notice the Victoria Cross. We cheered him in the class-rooms, we cheered him when he mounted his horse outside and rode along the terrace, and Peter led a detachment by the back way up to Breadalbane Street to give him one cheer more. Robertson was a tall, well-knit, athletic lad, with red hair, blue eyes, and a freckled face, not handsome, but carrying himself with much dignity and grace. Speug always appeared in tight-fitting trousers, as became Mr. McGuffie's son, but Robertson wore the kilt and never looked anything else but a gentleman, yet his kilt was ever of the shabbiest, and neither had his bonnet any tails. His manners were those of his blood, but a freer and heartier and more harum-scarum fellow never lived. It is a pleasant remembrance, after many years, to see again a group of lads round the big fire in the winter time, and to hear Duncan Robertson read the stirring ballad, "How Horatius kept the bridge in the brave days of old," till Peter can contain himself no longer, and proposes that a select band shall go instantly to McIntyre's Academy and simply compel a conflict. Dunc went into his father's regiment and fell at Tel-el-Kebir, and there is one Seminary man at least who keeps the portraits of the two captains—Peter McGuffie, the Scot, the horsedealer's son, and a very vulgar varlet indeed, and Duncan Robertson, the Celt, a well-born man's son, and a gentleman himself from head to foot—in remembrance of a school which was rough and old-fashioned, where, indeed, softness and luxury were impossible, but where men were made who had the heart in them to live and die for their country.

BULLDOG

II

The headmaster of a certain great English school is accustomed to enlarge in private on the secret of boy management, and this is the sum of his wisdom—Be kind to the boy, and he will despise you; put your foot on his neck, and he will worship you. This deliverance must, of course, as its eminent author intends, be read with sense, and with any modification it must be disappointing to philanthropists, but it is confirmed by life. Let a master, not very strong in character and scholarship, lay himself out to be a boy's friend—using affectionate language, overseeing his health, letting him off impositions, sparing the rod, and inciting him to general benevolence—and the boy will respond, without any doubt, but it will be after his own fashion. The boy will take that master's measure with extraordinary rapidity; he will call him by some disparaging nickname, with an unholy approximation to truth; he will concoct tricky questions to detect his ignorance; he will fling back his benefits with contempt; he will make his life a misery, and will despise him as long as he lives. Let a man of masculine character and evident ability set himself to rule and drill boys, holding no unnecessary converse with them, working them to the height of their powers, insisting on the work being done, not fearing to punish with severity, using terrible language on occasion, dealing with every boy alike without favour or partiality, giving rare praise with enthusiasm, and refraining always from mocking sarcasm—which boys hate and never forgive—and he will have his reward. They will rage against him in groups on the playing-fields and as they go home in companies, but ever with an intense appreciation of his masterliness; they will recall with keen enjoyment his detection of sneaks and his severity on prigs; they will invent a name for him to enshrine his achievements, and pass it down to the generation following; they will dog his steps on the street with admiration, all the truer because mingled with awe. And the very thrashings of such a man will be worth the having, and become the subject of boasting in after years.

There was a master once in Muirtown Seminary whose career was short and inglorious, as well as very disappointing to those who believed in the goodness of the boy. Mr. Byles explained to Mrs. Dowbiggin his idea of a schoolmaster's duty, and won the heart of that estimable person, although the Doctor maintained an instructive silence, and afterwards hinted to his spouse that Mr. Byles had not quite grasped the boy nature, at least in Muirtown.

"Yes, Mrs. Dowbiggin, I have always had a love for boys—for I was the youngest of our family, and the rest were girls—seven dear girls, gentle and sweet. They taught me sympathy. And don't you think that boys, as well as older people, are ruled by kindness and not by force? When I remember how I was treated, I feel this is how other boys would wish to be treated. Muffins? Buttered, if you please. I dote on muffins! So I am a schoolmaster."

"You are needed at the Seminary, Mr. Byles, I can tell you, for the place is just a den of savages! Will you believe me, that a boy rolled James on the ground till he was like a clay cat yesterday—and James is so particular about being neat!—and when I complained to Mr. MacKinnon, he laughed in my face and told me that it would do the laddie good? There's a master for you! Thomas John tells me that he is called 'Bulldog,' and although I don't approve of disrespect, I must say it is an excellent name for Mr. MacKinnon. And I've often said to the Doctor, 'If the masters are like that, what can you expect of the boys?'"

"Let us hope, Mrs. Dowbiggin, that there will soon be some improvement; and it will not be my fault if there isn't. What I want to be is not a master, but the boys' friend, to whom the boys will feel as to a mother, to whom they will confide their difficulties and trials," and Mr. Byles' face had a soft, tender, far-away look.

It was only for one winter that he carried on his mission, but it remains a green and delectable memory with old boys of the Seminary. How he would not use the cane, because it brutalised boys, as he explained, but kept Peter McGuffie in for an hour, during which time he remonstrated with Peter for his rude treatment of James Dowbiggin, whom he had capsized over a form, and how Peter's delighted compatriots climbed up one by one to the window and viewed him under Mr. Byles' ministrations with keen delight, while Speug imitated to them by signs that they would have to pay handsomely for their treat. How he would come on Jock Howieson going home in a heavy rain, and ostentatiously refusing even to button his coat, and would insist on affording him the shelter of an umbrella, to Jock's intense humiliation, who knew that Peter was following with derisive criticism. How, by way of conciliation, Mr. Byles would carry sweets in his coat-tail pocket and offer them at unsuitable times to the leading anarchists, who regarded this imbecility as the last insult. It is now agreed that Mr. Byles' sudden resignation was largely due to an engineering feat of Peter's, who had many outrages to avenge, and succeeded in attaching no less than three squibs to the good man's desk; but it is likely that an exhortation from Bulldog, overheard by the delighted school, had its due effect.

"Humanity or no humanity, my man, it's no peppermint drops nor pats on the head that'll rule Muirtown birkies; their fathers were brought up on the stick, and the stick'll make the sons men. If ye'll take my advice, Mr. Byles, adverteese for a situation in a lassies' school. Ye're ower dainty for Muirtown Seminary."

This was not a charge which his worst enemy could bring against Mr. Dugald MacKinnon, and because he was the very opposite—a most unflinching, resolute, iron man—he engraved himself on the hearts of three generations of Muirtown men. They were a dour, hard-headed, enterprising lot—a blend from the upland braes of Drumtochty and the stiff carse of Gowrie and the Celts of Lock Tay, with some good south country stuff—and there are not many big cities on either side of the Atlantic where two or three Muirtown men cannot this day be found. They always carry in their hearts the "Fair City"—which lieth in a basin among the hills, beside the clean, swift-running river, like a Scots Florence; and they grow almost eloquent when they start upon their home, but the terminus of recollection is ever the same. When they have dallied with the swimming in the Tay, and the climbing of the hill which looks down on the fair plain as far as Dundee, and the golf on the meadows, and the mighty snow fights in days where there were men (that is, boys) in the land, and memory is fairly awake, some one suddenly says, "Bulldog." "Ah!" cries another, with long-drawn pleasure, as one tasting a delicate liquor; and "Bulldog," repeats the third, as if a world of joy lay in the word. They rest for a minute, bracing themselves, and then conversation really begins, and being excited, they drop into the Scots tongue.

"Man," hurries in the first, "a' see him stannin' at his desk in the mornin' watchin' the laddies comin' in ower the top o' his spectacles, an' juist considerin' wha wud be the better o' a bit thrashin' that day."

"Sax feet high gin he wes an inch," bursts in the second, "an' as straight as a rush, though a'm thinkin' he wes seventy, or maybe eighty, some threipit (insisted) he was near ninety; an' the een o' him—div ye mind, lads, hoo they gied back an' forward in his head—oscillatin' like? Sall, they were fearsome."

"An' the rush to get in afore the last stroke o' nine"—the third man cannot be restrained—"an' the crack o' his cane on the desk an' 'Silence'; man, ye micht hae heard a moose cross the floor at the prayer."

"Div ye think he keekit oot atween his eyelids, Jock?"

"Him? nae fear o't," and Howieson is full of contempt. "Ae day I pit a peen into that smooth-faced wratch Dowbiggin, juist because I cudna bear the look o' him; an' if he didna squeal like a stuck pig. Did Bulldog open his een an' look?"

The audience has no remembrance of such a humiliating descent.

"Na, na," resumes Jock, "he didna need; he juist repeated the first sentence o' the prayer ower again in an awfu' voice, an' aifter it wes dune, doon he comes to me. 'Whatna prank wes that?'"

"Wes't nippy?" inquires Bauldie with relish, anticipating the sequel.

"Michty," replies Jock; "an' next he taks Dowbiggin. 'Who asked you to join in the prayer?' an' ye cud hae heard his yowls on the street. Bulldog hed a fine stroke." And the three smoked in silent admiration for a space.

"Sandie, div ye mind the sins in the prayer? 'Lord deliver the laddies before Thee from lying—— '"

"'Cheating,'" breaks in Bauldie.

"'Cowardice,'" adds Sandie.

"'And laziness, which are as the devil,'" completes Jock.

"An' the laist petition, a' likit it fine, 'Be pleased to put common sense in their heads, and Thy fear in their hearts, and—— '"

"'Give them grace to be honest men all the days of their life,'" chant the other two together.

"It wes a purpose-like prayer, an' a' never heard a better, lads; he walkit up to his words, did Bulldog, an' he did his wark well." And as they thought of that iron age, the railway president and the big banker and the corn merchant—for that is what the fellows have come to—smack their lips with relish and kindly regret.

It may be disappointing, but it remains a fact, that the human history of the ages is repeated in the individual, and the natural boy is a savage, with the aboriginal love of sport, hardy indifference to circumstances, stoical concealment of feelings, irrepressible passion for fighting, unfeigned admiration for strength, and slavish respect for the strong man. By-and-by he will be civilised and Christianised, and settle down, will become considerate, merciful, peaceable—will be concerned about his own boys having wet feet, and will preside at meetings for the prevention of cruelty to animals; but he has to go through his process of barbarism. During this Red Indian stage a philanthropist is not the ideal of the boy. His master must have the qualities of a brigand chief, an autocratic will, a fearless mien, and an iron hand. On the first symptom of mutiny he must draw a pistol from his belt (one of twenty), and shoot the audacious rebel dead on the spot. So perfectly did Bulldog fulfil this ideal that Bauldie, who had an unholy turn for caricature, once drew him in the costume and arms of Chipanwhackewa, an Indian chief of prodigious valour and marvellous exploits. This likeness was passed from hand to hand, to be arrested and confiscated by its subject when in Jock Howieson's possession, and although Jock paid the penalty, as was most due, yet it was believed that Bulldog was much pleased by the tribute, and that he kept the picture in his desk.

His achievements in his own field, which extended from the supervision of handwriting to instruction in mathematics, were sustained and marvellous. When a boy was committed to his care at or about the age of eight, before which age he attended a girls' school and fed his imagination on what was in store for him under Bulldog, the great man wrote at the head of his copy-book, in full text and something better than copper-plate, "He that spareth his rod hateth his son." With this animating sentiment the neophyte made a fearful beginning, and his master assisted him to transcribe it for years to come through half text and small text, till he could accomplish it with such delicate up-strokes and massive down-strokes, such fine curves and calculated distances, that the writing could hardly be distinguished from the original, and might be exhibited to the Lord Provost and bailies at the annual examination. It is said now that no school of any name in the land would condescend to teach writing, and that boys coming from such high places can compass their own signatures with difficulty, and are quite illegible after a gentlemanly fashion; but it was otherwise in one old grammar school. So famous was the caligraphy produced at the Seminary that Muirtown bankers, lawyers, and other great personages used to drop in of an afternoon, and having snuffed with the master, would go over the copy-books and pick out suitable lads for their offices. And it is a solemn fact that one enterprising Muirtown clerk went up to London without a single introduction and obtained a situation in the great firm of Brancker, Copleston, Goldbeater & Co., on the strength of a letter and sheet of figures he sent to old Fyler, the manager, whose reason was giving way under the scrawling of the junior clerks. Bulldog considered that his pupils' handwriting steadily deteriorated from the day of their departure. When they came to see him at school from Glasgow, London, and beyond the sea, as they all did, on their visits to Muirtown, besides giving them an affectionate welcome, which began at the door and ended at the desk, he never failed to produce their letters and point out the decadence in careful detail, while the school rejoiced greatly.

Any lad who showed some aptitude, or whose father insisted on the higher education, was allured into geometry and raised to the dignity of the blackboard, where he did his work in face of the school with fear and trembling. This was public life, and carried extremes of honour and disgrace. When Willie Pirie appeared at the board—who is now a Cambridge don of such awful learning that his juniors, themselves distinguished persons, can only imagine where he is in pure mathematics—the school, by tacit permission, suspended operations to see the performance. As Willie progressed, throwing in an angle here and a circle there, and utilising half the alphabet for signs, while he maintained the reasoning from point to point in his high, shrill voice, Bulldog stood a pace aside, a pointer in one hand and in the other a cloth with which at a time he would wipe his forehead till it was white with chalk, and his visage was glorious to behold. When the end came, Bulldog would seize the word out of Pirie's mouth and shout, "Q. E. D., Q ... E ... D. Splendid. Did ye follow that, laddies?" taking snuff profusely, with the cloth under one arm and the pointer under the other. "William Pirie, ye'll be a wrangler if ye hae grace o' continuance. Splendid!"

It was otherwise when Jock Howieson tried to indicate the nature of an isosceles triangle and confused it with a square, supporting his artistic efforts with remarks which reduced all the axioms of Euclid to one general ruin. For a while the master explained and corrected, then he took refuge in an ominous silence, after which, at each new development, he played on Jock with the pointer, till Jock, seeing him make for the cane, modestly withdrew, but did not reach his place of retreat without assistance and much plain truth.

"It's a shame to take any fee from your father, Jock Howieson, and it's little use trying to give ye any education. Ye've the thickest head and the least sense in all the schule. Man, they should take you home and set ye on eggs to bring out chickens; ye micht manage that wi' care. The first three propositions, Jock, before ye leave this room, without a slip, or ma certes!" and Jock understood that if he misused his time his instructor would make good use of his.

It was Bulldog's way to promenade the empty schoolroom for ten minutes before the reassembling at two, and it was rare indeed that a boy should be late. When one afternoon there were only nineteen present and forty-three absent, he could only look at Dowbiggin, and when that exemplary youth explained that the school had gone up to the top of the Meadow for a bathe, and suggested they were still enjoying themselves, Bulldog was much lifted.

"Bathing is a healthy exercise, and excellent for the mind, but it's necessary to bring a glow to the skin aifterwards, or there micht be a chill," and he searched out and felt a superior cane kept for the treatment of truants and other grievous offenders.

It was exactly 2.15 when the door opened and a procession of forty-two entered panting and breathless, headed by Dunc Robertson, who carried his head erect, with a light in his eye, and closed by Peter, whose hair was like unto that of a drowned rat, and whose unconcealed desire was for obscurity. The nineteen could only smack their lips with expectation and indicate by signs the treat awaiting their comrades.

"I've had chairge of the departments of writing, arithmetic, and mathematics in the Muirtown Seminary," began Bulldog, "for fifty-five years laist Martinmas, and near eighteen hundred laddies hae passed through my hands. Some o' them were gude and some were bad"—Mr. MacKinnon spoke with a judicial calmness that was awful—"some were yir grandfathers, some were yir fathers; but such a set of impudent, brazen-faced little scoundrels——" Then his composure failed him as he looked at the benches. "What have ye got to say for yirselves, for it will be three weeks afore I'm over ye all?"

For a while no one moved, and then Dunc Robertson rose in his place and made speech for his fellows like a gentleman's son.

"We are sorry for being late, sir, but it was not our blame; we had been bathing in the golfers' pool, and were dressing to run down to school in good time. Little Nestie—I mean Ernest Molyneux, sir—had stayed in a little longer, and someone cried, 'Nestie's drowning!' and there the little chap was, being carried away by the current."

"Is 'Nestie'—drowned?" and they all noticed the break in Bulldog's voice, and remembered that if he showed indulgence to anyone it was to the little English lad that had appeared in Muirtown life as one out of due place.

"No, sir, Nestie's safe, and some women have taken him home; but he was very nearly gone," and Dunc was plainly shaken. "He's a good ween man, and—and it would have been terrible to see him die before our eyes."

"Who saved Nestie?" Bulldog's face was white, and Jock swore afterwards the tears were in his eyes—but that we did not believe.

"It was one of the boys, sir"—Robertson's voice was very proud—"and it was a gallant deed; but I can't give his name, because he made me promise not to tell."

The master looked round the school, and there was a flush on his cheek.

"John Howieson," with a voice that knew no refusal, and Jock stood in his place.

"Give me the laddie's name who savit Nestie."

"It was Speug, sir, an'—it wes michty; but a' wudna hae telt had ye no askit, an'—it's no my blame," and Jock cast a deprecatory glance where Peter was striving to hide himself behind a slate.

"Peter McGuffie, come out this moment," and Peter, who had obeyed this order in other circumstances with an immovable countenance, now presented the face of one who had broken a till.

"Tell the story, Duncan Robertson, every word of it, that each laddie in this room may remember it as lang as he lives."

"We had nearly all dressed, and some of us had started for school ... and when I got back McGuffie had jumped and was out in the current waiting for Nestie to come up. We saw his face at last, white on the water, and shouted to Peter, and ... he had him in a minute, and ... made for shore; big swimming, sir; not one of us could have done it except himself. A salmon-fisher showed us how to rub Nestie till he came round, and ... he smiled to us, and said, 'I'm all right; sorry to trouble you chaps.' Then we ran down as hard as we could lick, and ... that's all, sir."

"Ye're a leear, Duncan Robertson," suddenly broke out Speug, goaded beyond endurance; "ye helpit oot Nestie yirself, an' ye're ... as muckle tae blame as me."

"All I did, sir"—and Robertson's face was burning red—"was to meet Peter and take Nestie off his hands quite near the bank; he had the danger; I ... did nothing—was too late, in fact, to be of use."

Speug might have contested this barefaced attempt at exculpation, but Bulldog was himself again and gripped the reins of authority.

"Silence!" and his emotion found vent in thunder; "no arguing in my presence. You're an impudent fellow, Peter McGuffie, and have been all your days, the most troublesome, mischievous, upsetting laddie in Muirtown School," and the culprit's whole mien was that of a dog with a bad conscience.

"Ye've fought with your fists, and ye've fought with snowballs; ye've played truant times without number; and as for your tricks in school, they're beyond knowledge. And now ye must needs put the capper on the concern wi' this business!

"There's no use denying it, Peter, for the evidence is plain"—and now Bulldog began to speak with great deliberation. "Ye saw a little laddie out of his depth and likely to be drowned." (Peter dared not lift his head this time; it was going to be a bad case.)

"Ye micht have given the alarm and got the salmon-fishers, but, instead of acting like ony quiet, decent, well-brought-up laddie, and walking down to the school in time for the geometry" (the school believed that the master's eye rested on William Dowbiggin), "ye jumped clothes and all into the Tay." (There was evidently no extenuating feature, and Peter's expression was hopeless.)

"Nor was that all. But the wicked speerit that's in ye, Peter McGuffie, made ye swim out where the river was running strongest and an able-bodied man wouldna care to go. And what for did ye forget yirsel and risk yer life?" But for the first time there was no bravery left in Peter to answer; his wickedness was beyond excuse, as he now felt.

"Peter dared not lift his head."

"Just to save an orphan laddie frae a watery death. And ye did it, Peter; an' it ... beats a'thing ye've dune since ye came into Muirtown Academy? As for you, Duncan Robertson, ye may say what ye like, but it's my opinion that ye're no one grain better. Peter got in first, for he's a perfect genius for mischief—he's aye on the spot—but ye were after him as soon as ye could—you're art and part, baith o' ye, in the exploit." It was clear now that Dunc was in the same condemnation and would share the same reward; whereat Peter's heart was lifted, for Robertson's treachery cried to Heaven for judgment.

"Boys of Muirtown, do you see those tablets?"—and Bulldog pointed to the lists in gold of the former pupils who had distinguished themselves over the world—prizemen, soldiers, travellers, writers, preachers, lawyers, doctors. "It's a grand roll, and an honour to have a place in it, and there are two new names to be added.

"Laddies"—and Bulldog came down from his desk and stood opposite the culprits, whose one wish was that the floor might open beneath them and swallow them up—"you are the sons of men, and I knew you had the beginnings of men in you. I am proud ... to shake hands with you, and to be ... your master. Be off this instant, run like mad to yir homes and change yir clothes, and be back inside half an hour, or it will be the worse for ye! And, look ye here, I would like to know ... how Nestie is."

His walk through the room was always full of majesty, but on that day it passed imagination, and from time to time he could be heard in a soliloquy, "A pair of young rascals! Men of their hands, though, men of their hands! Their fathers' sons! Well done, Peter!" To which the benches listened with awe, for never had they known Bulldog after this fashion.

When the school assembled next Monday morning the boys read in fresh, shining letters—

"Peter McGuffie and Duncan R. S. Robertson, who at the risk of their own lives saved a schoolfellow from drowning."

It stood before the school, so that all could see; but if anyone dared to make a sign in that direction as he passed Speug's desk, his life was not worth living for seven days, and it was felt that Speug never completely recovered from the moral disgrace of that day.

NESTIE

III

It was understood that Nestie's mother was dead and that his father was the Baptist minister of Muirtown—a denomination whose adherents were few and whose practices were vaguely associated with the mill lade—and for two years before he appeared at school Nestie and his father were quite familiar to the boys. Nestie began his education at a ladies' school, not far from the Seminary, where he was much petted by the big girls, and his father could be seen waiting for him every afternoon at dismissal time. A gentle, timid little man, apt to blush on being spoken to, with a hesitating speech and a suggestion of lasting sorrow in his eyes, Mr. Molyneux would sooner have faced a cannon than Miss Letitia MacMuldrow's bevy of young women, and it was a simple fact that when, meditating his sermon one day in the North Meadow, he flopped into their midst and his son insisted on introducing him to the boarders and to Miss Letitia, the poor man went home to bed and left the pulpit next Sunday to an amateur exhorter. His plan of campaign was to arrive on the opposite side of the terrace about a quarter to three, and, as the hour drew near, reconnoitre the door from behind a clump of bushes at the foot of the garden. Nestie usually made his appearance with a bodyguard of maidens, who kissed him shamelessly, and then, catching sight of the anxious face peeping through the laburnums, he would dash down the walk and, giving his slaves a last wave, disappear round the corner. The minister used to take a hasty survey lest they should become a sport to the barbarians in a land where for a father to kiss his boy was synonymous with mental incapacity, and then—it was a cat of a girl who oversaw the meeting—they hugged one another for the space of a whole minute, in which time it is wonderful what can be done if your heart is in it and your hat is allowed to go without care. Had a Seminary boy seen the sight—but the savages were caged at that hour—his feet would have been glued to the ground with amazement, and he had gone away full of silent gratitude that Providence had cast his lot north of the Tweed; but of course he had not reckoned that the father and son had been separated for, say, six whole hours—or almost—and it was necessary to re-establish relations. When this had been done satisfactorily the two crossed a wooden bridge into the Meadow arm-in-arm—Mr. Molyneux unconsciously wearing his hat with a rakish air on the side of his head. Between this hour and sunset was their pleasure in the summer time, and the things they did were varied and remarkable. Sometimes they would disappear into the woods above Muirtown, and return home very dirty, very tired, very happy, laden with wild flowers and dank, earthy roots, which they planted in their tiny garden and watered together with tender solicitude. Other times they played what was supposed to be golf over a course of their own selection and creation at the top of the Meadow, and if by any chance the minister got a ball into a hole, then Nestie danced for a space and the minister apologised for his insolent success. Times there were—warm, summer days—when the minister would bring a book with him and read to Nestie as they lay in a grassy hollow together. And on these days they would fall a-talking, and it would end in a photograph being taken from a case, and after they had studied it together, both would kiss the face, which was as if Nestie had kissed himself. Regular frequenters of the North Meadow began to take an interest in the pair, so that the golfers would cry "Fore" in quite a kindly tone when they got in the way of the balls, and one day old Peter Peebles, the chief of the salmon-fishers and a man of rosy countenance, rowed them up to Woody Island, and then allowed the boat to drop down with the tide past the North Meadow and beneath the two bridges, and landed them at the South Meadow, refusing all recompense with fierce words. Motherly old ladies whose families were off their hands, and who took in the situation at a glance, used to engage Mr. Molyneux in conversation in order to warn him about Nestie's flannels and the necessity of avoiding damp at nightfall. And many who never spoke to them, and would have repudiated the idea of sentiment with scorn, had a tender heart and a sense of the tears of things as the pair, strange and lonely, yet contented and happy, passed them in the evening.

When the time came that Nestie had to leave Miss Letitia's, his father began to hang round the Seminary taking observations, and his heart was heavy within him. After he had watched a scrimmage at football—a dozen of the aboriginal savages fighting together in a heap, a mass of legs, arms, heads—and been hustled across the terrace in a rush of Russians and English, from which he emerged without his hat, umbrella, or book, and after he had been eyewitness of an encounter between Jock Howieson and Bauldie over a misunderstanding in marbles, he offered to teach Nestie at home.

"Those Scotch boys are very ... h-healthy, Nestie, and I am not sure whether you are quite ... fit for their ... habits. There is a master, too, called ... Bulldog, and I am afraid——" and Mr. Molyneux looked wistfully at his boy.

"Why, pater, you are very n-naughty, and don't d-deserve two lumps of sugar," for ever since they were alone he had taken his mother's place and poured out the tea. "Do you think I am a coward? A boy must learn to play games, you know, and they won't be hard on a little chap at first. I'll soon learn f-football and ... the other things. I can play golf a little now. Didn't you tell me, pater, that mother was as bwave as ... a s-soldier?"

"Of course she was, Nestie," and Mr. Molyneux fell into the innocent little snare. "If you had only seen the pony your mother used to ride on her father's farm in Essex, where I saw her first! Do you know, nobody could ride 'Gypsy' except its mistress. It r-reared and ... k-kicked, Nestie"—the little man spoke with awe—"and once ran away; but your mother could always manage it. She looked so handsome on 'Gypsy'; and you have her spirit. I'm very ... t-timid."

"No, you aren't, not one little bit, pater, if there's real d-danger." Nestie was now on his father's knee, with a hand round his neck. "Who faced the cow on the meadows when she was charging, and the nurse had left the child, eh? Now, pater, tell the truth."

"That was because ... the poor little man would have been killed ... anyone would have d-done that, and ... I d-did not think what I was d-doing...."

"Yes, I know," and Nestie mocked his father shamefully, even unto his face; "and everybody read in the paper how the child wasn't near the cow, and the cow was quite nice and well-behaved, and you ... ran away; for shame, now!

"Did you go to the people that had the dip ... dip ... in the throat, or not?—that's a word I can't manage yet, but I heard Miss Leti-titia and the girls say you were like the soldiers 'at got the Vic—Victoria Cwoss."

"That's d-different, Nestie; that's my d-duty."

"Well, it's my d-duty to go to the S-Seminary, pater;" and so he went.

"What's your name?" Nestie was standing in the centre of the large entrance hall where his father had left him, a neat, slim little figure in an Eton suit and straw hat, and the walls were lined by big lads in kilts, knickers, tweed suits, and tailless Highland bonnets in various stages of roughness and decay.

"Ernest Molyneux, and for short, Nestie," and he looked round with a bright little smile, although inwardly very nervous.

"Moly-havers," retorted Cosh, who had a vague sense that Nestie, with his finished little manner, his English accent, his unusual dress, and his high-sounding name, was an offence to the Seminary. "Get yir hat oot o' there," and Cosh sent Ernest's straw skimming into the forbidden "well."

Molyneux's face turned crimson, for he had inherited the temper which mistressed "Gypsy," and boys who remembered Speug's first exploit expected to see the newcomer spring at Cosh's face.

"You mean that for f-fun, I s'pose," he said an instant later, and he recovered his hat very neatly. "I can leap a little, you know, not m-much yet," and again he smiled round the ring.

Nothing quite like this had happened before in the Seminary, and there was a pause in the proceedings, which was the salvation of Nestie, and far more of Peter McGuffie. He had been arrested by the first sight of Nestie and had been considering the whole situation in silence. Peter had a sudden inspiration.

"Did ye say Nestie?" inquired Speug, with an almost kindly accent, moving a little forward as for purposes of identification.

"My pater calls me that, and ... others did, but perhaps you would like to say Molyneux. What is your name?"

"We 'ill call ye 'Nestie'; it's no an ill word, an' it runs on the tongue. Ma name is Peter McGuffie, or Speug, an' gin onybody meddle wi' ye gie's a cry." And to show the celerity of his assistance Peter sent the remains of Cosh's bonnet into the "well" just as Bulldog came down to his room.

"Bulldog's in," as that estimable man identified the owner of the bonnet and passed on to his class-room. "In aifter him, an' gie yir name, afore the schule comes."

"Will you come with me, P-Peter?" and that worthy followed him mechanically, while the school held their breath; "it would be kind of you to intwodoosh—it's a little difficult that word—me to the master."

"What's the meaning of this?" demanded Bulldog at the sight of the two, for speech was paralysed in Speug and he was aghast at his own audacity.

"A new laddie ... ca'ed Molly, Mol ... a' canna mind it ... Nestie ... he dinna know the way...." And Speug broke down and cast a despairing look at the cane.

"Peter pwotected me from the other boys, who were making fun of me, and I asked him to bwing me in to you, sir; he was very p-polite."

"Was he?" said Bulldog, regarding Speug's confusion with unconcealed delight; "that is quite his public character in this school, and there's nobody better known. My advice"—here Bulldog stopped, and looked from Speug to Nestie as one who was about to say something and had changed his mind—"is to ... be friends with Peter."

So when the school took their places Nestie was seated next to Speug, and it was understood in a week that Nestie was ready to take his fair share in any honest fun that was going, but that if one of the baser sort tried to play the blackguard with Nestie, he had to balance accounts with Speug, and that the last farthing would be faithfully exacted.

As Nestie had at once settled in his mind that Speug was a young gentleman of high conduct and excellent manners—and Nestie, with all his sweetness, was as obstinate as a mule—nothing remained for Speug but to act as far as he could up to his new character. With this example of diligence by his side, he was roused to such exertion that he emerged from long division and plunged into the rule of three, while Nestie marvelled at his accomplishments—"for I'm not a clever chap like you, P-Peter." Speug had also accumulated a considerable collection of pencil sketches, mostly his own, in which life at Muirtown Seminary was treated very broadly indeed, and as he judged this portfolio unlikely to be appreciated by Nestie, and began himself to have some scruple in having his own name connected with it, it was consigned to the flames, and any offer of an addition, which boys made to Speug as a connoisseur in Rabelaisean art, was taken as a ground of offence. His personal habits had been negligent to a fault, and Nestie was absurdly careful about his hands, so Peter was reduced to many little observances he had overlooked, and would indeed have exposed himself to scathing criticism had it not been that his sense of humour was limited and, so far as it went, of a markedly practical turn.

As Nestie never ceased to exalt this paladin of chivalry, and all the virtues which he had discovered at school, Mr. Molyneux hungered to see him, and so Speug was invited to tea on a Saturday evening—an invitation he accepted with secret pride and outward confusion of face. All the time which could be saved that day from the sermons was devoted by Mr. Molyneux and his son to the commissariat, and it was pretty to see the Molyneuxs going from shop to shop collecting the feast. With much cunning Nestie had drawn from Speug that fried sausages (pork) with mashed potatoes, followed up by jam tarts and crowned with (raisin) cake, was a meal to live for, and all this they had, with shortbread and marmalade, thrown in as relishes. When Nestie was not watching at the upper window for Peter's coming he was gloating over the table, and pater, putting last touches to his exposure of Infant Baptism, ran out and in to see that nothing had been forgotten, for they did not give many feasts, and this was one of gratitude. Peter was late, because he had gathered his whole establishment to dress him, including the old groom, who wished him to go in corduroy breeches and top boots, and Speug was polished to the extent of shining. He was also so modest that he would not speak, nor even look, and when Nestie began to discourse on his goodness he cast glances at the door and perspired visibly, on which occasions he wiped his forehead with a large red handkerchief. Amid all his experiences on land and water, on horseback and among boys—i. e., savages—he had never yet been exalted as a hero and a philanthropist, and he felt uncomfortable in his clothes. He was induced, however, to trifle with the tea, and in the end did very fairly, regaining his native composure so far as to describe a new horse his father had bought, and the diabolical wickedness of the tame fox at the stables. Afterwards Nestie took Speug to his room and showed him his various treasures—a writing-desk with a secret drawer; The Sandalwood Traders by Ballantyne; a box of real tools, with nails and tacks complete; and then he uncovered something hidden in a case, whereat Speug was utterly astonished.

"Yes, it's a watch; my mother left it to me, and some day I'll wear it, you know; your mother's g-gone, too, Peter, isn't she?"

"Aye," replied Peter, "but a' dinna mind o' her." And then, anxious to change the subject, he produced a new knife with six blades. Before leaving he promised to give Nestie a pair of rabbits, and to guide him in their upbringing after a proper fashion. Without having ventured into the field of sentiment, there is no doubt Peter had carried himself in a way to satisfy Mr. Molyneux, and he himself gave such an account of the tea to Mr. McGuffie senior, that night, that the horsedealer, although not given to Pharisaical observance of the Sabbath, attended the little Baptist chapel next day in state, sleeping through the sermon, but putting five shillings in the plate, while Peter, sitting most demurely at his father's side, identified two of his enemies of McIntyre's Academy and turned various things over in his mind.

If anyone, however, supposed that the spirit had gone out of Peter through his friendship with Nestie, he erred greatly, and this Robert Cosh learned to his cost. What possessed him no one could guess, and very likely he did not know himself, but he must needs waylay Nestie in Breadalbane Street one day after schooltime and speak opprobriously to him, finishing up—

"Awa' wi' ye; yir father's a meeserable yammering (stammering) dookie (Baptist) minister."

"My father's one of the best men living"—Nestie was in an honourable temper—"and you are an ill-bred c-cad."

Poor Nestie would have been half-killed before Cosh had done with him had not Speug arrived on the scene, having been in the gundy (candy) shop not far off, and then there were circumstances. Cosh had a poor chance at any time with Peter, but now that worthy's arm was nerved with fierce indignation, and Nestie had to beg for mercy for Cosh, whose appearance on arriving home was remarkable. His story was even more so, and was indeed so affecting, not to say picturesque, that Bailie Cosh came into Bulldog's room with his son two days afterwards to settle matters.

"A' called, Maister MacKinnon," he said, in tones charged with dignity, "to explain the cause of my son Robert's absence; he was in bed with a poultice on his face twenty-four hours, an' he'll no be himself for days."

"'You are an ill-bred c-cad.'"

"He is no in condeetion to lose time wi' his lessons, a' can tell ye, Bailie; ye're richt to bring him back as sune as ye could; was't toothache?"

"No, it wasna toothache, but the ill-usage o' one of your scholars, the maist impudent, ill-doing, aggravating scoondrel in Muirtown."

"Peter McGuffie, come out here," which showed Bulldog's practical acquaintance with affairs. "Did ye give Robert Cosh a licking?"

No answer from Speug, but a look of satisfaction that was beyond all evidence.

"Was that just yir natural iniquity, Peter, or had ye a justification?"

Dogged silence of Speug, whose code of honour had one article at least—never to tell on a fellow.

"Please, sir, may I speak?" cried Nestie, as he saw the preparations for Peter's punishment and could not contain himself.

"Were you in this job, too, Nestie? You didn't tell me that there were two at puir Robert, Bailie; if Nestie got his hand on your son, he's sic a veeciously inclined character that it's a wonder Robert's leevin.'

"Now, Bailie, we'll conduct a judeecial investigation. Robert Cosh, what have ye to say? Speak up like a man, an' I'll see justice done ye, be sure o' that; but mind ye, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

Robert Cosh declined to contribute even the smallest morsel of truth in any shape or form, and, in spite of strong encouragement from the magistrate, preserved an impenetrable silence.

"This," said Bulldog, with a shrewd glance, "is mair than ordinary modesty; we 'ill take another witness. Ernest Molyneux, what have ye got to say?"

"Cosh called my father names, and ... I lost my t-temper, and ... and ... I said things ... the pater's ill, sir, so I ... and Cosh stwuck me once or twice—but I don't mind that; only Peter, you see, sir, wanted to help me. I'm afraid he h-hurtit Cosh, but that was how it happened."

"Stand beside Nestie, Cosh ... so; half a head taller and much broader and four years older. Ye called his father names, and then cut his lip when he answered. Just so. There are some pretty little scratches on yir own face. That would be Peter. Well, Bailie, the case is pretty plain, and we 'ill go to judgment.

"Ernest Molyneux, yir father's a good man, and it does not matter two brass peens what Robert Cosh says about him, and ye're no an ill-disposed laddie yersel.' Ye may go to your seat.

"Peter McGuffie, ye're aye meddlin' wi' what doesna concern ye, and ye seem to think that Providence gave Nestie into yir chairge. One day ye pull him oot o' the river, and anither ye take him oot o' the hands o' Robert Cosh. But ye've done your wark sae neatly this time that I havena the heart to thrash ye. Ye may go to your seat, too; and, Peter, ma man, just one word of advice. Yir head is thick, but yir heart is richt; see that ye always use yir fists as well as ye did that day.

"Robert Cosh, ye've had a fair trial, and ye have been convicted of three heinous sins. First, ye miscalled a good man—for that three strokes with the cane; next, ye ill-used the quietest laddie in the whole school—for that three strokes; and, lastly, being moved of the devil, ye went home and told lies to a magistrate—for that six strokes. Three on each hand to-day and to-morrow will just settle the count. Right hand first."

"Mr. MacKinnon, I protest...."

"What?" and Bulldog turned on the magistrate; "would ye interfere with the course o' justice in another man's jureesdiction, and you a magistrate?" And Bulldog's eyes began to rotate in a fearsome manner.

The Bailie allowed it to be understood that he had changed his mind, and Robert, who had expected great things from the magistrate's protection, abandoned himself to despair and walked humbly for many days to come.

Next day Nestie was not in his place, and Bulldog, growing uneasy, called on his way home.

"Aye, aye," and the landlady's voice sank into the minor key of Scots sympathy, "Maister Mollynoox (for such an outlandish name was ever a trial) is far through wi't; the doctor says he never had much to come an' go on, and noo this whup o' inflammation is the feenish.

"The doctor doesna expect him to see mornin', an' he's verra sober (weak); but his head's clear, an' the laddie's wi' him. Ma hert is wae (sorry) for him, for the twa hev been that bund up thegither that a'm dootin' Nestie 'ill never get ower the pairtin'."

The gentle little minister was not far from his end, and Nestie was nursing him as best he could. He sponged his father's face—threatening to let the soap get into his eyes if he were not obedient—and dried it with a soft towel; then he brushed the soft, thin brown hair slowly and caressingly, as he had often done on Sundays when his father was weary. Turning round, he saw Bulldog, and instead of being afraid, Nestie smiled a pathetic welcome, which showed either what a poor actor the master was, with all his canings, or that his English scholar was a very shrewd little man.

"Th-thank you f-for coming to see father, sir; he was n-naughty and got cold, and he has been so ill; but he must get better, for you know there are ... just the two of us, and ... I would be ... lonely without the pater."

"Nestie does not wish to part with me, Mr. MacKinnon, for we h-have been ... dear friends, that's how it was, and we loved ... mother; but he is a ... brave little man, as you know, and mother and I will not forget him ... you came to ask for Nestie, and it was God's will, for I h-have a f-favour to ask of you."

Bulldog went over and sat down by the bed, but said nothing. Only he took the minister's hand in his and waited. He also put his other arm round Nestie, and never did he look fiercer.

"I have no relatives, and his m-mother's family are all dead; there is nobody to be g-guardian to Nestie, and he cannot live alone. C-could you get some family who would be ... where he might be at ... h-home?

"You know we are not rich, but we've s-saved a little, for Nestie is a famous little house-k-keeper; and maybe there's enough to keep him ... till he grows big; and I'll give you the receipt at the bank, and you'll ... manage for him, won't you?"

Bulldog cleared his throat to speak, but could not find his voice—for a wonder, but his hand tightened on the minister's, and he drew Nestie nearer to him.

"Of course, Mr. MacKinnon, I know that we have no c-claim on you, for we are strangers in Muirtown, and you ... have many boys. But you've been kind to Nestie, and he ... loves you."

The minister stopped, breathless, and closed his eyes.

"Mr. Molyneux," began Bulldog in a stern voice, "I'm willing to manage Nestie's estate, big or small, and I'll give an account of all intromissions to the Court, but I must decline to look out a home for Nestie.

"Nestie and me" (bad grammar has its uses, and some of them are very comforting) "are good freends. My house has just an auld schoolmaster and an housekeeper in it, and whiles we would like to hear a young voice."

Bulldog paused and then went on, his voice sterner than ever—in sound.

"Now Bell's bark is worse than her bite, and maybe so is mine (Nestie nodded), so if the wee man wouldna be feared to live wi' ... Bulldog—oh, I know fine what the rascals call me—he 'ill have a heart welcome, and ... I'll answer to ye baith, father and mother, for yir laddie at the Day o' Judgment."

"'What shall I render ... unto the Lord ... for all His benefits?' I cannot thank you ... (the minister was now very weak); but you will not ... miss your reward. May the God of the orphan.... Kiss me, Nestie."

For a short while he slept, and they watched for any sign of consciousness.

"It was too soon"—he was speaking, but not to them—"for Nestie ... to come, Maud; he must stay ... at school. He is a good boy, and ... his master will ... take care of him ... Nestie will grow to be a man, dear."

The minister was nearing the other side, and seeing the face he loved and had lost awhile.

"It's mother," whispered Nestie, and a minute later he was weeping bitterly and clinging with all his might to the schoolmaster, who came perilously near to tears himself.

"They're together now, and ... I'll be father and mother to ye, Nestie," said Mr. Dugald MacKinnon, master of mathematics in Muirtown Seminary, and known as Bulldog to three generations of Muirtown lads.

A FAMOUS VICTORY

IV

The Seminary perfectly understood that, besides our two chief enemies, the "Pennies" and McIntyres, there were, in the holes and corners of the town, obscure schools where little companies of boys got some kind of education and were not quite devoid of proper spirit. During a really respectable snow-storm—which lasted for a month and gave us an opportunity of bringing affairs to a temporary settlement with our rivals, so that the town of Muirtown was our own for the next seven days—a scouting party from the Seminary in search of adventures had an encounter with a Free Kirk school, which was much enjoyed and spoken about for weeks beside the big fire. Speug began, indeed, to lay out a permanent campaign by which the boys going home southwards could look in from time to time on the Free Kirkers, and he indicated his willingness to take charge of the operation. It was also said that an Episcopal or Papist school—we made no subtile direct distinctions at the Seminary—in the northern district might afford some sport, and the leadership in this case was to be left to Duncan Robertson, the other captain of the commonwealth. Snow did not last the whole year round even in a Scots town; but it was wonderful what could be done in summer by the use of book-bags, well stuffed out with Cæsar and Lennie's English Grammar, and at the worst there always remained our fists. The pleasure of planning these forays is still a grateful recollection, for it seemed to us that by spreading our forces we might have perpetual warfare from January to December and over the length and breadth of the town, so that no one would be compelled to return to his home of an evening without the hope of a battle, and every street of the town would be distinguished by conflict. Nothing came, however, of those spirited enterprises that year, because our two rivals, laying aside their mutual quarrels, which, we understood, were very bitter, and entering into a covenant of falsehood—their lying filled us with holy indignation—attacked us front and rear while we were having an innocent game of Russians and English on the North Meadow. Although taken unawares and poorly provided with weapons we made a good fight; but in the end we were scattered so completely that Speug never reached the school again that day, for which he was thrashed by Bulldog next morning, and Dunc came in with a front tooth gone and one black eye, for which he was soundly thrashed at once.

During all that summer we denounced the amazing meanness of the other side, and turned over plans for splitting the alliance, so that we might deal with each power separately and finally. Speug even conducted a negotiation—watchfully and across the street, for the treachery of the other side was beyond description—and tried to come to terms with the representative of our least hated opponent. He even thought, and Peter was not guileless, that he had secured their neutrality, when they suddenly burst forth into opprobrious language, being a very vulgar school indeed, and exposed Peter's designs openly. His feelings were not much hurt by the talk, in which, indeed, he scored an easy victory after he had abandoned negotiation and had settled down to vituperation, but Seminary boys whose homeward route took them past the hostile territories had to be careful all that summer. It was, indeed, a time of bitter humiliation to the premier school of Muirtown, and might have finally broken its spirit had it not have been for the historical battle in the beginning of November, when McGuffie and Robertson led us to victory, and the power of the allies was smashed for years. So great, indeed, was their defeat that in early spring Peter has been known to withdraw himself from marbles in the height of the season and of his own personal profit, for the simple purpose of promenading through the enemies' sphere of influence alone and flinging words of gross insult in at their gates.

One of the schools must have been a charity for the education of poor lads, since it was known to us as the "Penny School," and it was a familiar cry ringing through the yard of the Seminary, "The Pennies are coming!" when we promptly turned out to give them the welcome which, to do them justice, they ardently desired. Whether this was a penny a week or a penny a month we did not know, or whether, indeed, they paid a penny at all, but it pleased us to give this name, and it soon passed beyond the stage of correction. Our enemies came at last to wear it proudly, like many other people who have been called by nicknames and turned the nickname into an honour, for they would follow up a particularly telling snowball with the cry, "There's a penny for ye!" They were sturdy varlets, quite indifferent as to boots and stockings, and equally so as to blows. Through their very regardlessness the Pennies would have been apt to rout the Seminary—whose boys had given pledges to respectability, and who had to answer searching questions as to their personal appearance every evening—had it not been for stalwarts like McGuffie, whose father, being a horsedealer, did not apply an over strict standard of judgment to his son's manners or exploits, and Robertson, who lived in lodgings and, being a soldier's son, was supposed to be in a state of discipline for the Army.

Our feeling towards the Pennies was hardly cordial, but it was as nothing to our hatred of McIntyre's school, which called itself an academy, and had a Latin master and held examinations and affected social equality with the Seminary. Everyone knew that the Seminary had existed in the time of Queen Mary, and some said went back to the days of William Wallace, although we had some doubts as to whether the present building was then in existence. Everyone also knew that McIntyre's whole concern belonged to himself, and that he collected the fees in every class on Friday morning, that he took home what was over after paying his assistants, and that butcher meat for the McIntyre family next week depended on the result. McIntyre drew his supplies from the small tradesmen, and a Seminary lad, going in to get a new pair of boots at Meiklewham's would have a fine sense of pride in being measured by an old opponent whose face had often looked out on him from the mist of battle. This pretentious and windy institution even attempted the absurdity of a yearly prizegiving, when, instead of the Provost sitting in state and glaring before him with a Horace in his hands upside down, McIntyre's minister would hold forth on diligence and tidiness and courtesy and such like contemptible virtues. Had a Seminary boy been offered the painful choice, he would almost as soon have gone to the Pennies as to McIntyre, for in that case he had not been an impostor and a fraud.

For a week the weather had been hovering on frost, and on Wednesday afternoon the snow began to fall with that quiet and steady downpour which means a lasting storm. Speug went home in great spirits, declaring to an admiring circle of junior boys that if Providence were kind and the snow continued there would be something worth living for at the dinner hour on Friday. As the snowball war was a serious affair, and was conducted after a scientific fashion, it never commenced until there was a good body of snow upon the ground and pure snow could be gathered up without earth and stones. The unpardonable sin of our warfare was slipping a stone into a snowball: this was the same as poisoning the wells, and the miscreant who perpetrated this crime was cast out from every school. There was a general understanding between parties that the mercies were not to be wasted, and that the schools were to refrain themselves until there was a fair and lasting supply of ammunition. It was still snowing on Thursday morning, and there were some who said that war might now be declared; and Jock Howieson, ever a daring and rash spirit, declared we should repent it if we were not ready against one o'clock. Speug and Dunc were however of opinion that nothing was likely to take place that day except desultory skirmishes, and that the whole day ought to be spent in accumulating a store of snowballs against Friday, when there was no question that we should have to face the united schools in a decisive battle. This was the only instance where our captains ever made a mistake, and they atoned for their error of judgment by the valour and skill with which they retrieved what seemed a hopeless defeat.

As the hours wore on to one o'clock Speug could be seen glancing anxiously out at the window, and he secured an opportunity with Dunc for a hasty conference during the geometry lesson. About a quarter to one he turned from his slate and cocked his ear, and in two minutes afterwards every boy in Bulldog's class-room understood that the war had begun and that we had been taken by surprise. Scouts from McIntyre's, as we afterwards learned, had risked the danger of playing truant, which in a school like theirs cost nothing, and had visited our playground. They had carried back news that we were not yet prepared for battle, and our firm opinion was that the authorities of Penny's and McIntyre's had allowed their schools out at half-past twelve, in order to take us at a disadvantage. Before the bell rang and the senior classes were dismissed the Seminary knew that our enemies had seized the field of battle, but we did not know until we came out the extent of the disaster.

The Pennies had come down the back street and had established themselves opposite the narrow entrance between two sheds through which three only could walk abreast from our playground to the street. They had also sent a daring body of their lighter and more agile lads to the top of the sheds which separated our playground from the street, and they had conveyed down an enormous store of ammunition, so that the courtyard was absolutely at their mercy, and anyone emerging from the corridor was received with a shower of well-made and hard snowballs against which there was no standing. Even if we ran this risk and crossed the open space we could then be raked by the fire from the shed, and a charge through the narrow passage to the street would be in the last degree hazardous. There were twelve feet of passage, and there were not many who would care to face a stream of snowballs driven by the vigorous hands of the Pennies down this passage as through a pipe. Instead of meeting our enemies on the street, we had been penned up within our own school. McIntyre's had come down the terrace and seized an excellent position behind two Russian guns which stood opposite our school and about twenty feet from our front entrance. They had made these guns into a kind of fort, from behind whose shelter, reinforced by a slight barricade of jackets, they commanded our entrance, and had driven in the first boys who emerged, in hopeless discomfiture. It came upon us that we had been shut up back and front, and shut up with the poorest supply of snowballs and very little snow with which to repair our resources.

"Seized an excellent position behind two Russian guns."

While the younger boys raged and stormed in the safety of the corridors, Dunc and Speug retired for consultation. In two minutes they came out and gave their orders to the mass of boys gathered together round the "well" and in the "well," and on the stairs and along the corridors. It was at this moment that Nestie Molyneux obtained a name which he covered with glory before the close of the day. As he had no class between twelve and one, he had been observing events, and with the aid of two or three other little boys had done what he could to repair the neglect of yesterday. In spite of a rain of snowballs he had availed himself of a sheltered corner in the playground and had worked without ceasing at the preparation of the balls. Every ball as it was made was dipped into a pail of water and then, half frozen, was laid in a corner where it was soon frozen altogether. "There'll be the feck o' two hundred balls ready. Ma certes! Nestie has a head on his shoulders. Now," said Speug, speaking from halfway up the stair, "we'll start with thae balls for a beginnin', and wi' them we'll fecht our way out to the open. As soon as we've cleared the background every ane o' the two junior classes is to mak' balls as hard as he can lick and bring them forward to the fighting line.

"We'll divide the senior school into three divisions; Dunc will take thirty of ye and drive McIntyre frae the guns and along the terrace till ye turn them into Breadalbane Street. Thirty o' ye—and I want nae Dowbiggins—'ll come with me, and we'll bring the Pennies aff the shed quicker than they got up, and drive them up the back streets till we land them wi' the rest in Breadalbane Street; and the juniors 'ill keep us well supplied with balls, else Dunc and me will ken the reason at two o'clock.

"Jock Howieson, ye're to tak' thirty swank fellows that can run and are no 'feart to be left alane. Ye'll rin round by the North Street and the Cathedral and come down the top of Breadalbane Street till ye cut off McIntyre's and the Pennies frae their schools. Dae nothin' till ye see Dunc and me drivin' the lot up Breadalbane Street, then come down from the back end of them wi' all your might, and I'm thinkin' they'll be wanting to be inside their ain yard afore a' be done."

Dunc assembled his corps inside the front porch, each boy supplied with two balls and with twenty youngsters behind bringing up more. McIntyre's balls were falling on the front wall and coming in through the porch. One of them struck Dunc on the side of the head, but he forbade any return fire.

"They're wastin' their balls," he said; "it'll be the better for us"; and then, looking round, "Are ye ready? Charge!" and shouting "Seminary! Seminary!" he led his division across the terrace and fell upon McIntyre's behind the guns. It was a short, sharp scrimmage, during which Dunc levelled the leader of McIntyre's, and then the enemy began to retreat slowly down the terrace, with many a hand-to-hand encounter and scuffle on the snow. As soon as Dunc's division had cleared the front, Jock Howieson collected his lads and started along the terrace in the opposite direction at a sharp run, carrying no balls, for they intended to make them on the scene of operation. When the other two divisions were off, Speug addressed his faithful band. "MacFarlane, take six birkies, climb up the waterspout, and clean the richt-hand shed, couping the Pennies into the street. Mackenzie, ye're no bad at the fightin'; tak' anither sax and empty the roof o' the left-hand shed, and 'gin ye can clout that Penny that's sittin' on the riggin' it'll teach him to keep in the street next day.

"Noo, that leaves eighteen, and me and Bauldie and Jamie Johnston 'ill lead ye down the passage. We'll need six balls each, as hard as ye mak' 'em, and the rest o' ye tak' two in yir arms and one in yir hand. Pit yir bonnits in yir pocket—they'll no be muckle use—button yir jackets, and when the three o' us gae down the passage for ony sake follow close in behind. Just ae thing more," said Speug, who was in his glory that day. "I'll need a laddie to keep me gaein' with balls, and I want a laddie that has some spunk, for he'll hae a rough time." Below thirty of the junior school were waiting and looking at Speug like dogs for a biscuit. He threw his eye over the group, any one of which would have given his best knife and all his marbles, and thrown in a cricket bat and his last kite, to have been chosen.

"Nestie," said Speug, "ye're little and ye're white and ye're terrible polite, but there's a sperit in ye. Ye'll carry ma balls this day, and noo, you juniors, aff to the ball-making, and see that Nestie's bonnet's well filled, and there's no any of us wanting for a ball when we drive the Pennies down the back road." Then Speug moved to the back corridor and arranged his division, with Nestie behind him, and Bauldie and Jamie Johnston on the right hand and on the left, Mackenzie's and MacFarlane's detachments close behind, who were to turn off to the right hand and the left as they emerged from the corridor; the rest were to follow Speug through the passage of danger. Speug took two balls and placed them in the hollow of his left arm, feeling them carefully to see that they would leave a mark when they struck a Penny. The third he took in his right hand, and Nestie had the reserve.

"Noo," he said, "gin anybody be feared he'd better gae in and sit doun beside the fire with the Dowbiggins," and since nobody responded to this genial invitation Speug gave one shout of "Seminary!" and in a minute was across the playground and at the mouth of the passage, while Mackenzie and MacFarlane were already scrambling up the walls of the sheds. Covering his face with his left arm and sending his first ball direct into the face of the foremost Penny, and following it up with a second and a third driven with unerring aim and the force of a catapolt, and receiving anything from twelve to twenty balls between him and Bauldie and Johnston, the three led the way down the passage, Nestie close behind Speug and handing him a new supply of balls. They met at the outer end of the passage—the Pennies and Speug's lot—and for about thirty seconds they swayed in one mass of struggling, fighting, shouting boy life, and then, so steady was the play of Speug's fists, so able the assistance of the other two, so strong the pressure from behind, and so rapid the shower of balls sent over Speug's head among the Pennies, the Pennies gave way and Speug and his band burst into the back street, the leader with his jacket torn off his back, and his face bearing the scars of conflict, but full of might, and Nestie with the balls behind him.

The Seminary lads and the Pennies were now face to face in the back street, with a space of about ten yards between, and both parties made arrangements for the final conflict. The scouts of the Pennies could be seen bringing balls from Breadalbane Street, and the Pennies themselves made such hasty readjustments of their negligent attire as were rendered necessary by the vigour of the last fighting. Their commander was a sturdy lad about fifteen years of age, with a great shock of red hair and fists like iron. His favourite method of charge was to lead his army in the form of an inverted V, he being himself at the apex, and to force his way through the other side on the principle of a wedge. Speug did not believe in this arrangement. He led himself in the centre and threw out his two lieutenants far out on the right hand and on the left, so that when the Pennies forced their way into the middle of his division, Bauldie and Johnson were on their right and left flanks—tactics which in Speug's experience always caused dismay in the attacking force. The younger boys of the Seminary had by this time ample resources of ammunition ready, working like tigers without jackets now or bonnets, and as they brought out the supplies of balls through the passage of victory they received nods of approval from Speug, each nod being something like a decoration. It was fine to see Speug examining the balls to see that they were properly made and of a hardness which would give satisfaction to the expectant Pennies.

Some pleasant incidents occurred during this interlude. When the Seminary lads fought their way through the passage they cut off the retreat of three Pennies who were still fighting with MacFarlane on the top of the right-hand shed.

"What are ye daein' up there?" said Speug, with ironic politeness; "that's no' the ordinar' road into the Seminary;" and then, as they hesitated on the edge of the water pipe, Speug conceived what was in these days a fine form of humour. "Come down," he said, "naebody 'ill touch ye"; and then he ordered an open passage to be made through the ranks of the Seminaries. Down between two lines the unfortunate Pennies walked, no one laying a hand upon them, but various humourists expressing their hopes that they had enjoyed the top of the shed, that it wasn't MacFarlane that had given one of them a black eye, that they hoped one of them hadn't lost his jacket on the roof of the shed, and that they were none the worse for their exertion, and that they expected to meet them later on—which gracious salutations the Pennies received in bitter silence as they ran the gauntlet; and when they had escaped clear of the Seminaries and stood halfway between the two armies they turned round with insulting gestures, and one of them cried, "Ye'll get yir paiks (thrashing) for this or the day be done!"

Their arrival among their friends and the slight commotion which it caused in the front ranks of the Pennies was a chance for Speug, who gave the signal for the charge and made himself directly for the leader of the Pennies. No pen at this distance of time can describe the conflict between the two leaders, who fired forth balls at each other at close distance, every one going to its mark, and one leaving an indelible impress upon Speug's ingenuous forehead. They then came to close grip, and there was a tussle, for which both had been waiting for many a day. From fists, which were not quite ineffectual, they fell upon wrestling, and here it seemed that Redhead must have the advantage, for he was taller in stature and more sinuous in body. During the wrestle there was something like a lull in the fighting, and both Pennies and Seminaries, now close together, held their hands till Speug, with a cunning turn of the leg that he had been taught by an English groom in his father's stable, got the advantage, and the two champions came down in the snow, Redhead below. The Seminaries set up a shout of triumph, and the scouts running to and fro with the balls behind joined in with, "Well done, Speug!"

Speug had all the instincts of a true general and was not the man to spend his time in unprofitable exultation. It was a great chance to take the Pennies when they were without their leader and discomfited by his fall, and in an instant Speug was up, driving his way through the midst of the enemy, who were now divided in the centre, whilst Johnston and Bauldie had crept up by the side of the houses on either side and were attacking them in parallel lines. MacFarlane and Mackenzie had come down from the shed with their detachment and were busy in the rear of the Seminaries. Redhead fought like a hero, but was almost helpless in the confusion, and thought it the best strategy to make a rush to the clear ground in the rear of his position, calling his followers after him; and now the Pennies gathered at the far end of the street, beaten in tactics and in fighting, but ever strong in heart, and full of insolence. "That," said Speug, wiping his face with his famous red handkerchief which he carried in his trousers pocket, and hastily attending to some of his wounds, "that wesna' bad"; and then turning to Nestie, "Ye keepit close, my mannie." Speug's officers, such mighties as Bauldie and Johnston, MacFarlane and Mackenzie, all bearing scars, clustered round their commander with expressions of admiration. "Yon was a bonny twirl, and you coupit him weel." "Sall, they've gotten their licks," while Speug modestly disclaimed all credit, and spoke generously of the Pennies, declaring that they had fought well, and that Redhead nearly got the mastery.

At that moment a shout of "Seminary!" was heard in the rear of the Pennies, and Speug knew that Duncan Robertson had driven McIntyre's the full length of the terrace and was now fighting them in Breadalbane Street. "Forward!" cried Speug. "Dunc's on the back of them," and Redhead at the same moment hurriedly withdrew his forces, covering his retreat with a shower of balls, and united with McIntyre's, who were retiring before Robertson and the second division of the Seminaries. Amid cries of "Seminary! Seminary!" Speug and Duncan met where the back street opens into Breadalbane Street, and their divisions amalgamated, exchanging notes on the battle and examining one another's personal appearance. There was not a bonnet to be seen, and not many jackets, which had either been left behind or thrown off or torn off in personal conflict with the Pennies; collars may have remained, but that no one could tell, and there were some whose waistcoats were now held by one button. Two or three also had been compelled to drop out of active battle and were hanging in the rear, rubbing their faces with snow and trusting to be able to see clear enough for the final charge; and still the juniors were making their balls and had established a new magazine at the end of the terrace. Several of these impenitent little wretches had themselves been in the thick of the fight, and could be seen pointing proudly to a clout on the forehead and a cut on the lip. What a time certain mothers would have that evening when their warriors came home, some of them without caps, which would never be recovered, most of them with buttonless waistcoats and torn jackets, half of them with disfigured faces, all of them drenched to the skin, and every one of them full of infinite satisfaction and gladness of heart! Their fathers, who had heard about the battle before they came home and had not failed to discover who had won, being all Seminary lads themselves, would also be much lifted, but would feign to be extremely angry at the savagery of their boys, would wonder where the police were, would threaten their sons with all manner of punishments if this ever happened again, and would declare their intention of laying a complaint before the chief constable. As, however, it was absolutely necessary in the interests of justice that the whole facts should be known before they took action, they would skilfully extract the whole Homeric narrative, with every personal conflict and ruse of war, from their sons, and only when the last incident had been related would announce their grave and final displeasure.

As for the police, who were not numerous in Muirtown, and who lived on excellent good terms with everybody, except tramps, they seemed to have a prophetic knowledge when a snow-fight was coming on, and were detained by important duty in distant streets. It was always, however, believed by the Seminary that two of the police could be seen, one at the distance of the bridge over the Tay, the other at the far extremity of Breadalbane Street, following the fight with rapt attention, and in the case of the Pennies winning, which had been their own school, smacking their lips and slapping their hands under pretence of warming themselves in the cold weather, and in the event of the Seminaries winning marching off in opposite directions, lest they should be tempted to interfere, which they would have considered contrary to the rules of fair play, and giving their own school a mean advantage. Perhaps some ingenuous modern person will ask, "What were the masters of the Seminary about during this hour?" The Rector was sitting by the fire in his retiring-room, reading a winter ode of Horace, and as faint sounds of war reached his ears he would stir the fire and lament, like the quiet old scholar that he was, that Providence had made him ruler of such a band of barbarians; but he would also cherish the hope that his barbarians would not come off second. As for Bulldog, his mind was torn between two delights—the anticipation of the exercise which he would have next day, and the pleasure which his lads were having to-day—and nothing more entirely endeared Bulldog to his savages than the fact that, instead of going home to dinner during this hour, which was his usual custom, he contented himself with a biscuit. He was obliged to buy it in a baker's shop in Breadalbane Street, from which he could command a perfect view of the whole battle, especially as he happened to stand in the doorway of the shop, and never returned to school till the crisis of war was over. He was careful to explain to the school that he had himself gone for the purpose of identifying the ringleaders in mischief, and it was on such an occasion that Speug, keeping his right cheek immovable towards Bulldog, would wink to the assembled school with irresistible effect.

Nor ought one to forget the janitor of Muirtown Seminary, who had been a sergeant in the Black Watch and had been wounded three times in the Crimean War. His orders, as given by the Rector and reinforced by all law-abiding parents, were to prevent any boy of the Seminary leaving the school for the purpose of a snowball fight, and should such an unfortunate affair take place he was directed to plunge into the midst and by force of arm to bring the Seminaries home to their own fireside, leaving rough and rude schools like the Pennies and McIntyre's to fight at their wicked will. For did not the Seminary lads move in polite society, except Speug, and were they not going to be, as they have become, clergymen and lawyers, and physicians, to say nothing of bailies on the bench and elders of the Kirk? These orders Sergeant Dougal McGlashan carried out, not so much in the bondage of the letter as in the fulness of the spirit. Many were the conversations which Speug and he had together in anticipation of the snow time, when you may believe if you please that that peaceable man was exhorting Speug to obedience and gentleness, or if you please that he was giving the commander of the Seminary certain useful hints which he himself had picked up from the "red line" at Balaclava. Certain it is that when the Seminaries went out that day in battle array the sergeant was engaged mending the fires with great diligence, so that he was not able to see them depart. Afterwards it was the merest duty for him to stand at the end of the passage of victory, lest the Pennies or any other person should venture on another outrage; and if he was late in calling his boys back from Breadalbane Street, that was only because the cold had made his wounds to smart again, and he could only follow them in the rear till the battle was over. When the evil was done there was no use of vain regret, and in the afternoon the sergeant stood beside the big fire and heard accounts of the battle from one and another, and then he would declare that there were lads in Muirtown Seminary who would have done well at Inkermann and the storming of the Redan.

Breadalbane Street, which was broad and straight, with the back road to the Seminary on the right hand, and the street to McIntyre's and the Pennies on the left, had been the battle-ground of generations, for it gave opportunity for deploying in divisions, for front attack and for flank, as well as for royal charges which extended across the street. McIntyres and Pennies had been recruited from their several schools and supplied afresh with ammunition. Redhead took command of the united force and arranged them across the street in his favourite wedge, with the base resting on the home street, and this time he gave the signal, and so impetuous was their charge that they drove their way almost through the ranks of the Seminaries, and Speug himself, through sheer weight of attack, was laid flat in the middle of the street. Robertson and his officers rallied their forces, but it was possible that the Seminaries might have lost the day had it not been for the masterly foresight of Speug and the opportune arrival of Jock Howieson. That worthy had taken his division by a circuitous route, in which they had been obstructed by a miserable Episcopal school which wanted a fight on its own account and had to receive some passing attention. A little late, Howieson reached the Cathedral, and then, judging it better not to come down Breadalbane Street, where his attack would have been exposed, he made his way on the right of the street by passages known only to himself, and having supplied his division with ammunition from a snow-drift in a back entry, he came into the home street, which was the only line of retreat for the enemy, and cut them off from their base. Leaving a handful of lads to prevent the scouts coming out from the Pennies or the McIntyres with information, and driving before him the ammunition train of the enemy, he came round into Breadalbane Street with twenty-five tough fighters raging and fuming for the battle and just in the nick of time. It was hard for any fighting man to have spent something like half an hour wandering round circuitous streets and holding ridiculous conflicts with unknown schools when the battle of Waterloo, with the fate of the Empire of Muirtown, was hanging in the balance.

Before Redhead had notice of the arrival of the new division they were upon his rear, and a play of snowballs fell upon the back of the Pennies. This was more than even veteran forces could endure, and in spite of the heroic efforts of Redhead, who fired his balls alternately back and forward, his forces fell into a panic. They broke and drove their way through Howieson's division, receiving severe punishment from balls fired at a distance of a few feet, and then, in spite of the efforts of their officers, who fought till they were black and blue, but chiefly red, the enemy rushed down the home street and, sweeping the rearguard of Howieson's before them like straws in a stream, made for their respective schools. The Seminaries in one united body, headed by the three commanders and attended by the whole junior school, visited the Pennies' school first, whose gates were promptly closed, and having challenged the Pennies with opprobrious words to come out and fight like men—Redhead being offered the chance of single combat with Dunc or Speug or Jock Howieson—the Seminaries then made their way to McIntyre's Academy. As this unfortunate place of learning had no gate, Speug led the Seminaries into the centre of their courtyard, McIntyre's boys having no spirit left in them and being now hidden in the class-rooms. As they would not come out, in spite of a shower of courteous invitations, Speug stood in the centre of their courtyard and called the gods to witness that it had been a fair fight and that the Seminaries had won. A marvellous figure was he, without bonnet, without collar, without tie, without jacket, without waistcoat, with nothing on him but a flannel shirt and those marvellous horsey trousers, but glorious in victory. Taking a snowball from Nestie, who was standing by his side, openly and in face of McIntyre's masters, gathered at a window, he sent it with unerring aim through the largest pane of glass in McIntyre's own room. "That," said Speug, "'ill tell ye the Seminaries have been here." Then he collected his forces and led them home down the cross street and into Breadalbane Street, down the middle of Breadalbane Street, and round the terrace, and in by the front door into the Seminary. As they came down they sang, "Scots wha hae," and the juniors, who had rushed on before, met them at the door and gave three cheers, first for Speug, then for Dunc, and then for Jock Howieson, which homage and tribute of victory Speug received with affected contempt but great pride of heart. In order to conceal his feelings he turned to his faithful henchman, little Nestie Molyneux, who, always a delicate-looking little laddie, was now an altogether abject spectacle, with torn clothes, dripping hair, and battered face. "Nestie," said Speug, in hearing of the whole school, "ye're a plucky little deevil," and although since then he has been in many places and has had various modest triumphs, that still remains the proudest moment in Nestie Molyneux's life.

HIS PRIVATE CAPACITY

V

It is well enough for popular rulers like presidents to live in public and shake hands with every person; but absolute monarchs, who govern with an iron hand and pay not the slightest attention to the public mind, ought to be veiled in mystery. If Bulldog had walked homeward with his boys in an affectionate manner, and inquired after their sisters, like his temporary assistant, Mr. Byles, or had played with interesting babies on the North Meadow, as did Topp, the drawing-master—Augustus de Lacy Topp—who wore a brown velvet jacket and represented sentiment in a form verging on lunacy; or if he had invited his classes to drink coffee in a very shabby little home, as poor Moossy did, and treated them to Beethoven's Symphonies, then even Jock Howieson, the stupidest lad in the Seminary, would have been shocked, and would have felt that the Creation was out of gear. The last thing we had expected of Bulldog was polite conversation, or private hospitality. His speech was confined to the class-room, and there was most practical; and his hospitality, which was generous and widespread, was invariably public. His rôle was to be austere, unapproachable, and lifted above feeling, and had it not been for Nestie he had sustained it to the day of his death.

Opinion varied about Bulldog's age, some insisting that he had approached his century, others being content with "Weel on to eighty." None hinted at less than seventy. No one could remember his coming to Muirtown, and none knew whence he came. His birthplace was commonly believed to be the West Highlands, and it was certain that in dealing with a case of aggravated truancy he dropped into Gaelic. Bailie McCallum used to refer in convivial moments to his schooldays under Bulldog, and always left it to be inferred that had it not been for that tender, fostering care, he had not risen to his high estate in Muirtown. Fathers of families who were elders in the kirk, and verging on grey hair, would hear no complaints of Bulldog, for they had passed under the yoke in their youth, and what they had endured with profit—they now said—was good enough for their children. He seemed to us in those days like Melchizedek, without father or mother, beginning or end of days; and now that Bulldog has lain for many a year in a quiet Perthshire kirkyard, it is hardly worth while visiting Muirtown Seminary.

Every morning, except in vacation, he crossed the bridge at 8.45, with such rigid punctuality that the clerks in the Post Office checked the clock by him, and he returned by the way he had gone, over the North Meadow, at 4.15, for it was his grateful custom to close the administration of discipline at the same hour as the teaching, considering with justice that any of the Muirtown varlets would rather take the cane than be kept in, where from the windows he could see the North Meadow in its greenness, and the river running rapidly on an afternoon. It would have been out of place for Bulldog to live in a Muirtown street, where he must have been overlooked and could not have maintained his necessary reserve. Years ago he had built himself a house upon the slope of the hill which commanded Muirtown from the other side of the river. It was a hill which began with wood and ended in a lofty crag; and even from his house, halfway up and among the trees, Bulldog could look down upon Muirtown, compactly built together on the plain beneath, and thinly veiled in the grey smoke which rose up lazily from its homes. It cannot be truthfully said that Bulldog gave himself to poetry, but having once varied his usual country holiday by a visit to Italy, he ever afterwards declared at dinner-table that Muirtown reminded him of Florence as you saw that city from Fiesole, with the ancient kirk of St. John rising instead of the Duomo, and the Tay instead of the Arno. He admitted that Florence had the advantage in her cathedral, but he stoutly insisted that the Arno was but a poor, shrunken river compared with his own; for wherever Bulldog may have been born, he boasted himself to be a citizen of Muirtown, and always believed that there was no river to be found anywhere like unto the Tay. His garden was surrounded with a high wall, and the entrance was by a wooden door, and how Bulldog lived within these walls no one knew, but many had imagined. Speug, with two daring companions, had once traced Bulldog home and seen him disappear through the archway, and then it was in their plan to form a ladder one above the other, and that Peter, from the top thereof, should behold the mysterious interior and observe Bulldog in private life; but even Speug's courage failed at the critical moment, and they returned without news to the disappointed school.

Pity was not the characteristic of Seminary life in those days, but the hardest heart was touched with compassion when Nestie Molyneux lost his father and went to stay with Bulldog. The Seminary rejoiced in their master; but it was with trembling, and the thought of spending the evening hours and all one's spare time in his genial company excited our darkest imagination. To write our copy-books and do our problems under Bulldog's eye was a bracing discipline which lent a kind of zest to life, but to eat and drink with Bulldog was a fate beyond words.

As it was an article of faith with us that Bulldog was never perfectly happy except when he was plying the cane, it was taken for granted that Nestie would be his solitary means of relaxation, from the afternoon of one day to the morning of the next, and when Nestie appeared, on the third morning after his change of residence, the school was waiting to receive him.

His walking across the meadow by Bulldog's side, with his hands in his pockets, talking at his ease and laughing lightly, amazed us on first sight, but did not count for much, because we considered this manner a policy of expediency and an act of hypocrisy. After all, he was only doing what every one of us would have done in the same circumstances—conciliating the tyrant and covering his own sufferings. We kept a respectful distance till Nestie parted with his guardian, and then we closed in round him and licked our lips, for the story that Nestie could tell would make any Indian tale hardly worth the reading.

Babel was let loose, and Nestie was pelted with questions which came in a fine confusion from many voices, and to which he was hardly expected to give an immediate answer.

"What like is the cane he keeps at home?" "Has Bulldog tawse in the house?" "Div ye catch it regular?" "Does he come after you to your bedroom?" "Have ye onything to eat?" "Is the garden door locked?" "Could ye climb over the wall if he was thrashing you too sore?" "Did he let ye bring yir rabbits?" "Have ye to work at yir lessons a' night?" "What does Bulldog eat for his dinner?" "Does he ever speak to you?" "Does he ever say onything about the school?" "Did ye ever see Bulldog sleeping?" "Are ye feared to be with him?" "Would the police take ye away if he was hurting ye?" "Is there ony other body in the house?" "Would he let ye make gundy (candy) by the kitchen fire?" "Have ye to work all night at yir books?" "Does he make ye brush his boots?" "What do ye call him in the house?" "Would ye call him Bulldog for a shilling's-worth of gundy if the garden gate was open?" "Has he ony apples in the garden?" "Would ye daur to lay a finger on them?" "How often have ye to wash yir hands?" "Would ye get yir licks if yir hair wasna brushed?" And then Speug interfered, and commanded silence that Nestie might satisfy the curiosity of the school.

"Haud yir blethering tongues!" was his polite form of address. "Noo, Nestie, come awa' wi' yir evidence. What like is't to live wi' Bulldog?"

"It's awfully g-good of you fellows to ask how I'm getting on with Bully," and Nestie's eyes lit up with fun, for he'd a nice little sense of humour, and never could resist the temptation of letting it play upon our slow-witted, matter-of-fact intellects. "And I declare you seem to know all about what h-happens. I'll j-just tell you something about it, but it'll make you creepy," and then all the circle gathered in round Nestie. "I have to rise at five in the morning, and if I'm not down at half-past, Bulldog comes for me with a c-cane" (Howieson at this point rubbed himself behind gently). "Before breakfast we have six 'p-props' from Euclid and two vulgar f-fractions" (a groan from the school): "for breakfast we've porridge and milk, and I have to keep time with Bulldog—one, two, three, four—with the spoonfuls. He's got the c-cane on the table." ("Gosh" from a boy at the back, and general sympathy.) "He has the t-tawse hung in the lobby so as to be handy." ("It cowes all.") "There are three regular c-canings every day, one in the morning, and one in the afternoon, and one before you go to bed." At this point Speug, who had been listening with much doubt to Nestie's account, and knew that he had a luxuriant imagination, interfered.

"Nestie," he said, "ye're an abandoned little scoundrel, and ye're telling lees straicht forward," and the school went into the class-room divided in opinion. Some were suspicious that Nestie had been feeding their curiosity with highly spiced meat, but others were inclined to believe anything of Bulldog's household arrangements. During the hour Speug studied Nestie's countenance with interest, and in the break he laid hold of that ingenious young gentleman by the ear and led him apart into a quiet corner, where he exhorted him to unbosom the truth. Nestie whispered something in Speug's ear which shook even that worthy's composure.

"Did ye say rabbits?"

"Lop-ears," said Nestie after a moment's silence, and Speug was more confounded than he had ever been in all his blameless life.

"Ernest Molyneux, div ye kin whar ye 'ill go to if ye tell lees."

"I'm telling the t-truth, Speug, and I never tell lies, but sometimes I compose t-tales. Lop-ear rabbits, and he feeds them himself."

"Will ye say 'as sure as death'?"—for this was with us the final test of truth.

"As sure as death," said Nestie, and that afternoon Speug had so much to think about that he gave almost no heed when Bulldog discovered him with nothing on the sheet before him except a remarkably correct drawing of two lop-eared rabbits.

Speug and Nestie crossed the North Meadow together after school, and before they parted at the bridge Nestie entreated the favour of a visit in his new home that evening from Speug; but, although modesty was not Speug's prevailing characteristic, he would on no account accept the flattering invitation. Maybe he was going to drive with his father, who was breaking-in a new horse, or maybe he was going out on the river in a boat, or maybe the stable gates were to be shut and the fox turned loose for a run, or maybe——

"Nestie whispered something in Speug's ear."

"Maybe you are going to learn your l-lessons, Speug, for once in your life," said Nestie, who, his head on one side, was studying Speug's embarrassment.

"A'm to do naething o' the kind," retorted Speug, turning a dark red at this insult. "Nane o' yir impidence."

"Maybe you're f-frightened to come," said Nestie, and dodged at the same time behind a lamp-post. "Why, Speug, I didn't know you were f-frightened of anything."

"Naither I am," said Speug stoutly; "an' if it had been Jock Howieson said that, I'd black his eyes. What sud I be frightened of, ye miserable little shrimp?"

"Really, I don't know, Speug," said Nestie; "but just let me g-guess. It might be climbing the hill; or did you think you might meet one of the 'Pennies,' and he would fight you; or, Speug—an idea occurs to me—do you feel as if you did not want to spend an hour—just a nice, quiet hour—all alone with Bulldog? You and he are such f-friends, Speug, in the Seminary. Afraid of Bulldog? Speug, I'm ashamed of you, when poor little me has to live with him now every day."

"When I get a grip o' you, Nestie Molyneux, I'll learn ye to give me chat. I never was afraid of Bulldog, and I dinna care if he chases me round the garden wi' a stick, but I'm no coming."

"You are afraid, Speug; you dare not come." And Nestie kept carefully out of Speug's reach.

"You are a liar," cried Speug. "I'll come up this very night at seven o'clock, but I'll no come in unless ye're at the garden door."

Speug had fought many pitched battles in his day, and was afraid neither of man nor beast, but his heart sank within him for the first time in his life when he crossed the bridge and climbed the hill to the residence of Mr. Dugald MacKinnon. Nothing but his pledged word, and a reputation for courage which must not be tarnished, since it rested on nothing else, brought him up the lane to Bulldog's door. He was before his time, and Nestie had not yet come to meet him, and he could allow his imagination to picture what was within the walls, and what might befall his unfortunate self before he went down that lane again. His one consolation and support was in the lop-eared rabbits; and if it were the case, as Nestie had sworn with an oath which never had been broken at the Seminary, that there were rabbits within that dreadful enclosure, there was hope for him; for if he knew about anything, he knew about rabbits, and if anyone had to do with rabbits—and although it was incredible, yet had not Nestie sworn it with an oath?—there must be some bowels of mercy even in Bulldog. Speug began to speculate whether he might not be able, with Nestie's loyal help, to reach the rabbits and examine thoroughly into their condition, and escape from the garden without a personal interview with its owner; and at the thought thereof Speug's heart was lifted. For of all his exploits which had delighted the Seminary, none, for its wonder and daring, its sheer amazingness, could be compared with a stolen visit to Bulldog's rabbits. "Nestie," he murmured to himself, as he remembered that little Englishman's prodigal imagination, "is a maist extraordinary leear, but he said 'as sure as death.'"

"Why, Speug, is that you? You ought to have opened the door. Come along and shake hands with the master; he's just l-longing to see you." And Speug was dragged along the walk between the gooseberry bushes, which in no other circumstances would he have passed unnoticed, and was taken up to be introduced with the air of a dog going to execution. He heard someone coming down the walk, and he lifted up his eyes to know the worst, and in that moment it appeared as if reason had deserted the unhappy Speug. It was the face of Bulldog, for the like of that countenance could not be found on any other man within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Yes, it was Bulldog, and that Speug would be prepared to swear in any court of justice. The nose and the chin, and the iron-grey whiskers and hair, and above all those revolving eyes. There could not be any mistake. But what had happened to Bulldog's face, for it was like unto that of another man? The sternness had gone out of it, and—there was no doubt about it—Bulldog was smiling, and it was an altogether comprehensive and irresistible smile. It had taken the iron lines out of his face and shaped his lips to the kindliest curve, and deprived his nose of its aggressive air, and robbed the judicial appearance of his whiskers, and it had given him—it was a positive fact—another pair of eyes. They still revolved, but not now like the guns in the turret of a monitor dealing destruction right and left. They were shining and twinkling like the kindly light from a harbour tower. There never was such a genial and humoursome face, so full of fun and humanity, as that which looked down on the speechless Speug. Nor was that all; it was a complete transformation. Where were the pepper-and-salt trousers and the formal black coat and vest, which seemed somehow to symbolise the inflexible severity of Bulldog's reign? and the hat, and the gloves, and the stick—what had become of his trappings? Was there ever such a pair of disreputable old slippers, down at the heel, out at the sides, broken at the seams, as those that covered the feet of Bulldog in that garden. The very sight of those slippers, with their suggestion of slackness and unpunctuality and ignorance of all useful knowledge and general Bohemianism, was the first thing which cheered the heart of Speug. Those slippers would tolerate no problems from Euclid and would laugh a cane to scorn. Where did he ever get those trousers, and from whose hands did they originally come, baggy at the knee and loose everywhere, stained with garden mould and torn with garden bushes?

"Speug was dragged along the walk."

Without question it was a warm night in that sheltered place on the side of the hill; but would any person believe that the master of mathematics, besides writing and arithmetic, in Muirtown Seminary, was going about in his garden, and before the eyes of two of his pupils, without the vestige of a waistcoat. Speug now was braced for wonders, but even he was startled with Bulldog's jacket, which seemed of earlier age than the trousers, with which it had no connexion in colour. It may once have had four buttons, but only two were left now; there was a tear in its side that must have been made by a nail in the garden wall, the handle of a hammer projected from one pocket, and a pruning-knife from the other. And if there was not a pipe in Bulldog's mouth, stuck in the side of his cheek, "as sure as death!" There was a knife in his hand, with six blades and a corkscrew and a gimlet and the thing for taking the stones out of a horse's hoof—oath again repeated—and Bulldog was trying the edge of the biggest blade upon his finger. Speug, now ascending from height to height, was not surprised to see no necktie, and would have been prepared to see no collar. He had now even a wild hope that when he reached Bulldog's head it might be crowned with a Highland bonnet, minus the tails; but instead thereof there was a hat, possibly once a wide-awake, so bashed, and shapeless, and discoloured, and worn so rakishly, partly on the back and partly on the side of his head, that Speug was inwardly satisfied, and knew that no evil could befall him in that garden.

"Speug, my mannie, how are ye?" said this amazing figure. "Ye've been long of coming. There's something like a knife, eh!" and Bulldog opened up the whole concern and challenged Speug to produce his knife, which was not so bad after all, for it had six departments, and one of them was a file, which was wanting in Bulldog's.

"Show the master your peerie, Speug," said Nestie. "It's split more tops than any one in the school; it's a r-ripper," and Nestie exhibited its deadly steel point with much pride, while Speug endeavoured to look unconscious as the owner of this instrument of war.

"Dod, I'll have a try myself," said Bulldog. "It's many a year since I've spun a top. Where's yir string?" and he strode up the walk winding the top, and the boys behind looked at one another, while Nestie triumphed openly.

"Are you frightened, Speug?" he whispered. "Ain't he great? And just you wait; you haven't begun to see things yet, not h-half."

Upon the doorstep Bulldog spun the top with a right hand that had not lost its cunning, but rather had been strengthened by much cane exercise. "It's sleeping," he cried in huge delight. "If you dare to touch it, pity you!" but no one wished to shorten its time, and the three hung over that top with fond interest, as Bulldog timed the performance with his watch, which he extricated from his trouser pocket.

"Ye're a judge of rabbits, Speug," said the master. "I would like to have yir advice," and as they went down through the garden they halted at a place, and the robins came and sat on Bulldog's shoulder and took crumbs out of his hand, and a little further on the thrushes bade him welcome, and he showed the boys where the swallows had built every year, and they also flew round his head.

"If ye dinna meddle with them, the birds 'ill no be afraid o' you, will they, Dandie?" and the old terrier which followed at his heels wagged his tail and indicated that he also was on good terms with every living thing in the garden.

No one in the Seminary ever could be brought to believe it, even although Speug tried to inculcate faith with his fists, that Bulldog had carried out a litter of young rabbits in his hat for inspection, and that, before the three of them laid themselves out for a supper of strawberries, Speug had given to his master the best knowledge at his command on the amount of green food which might be given with safety to a rabbit of adult years, and had laid it down with authority that a moderate amount of tea-leaves and oatmeal might be allowed as an occasional dainty.

After the attack on the strawberries, in which Speug greatly distinguished himself, and Bulldog urged him on with encouraging words, they had tarts and lemonade in the house, where not a sign of cane or tawse could be found. Bulldog drew the corks himself, and managed once to drench Speug gloriously, whereat that worthy wiped his face with his famous red handkerchief and was inordinately proud, while Nestie declared that the thing had been done on purpose, and Bulldog threatened him with the tawse for insulting his master.

"Div ye think, Speug, ye could manage a piece of rock before ye go," and Bulldog produced the only rock that a Muirtown man will ever think worth eating—Fenwick's own very best, thick, and pure, and rich, and well-flavoured; and when Speug knew not whether to choose the peppermint, that is black and white, or the honey rock, which is brown and creamy, or the cinnamon, which in those days was red outside and white within, his host insisted that he should take a piece of each, and they would last him till he reached his home.

"Speug," and Bulldog bade farewell to his pupil at the garden gate, "ye're the most aggravating little scoundrel in Muirtown Seminary, and the devilry that's in you I bear witness is bottomless; but ye're fine company, and ye 'ill, maybe, be a man yet, and Nestie and me will be glad to see ye when ye're no engaged with yir study. Ye 'ill no forget to come, Peter."

Peter's tongue, which had been wagging freely among the rabbits, again forsook him, but he was able to indicate that he would seize an early opportunity of again paying his respects to Mr. Dugald MacKinnon in his own home; and when Bulldog thrashed him next day for not having prepared an exercise the night before, the incident only seemed to complete Speug's pride and satisfaction.

THE DISGRACE OF MR. BYLES

VI

Bulldog's southern assistant had tried the patience of the Seminary by various efforts to improve its mind and manners, but when he proposed at the beginning of the autumn term to occupy Saturdays with botanical excursions to Kilspindie Woods, which, as everybody knows, are three miles from Muirtown, and a paradise of pheasants, it was felt that if there was any moral order in the universe something must happen. From the middle of September, when the school opened, on to the beginning of October, when football started, our spare time was given to kites, which we flew from the North Meadow in the equinoctial gales gloriously. Speug had one of heroic size, with the figure of a dragon upon it painted in blue and yellow and red—the red for the fire coming out of his mouth—and a tail of eight joints, ending in a bunch of hay fastened with a ribbon. None but a sportsman like Speug could have launched the monster from the ground—bigger than Peter by a foot—and nursed it through the lower spaces till it caught the wind, and held it in the higher as it tore upwards and forwards till the dragon was but the size of a man's hand in the clear autumn sky. Then Peter would lie down upon his back, with his hands below his head, and the stick with the kite string beneath his feet, and gaze up at the speck above, with an expression so lifted above this present world that a circle of juniors could only look at him with silent admiration and speculate whether they would ever become so good and great.

It must not be thought, however, that kite-flying was chiefly done upon your back, for it gave endless opportunities for intricate man[oe]uvres and spectacular display. When Peter was in the vein he would collect twelve mighties—each with a kite worth seeing—and bringing the kites low enough for the glory of their size and tails to be visible they would turn and wheel and advance and retire, keeping line and distance with such accuracy that Sergeant McGlashan would watch the review with keen interest and afterwards give his weighty approval. Then the band would work their way up to the head of the Meadow in the teeth of a north-wester, and forming in line, with half a dozen yards between each boy, would let the kites go and follow them at the run as the kites tore through the air and almost pulled their owners' arms out of the sockets. It was so fine a demonstration that the women bleaching their clothes would pick up half a dozen of the goodman's shirts to let Speug keep his course—knowing very well that he would have kept it otherwise over the shirts—and golfers, who expect everyone to get out of their way on pain of sudden death, would stop upon the putting green to see the kites go down in the wind with the laddies red-faced and bareheaded at their heels. If the housewives shook their heads as they spread out the shirts on the grass again—weighing them down with clean stones that they might not follow the kites—it was with secret delight, for there is no wholesome woman who does not rejoice in a boy and regard his most vexatious mischief with charity. And old Major MacLeod, the keenest of golfers and the most touchy of Celts, declared that this condemned old Island was not dead yet when it could turn out such a gang of sturdy young ruffians. And it was instead of such a mighty ploy that Mr. Byles proposed to take the Seminary for a botanical excursion.

It was in the mathematical class-room that Mr. Byles announced the new departure, and, even if Bulldog had not been keeping watch with an inscrutable countenance, the school was too much amazed to interrupt. Having touched on the glories of the creation amid which we lived, Mr. Byles pointed out, in what the newspapers call "neat and well-chosen terms," that it was not enough to learn mathematics as they all did so diligently—Jock Howieson's eye turned instinctively to Bulldog's cane—but they must also know some natural science in order to become, as he hoped they would, cultured men—Speug was just able to cast a longing glance at Thomas John. That no pursuit was easier and more delightful than botany, especially among wild flowers. That on Saturday he proposed to go with as many as would join him to ransack the treasures of Kilspindie Woods. That these woods were very rich, he believed, in flowers, among which he mentioned wild geraniums—at which the school began to recover and rustle. That the boys might dry the geraniums and make books for Christmas presents with them, and that he hoped to see a herbarium in the Seminary containing all the wild flowers of the district. The school was now getting into good spirits, and Bulldog allowed his eye to fall on Speug. That any boy who desired to improve his mind was to put on his oldest suit and bring a bag to carry the plants in and be in front of the Seminary at nine to-morrow. Then Bulldog brought his cane down on the desk with energy and dismissed the school, and Nestie told Peter that his mouth had begun to twitch.

Outside the school gathered together on the terrace around the Russian guns, which was our Forum, and after five seconds' pause, during which we gathered inspiration from each others' faces, a great shout of laughter went up to the sky, full-toned, unanimous, prolonged. Any sense of humour in the Seminary was practical, and Mr. Byles's botany class, with expeditions, was irresistible.

"Geranniums!" cried Howieson, who was immensely tickled; "it cowes a'. An' what was the ither flooer—'herbarries'? It's michty; it'ill be poppies an' mustard seed next. Speug, ye'ill be making a book for a present to Bulldog."

"Tak care o' yirsel," Bauldie shouted to the Dowbiggins, who were making off, as mass meetings did not agree with them, "an' see ye dinna wet yir feet or dirty yir hands. Ye'ill get yir wheeps at home if ye do. Give us a bit o' Byles, Nestie," and then there was instant silence, for Nestie had a nice little trick of mimicry which greatly endeared him to a school where delicate gifts were rare.

"S-silence, if you please," and Nestie held up his hand with Mr. Byles's favourite polite deprecating gesture. "I hear a smile. Remember, d-dear boys, that this is a serious s-subject. Do p-please sit quiet, Peter McGuffie; your fidgetin' is very t-tryin' indeed, and I 'ope, I mean h-hope, you will make an effort to l-learn. This, my l-lads, is a common object of Nature which I 'old, that is hold, in my h-hands—Howieson, I must ask you not to annoy Thomas John Dowbiggin—the c-colour is a lovely gold, and yet—no talking, if you please, it is r-rude—we pass it every day without n-notice. Each boy may take a dandelion h-home to his sister. Now go hout ... or rather out, quietly."

"Gosh, it's just Byles to the ground!" cried Bauldie; and Johnston passed a half stick of gundy to Nestie to refresh him after his labours. "Are ony o' you chaps goin'? It wud be worth seein' Byles traking thro' the Kilspindie Woods, with thae bleatin' sheep o' Dowbiggins at his heels, carryin' an airmful o' roots and sic like."

"You'ill no catch me tramping oot at the tail o' Byles and a litter o' Dowbiggins!"—and Jock was very emphatic. "Dod, it'ill just be like a procession o' MacMuldrow's lassies, two and two, and maybe airm in airm!"

This fearful and malignant suggestion settled the matter for the Seminary, as a score of its worthies marching across the bridge in the interests of science, like a boarding-school, would be a scandal for ever. So it was agreed that a body of sympathisers should see the Byles expedition off next morning, and then hold a field day of kites in the meadow.

The deterioration of the best is the worst, and that means that when a prim, conventional, respectable man takes in his head to dress as a Bohemian, the effect will be remarkable. Byles had been anxious to show that he could be quite the gay rustic when he pleased, and he was got up in a cap, much crushed, and a grey flannel shirt, with a collar corresponding, and no tie, and a suit of brown tweeds, much stained with futile chemical experiments. He was also equipped with a large canvas bag, slung over his shoulder, and a hammock net, which he explained could be slung from a tree and serve as a resting-place if it were damp beneath. The Dowbiggins had entered into the spirit of the thing, and were in clothes reserved for their country holidays. They had each an umbrella, large and bulgy, and altogether were a pair of objects to whom no one would have lent a shilling. Cosh, whose attack on Nestie made him a social outcast, had declared himself a convert to natural science, and was sucking up to Byles, and two harmless little chaps, who thought that they would like to know something about flowers, made up the Botanical Society.

They were a lonely little group standing on the terrace, while Mr. Byles was securing a trowel and other instruments of war from his room, but a large and representative gathering of the Seminary did their best to cheer and instruct them.

Howieson insisted that the bottle of milk which bulged from the bag of the younger Dowbiggin contained spirituous liquors, and warned the two juniors to keep clear of him and to resist every temptation to drinking. He also expressed an earnest hope that a rumour flying round the school about tobacco was not true. But the smell on Dowbiggin's clothes was horrid. Cosh was affectionately exhorted to have a tender care of his health and personal appearance, not to bully Lord Kilspindie's gamekeepers, nor to put his foot into a steel trap, nor to meddle with the rabbits, nor to fall into the Tay, but above all things not to tell lies.

Thomas John was beset with requests—that he would leave a lock of his hair in case he should not return, that he would mention the name of the pawn-broker from whom he got his clothes, that he would bring home a bouquet of wild flowers for Bulldog, that he would secure a supply of turnips to make lanterns for Halloween, that he would be kind to Mr. Byles and see that he took a rest in his net, that he would be careful to gather up any "h's" Mr. Byles might drop on the road, and that he should not use bad language under any circumstances.

"Never mind what those boys say, Thomas," said Mr. Byles, who had come out in time to catch the last exhortation: "it is far better to himprove, I mean cultivate, the mind than to fly kites like a set of children; but we all hope that you will have a nice fly, don't we, boys?" And sarcasm from so feeble a quarter might have provoked a demonstration had not Byles and his flock been blotted out by an amazing circumstance. As the botanists started, Speug, who had maintained an unusual silence all morning, joined the body along with Nestie, and gave Mr. Byles to understand that he also was hungering for scientific research. After their friends had recovered themselves they buzzed round the two, who were following the Dowbiggins with an admirable affectation of sedateness, but received no satisfaction. Speug contented himself with warning off a dozen henchmen who had fallen in by him with the idea of forming a mock procession, and then giving them a wink of extraordinary suggestiveness. But Nestie was more communicative, and explained the situation at length——

"Peter was a b-botanist all the time, but he did not know it; he fairly loves g-geranniums, and is sorry that he wasted his time on k-kites and snowballs. We are going to himprove our m-minds, and we don't want you to trouble us." But this was not knowledge.

It remained a mystery, and when Jock and Bauldie tailed off at the bridge, and Speug, halfway across, turned round and winked again, it was with regret that they betook themselves to their kites, and more than once they found themselves casting longing glances to the distant woods, where Speug was now pursuing the study of botany.

"Bauldie," said Jock suddenly, as the kites hung motionless in the sky, "this is weel enough, but tak' my word for't it's nothing to the game they're playin' in yon woods."

"Div ye mean howkin' geranniums? for I canna see muckle game in that: I would as soon dig potatoes." Bauldie, though a man of his hands, had a prosaic mind and had little imagination.

"Geranniums! ger—— havers, that's no' what Speug is after, you bet. He's got a big splore (exploit) on hand or he never crossed Muirtown Brig in such company. Man, Bauldie, I peety Byles, I do. Peter'ill lose the lot o' them in the woods or he'ill stick them in a bog, or"—and Jock could hardly hold his kite—"what div ye say to this, man? he'ill row them over to Woody Island and leave them there till Monday, with naething but bread and milk and the net to sleep in." And the joy of Jock and Bauldie at this cheerful prospect was rather a testimony to their faith in Peter's varied ability than a proof of sympathy with their fellow-creatures.

If Speug was playing the fox he gave no sign on the way to the woods, for he was a model of propriety and laid himself out to be agreeable. He showed an unwonted respect for the feelings of the Dowbiggins, so that these two young gentlemen relaxed the vigilant attention with which they usually regarded Speug, and he was quite affable with Cosh. As for the master, Peter simply placed himself at Mr. Byles's service, expatiating on the extent of the woods and their richness in flowers—"just fair scatted up wi' geranniums and the rest o' them:" offering to take the expedition by the nearest way to the treasures, and especially insisting on the number and beauty and tameness of the pheasants, till Mr. Byles was charmed and was himself surprised at the humanising influence of scientific pursuits.