[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE SCHOOL FELL OVER BENCHES AND OVER ONE ANOTHER."]
Speug suggested that as this plague of mice had burst upon the French cla.s.s-room the scholars should meet the calamity like men, and asked Moossy"s permission to go out upon the chase. For once Moossy and his pupils had one mind, and the school gave itself to its heart"s content, and without a thought of consequences, to a mouse hunt. Nothing is more difficult than to catch a mouse, and the difficulty is doubled when no one wishes to catch it; and so the school fell over benches, and over one another, and jumped over the desks and scrambled under them, ever pretending to have caught a mouse, and really succeeding once in smothering an unfortunate animal beneath the weight of half a dozen boys. Thomas John was early smeared with ink from top to bottom by an accident in which Howieson took a leading part, and the German Dictionary intended for a mouse happened to take Cosh on the way, which led to an encounter between that indignant youth and Bauldie, in which mice were forgotten. The blackboard was brought down with a crash, and a form was securely planted on its ruins. High above the babel Moossy could be heard crying encouragement, and demanding whether the "mices"
had been caught, but nothing would induce him to come down from his fastness. When things were at their highest, and gay spirits like Speug were beginning to conclude that even a big snow fight was nothing to a mouse hunt, and Howieson had been so lifted that he had mounted a desk, not to catch a mouse, but to give a cheer, and was standing there without collar or tie, dishevelled, triumphant, and raised above all the trials of life, the door opened and Bulldog entered. And it was a beautiful tribute to the personality of that excellent man, that the whole room crystallised in an instant, and everyone remained motionless, frozen, as it were, in the act.
Bulldog looked round with that calm composure which sat so well upon him, taking in Moossy perched upon his desk, Howieson on his form, Speug sitting with easy dignity on the top of Thomas John, and half a dozen worthies still tied together in a scrimmage, as if this were a sight to which he was accustomed every day in Muirtown Seminary.
"Foreign languages," he began, after a pause of ten seconds, "is evidently a verra divertin" subject of study, and I wonder that any pupil is left in the department of mathematics. I was not aware, Jock, that ye needed to stand on a form before you could do your German, and I suppose that is the French cla.s.s in the corner. I"m sorry to intrude, but I"m pleased to see a cla.s.s in earnest about its work, I really am."
"Mices!" remarked Bulldog in icy tones, as poor Moossy came down from his desk and began to explain. "My impression is that you are right, as far as I can judge--and I have some acquaintance with the circ.u.mstances.
There are a considerable number of mices in this room, a good many more mices than were brought in somebody"s pocket this morning. The mices I see were in my cla.s.s-room this morning, and they were very quiet and peaceable mices, and they"ll be the same in this cla.s.s-room after this, or I"ll know the reason why. If you"ll excuse me," and Bulldog embraced the whole scene in a comprehensive farewell, "I"ll leave the foreign cla.s.s-room and go down and see what my laddies are doing with their writing"; and when Bulldog closed the door Howieson realised that he owed his escape to Bulldog"s respect for another man"s cla.s.s-room, but that the joyful day in modern languages had come to an end. There would be no more "mices."
Next Sat.u.r.day afternoon Speug and Nestie were out for a ramble in the country, and turning into a lane where the hedgerows were breaking into green, and the primroses nestling at the roots of the bushes, they came upon a sight which made them pause so that they could only stand and look. Down the lane a man was dragging an invalid-chair, a poor and broken thing which had seen its best days thirty years ago. In the chair a woman was sitting, or rather lying, very plainly but comfortably dressed, and carefully wrapped up, whose face showed that she had suffered much, but whose cheeks were responding to the breath of spring.
As they stood, the man stopped and went to the bank and plucked a handful of primroses and gave them to the woman; and as he bent over her, holding up the primroses before her eyes, and as they talked together, even the boys saw the grateful pleasure in her eyes. He adjusted the well-worn cloak and changed her position in the chair, and then went back to drag it, a heavy weight down the soft and yielding track; and the boys stood and stared and looked at one another, for the man who was caring so gently for this invalid, and toiling so manfully with the lumbering chair, was Moossy.
"C-cut away, Speug," said Nestie; "he wouldn"t like us to see him. I say, he ain"t a bad sort--Moossy--after all. Bet you a bottle of g-ginger-beer that"s Moossy"s wife, and that"s why he"s so poor."
They were leaving the lane when they heard an exclamation, and going back they found that the miserable machine had slipped into the ditch and there stuck fast beyond poor Moossy"s power of recovery. With many an "Ach!" and other words, too, he was bewailing the situation and hanging over his invalid, while she seemed to be cheering him and trying if she could so lie in the chair as to lessen the weight upon the lower side, while every minute the wheel sank deeper in the soft earth.
"What are you st-staring at, you idle, worthless v-vagabond?" said Nestie to Speug. "Come along and give a hand to Moossy," who was so pleased to get some help in the lonely place that he forgot the revealing of his little secret. With Speug in the shafts, who had the strength of a man in his compact little body, and Moossy pulling on the other side, the coach was soon upon the road again, amid a torrent of grat.i.tude from Moossy and his wife, partly in English, but mostly in German, but all quite plain to the boys, for grat.i.tude is always understood in any language. They came bravely along the lane, Speug pulling, Moossy hanging over his wife to make sure she had not been hurt, and Nestie plucking flowers to make up a nosegay in memory of the lane, while Moossy declared them to be "_Zwei herzliche Knaben_."
When they came to the main road, Speug would not give up his work, but brought the carriage manfully to the little cottage, hidden in a garden, where Moossy lodged. When she had been carried in--she was so light that Moossy could lift her himself--she compelled the boys to come in, too, and Moossy made fragrant coffee, and this they had with strange German cakes, which were not half bad, and to which they both did ample justice. Going home, Nestie looked at Speug, and Speug looked at Nestie, and though no words pa.s.sed it was understood that the days of the troubles of Moossy in the Seminary of Muirtown were ended.
During the remaining year of Moossy"s labours at the Seminary it would not be true to say that he became a good or useful master, for he had neither the knowledge nor the tact, or that the boys were always respectful and did their work, for they were very far removed from being angels; but Moossy did pluck up some spirit, and Speug saw that he suffered no grievous wrong. He also took care that Moossy was not left to be his own horse from day to day, but that the stronger varlets of the Seminary should take some exercise in the shafts of Moossy"s coach.
Howieson was a young gentleman far removed from sentiment, and he gave it carefully to be understood that he only did the thing for a joke; but there is no question that more than once Jock brought Moossy"s carriage, with Moossy"s wife in it, successfully along that lane and other lanes, and it is a fact that, on a certain Sat.u.r.day, Speug came out with one of his father"s traps, and Mistress Moossy, as she was called, was driven far and wide about the country around Muirtown.
"You are what the papers call a ph-philanthropist, Speug," said Nestie, "and I expect to hear that you are opening an orphan asylum." And Speug promptly replied that, if he did, the first person to be admitted would be Nestie, and that he would teach him manners.
It was a fortunate thing for Moossy that some one died in Germany and left him a little money, so that he could give up the hopeless drudgery of the Seminary and go home to live in a little house upon the banks of the Rhine. His wife, who had been improving under Dr. Manley"s care, began to brisk up at once, and was quite certain of recovery when one afternoon they left Muirtown Station. Some dozen boys were there to see them off, and it was Jock and Speug who helped Moossy to place her comfortably in the carriage. The gang had pooled their pocket-money--selling one or two treasures to swell the sum--that Moossy and his wife might go away laden with such dainties as schoolboys love, and Nestie had a bunch of flowers to place in her hands. They still called him Moossy, as they had done before, and he looked, to tell the truth, almost as shabby and his hair was as long as ever; but he was in great spirits and much touched by the kindness of his tormentors. As the English mail pulled out of Muirtown Station with quickening speed, the boys ran along the platform beside the carriage shaking hands with Moossy through the open window and pa.s.sing in their gifts.
"Take care o" mices!" shouted Jock, with agreeable humour, but the last sight Moossy had of Muirtown was Speug standing on a luggage-barrow and waving farewell.
A LAST RESOURCE
X
That the Rector should be ill and absent from his cla.s.ses from time to time was quite in the order of things, because he was a scholar and absent-minded to a degree--going to bed in the morning, and being got out of bed in rather less than time for his work; eating when it occurred to him, but preferring, on the whole, not to eat at all; wearing very much the same clothes summer and winter, and if he added a heavy top-coat, more likely putting it on in the height of summer and going without it when there were ten degrees of frost. It was not for his scholarship, but for his peculiarities, that the school loved him; not because he edited a "Caesar" and compiled a set of Latin exercises, for which perfectly unnecessary and disgusting labours the school hated him, but because he used to arrive at ten minutes past nine, and his form was able to jeer at Bulldog"s boys as they hastened into their cla.s.s-room with much discretion at one minute before the hour. Because he used to be so much taken up with a happy phrase in Horace that he would forget the presence of his cla.s.s, and walk up and down before the fireplace, chortling aloud; and because sometimes he was so hoa.r.s.e that he could only communicate with the cla.s.s by signs, which they unanimously misunderstood. Because he would sometimes be absent for a whole week, and his form was thrown in with another, with the result of much enjoyable friction, and an almost perfect neglect of work. He was respected and never was annoyed, not even by ruffians like Howieson, because everyone knew that the Rector was an honourable gentleman, with all his eccentric ways, and the _Muirtown Advertiser_ had a leader every spring on the achievements of his scholars. Edinburgh professors who came to examine the school used to fill up their speeches on the prize-day with graceful compliments to the Rector, supported by cla.s.sical quotations, during which the boys cheered rapturously and the Rector looked as if he were going to be hung. He was one of the recognised glories of Muirtown, and was freely referred to at munic.i.p.al banquets by bailies whose hearts had grown merry within them drinking the Queen"s health, and was a.s.sociated in the peroration to the toast of "the Fair City" with the North Meadow and the Fair Maid, and the River Tay and the County Gaol.
Bulldog was of another breed. Whatever may have been his negligences of dress and occupation in private life--and on this subject Nestie and Speug told fearful lies--he exhibited the most exasperating regularity in public, from his copper-plate handwriting to his speckless dress, but especially by an inhuman and absolutely sinful punctuality. No one with a heart within him and some regard to the comfort of his fellow creatures, especially boys, had any right to observe times and seasons with such exactness. During all our time, except on the one great occasion I wish to record, he was never known to be ill, not even with a cold; and it was said that he never had been for a day off duty, even in the generation before us. His erect, spare frame, without an ounce of superfluous flesh, seemed impervious to disease, and there was a feeling in the background of our minds that for any illness to have attacked Bulldog would have been an act of impertinence which he would have known how to deal with. It was firmly believed that for the last fifty years--and some said eighty, but that was poetry--Bulldog had entered his cla.s.s-room every morning, except on Sat.u.r.days, Sundays, and holidays, at 8.50, and was ready to begin work at the stroke of nine.
There was a pleasant story that in the days of our fathers there had been such a fall of snow and so fierce a wind that the bridge had been drifted up, and no one could cross that morning from the other side. The boys from the south side of the town had brought news of the drift to the school, and the earlier arrivals, who had come in hope of a snow-fight, were so mightily taken with the news that they hurried to the Muirtown end of the bridge to look at the drift, and danced with joy at the thought that on the other side Bulldog was standing, for once helpless and dismayed. Speug"s father, true ancestor of such a son, had shouted across the drift invitations for Bulldog to come over, secure in the fact that he could not be seen across its height, and in the hope that Bulldog would not know his voice. When they were weary celebrating the event, and after a pleasant encounter with a hastily organised regiment of message boys, the eager scholars sauntered along to the school, skirmishing as they went, just to be ready for the midday fight with the "Pennies." For the pure joy of it they opened the door of the mathematical cla.s.s-room, merely to see how it looked when Bulldog was not there, and found that estimable teacher at his desk, waiting to receive them with bland courtesy. Some said that he had stayed in Muirtown all night, antic.i.p.ating that drift, others that he had climbed over it in the early morning, before Muirtown was awake; but it was found out afterwards that he had induced old Duncan Rorison, the salmon-fisher, to ferry him across the flooded river, that it took them an hour to reach the Muirtown side, and that they had both been nearly drowned in the adventure.
"Come in, my boys," was all that he said. "Ye"re a little late, but the roads are heavy this morning. Come to the fire and warm yir hands before ye begin yir work. It"s a fine day for mathematics," and Mr. McGuffie senior used to tell his son with much relish that their hands were warmed. The school was profoundly convinced that if necessary Bulldog would be prepared to swim the river rather than miss a day in the mathematical cla.s.s-room.
It was a pleasant spring morning, and the "marble" season had just begun, when Howieson, after a vicious and well-directed stroke which won him three "brownies," inquired casually whether anybody had seen Bulldog go in; for, notwithstanding the years which came and went, his pa.s.sing in was always an occasion. Everyone then recollected that he had not been seen, but no one for a moment suggested that he had not arrived; and even when the school trooped into the cla.s.s-room and found Bulldog"s desk empty, there was no exhilaration and no tendency to take advantage of the circ.u.mstances. No one knew where he might be lying in wait, and from what quarter he might suddenly appear; and it was wonderful with what docility the boys began to work under the mild and beneficent reign of Mr. Byles, who had not at that time joined with the Dowbiggins in the unlawful pursuit of game. As the forenoon wore on there was certainly some curiosity, and Nestie was questioned as to Bulldog"s whereabouts; but it was understood to be a point of honour with Nestie, as a member of his household, to give no information about Bulldog"s movements, and so the school were none the wiser. There was some wild talk during the hour, and a dozen stories were afloat by afternoon. Next morning it was boldly said that Bulldog was ill, and some, who did not know what truth was, a.s.serted that he was in bed, and challenged Nestie to deny the slander. That ingenious young gentleman replied vaguely but politely, and veiled the whole situation in such a mist of irrelevant detail that the school went in for the second day to the cla.s.s-room rejoicing with trembling, and not at all sure whether Bulldog might not arrive in a carriage and pair, possibly with a large comforter round his throat, but otherwise full of spirits and perfectly fit for duty. It was only after the twelve o"clock break and a searching cross-examination of Nestie that the school could believe in the goodness of Providence, and felt like the Children of Israel on the other bank of the Red Sea. Some were for celebrating their independence in the North Meadow and treating Mr.
Byles with absolute contempt; but there were others who judged with some acuteness that they could have the North Meadow any day, but they might never again have a full hour in the mathematical cla.s.s-room without Bulldog. There seemed a certain fitness in holding the celebration amid the scenes of labour and discipline, and the mathematical cla.s.s went in to wait on Mr. Byles"s instruction in high spirits and without one missing. It is true that the Dowbiggins showed for the first time some reluctance in attending to their studies, but it was pointed out to them in a very firm and persuasive way by Speug that it would be disgraceful for them to be absent when Bulldog was ill, and that the cla.s.s could not allow such an act of treachery. Speug was so full of honest feeling that he saw Thomas John safely within the door, and, since he threatened an unreasonable delay, a.s.sisted him across the threshold from behind. There is no perfectly full and accurate account extant of what took place between twelve and one that day in the mathematical cla.s.s-room, but what may be called contributions to history oozed out and were gratefully welcomed by the school. It was told how Bauldie, being summoned by Mr.
Byles to work a problem on the board, instead of a triangle drew a fetching likeness of Mr. Byles himself, and being much encouraged by the applause of the cla.s.s, and having an artist"s love of his work, thrust a pipe into Mr. Byles"s mouth (pictorially), and blacked one of Mr.
Byles"s eyes (also pictorially), and then went to his seat with a sense of modest worth. That Mr. Byles, through a want of artistic appreciation, resented this Bohemian likeness of himself, and, moved by a Philistine spirit, would have wiped it from the board; but the senior members of the cla.s.s would on no account allow any work by a young but promising master to be lost, and succeeded in the struggle in wiping Mr. Byles"s own face with the chalky cloth. That Mr. Byles, instead of entering into the spirit of the day, lost his temper and went to Bulldog"s closet for a cane; whereupon Speug, seizing the opportunity so pleasantly afforded, locked Mr. Byles in that place of retirement, and so kept him out of any further mischief for the rest of the hour. That as Mr. Byles had been deposed from office on account of his incapacity, and the place of mathematical master was left vacant, Speug was unanimously elected to the position, and gave an address, from Bulldog"s desk, replete with popular humour. That as Thomas John did not seem to be giving such attention to his studies as might have been expected, Speug ordered that he be brought up for punishment, which was promptly done by Bauldie and Howieson. That after a long review of Thomas John"s iniquitous career, Speug gave him the tawse with much faithfulness, Bauldie seeing that Thomas John held out his hand in a becoming fashion; then that unhappy young gentleman was sent to his seat with a warning from Speug that this must never occur again. That Nestie, having stealthily left the room, gave such an accurate imitation of Bulldog"s voice in the pa.s.sage--"Pack of little fiddlers taking advantage of my absence; but I"ll warm them"--that there was an instantaneous rush for the seats; and when the door opened and Nestie appeared, the mathematical cla.s.s-room was as quiet as p.u.s.s.y, and Speug was ostentatiously working at a mathematical problem. There are men living who look back on that day with modest, thankful hearts, finding in its remembrance a solace in old age for the cares of life; and the scene on which they dwell most fondly is Nestie, whose face had been whitened for his abominable trick, standing on the top of Bulldog"s desk, and singing a school song with the manner of the Count and the accent of Moossy, while Speug with a cane in his hand compelled Dowbiggin to join in the chorus, and Byles could be heard bleating from the closet. Ah, me! how soon we are spoiled by this sinful world, and lose the sweet innocence of our first years! how poor are the rewards of ambition compared with the simple pleasures of childhood!
It could not be expected that we should ever have another day as good again, but everyone had a firm confidence in the originality of Speug when it was a question of mischief. We gathered hopefully round the Russian guns next morning--for, as I have said, the guns were our forum and place of public address--and, while affecting an att.i.tude of studied indifference, we waited with desire to hear the plan of campaign from our leader"s lips. But Speug, like all great generals, was full of surprises, and that morning he was silent and unapproachable. Various suggestions were made for brightening the mathematical labours and cheering up Mr. Byles, till at last Howieson, weary of their futility, proposed that the whole cla.s.s should go up to the top of the North Meadow and bathe in the river, and then Speug broke silence.
"Ye may go to bathe if ye like, Jock, and Cosh may go with ye, and if he"s drowned it"ll be no loss, nor, for that matter, if the half of ye are carried down the river. For myself, I"m going to the mathematical cla.s.s, and if onybody meddles wi" Byles I"ll fight him in the back yard in the dinner-hour for half a dozen stone-gingers."
"Is there onything wrang with your head, Speug?" For the thought of Peter busy with a triangle under the care and pastoral oversight of Mr.
Byles could only be explained in one way.
"No," replied Speug savagely, "nor with my fists, either. The fact is----" And then Speug hesitated, realising amid his many excellences a certain deficiency of speech for a delicate situation. "Nestie, what are ye glowering at? Get up on the gun and tell them aboot--what ye told me this meenut." And the school gathered in amazement round our pulpit, on which Nestie stood quite unconcerned.
"It was very good fun-n yesterday, boys, but it won"t do to-t-to-day.
Bully"s very ill, and Doctor Manley is afraid that he may--d-die, and it would be beastly bad form-m to be having larks when Bulldog is--maybe----" And Nestie came down hurriedly from the gun and went behind the crowd, while Speug covered his retreat in an aggressive manner, all the more aggressive that he did not seem himself to be quite indifferent.
Manley said it. Then every boy knew it must be going hard with Bulldog; for there was not in broad Scotland a cleverer, pluckier, cheerier soul in his great profession than John Manley, M.D., of Edinburgh, with half a dozen honours of Scotland, England, and France. He had an insight into cases that was almost supernatural, he gave prescriptions which n.o.body but his own chemist could make up, he had expedients of treatment that never occurred to any other man, and then he had a way with him that used to bring people up from the gates of death and fill despairing relatives with hope. His arrival in the sick room, a little man, with brusque, sharp, straightforward manner, seemed in itself to change the whole face of things and beat back the tides of disease. He would not hear that any disease was serious, but he treated it as if it were; he would not allow a gloomy face in a sick room, and his language to women who began to whimper, when he got them outside the room, was such as tom cats would be ashamed of; and he regarded the idea of any person below eighty dying on his hands as a piece of incredible impertinence. All over Perthshire country doctors in their hours of anxiety and perplexity sent for Manley; and when two men like William McClure and John Manley took a job in hand together, Death might as well leave and go to another case, for he would not have a look in with those champions in the doorway. English sportsmen in lonely shooting-boxes sent for the Muirtown crack in hours of sudden distress, and then would go up to London and swear in the clubs that there was a man down there in a country town of Scotland who was cleverer than all the West End swell doctors put together. He would not allow big names of diseases to be used in his hearing, believing that the shadow killed more people than the reality, and fighting with all his might against the melancholy delight that Scots people have in serious sickness and other dreary dispensations. When Manley returned one autumn from a week"s holiday and found the people of the North Free Kirk mourning in the streets over their minister, because he was dying of diphtheria, and his young wife asking grace to give her husband up if it were the will of G.o.d, Manley went to the house in a whirlwind of indignation, declaring that to call a sore throat diphtheria was a tempting of Providence, and that it was a mere mercy that they hadn"t got the real disease "just for a judgment."
It happened, however, that his treatment was exactly the same as that for diphtheria, and although he remarked that he didn"t know whether it was necessary for him to come back again for such an ordinary case, he did drop in by a series of accidents twice a day for more than a week; and although no one dared to whisper it in his presence, there are people who think to this day that the minister had diphtheria. As Manley, however, insisted that it was nothing but a sore throat, the minister felt bound to get better, and the whole congregation would have thanked Manley in a body had it not been that he would have laughed aloud. Many a boy remembered the day when he had been ill and sweating with terror lest he should die--although he wouldn"t have said that to any living creature--and Manley had come in like a breeze of fresh air, and declared that he was nothing but a "skulking young dog," with nothing wrong about him, except the desire to escape for three days from Bulldog.
"Well, Jimmie, ye don"t deserve it, for you"re the most mischievous little rascal, except Peter McGuffie, in the whole of Muirtown; but I"ll give you three days in bed, and your mother will let you have something nice to eat, and then out you go and back to the Seminary," and going out of the door Manley would turn round and shake his fist at the bed, "just a trick, nothing else." It might be three weeks before the boy was out of bed, but he was never afraid again, and had some heart to fight his disease.
Boys are not fools, and the Seminary knew that, if Manley had allowed death to be even mentioned in connexion with Bulldog, it was more than likely that they would never see the master of the mathematical department again. And boys are a perfect absurdity, for--as sure as death--they were not glad. Bulldog had thrashed them all, or almost all, with faithfulness and perseverance, and some of them he had thrashed many times; he had never petted any of them, and never more than six times, perhaps, said a kind word to them in public. But that morning, as they stood silent, awkward and angry, round the guns, there is no doubt about it, the Seminary knew that it loved Bulldog. Never to see his erect figure and stern face come across the North Meadow, never to hear him say again from the desk, "Attention to your work, you little fiddlers"; never to watch him promenading down between the benches, overseeing each boy"s task and stimulating the negligent on some tender part of their bodies; never to be thrashed by him again! At the thought of this calamity each boy felt bad in his clothes, and Speug, resenting what he judged the impertinent spying of Cosh, threatened to punch his head, and "learn Cosh to be watching him." As everybody knows, boys have no sentiment and no feeling, so the collapse of that morning must be set down to pure cussedness; but the school was so low that Byles ruled over them without resistance, and might have thrashed them if he had so pleased and had not ventured to use Bulldog"s cane.
Had they not been boys, they would have called at Bulldog"s to learn how he was. Being boys, they avoided his name and pretended they were indifferent; but when they met Manley on the bridge that afternoon, and judged he had come from Bulldog"s, they studied his face with the skill of wild animals, and concluded each one for himself that things were going badly with the master. They picked up every sc.r.a.p of information from their fathers in the evening, although they fiercely resented the suggestion of their mothers that they would be concerned about "Mr.
MacKinnon"s illness"--as if they cared whether a master were ill or well, as if it were not better for them that he should be ill, especially such an old brute as Bulldog. And the average mother was very much disappointed by this lack of feeling, and said to her husband at night that she had expected better things from Archibald; but if she had gone suddenly into Bauldie"s room--for that was his real name, Archibald being only the thing given in baptism--she would have found that truculent worthy sobbing aloud and covering his head with the blankets, lest his elder brother, who slept in the same room, should hear him. You have no reason to believe me, and his mother would not have believed me, but--as sure as death--Bauldie was crying because Bulldog was sick unto death.
Next morning Speug and a couple of friends happened by the merest accident to be loitering at Bailie MacFarlane"s shop window, and examining with interest the ancient furniture exposed, at the very time when that worthy magistrate came out and questioned Dr. Manley "How things were going up-bye wi" the maister?"
"Not well, bailie, not well at all. I don"t like the case; it looks bad, very bad indeed, and I"m not a croaker. Disease is gone, and he"s a strong man, not a stronger in Muirtown than MacKinnon; but he has lost interest in things, and isn"t making an effort to get better; just lying quiet and looking at you--says he"s taking a rest, and if we don"t get him waked up, I tell you, Bailie, it will be a long one."
"Michty," said the Bailie, overcome with astonishment at the thought of Bulldog dying, as it were, of gentleness.
"Yes, yes," said Manley; "but that"s just the way with those strong, healthy men, who have never known a day"s sickness till they are old; they break up suddenly. And he"ll be missed. Bailie, Bulldog didn"t thrash you and me, else we would have been better men; but he has attended to our boys."
"He has been verra conscientious," and the Bailie shook his head, sadly mourning over a man who had laid down his life in discharge of discipline. But the boys departed without remark, and Speug loosened the strap of Bauldie"s books, so that they fell in a heap upon the street, whereat there was a brisk interchange of ideas, and then the company went on its way rejoicing. So callous is a boy.
Nestie was not at school that day, and perhaps that was the reason that Speug grew sulky and ill-tempered, taking offence if anyone looked at him, and picking quarrels in the corridors, and finally disappearing during the dinner-hour. It was supposed that he had broken bounds and gone to Woody Island, that forbidden Paradise of the Seminary, and that while the cla.s.s was wasting its time with Byles, Peter was playing the Red Indian. He did not deny the charge next day, and took an hour"s detention in the afternoon with great equanimity, but at the time he was supposed to be stalking Indians behind the trees, and shooting them as they floated down the river on a log, he was lying among the hay in his father"s stable, hidden from sight, and--as sure as death--Speug was trying to pray for Bulldog.
The virtues of Mr. McGuffie senior were those of the natural man, and Mr. McGuffie junior had never been present at any form of family prayers, nor had he attended a Sunday-school, nor had he sat under any minister in particular. He had no training in devotional exercises, although he had enjoyed an elaborate education in profanity under his father and the grooms, and so his form of prayer was entirely his own.
"G.o.d, I dinna ken how to call You, but they say Ye hear onybody. I"m Peter McGuffie, but mebbe Ye will ken me better by Speug. I"m no" a good laddie like Nestie, and I"m aye gettin" the tawse, but I"m awful fond of Bulldog. Dinna kill Bulldog, G.o.d; dinna kill Bulldog! If Ye let him aff this time I"ll never say any bad words again--as sure as death--and I"ll never play truant, and I"ll never slap Dowbiggin"s face, and I"ll never steal birds" eggs, and I"ll never set the terrier on the cats. I"ll wash my face and--my hands, too, and I"ll go to the Sabbath-schule, and I"ll do onything Ye ask me if Ye"ll let off Bulldog. For ony sake, dinna kill Bulldog."
When Dr. Manley came out from the master"s garden door that evening he stumbled upon Speug, who was looking very miserable, but began to whistle violently the moment he was detected, and denied that he had come to ask for news.
"You did, you young limmer, and you needn"t tell me lies, for I know you, Speug, and your father before you. I wish I"d good news to give you, but I haven"t. I fear you"ve had your last thrashing from Bulldog."
For a moment Speug kicked at a stone on the road and thrust his hands deep into his pockets; then the corners of his mouth began to twitch, and turning round he hid his face upon the wall, while his tough little body that had stood many a fight shook all over. Doctor Manley was the first person that had seen Speug cry, and he stood over him to protect him from the gaze of any wandering message boys who might come along the lane. By and by Speug began to speak between his sobs.
"It was a lee, Doctor, for I did come up to ask, but I dinna like to let on.... I heard ye say that ye couldna rouse Bulldog to take an interest in onything, and I thought o" something."
"What was it, Speug?" and the doctor laid his hands on the boy"s shoulder and encouraged him to proceed. "I"ll never tell, you may trust me."