r, 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 Caesar 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