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