, 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 wis