led the Seminary any more than you can hold
quicksilver in your hand. When he walked with stately step up and down
the broad pavement before Bulldog's windows, the Seminary went up and
played opposite the Bailie's house, introducing his name into
conversation, with opprobrious remarks regarding the stoutness of his
person, and the emptiness of his head, and finally weaving the story of
his life into a verse of poetry which was composed by Speug, but is not
suitable for a book of family reading. If the constable, with the fear
of the magistrate before his eyes, went up to stand as a guard of honour
before the Bailie's house, the school went down then to the Russian guns
and held a meeting of triumph, challenging the constable to come back to
the Seminary, and telling him what they would do to him. They formed a
bodyguard round him some days, keeping just out of reach, and marched
along with him, backward and forward; other days they chaffed and teased
him till his life was a burden to him, for he had no power to arrest
them, and in his heart he sympathised with them. And then, at last,
being weary of the constable, the school turned its attention to the
Bailie.

One afternoon a meeting of choice spirits was held in the North Meadow,
beyond the supervision of the constable, and after the Bailie had been
called every name of abuse known to the Seminary, and Speug had
ransacked the resources of the stable yard in profanity, he declared
that the time had now come for active operation, and that the war must
be carried into the enemy's country. Speug declared his conviction in
the vernacular of the school, which is here translated into respectable
language, that the Bailie was a gentleman of doubtful birth and
discreditable pedigree, that his conduct as a boy was beyond
description, and that his private life was stained with every vice; that
his intellect would give him a right to be confined in the county
asylum, and that he had also qualified by his way of living for the
county gaol; that he didn't wash more than once a year, and that the
smell of him was like to that from a badger's hole; that it was a pity
he didn't attend to his own business, and that he had very little
business to do; that he would soon be bankrupt, and that if he wasn't
bankrupt already it was only because he cheated with his change; that he
sanded his sugar, and that his weights and measures were a scandal; but
that the Seminary must do what they could