o gave him the shillin'
when he describit ye juist as ye are standing; then the puir body, when
ye threatened him, brought in the lassie. Man, though ye're a Bailie and
I'm naething but Tinkler Tam, I would scorn to make use of a poor
natural that hasna his wits, juist to feed my vanity and gither a crowd
round my shop." Then the crowd united in three long groans, and possibly
might have shown their indignation in a still more pronounced form, but
the police, being still further reinforced, drove them along the
streets, while the Bailie hid himself in the recesses of his shop.

Three minutes later Speug sauntered into the shop with Howieson and
Bauldie, and demanded a pennyworth of peppermint drops. He also remarked
to Jock, as they were being folded up, "If there be as mony o' the
Bailie's friends callin' at the shop on Monday, I doubt the police will
no be able to spare a constable to keep order on the Terrace." And as a
matter of fact the offensive patrol was withdrawn, and the Seminary
resumed possession of the debatable ground.

THE FALL OF GOLIATH

XIII

Bailie MacConachie made a mistake when he risked a war with the boys of
the Seminary, and it was colossal folly on his part to continue the war
after his first defeat in the affair of the advertisement. No doubt it
was humiliating to have his respectable place of business filled with
the mob of Muirtown demanding whisky as a right, and threatening him
with penalties as a covenant-breaker when they did not get it; he had
also very good reasons for believing that the unholy inspiration which
gathered the vagrants to his shop came from the Seminary. His best
policy, however, would have been to treat the matter as a joke; and if
the Bailie had stopped on his way to dinner, and told the boys plainly
that he knew quite well they were at the bottom of the affair, that they
were a set of confounded young rascals, that he had intended to hang six
of them and send the rest to penal servitude, that he was going to
forgive them for the sake of their unhappy parents, and because it had
not been half bad fun after all, that there would be no more policemen
before the Seminary, and there must be no more windows smashed in his
(the Bailie's) house--the Seminary, which always respected a fellow who
took his licking with good humour and didn't squeal, would have given
the Bailie the best cheer he ever got in his public career, and a
covenant of peace would have been mad