the Cathedral, disappeared up the
road which ran to Drumtochty. "And where think ye have their royal
highnesses been?"

If the name of a school be St. Columba's, and the boys call themselves
Columbians, it is very profane to an absolutely respectable Scots saint,
and very rude to a number of well-behaved lads, to call them "Bumbees";
but Speug was neither reverent nor polite, and the Seminary, although
mainly occupied with local quarrels, yet harboured a distant grudge
against the new public school at St. Columba's, which had been recently
started in a romantic part of Perthshire. Its founders were a number of
excellent and perhaps slightly superior persons, who were justly aghast
at the somewhat rough life and unfinished scholarship of the Scots
grammar schools, and who did not desire that Scots lads of the better
class should be sent of necessity to the English public schools. Their
idea was to establish a public school after the English method in
Scotland, and so St. Columba's kept terms, and had dormitories, and a
chapel, and playing-fields, and did everything on a smaller scale which
was done at Rugby and Harrow. The masters of St. Columba's would have
nothing to do with such modest men as the staff of the Seminary. The
Columbians occasionally came down to Muirtown and sniffed through the
town. Two or three boys had been taken from the Seminary, because it was
vulgar, and sent to St. Columba's, in order to get into genteel society.
And those things had gradually filtered into the mind of the Seminary,
which was certainly a rough school, but at the same time very proud and
patriotic, and there was a latent desire in the mind of the Seminary
that the Columbians should come down in snow-time and show their
contempt for the Muirtown grammar school, when that school would explain
to the Columbians what it thought of them and all their works. As this
pleasure was denied the Seminary, and the sight of the brake was too
much for Speug's uncultured nature, he forgot himself, and yelled
opprobrious names, in which the word "Bumbee" was distinct and
prominent.

"Your m-manners are very b-bad, Speug, and I am a-ashamed of you.
D-don't you know that the 'B-bumbees' have been p-playing in England and
w-won their match? Twenty-two runs and s-seven wickets to fall. G-good
s-sport, my Speug; read it in the newspaper."

"It wasna bad. I didna think the 'Bumbees' had as muckle spunk in them;
seven wickets, did ye say, against the