because he had made provision for his last years,
but on this occasion he signed himself "Your most obliged servant." It
was then determined to entertain this obdurate man at a banquet, and to
make a presentation of plate to him. And Mr. MacKinnon was again most
grateful for the kindness of his fellow citizens and the honour they
proposed to do him, but he clearly indicated he would neither accept the
banquet nor a piece of plate. It dawned gradually upon Muirtown, a city
slow but sure of understanding, and with a silent sense of the fitness
of things, that Mr. Dugald MacKinnon, having reigned like Caesar Augustus
for fifty-eight years without contradiction and without conciliation,
giving no favours and receiving none, but doing his part by the laddies
of Muirtown with all his strength of mind and conscience and right arm,
was not going to weaken at the end of his career. For him to rise at the
close of a dinner and return thanks for a piece of plate would have been
out of keeping with his severe and lonely past, and for him to be a
pensioner, even of the Town Council, would have been an indignity. He
had reigned longer and more absolutely than any master in the annals of
the Seminary, and to the last day he had held the sceptre without
flinching. As a king, strong, uncompromising and invincible, he would
lay aside the purple, and disappear into private life. And Muirtown was
proud of Bulldog.

Bulldog had beaten the magistrates of Muirtown in all their glory, and
his fellow citizens united in one enthusiastic body, but he had not yet
settled with the boys. They had not expressed in resolutions or any
other way their appreciation of their master, and they had followed the
futile attempts of their parents with silent contempt. It was wonderful
that grown up people should be so far left to themselves as to suppose
that Bulldog, their own Bulldog, would ever condescend to be dined by
Bailies and stand at the close of dinner like a dithering idiot with a
silver jug in his hands, or some such trash, while his hands were
itching to thrash every one of his hosts as he had thrashed them long
ago. When the boys heard their fathers raging at Bulldog's proud
obstinacy they offered no remark, but when they got together they
chortled with glee, and felt that there was comfort and compensation for
many an honest thrashing, in the fact that Bulldog was as much ruler of
Muirtown as he had been of the Seminary. No rebellion against him