had
ever had the faintest gleam of hope, and no rebel had ever escaped
without his just punishment, but the boys, rascals to the last and full
of devilry, agreed together by an instinct rather than a conference that
they would close Bulldog's last term with a royal insurrection. He had
governed them with an iron hand, and they had been proud to be governed,
considering the wounds of Bulldog ten thousand times more desirable than
the kisses of McIntyres', but they would have one big revenge and then
Bulldog and his "fiddlers" would part for ever. They held long
confabulations together in the Rector's class-room while that learned
man was reading aloud some new and specially ingenious translation of an
ode and in the class-room of modern languages, while Moossy's successor
was trying to teach Jock Howieson how to pronounce a modified U, in the
German tongue, in Mrs. McWhae's tuck-shop when the "gundy" allowed them
to speak at all, and at the Russian guns where they gathered in the
break instead of playing rounders. The junior boys were not admitted to
those mysterious meetings, but were told to wait and see what they would
see, and whatever plan the seniors formed not a word of it oozed out in
the town. But the Seminary was going to do something mighty, and Bulldog
would repent the years of his tyranny.

Funds were necessary for the campaign, since it was going to be a big
affair, and Speug directed that a war chest should at once be
established. No one outside the secret junta knew what was going to be
done with the money, but orders were issued that by hook or crook every
boy in school except the merest kids should pay sixpence a week to Jock
Howieson, who was not an accomplished classical scholar nor specially
versed in geometry but who could keep the most intricate accounts in his
head with unerring accuracy, and knew every boy in the Seminary by head
mark. And although he was not a fluent speaker, he was richly endowed
with other powers of persuasion, and he would be a very daring young
gentleman indeed, and almost indifferent to circumstances, who did not
pay his sixpence to Jock before set of sun each Monday. Jock made no
demands, and gave no receipts; he engaged in no conversation whatever,
but simply waited and took. If any one tried to compound with Jock for
threepence, one look at the miserable produced the sixpence; and when
little Cosh following in the devious steps of his elder brother
insinuated that he had