lf in the Tay rather than continue his studies at
Muirtown Seminary.

Speug's father was the leading horsedealer of the Scots Midlands, and a
sporting man of established repute, a short, thick-set, red-faced,
loud-voiced, clean-shaven man, with hair cut close to his head, whose
calves and whose manner were the secret admiration of Muirtown. Quiet
citizens of irreproachable respectability and religious orthodoxy
regarded him with a pride which they would never confess; not because
they would have spoken or acted as he did for a king's ransom, and not
because they would have liked to stand in his shoes when he came to
die--considering, as they did, that the future of a horsedealer and an
owner of racing horses was dark in the extreme--but because he was a
perfect specimen of his kind and had made the town of Muirtown to be
known far and wide in sporting circles. Bailie McCallum, for instance,
could have no dealings with McGuffie senior, and would have been
scandalised had he attended the Bailie's kirk; but sitting in his shop
and watching Muirtown life as it passed, the Bailie used to chuckle
after an appreciative fashion at the sight of McGuffie, and to meditate
with much inward satisfaction on stories of McGuffie's exploits--how he
had encountered southern horsedealers and sent them home humbled with
defeat, and had won hopeless races over the length and breadth of the
land. "It's an awfu' trade," McCallum used to remark, "and McGuffie is
no' the man for an elder; but sall, naebody ever got the better o' him
at a bargain." Among the lads of the Seminary he was a local hero, and
on their way home from school they loitered to study him, standing in
the gateway of his stables, straddling his legs, chewing a straw, and
shouting his views on the Muirtown races to friends at the distance of
half a street. When he was in good humour he would nod to the lads and
wink to them with such acuteness and drollery that they attempted to
perform the same feat all the way home and were filled with despair. It
did not matter that we were fed, by careful parents, with books
containing the history of good men who began life with 2_s._ 11_d._, and
died leaving a quarter of a million, made by selling soft goods and
attending church, and with other books relating pathetic anecdotes of
boys who died young and, before they died, delighted society with
observations of the most edifying character on the shortness of life. We
had rather have been