n they had mocked with cries of
"Crotal-coat, Crotal-coat," did not very bravely stand a close trial.
He was not dismayed at this; he did as we must all be doing through life
and changed one illusion for another. It is a wonderful rich world for
dreams, and he had a different one every day, as he sat in the peaty
odour of instruction.

Old Brooks would perch high on his three-legged stool conning over some
exercise while his scholars in their rows behind the knife-hewn inky
desks hummed like bees upon their tasks. The hornbooks of the little
ones at the bottom of the room would sometimes fall from their hands in
the languor of that stagnant atmosphere, but the boys of the upper forms
were ever awake for mischief. To the teaching of the Dominie they would
come with pockets full of playthings, sometimes animals from the woods
and fields about the town--frogs, moles, hedgehogs, or fledgeling birds.
Brooks rarely suspected the presence of these distractions in his sacred
grove, for he was dull of vision and preferred to see his scholars about
him in a vague mist rather than wear in their presence the great horn
spectacles that were privy to his room in Crombie's Land. The town's
clock staring frankly in at the school windows conveyed to him no
knowledge of the passing enemy, and, as his watch had been for a
generation but a bulge upon his vest, he must wait till the hour struck
ere he knew it was meridian and time to cross the playground and into
Kate Bell's for his glass of waters. "Silence till I return!" he would
say, whipping on his better coat and making for the door that had no
sooner shut on him than tumult reigned.

On his way back from the tavern he would meet, perhaps, the Paymaster
making for the house of the Sergeant More. "I cannot understood,"
would the Paymaster say, "what makes you take your drams in so common
a civilian house as that. A man and a soldier keeps the Abercrombie, a
fellow who fought for his country. And look at the company! MacNicol and
Major Hall--and--and--myself and some of the best in the burgh; yet
you must be frequenting a low tavern with only merchants and mice and
fisherman to say 'Good health' to."

Master Brooks had always his answer very pat.

"I get a great abundance of old war tales in my books," he would say
drily. "And told with a greater ingenuity--not to mention veracity--than
pertain to the legends and histories of you old campaigners. Between
ourselves, I'm not for war a