, resolutely muffled
his head in the bed-clothes and refused to hear the tale. His sagacity
in judging of the character of others was shown, too, even as a
school-boy; and once it led him to take an advantage which caused him
many compunctions in after-life, whenever he recalled his skilful
puerile tactics. On one occasion--I tell the story as he himself
rehearsed it to Samuel Rogers, almost at the end of his life, after
his attack of apoplexy, and just before leaving England for Italy in
the hopeless quest of health--he had long desired to get above a
schoolfellow in his class, who defied all his efforts, till Scott
noticed that whenever a question was asked of his rival, the lad's
fingers grasped a particular button on his waistcoat, while his mind
went in search of the answer. Scott accordingly anticipated that if he
could remove this button, the boy would be thrown out, and so it
proved. The button was cut off, and the next time the lad was
questioned, his fingers being unable to find the button, and his eyes
going in perplexed search after his fingers, he stood confounded, and
Scott mastered by strategy the place which he could not gain by mere
industry. "Often in after-life," said Scott, in narrating the
manoeuvre to Rogers, "has the sight of him smote me as I passed by
him; and often have I resolved to make him some reparation, but it
ended in good resolutions. Though I never renewed my acquaintance with
him, I often saw him, for he filled some inferior office in one of the
courts of law at Edinburgh. Poor fellow! I believe he is dead; he took
early to drinking."[4]

Scott's school reputation was one of irregular ability; he "glanced like
a meteor from one end of the class to the other," and received more praise
for his interpretation of the spirit of his authors than for his knowledge
of their language. Out of school his fame stood higher. He extemporized
innumerable stories to which his school-fellows delighted to listen; and,
in spite of his lameness, he was always in the thick of the "bickers," or
street fights with the boys of the town, and renowned for his boldness in
climbing the "kittle nine stanes" which are "projected high in air from
the precipitous black granite of the Castle-rock." At home he was much
bullied by his elder brother Robert, a lively lad, not without some powers
of verse-making, who went into the navy, then in an unlucky moment passed
into the merchant service of the East India Company,