24 THE BOY. 



' In a short time ' these are his own words ' my narra- 

 tives had charmed the very shadow of discipline out of 

 the class/ In his English reading lessons he appeared 

 to some advantage, the master contriving to make out 

 that he could distinguish between good and bad in style ; 

 but on the whole he looked upon school attendance as a 

 mere curtailment of his freedom, made no progress what- 

 ever in spelling or parsing, and in Latin failed utterly. 



In some respects, always excepting those for 

 which it was specially intended, the school was not 

 amiss. In the company of one hundred and fifty boys 

 and girls, there is likely to be not a little that will con- 

 tribute to mental and physical development. From the 

 windows could be seen at all hours ships and boats, 

 entering or leaving the harbour ; at certain seasons the 

 turf before the door glittered with myriads of herrings, 

 the air became alive with bustle of curing operations ; a 

 pig-slaughtering establishment was at hand, where Hugh, 

 turning characteristically from the slaying processes, 

 could look inquiringly into the mysteries of porcine 

 anatomy ; and there was a chance at any moment of 

 taking part in a glorious expedition sent forth to exact, 

 arte vel Marte, the tribute of peats which the boatmen of 

 Ross, as they arrived with their cargoes, were bound to 

 pay to the school. An annual cock-fight was celebrated 

 by the boys and their teacher, but in this he took no 

 more interest than in the killing of the pigs ; the tender- 

 ness he had derived from his father forbade him. 



In his tenth year, the spell cast over his imagination 

 by the narratives of the sea-captains had been broken. 

 He had read The Adventures of Sir William Wallace, by 

 the Scottish Homer of the fifteenth century, of whom we 

 know only that his name was Harry, that he was blind, 

 that he earned his bread by repeating his poetry in the 



