a horsedealer and kept a stable.

Most of us regarded McGuffie senior as a model of all the virtues that
were worthy of a boy's imitation, and his son with undisguised envy,
because he had a father of such undeniable notoriety, because he had the
run of the stables, because he was on terms of easy familiarity with his
father's grooms, and because he was encouraged to do those things which
we were not allowed to do, and never exhorted to do those things which
he hated to do. All the good advice we ever got, and all the examples of
those two excellent young gentlemen, the sons of the Rev. Dr.
Dowbiggin, were blown to the winds when we saw Speug pass, sitting in
the high dogcart beside his father, while that talented man was showing
off to Muirtown a newly broken horse. Speug's position on that seat of
unique dignity was more than human, and none of us would have dared to
recognise him, but it is only just to add that Peter was quite unspoiled
by his privileges, and would wink to his humble friends upon the street
after his most roguish fashion and with a skill which proved him his
father's son. Social pride and the love of exclusive society were not
failings either of Mr. McGuffie senior or of his hopeful son. Both were
willing to fight any person of their own size (or, indeed, much bigger),
as well as to bargain with anybody, and at any time, about anything,
from horses to marbles.

Mrs. McGuffie had been long dead, and during her lifetime was a woman of
decided character, whom the grooms regarded with more terror than they
did her husband, and whom her husband himself treated with great
respect, a respect which grew into unaffected reverence when he was
returning from a distant horse-race and was detained, by professional
duties, to a late hour in the evening. As her afflicted husband refused
to marry again, in decided terms, Peter, their only child, had been
brought up from an early age among grooms and other people devoted to
the care and study of horses. In this school he received an education
which was perhaps more practical and varied than finished and polite. It
was not to be wondered, therefore, that his manners were simple and
natural to a degree, and that he was never the prey, either in any
ordinary circumstances, of timidity or of modesty. Although a motherless
lad, he was never helpless, and from the first was able to hold his own
and to make his hands keep his head.

His orphan condition excited the compa