g to our hatred of McIntyre's school, which called itself an
academy, and had a Latin master and held examinations and affected
social equality with the Seminary. Everyone knew that the Seminary had
existed in the time of Queen Mary, and some said went back to the days
of William Wallace, although we had some doubts as to whether the
present building was then in existence. Everyone also knew that
McIntyre's whole concern belonged to himself, and that he collected the
fees in every class on Friday morning, that he took home what was over
after paying his assistants, and that butcher meat for the McIntyre
family next week depended on the result. McIntyre drew his supplies from
the small tradesmen, and a Seminary lad, going in to get a new pair of
boots at Meiklewham's would have a fine sense of pride in being measured
by an old opponent whose face had often looked out on him from the mist
of battle. This pretentious and windy institution even attempted the
absurdity of a yearly prizegiving, when, instead of the Provost sitting
in state and glaring before him with a Horace in his hands upside down,
McIntyre's minister would hold forth on diligence and tidiness and
courtesy and such like contemptible virtues. Had a Seminary boy been
offered the painful choice, he would almost as soon have gone to the
Pennies as to McIntyre, for in that case he had not been an impostor and
a fraud.

For a week the weather had been hovering on frost, and on Wednesday
afternoon the snow began to fall with that quiet and steady downpour
which means a lasting storm. Speug went home in great spirits, declaring
to an admiring circle of junior boys that if Providence were kind and
the snow continued there would be something worth living for at the
dinner hour on Friday. As the snowball war was a serious affair, and was
conducted after a scientific fashion, it never commenced until there was
a good body of snow upon the ground and pure snow could be gathered up
without earth and stones. The unpardonable sin of our warfare was
slipping a stone into a snowball: this was the same as poisoning the
wells, and the miscreant who perpetrated this crime was cast out from
every school. There was a general understanding between parties that the
mercies were not to be wasted, and that the schools were to refrain
themselves until there was a fair and lasting supply of ammunition. It
was still snowing on Thursday morning, and there were some who said that
war mig