ory that
day. "I'll need a laddie to keep me gaein' with balls, and I want a
laddie that has some spunk, for he'll hae a rough time." Below thirty
of the junior school were waiting and looking at Speug like dogs for a
biscuit. He threw his eye over the group, any one of which would have
given his best knife and all his marbles, and thrown in a cricket bat
and his last kite, to have been chosen.

"Nestie," said Speug, "ye're little and ye're white and ye're terrible
polite, but there's a sperit in ye. Ye'll carry ma balls this day, and
noo, you juniors, aff to the ball-making, and see that Nestie's bonnet's
well filled, and there's no any of us wanting for a ball when we drive
the Pennies down the back road." Then Speug moved to the back corridor
and arranged his division, with Nestie behind him, and Bauldie and Jamie
Johnston on the right hand and on the left, Mackenzie's and MacFarlane's
detachments close behind, who were to turn off to the right hand and the
left as they emerged from the corridor; the rest were to follow Speug
through the passage of danger. Speug took two balls and placed them in
the hollow of his left arm, feeling them carefully to see that they
would leave a mark when they struck a Penny. The third he took in his
right hand, and Nestie had the reserve.

"Noo," he said, "gin anybody be feared he'd better gae in and sit doun
beside the fire with the Dowbiggins," and since nobody responded to this
genial invitation Speug gave one shout of "Seminary!" and in a minute
was across the playground and at the mouth of the passage, while
Mackenzie and MacFarlane were already scrambling up the walls of the
sheds. Covering his face with his left arm and sending his first ball
direct into the face of the foremost Penny, and following it up with a
second and a third driven with unerring aim and the force of a catapolt,
and receiving anything from twelve to twenty balls between him and
Bauldie and Johnston, the three led the way down the passage, Nestie
close behind Speug and handing him a new supply of balls. They met at
the outer end of the passage--the Pennies and Speug's lot--and for about
thirty seconds they swayed in one mass of struggling, fighting, shouting
boy life, and then, so steady was the play of Speug's fists, so able the
assistance of the other two, so strong the pressure from behind, and so
rapid the shower of balls sent over Speug's head among the Pennies, the
Pennies gave way and Speug and his b