orhood where Walter lived had formed a company
that had been given a beautiful standard by a young noblewoman. This
company fought every week with a band composed of boys of the poorer
classes. The leader of the latter was a fine-looking young fellow who
bore himself as bravely as any chieftain. In the midst of a hotly fought
contest, this boy had all but captured the enemy's proudly erected
standard when he was struck severely to the ground with a cruelly heavy
weapon. The dismayed companies fled in all directions, and the lad was
taken to the hospital. In a few days, however, he recovered; and then it
was that through a friendly baker Walter Scott and his brothers were
able to get word to their mistreated opponent and to offer a sum of
money in token of their regret. But Green-breeks, as the young leader
had been dubbed, refused to accept this, and said besides that they
might be sure of his not telling what he knew of the affair in which he
had been hurt, for he felt it a disgrace to be a talebearer. This
generous conduct so impressed young Scott and his companions that always
afterward the fighting was fair.

It must have been with not a little difficulty that this warlike spirit
was subdued and made obedient to the strict rules observed in the
Presbyterian home on Sunday. To a boy whose mind was filled with
stirring deeds of adventure and all sorts of vivid legends and romances,
the long, gloomy services seemed a tiresome burden. Monday, however,
brought new opportunities for reading favorite poets and works of
history and travel, and many were the spare moments through the week
that were spent thus. The marvelous characters and incidents in
Spenser's _Faerie Queene_ were a never-ending source of enjoyment, and
later Percy's _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_ was discovered by the
young reader with a gladness that made him forget everything else in the
world. "I remember well," he has written, "the spot where I read these
volumes for the first time. It was beneath a huge platanus tree, in the
ruins of what had been intended for an old-fashioned arbor in the garden
I have mentioned. The summer day sped onward so fast that,
notwithstanding the sharp appetite of thirteen, I forgot the hour of
dinner, was sought for with anxiety, and was found still entranced in my
intellectual banquet. To read and to remember was in this instance the
same thing, and henceforth I overwhelmed my schoolfellows, and all who
would hearke