ceeding, I cannot tell; but the result of this proof of her
temper was that she made her teeth meet through Bruce's hand.

"Damn the bitch!" he roared, snatching it away with the blood beginning
to flow.

A laugh, not smothered this time, billowed and broke through the whole
school; for the fact that Bruce should be caught swearing, added to the
yet more delightful fact that Juno had bitten her master, was
altogether too much.

"Eh! isna't weel we didna kill her efter a'?" said Curly.

"Guid doggie!" said another, patting his own knee, as if to entice her
to come and be caressed.

"At him again, Juno!" said a third.

"I'll gie her a piece the neist time I see her," said Curly.

Bruce, writhing with pain, and mortified at the result of his ocular
proof of Juno's incapability of biting, still more mortified at having
so far forgotten himself as to utter an oath, and altogether
discomfited by the laughter, turned away in confusion.

"It's a' their wyte, the baad boys! She never did the like afore. They
hae ruined her temper," he said, as he left the school, following Juno,
which was tugging away at the string as if she had been a blind man's
dog.

"Well, what have you to say for yourself, William?" said Malison.

"She began 't, sir."

This best of excuses would not, however, satisfy the master. The
punishing mania had possibly taken fresh hold upon him. But he would
put more questions first.

"Who besides you tortured the poor animal?"

Curly was silent. He had neither a very high sense of honour, nor any
principles to come and go upon; but he had a considerable amount of
devotion to his party, which is the highest form of conscience to be
found in many.

"Tell me their names, sir?"

Curly was still silent.

But a white-headed urchin, whom innumerable whippings, not bribes, had
corrupted, cried out in a wavering voice:

"Sanny Forbes was ane o' them; an' he's no here, 'cause Juno worried
him."

The poor creature gained little by his treachery; for the smallest of
the conspirators fell on him when school was over, and gave him a
thrashing, which he deserved more than ever one of Malison's.

But the effect of Alec's name on the master was talismanic. He changed
his manner at once, sent Curly to his seat, and nothing more was heard
of Juno or her master.

The opposite neighbours stared across, the next morning, in bewildered
astonishment, at the place where the shop of Robert Bruce had been wont
to