One of the schools must have been a charity for the education of poor lads, since it was known to us as the "Penny School," and it was a familiar cry ringing through the yard of the Seminary, "The Pennies are coming!" when we promptly turned out to give them the welcome which, to do them justice, they ardently desired. Whether this was a penny a week or a penny a month we did not know, or whether, indeed, they paid a penny at all, but it pleased us to give this name, and it soon passed beyond the stage of correction. Our enemies came at last to wear it proudly, like many other people who have been called by nicknames and turned the nickname into an honour, for they would follow up a particularly telling snowball with the cry, "There's a penny for ye!" They were sturdy varlets, quite indifferent as to boots and stockings, and equally so as to blows. Through their very regardlessness the Pennies would have been apt to rout the Seminary—whose boys had given pledges to respectability, and who had to answer searching questions as to their personal appearance every evening—had it not been for stalwarts like McGuffie, whose father, being a horsedealer, did not apply an over strict standard of judgment to his son's manners or exploits, and Robertson, who lived in lodgings and, being a soldier's son, was supposed to be in a state of discipline for the Army.
Our feeling towards the Pennies was hardly cordial, but it was as nothing 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 might now be declared; and Jock Howieson, ever a daring and rash spirit, declared we should repent it if we were not ready against one o'clock. Speug and Dunc were however of opinion that nothing was likely to take place that day except desultory skirmishes, and that the whole day ought to be spent in accumulating a store of snowballs against Friday, when there was no question that we should have to face the united schools in a decisive battle. This was the only instance where our captains ever made a mistake, and they atoned for their error of judgment by the valour and skill with which they retrieved what seemed a hopeless defeat.
As the hours wore on to one o'clock Speug could be seen glancing anxiously out at the window, and he secured an opportunity with Dunc for a hasty conference during the geometry lesson. About a quarter to one he turned from his slate and cocked his ear, and in two minutes afterwards every boy in Bulldog's class-room understood that the war had begun and that we had been taken by surprise. Scouts from McIntyre's, as we afterwards learned, had risked the danger of playing truant, which in a school like theirs cost nothing, and had visited our playground. They had carried back news that we were not yet prepared for battle, and our firm opinion was that the authorities of Penny's and McIntyre's had allowed their schools out at half-past twelve, in order to take us at a disadvantage. Before the bell rang and the senior classes were dismissed the Seminary knew that our enemies had seized the field of battle, but we did not know until we came out the extent of the disaster.
The Pennies had come down the back street and had established themselves opposite the narrow entrance between two sheds through which three only could walk abreast from our playground to the street. They had also sent a daring body of their lighter and more agile lads to the top of the sheds which separated our playground from the street, and they had conveyed down an enormous store of ammunition, so that the courtyard was absolutely at their mercy, and anyone emerging from the corridor was received with a shower of well-made and hard snowballs against which there was no standing. Even if we ran this risk and crossed the open space we could then be raked by the fire from the shed, and a charge through the narrow passage to the street would be in the last degree hazardous. There were twelve feet of passage, and there were not many who would care to face a stream of snowballs driven by the vigorous hands of the Pennies down this passage as through a pipe. Instead of meeting our enemies on the street, we had been penned up within our own school. McIntyre's had come down the terrace and seized an excellent position behind two Russian guns which stood opposite our school and about twenty feet from our front entrance. They had made these guns into a kind of fort, from behind whose shelter, reinforced by a slight barricade of jackets, they commanded our entrance, and had driven in the first boys who emerged, in hopeless discomfiture. It came upon us that we had been shut up back and front, and shut up with the poorest supply of snowballs and very little snow with which to repair our resources.
"Seized an excellent position behind two Russian guns."
While the younger boys raged and stormed in the safety of the corridors, Dunc and Speug retired for consultation. In two minutes they came out and gave their orders to the mass of boys gathered together round the "well" and in the "well," and on the stairs and along the corridors. It was at this moment that Nestie Molyneux obtained a name which he covered with glory before the close of the day. As he had no class between twelve and one, he had been observing events, and with the aid of two or three other little boys had done what he could to repair the neglect of yesterday. In spite of a rain of snowballs he had availed himself of a sheltered corner in the playground and had worked without ceasing at the preparation of the balls. Every ball as it was made was dipped into a pail of water and then, half frozen, was laid in a corner where it was soon frozen altogether. "There'll be the feck o' two hundred balls ready. Ma certes! Nestie has a head on his shoulders. Now," said Speug, speaking from halfway up the stair, "we'll start with thae balls for a beginnin', and wi' them we'll fecht our way out to the open. As soon as we've cleared the background every ane o' the two junior classes is to mak' balls as hard as he can lick and bring them forward to the fighting line.
"We'll divide the senior school into three divisions; Dunc will take thirty of ye and drive McIntyre frae the guns and along the terrace till ye turn them into Breadalbane Street. Thirty o' ye—and I want nae Dowbiggins—'ll come with me, and we'll bring the Pennies aff the shed quicker than they got up, and drive them up the back streets till we land them wi' the rest in Breadalbane Street; and the juniors 'ill keep us well supplied with balls, else Dunc and me will ken the reason at two o'clock.