Opinion varied about Bulldog's age, some insisting that he had approached his century, others being content with "Weel on to eighty." None hinted at less than seventy. No one could remember his coming to Muirtown, and none knew whence he came. His birthplace was commonly believed to be the West Highlands, and it was certain that in dealing with a case of aggravated truancy he dropped into Gaelic. Bailie McCallum used to refer in convivial moments to his schooldays under Bulldog, and always left it to be inferred that had it not been for that tender, fostering care, he had not risen to his high estate in Muirtown. Fathers of families who were elders in the kirk, and verging on grey hair, would hear no complaints of Bulldog, for they had passed under the yoke in their youth, and what they had endured with profit—they now said—was good enough for their children. He seemed to us in those days like Melchizedek, without father or mother, beginning or end of days; and now that Bulldog has lain for many a year in a quiet Perthshire kirkyard, it is hardly worth while visiting Muirtown Seminary.
Every morning, except in vacation, he crossed the bridge at 8.45, with such rigid punctuality that the clerks in the Post Office checked the clock by him, and he returned by the way he had gone, over the North Meadow, at 4.15, for it was his grateful custom to close the administration of discipline at the same hour as the teaching, considering with justice that any of the Muirtown varlets would rather take the cane than be kept in, where from the windows he could see the North Meadow in its greenness, and the river running rapidly on an afternoon. It would have been out of place for Bulldog to live in a Muirtown street, where he must have been overlooked and could not have maintained his necessary reserve. Years ago he had built himself a house upon the slope of the hill which commanded Muirtown from the other side of the river. It was a hill which began with wood and ended in a lofty crag; and even from his house, halfway up and among the trees, Bulldog could look down upon Muirtown, compactly built together on the plain beneath, and thinly veiled in the grey smoke which rose up lazily from its homes. It cannot be truthfully said that Bulldog gave himself to poetry, but having once varied his usual country holiday by a visit to Italy, he ever afterwards declared at dinner-table that Muirtown reminded him of Florence as you saw that city from Fiesole, with the ancient kirk of St. John rising instead of the Duomo, and the Tay instead of the Arno. He admitted that Florence had the advantage in her cathedral, but he stoutly insisted that the Arno was but a poor, shrunken river compared with his own; for wherever Bulldog may have been born, he boasted himself to be a citizen of Muirtown, and always believed that there was no river to be found anywhere like unto the Tay. His garden was surrounded with a high wall, and the entrance was by a wooden door, and how Bulldog lived within these walls no one knew, but many had imagined. Speug, with two daring companions, had once traced Bulldog home and seen him disappear through the archway, and then it was in their plan to form a ladder one above the other, and that Peter, from the top thereof, should behold the mysterious interior and observe Bulldog in private life; but even Speug's courage failed at the critical moment, and they returned without news to the disappointed school.
Pity was not the characteristic of Seminary life in those days, but the hardest heart was touched with compassion when Nestie Molyneux lost his father and went to stay with Bulldog. The Seminary rejoiced in their master; but it was with trembling, and the thought of spending the evening hours and all one's spare time in his genial company excited our darkest imagination. To write our copy-books and do our problems under Bulldog's eye was a bracing discipline which lent a kind of zest to life, but to eat and drink with Bulldog was a fate beyond words.
As it was an article of faith with us that Bulldog was never perfectly happy except when he was plying the cane, it was taken for granted that Nestie would be his solitary means of relaxation, from the afternoon of one day to the morning of the next, and when Nestie appeared, on the third morning after his change of residence, the school was waiting to receive him.
His walking across the meadow by Bulldog's side, with his hands in his pockets, talking at his ease and laughing lightly, amazed us on first sight, but did not count for much, because we considered this manner a policy of expediency and an act of hypocrisy. After all, he was only doing what every one of us would have done in the same circumstances—conciliating the tyrant and covering his own sufferings. We kept a respectful distance till Nestie parted with his guardian, and then we closed in round him and licked our lips, for the story that Nestie could tell would make any Indian tale hardly worth the reading.
Babel was let loose, and Nestie was pelted with questions which came in a fine confusion from many voices, and to which he was hardly expected to give an immediate answer.
"What like is the cane he keeps at home?" "Has Bulldog tawse in the house?" "Div ye catch it regular?" "Does he come after you to your bedroom?" "Have ye onything to eat?" "Is the garden door locked?" "Could ye climb over the wall if he was thrashing you too sore?" "Did he let ye bring yir rabbits?" "Have ye to work at yir lessons a' night?" "What does Bulldog eat for his dinner?" "Does he ever speak to you?" "Does he ever say onything about the school?" "Did ye ever see Bulldog sleeping?" "Are ye feared to be with him?" "Would the police take ye away if he was hurting ye?" "Is there ony other body in the house?" "Would he let ye make gundy (candy) by the kitchen fire?" "Have ye to work all night at yir books?" "Does he make ye brush his boots?" "What do ye call him in the house?" "Would ye call him Bulldog for a shilling's-worth of gundy if the garden gate was open?" "Has he ony apples in the garden?" "Would ye daur to lay a finger on them?" "How often have ye to wash yir hands?" "Would ye get yir licks if yir hair wasna brushed?" And then Speug interfered, and commanded silence that Nestie might satisfy the curiosity of the school.
"Haud yir blethering tongues!" was his polite form of address. "Noo, Nestie, come awa' wi' yir evidence. What like is't to live wi' Bulldog?"
"It's awfully g-good of you fellows to ask how I'm getting on with Bully," and Nestie's eyes lit up with fun, for he'd a nice little sense of humour, and never could resist the temptation of letting it play upon our slow-witted, matter-of-fact intellects. "And I declare you seem to know all about what h-happens. I'll j-just tell you something about it, but it'll make you creepy," and then all the circle gathered in round Nestie. "I have to rise at five in the morning, and if I'm not down at half-past, Bulldog comes for me with a c-cane" (Howieson at this point rubbed himself behind gently). "Before breakfast we have six 'p-props' from Euclid and two vulgar f-fractions" (a groan from the school): "for breakfast we've porridge and milk, and I have to keep time with Bulldog—one, two, three, four—with the spoonfuls. He's got the c-cane on the table." ("Gosh" from a boy at the back, and general sympathy.) "He has the t-tawse hung in the lobby so as to be handy." ("It cowes all.") "There are three regular c-canings every day, one in the morning, and one in the afternoon, and one before you go to bed." At this point Speug, who had been listening with much doubt to Nestie's account, and knew that he had a luxuriant imagination, interfered.
"Nestie," he said, "ye're an abandoned little scoundrel, and ye're telling lees straicht forward," and the school went into the class-room divided in opinion. Some were suspicious that Nestie had been feeding their curiosity with highly spiced meat, but others were inclined to believe anything of Bulldog's household arrangements. During the hour Speug studied Nestie's countenance with interest, and in the break he laid hold of that ingenious young gentleman by the ear and led him apart into a quiet corner, where he exhorted him to unbosom the truth. Nestie whispered something in Speug's ear which shook even that worthy's composure.