"Father."
"Yes, Walter, lad?" The lawyer looked up from his writing, and smiled at the figure on the high stool.
"I'd best be going home; there's no more light here to see by."
"A good reason, Walter. Wrap yourself up warm, for the night is cold."
Young Walter slid down from his seat, and stretched his arms and legs to cure the stiffness in them. He was a sturdy, well-built lad, with tousled yellow hair, frank eyes with a twinkle in them, and a mouth that was large and betokened humor. When he walked he limped, but he held himself so straight that when he was still no one would have noticed the deformity.
Five minutes later the boy was plowing his way through the narrow streets of the Canongate, the old part of Edinburgh that had as ancient a history of street brawls as the Paris kennels. Nobody who could help it was abroad, and Walter was glad when he reached the door of his father's house in George's Square and could find shelter from the cutting wind. The Scotch evening meal was simple, soon over, and then came the time to sit before the blazing logs on the great open hearth and tell stories.
The older people were busy at cards in another room, and Walter, with a group of boys of his own age who lived in the neighborhood and liked to be with the lame lad, had the fireside to themselves.
In front of the fire young Walter was no longer the sleepy student of Erskine's "Institutes"; his eyes shone as he told story after story of the Scotch border, half of them founded on old ballads or legends he knew by heart and half the product of his own eager imagination. Whole poems, filled with battles and hunts and knightly adventures, he could recite from memory, and his eye for the color and trappings of history was so keen that the boys could see the very scenes before them. They sat in a circle about him, listening eagerly to story after story, forgetting everything but the boy's words, and showing their fondness and admiration for the romancer in each glance.
Walter was minstrel and prophet and historian to the boys of the Canongate by the winter fire, as he was to be later to the whole nation of Englishmen.
By the next day the snow had ceased falling, and the open squares of the city presented the finest mimic battle-fields that could be imagined. The boys of Edinburgh were divided into clans according to the part of the city in which they lived, and carried on constant warfare as long as winter lasted. Walter Scott and his brothers belonged to a clan that made George's Square their headquarters, and their nearest and dearest enemies were the boys of the Crosscauseway, a poorer section of the city that lay not very far distant.