It is well seen from the foregoing that Quintin, my brother, had no easy time of it while he was at the college, where they called him “Separator,” “Hill Whig,” “Young Drumclog,” and other nicknames, some of which grieved the lad sore.
Now they were mostly leather-jawed, slack-twisted Geordies from the Hieland border that so troubled our Quintin—who, though he was not averse to the sword or the pistol in a good cause, yet would not even be persuaded to lift his fist to one of these rascals, lest it should cause religion to be spoken against. But I was held by none of these scruples.
So it chanced that one night as we came out of the College Wynd in the early falling winter gloaming, one of these bothy-men from the North called out an ill name after us—“porridge-fed Galloway pigs,” or something of the kind. Whereat very gladly I dealt him so sound a buffet on the angle of his jaw that his head was not set on straight again all the winter.
After this we adjourned to settle our differences at the corner of the plainstones; but Quintin and the other theologians who had characters to lose took their way home, grieved in spirit. Or so at least I think he pretended to himself.
For when I came in to our lodging an hour after his first words were: “Did ye give him his licks, Hob?” And that question, to which I answered simply that I had and soundly, did not argue that the ancient Adam had been fully exorcised from our Quintin.
All the same the Highlandman was none so easy to handle, being a red-headed Grant from Speyside, and more inclined to come at you with his thick skull, like a charging boar of Rothiemurchus, than decently to stand up with the brave bare knuckles, as we are wont to do in the South.
A turn or two at Kelton Hill fair would have done him no harm and taught him that he must not fight with such an ungodly battering-ram as his head. I know lads there who would have met him on the crown with the toe of their brogans.
But this I scorned, judging it feater to deal him a round-arm blow behind the ear and leap aside. The first of these discouraged the Grant; the second dropped him on the causeway dumb and limp.
“Well done, Galloway!” cried a voice above; “but ye shall answer for this the morn, every man o’ ye!”
“Run, lads, run! ’Tis the Regent!” came the answering cry from the collegers.