A confectioner in the Crosscauseway acted as messenger between the boys of the Causeway and the Square, and to him Walter Scott and his brother went early the next morning and asked if he would take Green Breeks some money to pay for his wound and loss of time in the tailor's shop. Green Breeks in the hospital had been asked to tell the name of the one who had struck him, but had refused pointblank, and none of either party could be found to tell. When the wounded leader heard of Walter's offer he refused to accept the money on the ground that such accidents were apt to happen to any one in battle, and that he did not need the money. Walter sent another message, inquiring if Green Breeks' family were in need of anything he could supply, and received the answer that he lived with his aged grandmother who was very fond of taking snuff. Thereupon Walter presented the old woman with a pound of snuff, and as soon as Green Breeks was out of the hospital made him one of his friends. With the opening of spring Walter spent all his spare hours in his favorite pursuit, riding through the country on a search for old legends or curious tales of the neighborhood. Scottish history was his never-ending delight; he knew every battle-field in the vicinity of Edinburgh, and could tell how the armies had come to meet and what was the result. Stories of sprites and goblins, of witches and magicians, were eagerly sought by him. Many an old woman was led to tell the lame boy with the eager eyes the tales she had heard as a schoolgirl, and was well repaid by the boy's rapt attention. Hardly a stick or a stone, a stream or a hill in the Lowlands that had a history but Walter Scott learned it, and at the same time he learned to know the plain people, all their habits and customs, and all the little eccentricities that made up their characters. [Illustration: STREET IN EDINBURGH WHERE SCOTT PLAYED AS A BOY] Every Saturday in fair weather, and more frequently during the vacations, his father allowed him a holiday from the office. Walter and a boy friend named John Irving used to take two or three books from the public library of Edinburgh, and go out into the neighboring country, to Salisbury Crags, Arthur's Seat, or to a height called Blackford Hill, from which there was a splendid view of the Lowland country. There they read the books together, Walter always a little ahead of his friend, and obliged to wait at the end of every two pages for him to catch up. The books were almost always stories of knights-errant; the romances of Spenser, the "Castle of Otranto," and translations from such Italian writers as Ariosto, were very popular.