The High School, a venerable civic institution dating from the sixteenth century, still occupied the site of the Blackfriars’ Monastery, at the east end of the ridge from which the ruined Kirk-of-Field was displaced by the newly-founded university in Queen Mary’s time. The modern policeman had not yet superseded the old city watch. The High School Wynd, a singularly picturesque alley of timber-fronted lands, at the foot of which stood the palace of Cardinal Beaton, gave access to the Cowgate, a plebeian haunt, the young roughs of which maintained a hereditary feud against the “puppies” of the High School. A stray High School boy, especially if he was a “guite” or freshman, venturing into that Alsatia, incurred all the risks of a wanderer into an enemy’s lines; and from time to time a bicker, or pitched battle with sticks and stones, between the “puppies” of the High School and the “blackguards” of the Cowgate, came off by mutual understanding on a Saturday in the Hunter’s Bog or on the Links. The school numbered upwards of seven hundred boys. The Yards, as the playground was called, presented the busy scene characteristic of similar juvenile gatherings. But there was then less of restraint either by masters or police than under the new _régime_ of school boards and “peelers.” Out of school boys settled their own affairs, and righted their own wrongs, with results that seem to me on the whole to have tended to develop manliness and self-restraint. In the general sports, as well as in organized bickers or raids into the enemy’s quarters, after some Cowgate encroachment upon the amenities of the school, all were one; but the acquaintance even with the boys of our own class was partial. They naturally formed into little groups of kindred spirits, the beginnings in some cases of life-long friendships.