Captious people, such as ministers of religion and old maids of the precise kind, considered that the Seminary were guilty of many sins and mentioned them freely; but those excellent people erred through lack of vision. Hunting mice in Moossy's class-room, putting the Dowbiggins' clothes into a state of thorough repair, raiding the territory of the "Pennies," having a stand-up fight between two well-matched champions, say, once a month, and "ragging" Mr. Byles, might have an appearance of evil, but were in reality disguised virtues, feeding the high spirit of those who were active, and teaching the Christian grace of meekness to those who were passive. There was only one act which the Seminary knew it ought not to do, and which all the boys wanted to do, which they enjoyed very much in doing, and were quite willing to be punished for doing. The besetting sin of a school--a country school--which will remain its sin until the days of the millennium have fairly set in, was playing truant. This crime was equivalent to high treason in the State, and consisted in a boy absenting himself from school without the knowledge of his parents, and without the consent of his master, for a day or half of a day. The boy did not disappear because he was ill, for he was on such occasions outrageously well: nor because he was overburdened by work, for the truants always guarded themselves against brain fag; nor because he wanted to hang about the streets, or smoke in secret places. He was simply seized with the passion of the open air and of the country. To tramp through the bosky woods, hunting for birds' eggs and watching the ways of wild animals; to guddle for trout under the stones of some clear running mountain burn, or to swim in the cool water on a summer day, or to join the haymakers on a farm, and do a full day's work, as long as lesson time and harder. There was a joy in escaping from bounds, as if an animal had broken out from a menagerie; there was joy in thinking, as you lay beside your burn or under the shadow of a tree, of the fellows mewed up in the hot class-room and swatting at their sums, under Bulldog's eye; and joy in coming home in the evening, tired, but satisfied, and passing the empty Seminary with defiance. There is no joy--I mean sin--but has its drawbacks, and there were clouds in the truant's sky. Country folk had their own suspicions when they came on a couple of boys going at large on a working day, when the school was in session, as one might have a shrewd guess if he came upon two convicts in their professional dress fishing in some lonely spot on Dartmoor. But there is a charitable sympathy with all animals who have escaped from a cage, unless it be a tigress looking for her dinner, and no one would have thought of informing on the boys, except one bad man; and Providence, using Speug as an instrument, punished him for his evil doings--as I shall tell.