all his eccentric ways, and the _Muirtown Advertiser_ had a leader every spring on the achievements of his scholars. Edinburgh professors who came to examine the school used to fill up their speeches on the prize-day with graceful compliments to the Rector, supported by classical quotations, during which the boys cheered rapturously and the Rector looked as if he were going to be hung. He was one of the recognised glories of Muirtown, and was freely referred to at municipal banquets by bailies whose hearts had grown merry within them drinking the Queen's health, and was associated in the peroration to the toast of "the Fair City" with the North Meadow and the Fair Maid, and the River Tay and the County Gaol. Bulldog was of another breed. Whatever may have been his negligences of dress and occupation in private life--and on this subject Nestie and Speug told fearful lies--he exhibited the most exasperating regularity in public, from his copper-plate handwriting to his speckless dress, but especially by an inhuman and absolutely sinful punctuality. No one with a heart within him and some regard to the comfort of his fellow creatures, especially boys, had any right to observe times and seasons with such exactness. During all our time, except on the one great occasion I wish to record, he was never known to be ill, not even with a cold; and it was said that he never had been for a day off duty, even in the generation before us. His erect, spare frame, without an ounce of superfluous flesh, seemed impervious to disease, and there was a feeling in the background of our minds that for any illness to have attacked Bulldog would have been an act of impertinence which he would have known how to deal with. It was firmly believed that for the last fifty years--and some said eighty, but that was poetry--Bulldog had entered his class-room every morning, except on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays, at 8.50, and was ready to begin work at the stroke of nine. There was a pleasant story that in the days of our fathers there had been such a fall of snow and so fierce a wind that the bridge had been drifted up, and no one could cross that morning from the other side. The boys from the south side of the town had brought news of the drift to the school, and the earlier arrivals, who had come in hope of a snow-fight, were so mightily taken with the news that they hurried to the Muirtown end of the bridge to look at the drift, and danced with joy at the thought that on the other side Bulldog was standing, for once helpless and dismayed. Speug's father, true ancestor of such a son, had shouted across the drift invitations for Bulldog to come over, secure in the fact that he could not be seen across its height, and in the hope that Bulldog would not know his voice. When they were weary celebrating the event, and after a pleasant encounter with a hastily organised regiment of message boys, the eager scholars sauntered along to the