He had neither a very high sense of honour, nor any principles to come and go upon; but he had a considerable amount of devotion to his party, which is the highest form of conscience to be found in many.
"Tell me their names, sir ?" Curly was still silent.
But a white-headed urchin, whom innumerable whippings, not bribes, had corrupted, cried out in a wavering voice: "Sanny Forbes was ane o' them; an' he's no here, 'cause Juno worried him." The poor creature gained little by his treachery; for the smallest of the conspirators fell on him when school was over, and gave him a thrashing, which he deserved more than ever one of Malison's.
But the effect of Alec's name on the master was talismanic.

He changed his manner at once, sent Curly to his seat, and nothing more was heard of Juno or her master.
The opposite neighbours stared across, the next morning, in bewildered astonishment, at the place where the shop of Robert Bruce had been wont to invite the public to enter and buy.

Had it been possible for an avalanche to fall like a thunderbolt from the heavens, they would have supposed that one had fallen in the night, and overwhelmed the house.
Door and windows were invisible, buried with the rude pavement in front beneath a mass of snow.

Spades and shovels in boys' hands had been busy for hours during the night, throwing it up against the house, the door having first been blocked up with a huge ball, which they had rolled in silence the whole length of the long street.
Bruce and his wife slept in a little room immediately behind the shop, that they might watch over their treasures; and Bruce's first movement in the morning was always into the shop to unbolt the door and take down the shutters.

His astonishment when he looked upon a blank wall of snow may be imagined.