Part 23

At this utterly unlooked-for conclusion Mr. Traill seemed to gather his lean shoulders together for a spring, and his gray eyes narrowed to blades.

“With due respect to your Honor, I must tak' an appeal against sic a deceesion, to the Lord Provost and a' the magistrates, and then to the Court of Sessions.”

“You would get scant attention, Mr. Traill. The higher judiciary have more important business than reviewing dog cases. You would be laughed out of court.”

The dry tone stung him to instant retort. “And in gude company I'd be. Fifty years syne Lord Erskine was laughed down in Parliament for proposing to give legal protection to dumb animals. But we're getting a bit more ceevilized.”

“Tut, tut, Mr. Traill, you are making far too much of a small matter.”

“It's no' a sma' matter to be entered in the records of the Burgh court as a petty law-breaker. And if I continued to feed the dog I would be in contempt of court.”

The magistrate was beginning to feel badgered. “The fine carries the interdiction with it, Mr. Traill, if you are asking for information.”

“It was no' for information, but just to mak' plain my ain line of conduct. I'm no' intending to abandon the dog. I am commended here for my humanity, but the bit dog I must let starve for a technicality.” Instantly, as the magistrate half rose from the bench, the landlord saw that he had gone too far, and put the court on the defensive. In an easy, conversational tone, as if unaware of the point he had scored, he asked if he might address his accuser on a personal matter. “We knew each other weel as laddies. Davie, when you're in my neeborhood again on a wet day, come in and dry yoursel' by my fire and tak' another cup o' kindness for auld lang syne. You'll be all the better man for a lesson in morals the bit dog can give you: no' to bite the hand that feeds you.”

The policeman turned purple. A ripple of merriment ran through the room. The magistrate put his hand up to his mouth, and the clerk began to drop pens. Before silence was restored a messenger laddie ran up with a note for the bench. The magistrate read it with a look of relief, and nodded to the man who had been listening from the doorway, but who disappeared at once.

“The case is ordered continued. The defendant will be given time to secure witnesses, and notified when to appear. The next case is called.”

Somewhat dazed by this sudden turn, and annoyed by the delayed settlement of the affair, Mr. Traill hastened from the court-room. As he gained the street he was overtaken by the messenger with a second note. And there was a still more surprising turn that sent the landlord off up swarming High Street, across the bridge, and on to his snug little place of business, with the face and the heart of a school-boy. When Bobby, draggled by three days of wet weather, came in for his dinner, Mr. Traill scanned him critically and in some perplexity. At the end of the day's work, as Ailie was dropping her quaint curtsy and giving her adored employer a shy “gude nicht,” he had a sudden thought that made him call her back.

“Did you ever give a bit dog a washing, lassie?”

“Ye mean Bobby, Maister Traill? Nae, I didna.” Her eyes sparkled. “But Tammy's hauded 'im for Maister Brown, an' he says it's sonsie to gie the bonny wee a washin'.”

“Weel, Mr. Brown is fair ill, and there has been foul weather. Bobby's getting to look like a poor 'gaen aboot' dog. Have him at the kirkyard gate at a quarter to eight o'clock the morn looking like a leddy's pet and I'll dance a Highland fling at your wedding.”

“Are ye gangin' to tak' Bobby on a picnic, Maister Traill?”

He answered with a mock solemnity and a twinkle in his eyes that mystified the little maid. “Nae, lassie; I'm going to tak' him to a meeting in a braw kirk.”

When Ailie wanted to get up unusually early in the morning she made use of Tammy for an alarm-clock. A crippled laddie who must “mak' 'is leevin' wi' 'is heid” can waste no moment of daylight, and in the ancient buildings around Greyfriars the maximum of daylight was to be had only by those able and willing to climb to the gables. Tammy, having to live on the lowest, darkest floor of all, used the kirkyard for a study, by special indulgence of the caretaker, whenever the weather permitted.

From a window he dropped his books and his crutches over the wall. Then, by clasping his arms around a broken shaft that blocked the casement, he swung himself out, and scrambled down into an enclosed vault yard. There he kept hidden Mistress Jeanie's milking stool for a seat; and a table-tomb served as well, for the laddie to do his sums upon, as it had for the tearful signing of the Covenant more than two hundred years before. Bobby, as host, greeted Tammy with cordial friskings and waggings, saw him settled to his tasks, and then went briskly about his own interrupted business of searching out marauders. Many a spring dawn the quiet little boy and the swift and silent little dog had the shadowy garden all to themselves, and it was for them the song-thrushes and skylarks gave their choicest concerts.

On that mid-April morning, when the rising sun gilded the Castle turrets and flashed back from the many beautiful windows of Heriot's Hospital, Tammy bundled his books under the table-tomb of Mistress Jean Grant, went over to the rear of the Guildhall at the top of the Row, and threw a handful of gravel up to Ailie's window. Because of a grandmither, Ailie, too, dwelt on a low level. Her eager little face, lighted by sleep-dazzled blue eyes, popped out with the surprising suddenness of the manikins in a Punch-and-Judy show.

“In juist ane meenit, Tammy,” she whispered, “no' to wauken the grandmither.” It was in so very short a minute that the lassie climbed out onto the classic pediment of a tomb and dropped into the kirkyard that her toilet was uncompleted. Tammy buttoned her washed-out cotton gown at the back, and she sat on a slab to lace her shoes. If the fun of giving Bobby his bath was to be enjoyed to the full there must be no unnecessary delay. This consideration led Tammy to observe:

“Ye're no' needin' to comb yer hair, Ailie. It leuks bonny eneugh.”

In truth, Ailie was one of those fortunate lassies whose crinkly, gold-brown mop really looked best when in some disorder; and of that advantage the little maid was well aware.

“I ken a' that, Tammy. I aye gie it a lick or twa wi' a comb the nicht afore. Ca' the wee doggie.”

Bobby fully understood that he was wanted for some serious purpose, but it was a fresh morning of dew and he, apparently, was in the highest of spirits. So he gave Ailie a chase over the sparkling grass and under the showery shrubbery. When he dropped at last on Auld Jock's grave Tammy captured him. The little dog could always be caught there, in a caressable state of exhaustion or meditation, for, sooner or later, he returned to the spot from every bit of work or play. No one would have known it for a place of burial at all. Mr. Brown knew it only by the rose bush at its head and by Bobby's haunting it, for the mound had sunk to the general level of the terrace on which it lay, and spreading crocuses poked their purple and gold noses through the crisp spring turf. But for the wee, guardian dog the man who lay beneath had long lost what little identity he had ever possessed.

Now, as the three lay there, the lassie as flushed and damp as some water-nymph, Bobby panting and submitting to a petting, Tammy took the little dog's muzzle between his thin hands, parted the veil, and looked into the soft brown eyes.

“Leak, Ailie, Bobby's wantin' somethin', an' is juist haudin' 'imsel'.”

It was true. For all his gaiety in play and his energy at work Bobby's eyes had ever a patient, wistful look, not unlike the crippled laddie's. Ah, who can say that it did not require as much courage and gallant bravado on the part of that small, bereft creature to enable him to live at all, as it did for Tammy to face his handicapped life and “no' to remember 'is bad legs”?

In the bath on the rear steps of the lodge Bobby swam and splashed, and scattered foam with his excited tail. He would not stand still to be groomed, but wriggled and twisted and leaped upon the children, putting his shaggy wet paws roguishly in their faces. But he stood there at last, after the jolliest romp, in which the old kirkyard rang with laughter, and oh! so bonny, in his rippling coat of dark silver. No sooner was he released than he dashed around the kirk and back again, bringing his latest bone in his mouth. To his scratching on the stone sill, for he had been taught not to scratch on the panel, the door was opened by snod and smiling Mistress Jeanie, who invited these slum bairns into such a cozy, spotless kitchen as was not possible in the tenements. Mr. Brown sat by the hearth, bundled in blue and white blankets of wonderfully blocked country weaving. Bobby put his fore paws on the caretaker's chair and laid his precious bone in the man's lap.