Part 28

On the outward march, among the many dogs and laddies that had followed the soldiers, Bobby escaped notice. But most of these had gone adventuring in Swanston Dell, to return to the city by the gorge of Leith Water. Now, traveling three miles to the soldiers' one, scampering in wide circles over the fields, swimming burns, scrambling under hedges, chasing whaups into piping cries, barking and louping in pure exuberance of spirits, many eyes looked upon him admiringly, and discontented mouths turned upward at the corners. It is not the least of a little dog's missions in life to communicate his own irresponsible gaiety to men.

If the return had been over George IV Bridge Bobby would, no doubt, have dropped behind at Mr. Traill's or at the kirkyard. But on the Burghmuir the troops swung eastward until they rounded Arthur's Seat and met the cavalry drilling before the barracks at Piershill. Such pretty maneuvering of horse and foot took place below Holyrood Palace as quite to enrapture a terrier. When the infantry marched up the Canongate and High Street, the mounted men following and the bands playing at full blast, the ancient thoroughfare was quickly lined with cheering crowds, and faces looked down from ten tiers of windows on a beautiful spectacle. Bobby did not know when the bridge-approach was passed; and then, on Castle Hill, he was in an unknown region. There the street widened to the great square of the esplanade. The cavalry wheeled and dashed down High Street, but the infantry marched on and up, over the sounding drawbridge that spanned a dry moat of the Middle Ages, and through a deep-arched gateway of masonry.

The outer gate to the Castle was wider than the opening into many an Edinburgh wynd; but Bobby stopped, uncertain as to where this narrow roadway, that curved upward to the right, might lead. It was not a dark fissure in a cliff of houses, but was bounded on the outer side by a loopholed wall, and on the inner by a rocky ledge of ascending levels. Wherever the shelf was of sufficient breadth a battery of cannon was mounted, and such a flood of light fell from above and flashed on polished steel and brass as to make the little dog blink in bewilderment. And he whirled like a rotary sweeper in the dusty road and yelped when the time-gun, in the half-moon battery at the left of the gate and behind him, crashed and shook the massive rock.

He barked and barked, and dashed toward the insulting clamor. The dauntless little dog and his spirited protest were so out of proportion to the huge offense that the guard laughed, and other soldiers ran out of the guard houses that flanked the gate. They would have put the noisy terrier out at once, but Bobby was off, up the curving roadway into the Castle. The music had ceased, and the soldiers had disappeared over the rise. Through other dark arches of masonry he ran. On the crest were two ways to choose--the roadway on around and past the barracks, and a flight of steps cut steeply in the living rock of the ledge, and leading up to the King's Bastion. Bobby took the stairs at a few bounds.

On the summit there was nothing at all beside a tiny, ancient stone chapel with a Norman arched and sculptured doorway, and guarding it an enormous burst cannon. But these ruins were the crown jewels of the fortifications--their origins lost in legends--and so they were cared for with peculiar reverence. Sergeant Scott of the Royal Engineers himself, in fatigue-dress, was down on his knees before St. Margaret's oratory, pulling from a crevice in the foundations a knot of grass that was at its insidious work of time and change. As Bobby dashed up to the citadel, still barking, the man jumped to his feet. Then he slapped his thigh and laughed. Catching the animated little bundle of protest the sergeant set him up for inspection on the shattered breeching of Mons Meg.

“Losh! The sma' dog cam' by 'is ainsel'! He could no' resist the braw soldier laddies. 'He's a dog o' discreemination,' eh? Gin he bides a wee, noo, it wull tak' the conceit oot o' the innkeeper.” He turned to gather up his tools, for the first dinner bugle was blowing. Bobby knew by the gun that it was the dinner-hour, but he had been fed at the farm and was not hungry. He might as well see a bit more of life. He sat upon the cannon, not in the least impressed by the honor, and lolled his tongue.

In Edinburgh Castle there was nothing to alarm a little dog. A dozen or more large buildings, in three or four groups, and representing many periods of architecture, lay to the south and west on the lowest terraces, and about them were generous parked spaces. Into the largest of the buildings, a long, four-storied barracks, the soldiers had vanished. And now, at the blowing of a second bugle, half a hundred orderlies hurried down from a modern cook-house, near the summit, with cans of soup and meat and potatoes. The sergeant followed one of these into a room on the front of the barracks. In their serge fatigue-tunics the sixteen men about the long table looked as different from the gay soldiers of the march as though so many scarlet and gold and bonneted butterflies had turned back into sad-colored grubs.

“Private McLean,” he called to his batman who, for one-and-six a week, cared for his belongings, “tak' chairge o' the dog, wull ye, an' fetch 'im to the non-com mess when ye come to put ma kit i' gude order.”

Before he could answer the bombardment of questions about Bobby the door was opened again. The men dropped their knives and forks and stood at attention. The officer of the day was making the rounds of the forty or fifty such rooms in the barracks to inquire of the soldiers if their dinner was satisfactory. He recognized at once the attractive little Skye that had taken the eyes of the men on the march, and asked about him. Sergeant Scott explained that Bobby had no owner. He was living, by permission, in Greyfriars kirkyard, guarding the grave of a long-dead, humble master, and was fed by the landlord of the dining-rooms near the gate. If the little dog took a fancy to garrison life, and the regiment to him, he thought Mr. Traill, who had the best claim upon him, might consent to his transfer to the Castle. After orders, at sunset, he would take Bobby down to the restaurant himself.

“I wish you good luck, Sergeant.” The officer whistled, and Bobby leaped upon him and off again, and indulged in many inconsequent friskings. “Before you take him home fetch him over to the officers' mess at dinner. It is guest night, and he is sure to interest the gentlemen. A loyal little creature who has guarded his dead master's grave for more than eight years deserves to have a toast drunk to him by the officers of the Queen. But it's an extraordinary story, and it doesn't sound altogether probable. Jolly little beggar!” He patted Bobby cordially on the side, and went out.

The news of his advent and fragments of his story spread so quickly through the barracks that mess after mess swarmed down from the upper moors and out into the roadway to see Bobby. Private McLean stood in the door, smoking a cutty pipe, and grinning with pride in the merry little ruffian of a terrier, who met the friendly advances of the soldiers more than half-way. Bobby's guardian would have liked very well to have sat before the canteen in the sun and gossiped about his small charge. However, in the sergeant's sleeping-quarters above the mess-room, he had the little dog all to himself, and Bobby had the liveliest interest in the boxes and pots, brushes and sponges, and in the processes of polishing, burnishing, and pipe-claying a soldier's boots and buttons and belts. As he worked at his valeting, the man kept time with his foot to rude ballads that he sang in such a hissing Celtic that Bobby barked, scandalized by a dialect that had been music in the ears of his ancestors. At that Private McLean danced a Highland fling for him, and wee Bobby came near bursting with excitement. When the sergeant came up to make a magnificent toilet for tea and for the evening in town, the soldier expressed himself with enthusiasm.

“He iss a deffle of a dog, sir!”

He was thought to be a “deffle of a dog” in the mess, where the non-com officers had tea at small writing and card tables. They talked and laughed very fast and loud, tried Bobby out on all the pretty tricks he knew, and taught him to speak and to jump for a lump of sugar balanced on his nose. They did not fondle him, and this rough, masculine style of pampering and petting was very much to his liking. It was a proud thing, too, for a little dog, to walk out with the sergeant's shining boots and twirled walkingstick, and be introduced into one strange place after another all around the Castle.

From tea to tattoo was playtime for the garrison. Many smartly dressed soldiers, with passes earned by good behavior, went out to find amusement in the city. Visitors, some of them tourists from America, made the rounds under the guidance of old soldiers. The sergeant followed such a group of sight-seers through a postern behind the armory and out onto the cliff. There he lounged under a fir-tree above St. Margaret's Well and smoked a dandified cigar, while Bobby explored the promenade and scraped acquaintance with the strangers.

On the northern and southern sides the Castle wall rose from the very edge of sheer precipices. Except for loopholes there were no openings. But on the west there was a grassy terrace without the wall, and below that the cliff fell away a little less steeply. The declivity was clothed sparsely with hazel shrubs, thorns, whins and thistles; and now and then a stunted fir or rowan tree or a group of white-stemmed birks was stoutly rooted on a shelving ledge. Had any one, the visitors asked, ever escaped down this wild crag?

Yes, Queen Margaret's children, the guide answered. Their father dead, in battle, their saintly mother dead in the sanctuary of her tiny chapel, the enemy battering at the gate, soldiers had lowered the royal lady's body in a basket, and got the orphaned children down, in safety and away, in a fog, over Queen's Ferry to Dunfirmline in the Kingdom of Fife. It was true that a false step or a slip of the foot would have dashed them to pieces on the rocks below. A gentleman of the party scouted the legend. Only a fox or an Alpine chamois could make that perilous descent.

With his head cocked alertly, Bobby had stood listening. Hearing this vague talk of going down, he may have thought these people meant to go, for he quietly dropped over the edge and went, head over heels, ten feet down, and landed in a clump of hazel. A lady screamed. Bobby righted himself and barked cheerful reassurance. The sergeant sprang to his feet and ordered him to come back.

Now, the sergeant was pleasant company, to be sure; but he was not a person who had to be obeyed, so Bobby barked again, wagged his crested tail, and dropped lower. The people who shuddered on the brink could see that the little dog was going cautiously enough; and presently he looked doubtfully over a sheer fall of twenty feet, turned and scrambled back to the promenade. He was cried and exclaimed over by the hysterical ladies, and scolded for a bittie fule by the sergeant. To this Bobby returned ostentatious yawns of boredom and nonchalant lollings, for it seemed a small matter to be so fashed about. At that a gentleman remarked, testily, to hide his own agitation, that dogs really had very little sense. The sergeant ordered Bobby to precede him through the postern, and the little dog complied amiably.

All the afternoon bugles had been blowing. For each signal there was a different note, and at each uniformed men appeared and hurried to new points. Now, near sunset, there was the fanfare for officers' orders for the next day. The sergeant put Bobby into Queen Margaret's Chapel, bade him remain there, and went down to the Palace Yard. The chapel on the summit was a convenient place for picking the little dog up on his way to the officers' mess. Then he meant to have his own supper cozily at Mr. Traill's and to negotiate for Bobby.

A dozen people would have crowded this ancient oratory, but, small as it was, it was fitted with a chancel rail and a font for baptizing the babies born in the Castle. Through the window above the altar, where the sainted Queen was pictured in stained glass, the sunlight streamed and laid another jeweled image on the stone floor. Then the colors faded, until the holy place became an austere cell. The sun had dropped behind the western Highlands.

Bobby thought it quite time to go home. By day he often went far afield, seeking distraction, but at sunset he yearned for the grave in Greyfriars. The steps up which he had come lay in plain view from the doorway of the chapel. Bobby dropped down the stairs, and turned into the main roadway of the Castle. At the first arch that spanned it a red-coated guard paced on the other side of a closed gate. It would not be locked until tattoo, at nine thirty, but, without a pass, no one could go in or out. Bobby sprang on the bars and barked, as much as to say: “Come awa', man, I hae to get oot.”

The guard stopped, presented arms to this small, peremptory terrier, and inquired facetiously if he had a pass. Bobby bristled and yelped indignantly. The soldier grinned with amusement. Sentinel duty was lonesome business, and any diversion a relief. In a guardhouse asleep when Bobby came into the Castle, he had not seen the little dog before and knew nothing about him. He might be the property of one of the regiment ladies. Without orders he dared not let Bobby out. A furious and futile onslaught on the gate he met with a jocose feint of his bayonet. Tiring of the play, presently, the soldier turned his back and paced to the end of his beat.

Bobby stopped barking in sheer astonishment. He gazed after the stiff, retreating back, in frightened disbelief that he was not to be let out. He attacked the stone under the barrier, but quickly discovered its unyielding nature. Then he howled until the sentinel came back, but when the man went by without looking at him he uttered a whimpering cry and fled upward. The roadway was dark and the dusk was gathering on the citadel when Bobby dashed across the summit and down into the brightly lighted square of the Palace Yard.

The gas-lamps were being lighted on the bridge, and Mr. Traill was getting into his streetcoat for his call on Mr. Brown when Tammy put his head in at the door of the restaurant. The crippled laddie had a warm, uplifted look, for Love had touched the sordid things of life, and a miracle had bloomed for the tenement dwellers around Greyfriars.

“Maister Traill, Mrs. Brown says wull ye please send Bobby hame. Her gude-mon's frettin' for 'im; an' syne, a' the folk aroond the kirkyaird hae come to the gate to see the bittie dog's braw collar. They wullna believe the Laird Provost gied it to 'im for a chairm gin they dinna see it wi' their gin een.”

“Why, mannie, Bobby's no' here. He must be in the kirkyard.”

“Nae, he isna. I ca'ed, an' Ailie keeked in ilka place amang the stanes.”

They stared at each other, the landlord serious, the laddie's lip trembling. Mr. Traill had not returned from his numerous errands about the city until the middle of the afternoon. He thought, of course, that Bobby had been in for his dinner, as usual, and had returned to the kirkyard. It appeared, now, that no one about the diningrooms had seen the little dog. Everybody had thought that Mr. Traill had taken Bobby with him. He hurried down to the gate to find Mistress Jeanie at the wicket, and a crowd of tenement women and children in the alcove and massed down Candlemakers Row. Alarm spread like a contagion. In eight years and more Bobby had not been outside the kirkyard gate after the sunset bugle. Mrs. Brown turned pale.