Part 29

“Dinna say the bittie dog's lost, Maister Traill. It wad gang to the heart o' ma gudemon.”

“Havers, woman, he's no' lost.” Mr. Traill spoke stoutly enough. “Just go up to the lodge and tell Mr. Brown I'm--weel, I'll just attend to that sma' matter my ainsel'.” With that he took a gay face and a set-up air into the lodge to meet Mr. Brown's glowering eye.

“Whaur's the dog, man? I've been deaved aboot 'im a' the day, but I haena seen the sonsie rascal nor the braw collar the Laird Provost gied 'im. An' syne, wi' the folk comin' to spier for 'im an' swarmin' ower the kirkyaird, ye'd think a warlock was aboot. Bobby isna your dog--”

“Haud yoursel', man. Bobby's a famous dog, with the freedom of Edinburgh given to him, and naething will do but Glenormiston must show him to a company o' grand folk at his bit country place. He's sending in a cart by a groom, and I'm to tak' Bobby out and fetch him hame after a braw dinner on gowd plate. The bairns meant weel, but they could no' give Bobby a washing fit for a veesit with the nobeelity. I had to tak' him to a barber for a shampoo.”

Mr. Brown roared with laughter. “Man, ye hae mair fule notions i' yer heid. Ye'll hae to pay a shullin' or twa to a barber, an' Bobby'll be sae set up there'll be nae leevin' wi' 'im. Sit ye doon an' tell me aboot the collar, man.”

“I can no' stop now to wag my tongue. Here's the gude-wife. I'll just help her get you awa' to your bed.”

It was dark when he returned to the gate, and the Castle wore its luminous crown. The lights from the street lamps flickered on the up-turned, anxious faces. Some of the children had begun to weep. Women offered loud suggestions. There were surmises that Bobby had been run over by a cart in the street, and angry conjectures that he had been stolen. Then Ailie wailed:

“Oh, Maister Traill, the bittie dog's deid!”

“Havers, lassie! I'm ashamed o' ye for a fulish bairn. Bobby's no' deid. Nae doot he's amang the stanes i' the kirkyaird. He's aye scramblin' aboot for vermin an' pussies, an' may hae hurt himsel', an' ye a' ken the bonny wee wadna cry oot i' the kirkyaird. Noo, get to wark, an' dinna stand there greetin' an' waggin' yer tongues. The mithers an' bairns maun juist gang hame an' stap their havers, an' licht a' the candles an' cruisey lamps i' their hames, an' set them i' the windows aboon the kirkyaird. Greyfriars is murky by the ordinar', an' ye couldna find a coo there wi'oot the lichts.”

The crowd suddenly melted away, so eager were they all to have a hand in helping to find the community pet. Then Mr. Traill turned to the boys.

“Hoo mony o' ye laddies hae the bull's-eye lanterns?”

Ah! not many in the old buildings around the kirkyard. These japanned tin aids to dark adventures on the golf links on autumn nights cost a sixpence and consumed candles. Geordie Ross and Sandy McGregor, coming up arm in arm, knew of other students and clerks who still had these cherished toys of boyhood. With these heroes in the lead a score or more of laddies swarmed into the kirkyard.

The tenements were lighted up as they had not been since nobles held routs and balls there. Enough candles and oil were going up in smoke to pay for wee Bobby's license all over again, and enough love shone in pallid little faces that peered into the dusk to light the darkest corner in the heart of the world. Rays from the bull's-eyes were thrown into every nook and cranny. Very small laddies insinuated themselves into the narrowest places. They climbed upon high vaults and let themselves down in last year's burdocks and tangled vines. It was all done in silence, only Mr. Traill speaking at all. He went everywhere with the searchers, and called:

“Whaur are ye, Bobby? Come awa' oot, laddie!”

But no gleaming ghost of a tousled dog was conjured by the voice of affection. The tiniest scratching or lowest moaning could have been heard, for the warm spring evening was very still, and there were, as yet, few leaves to rustle. Sleepy birds complained at being disturbed on their perches, and rodents could be heard scampering along their runways. The entire kirkyard was explored, then the interior of the two kirks. Mr. Traill went up to the lodge for the keys, saying, optimistically, that a sexton might unwittingly have locked Bobby in. Young men with lanterns went through the courts of the tenements, around the Grassmarket, and under the arches of the bridge. Laddies dropped from the wall and hunted over Heriot's Hospital grounds to Lauriston market. Tammy, poignantly conscious of being of no practical use, sat on Auld Jock's grave, firm in the conviction that Bobby would return to that spot his ainsel' And Ailie, being only a maid, whose portion it was to wait and weep, lay across the window-sill, on the pediment of the tomb, a limp little figure of woe.

Mr. Traill's heart was full of misgiving. Nothing but death or stone walls could keep that little creature from this beloved grave. But, in thinking of stone walls, he never once thought of the Castle. Away over to the east, in Broughton market, when the garrison marched away and at Lauriston when they returned, Mr. Traill did not know that the soldiers had been out of the city. Busy in the lodge Mistress Jeanie had not seen them go by the kirkyard, and no one else, except Mr. Brown, knew the fascination that military uniforms, marching and music had for wee Bobby. A fog began to drift in from the sea. Suddenly the grass was sheeted and the tombs blurred. A curtain of gauze seemed to be hung before the lighted tenements. The Castle head vanished, and the sounds of the drum and bugle of the tattoo came down muffled, as if through layers of wool. The lights of the bull's-eyes were ruddy discs that cast no rays. Then these were smeared out to phosphorescent glows, like the “spunkies” that everybody in Scotland knew came out to dance in old kirkyards.

It was no' canny. In the smother of the fog some of the little boys were lost, and cried out. Mr. Traill got them up to the gate and sent them home in bands, under the escort of the students. Mistress Jeanie was out by the wicket. Mr. Brown was asleep, and she “couldna thole it to sit there snug.” When a fog-horn moaned from the Firth she broke into sobbing. Mr. Traill comforted her as best he could by telling her a dozen plans for the morning. By feeling along the wall he got her to the lodge, and himself up to his cozy dining-rooms.

For the first time since Queen Mary the gate of the historic garden of the Greyfriars was left on the latch. And it was so that a little dog, coming home in the night might not be shut out.

XI.

It was more than two hours after he left Bobby in Queen Margaret's Chapel that the sergeant turned into the officers' mess-room and tried to get an orderly to take a message to the captain who had noticed the little dog in the barracks. He wished to report that Bobby could not be found, and to be excused to continue the search.

He had to wait by the door while the toast to her Majesty was proposed and the band in the screened gallery broke into “God Save the Queen”; and when the music stopped the bandmaster came in for the usual compliments.

The evening was so warm and still, although it was only mid-April, that a glass-paneled door, opening on the terrace, was set ajar for air. In the confusion of movement and talk no one noticed a little black mop of a muzzle that was poked through the aperture. From the outer darkness Bobby looked in on the score or more of men doubtfully, ready for instant disappearance on the slightest alarm. Desperate was the emergency, forlorn the hope that had brought him there. At every turn his efforts to escape from the Castle had been baffled. He had been imprisoned by drummer boys and young recruits in the gymnasium, detained in the hospital, captured in the canteen.

Bobby went through all his pretty tricks for the lads, and then begged to be let go. Laughed at, romped with, dragged back, thrown into the swimming-pool, expected to play and perform for them, he rebelled at last. He scarred the door with his claws, and he howled so dismally that, hearing an orderly corporal coming, they turned him out in a rough haste that terrified him. In the old Banqueting Hall on the Palace Yard, that was used as a hospital and dispensary, he went through that travesty of joy again, in hope of the reward.

Sharply rebuked and put out of the hospital, at last, because of his destructive clawing and mournful howling, Bobby dashed across the Palace Yard and into a crowd of good-humored soldiers who lounged in the canteen. Rising on his hind legs to beg for attention and indulgence, he was taken unaware from behind by an admiring soldier who wanted to romp with him. Quite desperate by that time, he snapped at the hand of his captor and sprang away into the first dark opening. Frightened by the man's cry of pain, and by the calls and scuffling search for him without, he slunk to the farthest corner of a dungeon of the Middle Ages, under the Royal Lodging.

When the hunt for him ceased, Bobby slipped out of hiding and made his way around the sickle-shaped ledge of rock, and under the guns of the half-moon battery, to the outer gate. Only a cat, a fox, or a low, weasel-like dog could have done it. There were many details that would have enabled the observant little creature to recognize this barrier as the place where he had come in. Certainly he attacked it with fury, and on the guards he lavished every art of appeal that he possessed. But there he was bantered, and a feint was made of shutting him up in the guard-house as a disorderly person. With a heart-broken cry he escaped his tormentors, and made his way back, under the guns, to the citadel.

His confidence in the good intentions of men shaken, Bobby took to furtive ways. Avoiding lighted buildings and voices, he sped from shadow to shadow and explored the walls of solid masonry. Again and again he returned to the postern behind the armory, but the small back gate that gave to the cliff was not opened. Once he scrambled up to a loophole in the fortifications and looked abroad at the scattered lights of the city set in the void of night. But there, indeed, his stout heart failed him.

It was not long before Bobby discovered that he was being pursued. A number of soldiers and drummer boys were out hunting for him, contritely enough, when the situation was explained by the angry sergeant. Wherever he went voices and footsteps followed. Had the sergeant gone alone and called in familiar speech, “Come awa' oot, Bobby!” he would probably have run to the man. But there were so many calls--in English, in Celtic, and in various dialects of the Lowlands--that the little dog dared not trust them. From place to place he was driven by fear, and when the calling stopped and the footsteps no longer followed, he lay for a time where he could watch the postern. A moment after he gave up the vigil there the little back gate was opened.

Desperation led him to take another chance with men. Slipping into the shadow of the old Governor's House, the headquarters of commissioned officers, on the terrace above the barracks, he lay near the open door to the mess-room, listening and watching.