[* Esil, “vinegar” (Hamlet, V, I, 299).]

Still the Chicken holds; death not far off.  “Snuff! a pinch of snuff!” observed a calm, highly-dressed young buck, with an eye-glass in his eye.  “Snuff, indeed!” growled the angry crowd, affronted and glaring.  “Snuff! a pinch of snuff!” again observed the buck, but with more urgency; whereon were produced several open boxes, and from a mull which may have been at Culloden, he took a pinch, knelt down, and presented it to the nose of the Chicken.  The laws of physiology and of snuff take their course; the Chicken sneezes, and Yarrow is free!

The young pastoral giant stalks off with Yarrow in his arms,—­comforting him.

But the Bull Terrier’s blood is up, and his soul unsatisfied; he grips the first dog he meets, and discovering she is not a dog, in Homeric phrase, he makes a brief sort of amende, and is off.  The boys, with Bob and me at their head, are after him:  down Niddry Street he goes, bent on mischief; up the Cowgate like an arrow—­Bob and I, and our small men, panting behind.

There, under the single arch of the South Bridge, is a huge mastiff, sauntering down the middle of the causeway, as if with his hands in his pockets:  he is old, gray, brindled, as big as a little Highland bull, and has the Shakesperian dewlaps shaking as he goes.

The Chicken makes straight at him, and fastens on his throat.  To our astonishment, the great creature does nothing but stand still, hold himself up, and roar—­yes, roar; a long, serious, remonstrative roar.  How is this?  Bob and I are up to them. He is muzzled!  The bailies had proclaimed a general muzzling, and his master, studying strength and economy mainly, had encompassed his huge jaws in a home-made apparatus, constructed out of the leather of some ancient breechin.  His mouth was open as far as it could; his lips curled up in rage—­a sort of terrible grin; his teeth gleaming, ready, from out the darkness; the strap across his mouth tense as a bowstring; his whole frame stiff with indignation and surprise; his roar asking us all round, “Did you ever see the like of this?” He looked a statue of anger and astonishment, done in Aberdeen granite.

We soon had a crowd:  the Chicken held on.  “A knife!” cried Bob; and a cobbler gave him his knife:  you know the kind of knife, worn away obliquely to a point, and always keen.  I put its edge to the tense leather; it ran before it; and then!—­one sudden jerk of that enormous head, a sort of dirty mist about his mouth, no noise,—­and the bright and fierce little fellow is dropped, limp, and dead.  A solemn pause:  this was more than any of us had bargained for.  I turned the little fellow over, and saw he was quite dead; the mastiff had taken him by the small of the back like a rat, and broken it.

He looked down at his victim appeased, ashamed, and amazed; snuffed him all over, stared at him, and taking a sudden thought, turned round and trotted off.  Bob took the dead dog up, and said, “John, we’ll bury him after tea.”  “Yes,” said I, and was off after the mastiff.  He made up the Cowgate at a rapid swing; he had forgotten some engagement.  He turned up the Candlemaker Row, and stopped at the Harrow Inn.