“Eh, laddie, I dinna ken what to do wi’ ye.  We maun juist hae to sleep oot.”  It did not occur to Auld Jock that he could abandon the little dog.  And then there drifted across his memory a bit of Mr. Traill’s talk that, at the time, had seemed to no purpose:  “Sir Walter happed the wee lassie in the pocket of his plaid—­” He slapped his knee in silent triumph.  In the dark he found the broad, open end of the plaid, and the rough, excited head of the little dog.

“A hap, an’ a stap, an’ a loup, an’ in ye gang.  Loup in, laddie.”

Bobby jumped into the pocket and turned ’round and ’round.  His little muzzle opened for a delighted bark at this original play, but Auld Jock checked him.

“Cuddle doon noo, an’ lie canny as pussy.”  With a deft turn he brought the weighted end of the plaid up under his arm so there would be no betraying drag.  “We’ll pu’ the wool ower the auld wifie’s een,” he chuckled.

He mounted the stairs almost blithely, and knocked on one of the three narrow doors that opened on the two-by-eight landing.  It was opened a few inches, on a chain, and a sordid old face, framed in straggling gray locks and a dirty mutch cap, peered suspiciously at him through the crevice.

Auld Jock had his money in hand—­a shilling and a sixpence—­to pay for a week’s lodging.  He had slept in this place for several winters, and the old woman knew him well, but she held his coins to the candle and bit them with her teeth to test them.  Without a word of greeting she shoved the key to the sleeping-closet he had always fancied, through the crack in the door, and pointed to a jug of water at the foot of the attic stairs.  On the proffer of a halfpenny she gave him a tallow candle, lighted it at her own and fitted it into the neck of a beer bottle.

“Ye hae a cauld.” she said at last, with some hostility.  “Gin ye wauken yer neebors yell juist hae to fecht it oot wi’ ’em.”

“Ay, I ken a’ that,” Auld Jock answered.  He smothered a cough in his chest with such effort that it threw him into a perspiration.  In some way, with the jug of water and the lighted candle in his hands and the hidden terrier under one arm, the old man mounted the eighteen-inch wide, walled-in attic stairs and unlocked the first of a number of narrow doors on the passage at the top.

“Weel aboon the fou’ smell,” indeed; “weel worth the lang climb!” Around the loose frames of two wee southward-looking dormer windows, that jutted from the slope of the gable, came a gush of rain-washed air.  Auld Jock tumbled Bobby, warm and happy and “nane the wiser,” out into the cold cell of a room that was oh, so very, very different from the high, warm, richly colored library of Sir Walter!  This garret closet in the slums of Edinburgh was all of cut stone, except for the worn, oaken floor, a flimsy, modern door, and a thin, board partition on one side through which a “neebor” could be heard snoring.  Filling all of the outer wall between the peephole,