“Loup, Bobby!”

Bobby jumped for the bonnet, missed it, jumped again and barked-the high-pitched, penetrating yelp of the terrier.

Instantly their little house of joy tumbled about their ears.  There was a pounding on the thin partition wall, an oath and a shout “Whaur’s the deil o’ a dog?” Bobby flew at the insulting clamor, but Auld Jock dragged him back roughly.  In a voice made harsh by fear for his little pet, he commanded: 

“Haud yer gab or they’ll hae ye oot.”

Bobby dropped like a shot, cringing at Auld Jock’s feet.  The most sensitive of four-footed creatures in the world, the Skye terrier is utterly abased by a rebuke from his master.  The whole garret was soon in an uproar of vile accusation and shrill denial that spread from cell to cell.

Auld Jock glowered down at Bobby with frightened eyes.  In the winters he had lodged there he had lived unmolested only because he had managed to escape notice.  Timid old country body that he was, he could not “fecht it oot” with the thieves and beggars and drunkards of the Cowgate.  By and by the brawling died down.  In the double row of little dens this one alone was silent, and the offending dog was not located.

But when the danger was past, Auld Jock’s heart was pounding in his chest.  His legs gave way under him, when he got up to fetch the candle from near the door and set it on a projecting brick in the fireplace.  By its light he began to read in a small pocket Bible the Psalm that had always fascinated him because he had never been able to understand it.

“The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.”

So far it was plain and comforting.  “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.  He leadeth me beside the still waters.”

Nae, the pastures were brown, or purple and yellow with heather and gorse.  Rocks cropped out everywhere, and the peaty tarps were mostly bleak and frozen.  The broad Firth was ever ebbing and flowing with the restless sea, and the burns bickering down the glens.  The minister of the little hill kirk had said once that in England the pastures were green and the lakes still and bright; but that was a fey, foreign country to which Auld Jock had no desire to go.  He wondered, wistfully, if he would feel at home in God’s heaven, and if there would be room in that lush silence for a noisy little dog, as there was on the rough Pentland braes.  And there his thoughts came back to this cold prison cell in which he could not defend the right of his one faithful little friend to live.  He stooped and lifted Bobby into the bed.  Humble, and eager to be forgiven for an offense he could not understand, the loving little creature leaped to Auld Jock’s arms and lavished frantic endearments upon him.