A big-boned, slow-moving man of the best country house-gardener type, serviceably dressed in corduroy, wool bonnet, and ribbed stockings, James Brown collided with the small and wiry landlord, to his own very great embarrassment.

“Eh, Maister Traill, ye gied me a turn.  It’s no’ canny to be proolin’ aboot the kirkyaird i’ the gloamin’.”

“Whaur did the bit dog go, man?” demanded the peremptory landlord.

“Dog?  There’s no’ ony dog i’ the kirkyaird.  It isna permeetted.  Gin it’s a pussy ye’re needin’, noo—­”

But Mr. Traill brushed this irrelevant pleasantry aside.

“Ay, there’s a dog.  I let him in my ainsel’.”

The caretaker exploded with wrath:  “Syne I’ll hae the law on ye.  Can ye no’ read, man?”

“Tut, tut, Jeemes Brown.  Don’t stand there arguing.  It’s a gude and necessary regulation, but it’s no’ the law o’ the land.  I turned the dog in to settle a matter with my ain conscience, and John Knox would have done the same thing in the bonny face o’ Queen Mary.  What it is, is nae beesiness of yours.  The dog was a sma’ young terrier of the Highland breed, but with a drop to his ears and a crinkle in his frosty coat—­no’ just an ordinar’ dog.  I know him weel.  He came to my place to be fed, near dead of hunger, then led me here.  If his master lies in this kirkyard, I’ll tak’ the bit dog awa’ with me.”

Mr. Traill’s astonishing fluency always carried all walls of resistance before it with men of slower wit and speech.  Only a superior man could brush time-honored rules aside so curtly and stand on his human rights so surely.  James Brown pulled his bonnet off deferentially, scratched his shock head and shifted his pipe.  Finally he admitted: 

“Weel, there was a bit tyke i’ the kirkyaird twa days syne.  I put ‘im oot, an’ haena seen ’im aboot ony main” He offered, however, to show the new-made mound on which he had found the dog.  Leading the way past the church, he went on down the terraced slope, prolonging the walk with conversation, for the guardianship of an old churchyard offers very little such lively company as John Traill’s.

“I mind, noo, it was some puir body frae the Coogate, wi’ no’ ony mourners but the sma’ terrier aneath the coffin.  I let ’im pass, no’ to mak’ a disturbance at a buryin’.  The deal box was fetched up by the police, an’ carried by sic a crew o’ gaol-birds as wad mak’ ye turn ower in yer ain God’s hole.  But he paid for his buryin’ wi’ his ain siller, an’ noo lies as canny as the nobeelity.  Nae boot here’s the place, Maister Traill; an’ ye can see for yer ainsel’ there’s no’ any dog.”

“Ay, that would be Auld Jock and Bobby would no’ be leaving him,” insisted the landlord, stubbornly.  He stood looking down at the rough mound of frozen clods heaped in a little space of trampled snow.

“Jeemes Brown,” Mr. Trail said, at last, “the man wha lies here was a decent, pious auld country body, and I drove him to his meeserable death in the Cowgate.”