“Is there no’ a way to smuggle the bit dog into the kirkyard?”

It appeared that nothing was easier, “aince ye ken hoo.”  Did Mr. Traill know of the internal highway through the old Cunzie Neuk at the bottom of the Row?  One went up the stairs on the front to the low, timbered gallery, then through a passage as black as “Bluidy” McKenzie’s heart.  At the end of that, one came to a peep-hole of a window, set out on wooden brackets, that hung right over the kirkyard wall.  From that window Bobby could be dropped on a certain noble vault, from which he could jump to the ground.

“Twa meenits’ wark, stout hearts, sleekit footstaps, an’ the fearsome deed is done,” declared twelve-year-old Geordie, whose sense of the dramatic matched his daring.

But when the deed was done, and the two stood innocently on the brightly lighted approach to the bridge, Mr. Traill had his misgivings.  A well-respected business man and church-member, he felt uneasy to be at the mercy of a laddie who might be boastful.

“Geordie, if you tell onybody about this I’ll have to give you a licking.”

“I wullna tell,” Geordie reassured him.  “It’s no’ so respectable, an’ syne ma mither’d gie me anither lickin’, an’ they’d gie me twa more awfu’ aces, an’ black marks for a month, at Heriot’s.”

V.

Word had been left at all the inns and carting offices about both markets for the tenant of Cauldbrae farm to call at Mr. Traill’s place for Bobby.  The man appeared Wednesday afternoon, driving a big Clydesdale horse to a stout farm cart.  The low-ceiled dining-room suddenly shrank about the big-boned, long legged hill man.  The fact embarrassed him, as did also a voice cultivated out of all proportion to town houses, by shouting to dogs and shepherds on windy shoulders of the Pentlands.

“Hae ye got the dog wi’ ye?”

Mr. Train pointed to Bobby, deep in a blissful, after dinner nap under the settle.

The farmer breathed a sigh of relief, sat at a table, and ate a frugal meal of bread and cheese.  As roughly dressed as Auld Jock, in a metal-buttoned greatcoat of hodden gray, a woolen bonnet, and the shepherd’s twofold plaid, he was a different species of human being altogether.  A long, lean, sinewy man of early middle age, he had a smooth-shaven, bony jaw, far-seeing gray eyes under furzy brows, and a shock of auburn hair.  When he spoke, it was to give bits out of his own experience.

“Thae terriers are usefu’ eneugh on an ordinar’ fairm an’ i’ the toon to keep awa’ the vermin, but I wadna gie a twa-penny-bit for ane o’ them on a sheep-fairm.  There’s a wee lassie at Cauldbrae wha wants Bobby for a pet.  It wasna richt for Auld Jock to win ‘im awa’ frae the bairn.”

Mr. Traill’s hand was lifted in rebuke.  “Speak nae ill, man; Auld Jock’s dead.”

The farmer’s ruddy face blanched and he dropped his knife.  “He’s no’ buried so sane?”