On that snarling April day, when only himself and the flossy ball of sleeping Skye were in the place, this thought added to Mr. Traill’s discontent.  There had been few guests.  Those who had come in, soaked and surly, ate their dinner in silence and discomfort and took themselves away, leaving the freshly scrubbed floor as mucky as a moss-hag on the moor.  Late in the afternoon a sergeant, risen from the ranks and cocky about it, came in and turned himself out of a dripping greatcoat, dapper and dry in his red tunic, pipe-clayed belt, and winking buttons.  He ordered tea and toast and Dundee marmalade with an air of gay well-being that was no less than a personal affront to a man in Mr. Traill’s frame of mind.  Trouble brewed with the tea that Ailie Lindsey, a tall lassie of fifteen, but shy and elfish as of old, brought in on a tray from the scullery.

When this spick-and-span non-commissioned officer demanded Mr. Traill’s price for the little dog that took his eye, the landlord replied curtly that Bobby was not for sale.  The soldier was insolently amused.

“That’s vera surprisin’.  I aye thoucht an Edinburgh shopkeeper wad sell ilka thing he had, an’ tak’ the siller to bed wi’ ’im to keep ’im snug the nicht.”

Mr. Traill returned, with brief sarcasm, that “his lairdship” had been misinformed.

“Why wull ye no’ sell the bit dog?” the man insisted.

The badgered landlord turned upon him and answered at length, after the elaborate manner of a minister who lays his sermon off in sections

“First:  he’s no’ my dog to sell.  Second:  he’s a dog of rare discreemination, and is no’ like to tak’ you for a master.  Third:  you soldiers aye have with you a special brand of shulling-a-day impudence.  And, fourth and last, my brither:  I’m no’ needing your siller, and I can manage to do fair weel without your conversation.”

As this bombardment proceeded, the sergeant’s jaw dropped.  When it was finished he laughed heartily and slapped his knee.  “Man, come an’ brak bread wi’ me or I’ll hae to brak yer stiff neck.”

A truce was declared over a cozy pot of tea, and the two became at least temporary friends.  It was such a day that the landlord would have gossiped with a gaol bird; and when a soldier who has seen years of service, much of it in strange lands, once admits a shopkeeper to equality, he can be affable and entertaining “by the ordinar’.”  Mr. Traill sketched Bobby’s story broadly, and to a sympathetic listener; and the soldier told the landlord of the animals that had lived and died in the Castle.

Parrots and monkeys and strange dogs and cats had been brought there by regiments returning from foreign countries and colonies.  But most of the pets had been native dogs—­collies, spaniels and terriers, and animals of mixed breeds and of no breed at all, but just good dogs.  No one knew when the custom began, but there was an old and well-filled cemetery for the Castle pets.  When a dog died