Here was a pretty kettle of fish, indeed, for a respected member of a kirk and middle-aged business man to fry in.  Through the legal verbiage Mr. Traill made out that he was summoned to appear before whatever magistrate happened to be sitting on the morrow in the Burgh court, to answer to the charge of owning, or harboring, one dog, upon which he had not paid the license tax of seven shillings.

For all its absurdity it was no laughing matter.  The municipal court of Edinburgh was of far greater dignity than the ordinary justice court of the United Kingdom and of America.  The civic bench was occupied, in turn, by no less a personage than the Lord Provost as chief, and by five other magistrates elected by the Burgh council from among its own membership.  Men of standing in business, legal and University circles, considered it an honor and a duty to bring their knowledge and responsibility to bear on the pettiest police cases.

It was morning before Mr. Traill had the glimmer of an idea to take with him on this unlucky business.  An hour before the opening of court he crossed the bridge into High Street, which was then as picturesquely Gothic and decaying and overpopulated as the Cowgate, but high-set, wind-swept and sun-searched, all the way up the sloping mile from Holyrood Palace to the Castle.  The ridge fell away steeply, through rifts of wynds and closes, to the Cowgate ravine on the one hand, and to Princes Street’s parked valley on the other.  Mr. Traill turned into the narrow descent of Warriston Close.  Little more than a crevice in the precipice of tall, old buildings, on it fronted a business house whose firm name was known wherever the English language was read:  “W. and R. Chambers, Publishers.”

From top to bottom the place was gas-lit, even on a sunny spring morning, and it hummed and clattered with printing-presses.  No one was in the little anteroom to the editorial offices beside a young clerk, but at sight of a red-headed, freckle-faced Heriot laddie of Bobby’s puppyhood days Mr. Traill’s spirits rose.

“A gude day to you, Sandy McGregor; and whaur’s your auld twin conspirator, Geordie Ross?”

“He’s a student in the Medical College, Mr. Traill.  He went by this meenit to the Botanical Garden for herbs my grandmither has aye known without books.”  Sandy grinned in appreciation of this foolishness, but he added, with Scotch shrewdness, “It’s gude for the book-prenting beesiness.”

“It is so,” the landlord agreed, heartily.  “But you must no’ be forgetting that the Chambers brothers war book readers and sellers before they war publishers.  You are weel set up in life, laddie, and Heriot’s has pulled the warst of the burrs from your tongue.  I’m wanting to see Glenormiston.”

“Mr. William Chambers is no’ in.  Mr. Robert is aye in, but he’s no’ liking to be fashed about sma’ things.”

“I’ll no’ trouble him.  It’s the Lord Provost I’m wanting, on ofeecial beesiness.”  He requested Sandy to ask Glenormiston, if he came in, to come over to the Burgh court and spier for Mr. Traill.