The policeman turned purple.  A ripple of merriment ran through the room.  The magistrate put his hand up to his mouth, and the clerk began to drop pens.  Before silence was restored a messenger laddie ran up with a note for the bench.  The magistrate read it with a look of relief, and nodded to the man who had been listening from the doorway, but who disappeared at once.

“The case is ordered continued.  The defendant will be given time to secure witnesses, and notified when to appear.  The next case is called.”

Somewhat dazed by this sudden turn, and annoyed by the delayed settlement of the affair, Mr. Traill hastened from the court-room.  As he gained the street he was overtaken by the messenger with a second note.  And there was a still more surprising turn that sent the landlord off up swarming High Street, across the bridge, and on to his snug little place of business, with the face and the heart of a school-boy.  When Bobby, draggled by three days of wet weather, came in for his dinner, Mr. Traill scanned him critically and in some perplexity.  At the end of the day’s work, as Ailie was dropping her quaint curtsy and giving her adored employer a shy “gude nicht,” he had a sudden thought that made him call her back.

“Did you ever give a bit dog a washing, lassie?”

“Ye mean Bobby, Maister Traill?  Nae, I didna.”  Her eyes sparkled.  “But Tammy’s hauded ‘im for Maister Brown, an’ he says it’s sonsie to gie the bonny wee a washin’.”

“Weel, Mr. Brown is fair ill, and there has been foul weather.  Bobby’s getting to look like a poor ‘gaen aboot’ dog.  Have him at the kirkyard gate at a quarter to eight o’clock the morn looking like a leddy’s pet and I’ll dance a Highland fling at your wedding.”

“Are ye gangin’ to tak’ Bobby on a picnic, Maister Traill?”

He answered with a mock solemnity and a twinkle in his eyes that mystified the little maid.  “Nae, lassie; I’m going to tak’ him to a meeting in a braw kirk.”

IX

When Ailie wanted to get up unusually early in the morning she made use of Tammy for an alarm-clock.  A crippled laddie who must “mak’ ‘is leevin’ wi’ ’is heid” can waste no moment of daylight, and in the ancient buildings around Greyfriars the maximum of daylight was to be had only by those able and willing to climb to the gables.  Tammy, having to live on the lowest, darkest floor of all, used the kirkyard for a study, by special indulgence of the caretaker, whenever the weather permitted.

From a window he dropped his books and his crutches over the wall.  Then, by clasping his arms around a broken shaft that blocked the casement, he swung himself out, and scrambled down into an enclosed vault yard.  There he kept hidden Mistress Jeanie’s milking stool for a seat; and a table-tomb served as well, for the laddie to do his sums upon, as it had for the tearful signing of the Covenant more than two hundred years before.  Bobby, as host, greeted Tammy with cordial friskings and waggings, saw him settled to his tasks, and then went briskly about his own interrupted business of searching out marauders.  Many a spring dawn the quiet little boy and the swift and silent little dog had the shadowy garden all to themselves, and it was for them the song-thrushes and skylarks gave their choicest concerts.