At some of the doors there was no answer.  At others students stared out at the bairn, not in the least comprehending this wild crying.  Tears of anger and despair flooded the little maid’s blue eyes when she beat on the last door of the row with her doubled fist.

“Do ye ken Greyfriars Bobby?  The police are gangin’ to mak’ ’im be deid—­” As the door was flung open she broke into stormy weeping.

“Hey, lassie.  I know the dog.  What fashes you?”

There stood a tall student, a wet towel about his head, and, behind him, the rafters of the dormer-lighted closet were as thickly hung with bunches of dried herbs from the Botanical Garden as any auld witch wife’s kitchen.

“Oh, are ye kennin’ ‘im?  Isna he bonny an’ sonsie?  Gie me the shullin’ an’ twapenny ha’ penny we’re needin’, so the police wullna put ’im awa’.”

“Losh!  It’s a license you’re wanting?  I wish I had as many shullings as I’ve had gude times with Bobby, and naething to pay for his braw company.”

For this was Geordie Ross, going through the Medical College with the help of Heriot’s fund that, large as it was, was never quite enough for all the poor and ambitious youths of Edinburgh.  And so, although provided for in all necessary ways, his pockets were nearly as empty as of old.  He could spare a sixpence if he made his dinner on a potato and a smoked herring.  That he was very willing to do, once he had heard the tale, and he went with Ailie to the lodgings of other students, and demanded their siller with no explanation at all.

“Give the lassie what you can spare, man, or I’ll have to give you a licking,” was his gay and convincing argument, from door to door, until the needed amount was made up.  Ailie fled recklessly down the stairs, and cried triumphantly to the upward-looking, silent crowd that had grown and grown around Tammy, like some host of children crusaders.

While Ailie and Tammy were collecting the price of his ransom Bobby was exploring the intricately cut-up interior of old St. Giles, sniffing at the rifts in flimsily plastered partitions that the Lord Provost pointed out to Mr. Traill.  Rats were in those crumbling walls.  If there had been a hole big enough to admit him, the plucky little dog would have gone in after them.  Forbidden to enlarge one, Bobby could only poke his indignant muzzle into apertures, and brace himself as for a fray.  And, at the very smell of him, there were such squeakings and scamperings in hidden runways as to be almost beyond a terrier’s endurance.  The Lord Provost watched him with an approving eye.

“When these partitions are tak’n down Bobby would be vera useful in ridding our noble old cathedral of vermin.  But that will not be in this wee Highlander’s day nor, I fear, in mine.”  About the speech of this Peebles man, who had risen from poverty to distinction, learning, wealth, and many varieties of usefulness, there was still an engaging burr.  And his manner was so simple that he put the humblest at his ease.