A number of the older laddies ran up the climbing street.  Mr. Traill called Bobby back and, with a last grip of Glenormiston’s hand, set off across the bridge.  To the landlord the world seemed a brave place to be living in, the fabric of earth and sky and human society to be woven of kindness.  Having urgent business of buying supplies in the markets at Broughton and Lauriston, Mr. Traill put Bobby inside the kirkyard gate and hurried away to get into his everyday clothing.  After dinner, or tea, he promised himself the pleasure of an hour at the lodge, to tell Mr. Brown the wonderful news, and to show him Bobby’s braw collar.

When, finally, he was left alone, Bobby trotted around the kirk, to assure himself that Auld Jock’s grave was unmolested.  There he turned on his back, squirmed and rocked on the crocuses, and tugged at the unaccustomed collar.  His inverted struggles, low growlings and furry contortions set the wrens to scolding and the redbreasts to making nervous inquiries.  Much nestbuilding, tuneful courtship, and masculine blustering was going on, and there was little police duty for Bobby.  After a time he sat up on the table-tomb, pensively.  With Mr. Brown confined, to the lodge, and Mistress Jeanie in close attendance upon him there, the kirkyard was a lonely place for a sociable little dog; and a soft, spring day given over to brooding beside a beloved grave, was quite too heart-breaking a thing to contemplate.  Just for cheerful occupation Bobby had another tussle with the collar.  He pulled it so far under his thatch that no one could have guessed that he had a collar on at all, when he suddenly righted himself and scampered away to the gate.

The music grew louder and came nearer.  The first of the route-marching that the Castle garrison practiced on occasional, bright spring mornings was always a delightful surprise to the small boys and dogs of Edinburgh.  Usually the soldiers went down High Street and out to Portobello on the sea.  But a regiment of tough and wiry Highlanders often took, by preference, the mounting road to the Pentlands to get a whiff of heather in their nostrils.

On they came, band playing, colors flying, feet moving in unison with a march, across the viaduct bridge into Greyfriars Place.  Bobby was up on the wicket, his small, energetic body quivering with excitement from his muzzle to his tail.  If Mr. Traill had been there he would surely have caught the infection, thrown care to this sweet April breeze for once, and taken the wee terrier for a run on the Pentland braes.  The temptation was going by when a preoccupied lady, with a sheaf of Easter lilies on her sable arm, opened the wicket.  Her ample Victorian skirts swept right over the little dog, and when he emerged there was the gate slightly ajar.  Widening the aperture with nose and paws, Bobby was off, skirmishing at large on the rear and flanks of the troops, down the Burghmuir.