the low, timbered
gallery, then through a passage as black as "Bluidy" McKenzie's heart.
At the end of that, one came to a peep-hole of a window, set out on
wooden brackets, that hung right over the kirkyard wall. From that
window Bobby could be dropped on a certain noble vault, from which he
could jump to the ground.

"Twa meenits' wark, stout hearts, sleekit footstaps, an' the fearsome
deed is done," declared twelve-year-old Geordie, whose sense of the
dramatic matched his daring.

But when the deed was done, and the two stood innocently on the brightly
lighted approach to the bridge, Mr. Traill had his misgivings. A
well-respected business man and church-member, he felt uneasy to be at
the mercy of a laddie who might be boastful.

"Geordie, if you tell onybody about this I'll have to give you a
licking."

"I wullna tell," Geordie reassured him. "It's no' so respectable, an'
syne ma mither'd gie me anither lickin', an' they'd gie me twa more
awfu' aces, an' black marks for a month, at Heriot's."

V.

Word had been left at all the inns and carting offices about both
markets for the tenant of Cauldbrae farm to call at Mr. Traill's
place for Bobby. The man appeared Wednesday afternoon, driving a big
Clydesdale horse to a stout farm cart. The low-ceiled dining-room
suddenly shrank about the big-boned, long legged hill man. The fact
embarrassed him, as did also a voice cultivated out of all proportion to
town houses, by shouting to dogs and shepherds on windy shoulders of the
Pentlands.

"Hae ye got the dog wi' ye?"

Mr. Train pointed to Bobby, deep in a blissful, after dinner nap under
the settle.

The farmer breathed a sigh of relief, sat at a table, and ate a
frugal meal of bread and cheese. As roughly dressed as Auld Jock, in
a metal-buttoned greatcoat of hodden gray, a woolen bonnet, and the
shepherd's twofold plaid, he was a different species of human being
altogether. A long, lean, sinewy man of early middle age, he had a
smooth-shaven, bony jaw, far-seeing gray eyes under furzy brows, and a
shock of auburn hair. When he spoke, it was to give bits out of his own
experience.

"Thae terriers are usefu' eneugh on an ordinar' fairm an' i' the toon to
keep awa' the vermin, but I wadna gie a twa-penny-bit for ane o' them on
a sheep-fairm. There's a wee lassie at Cauldbrae wha wants Bobby for a
pet. It wasna richt for Auld Jock to win 'im awa' frae the bairn."

Mr. Traill's hand was lifted in rebuke.