and
scouted the idea of the sergeant's going down into the city. As the drum
began to beat the tattoo and the bugle to rise on a crescendo of lovely
notes, soldiers swarmed toward the barracks. Those who had been out in
the town came running up the roadway into the Castle, talking loudly of
adventures they had had in the fog. The sergeant looked down at anxious
Bobby, who stood agitated and straining as at a leash, and said that he
preferred to go.

"Impossible! A foolish risk, Sergeant, that I am unwilling you should
take. Edinburgh is too full of pitfalls for a man to be going about on
such a night. Our guests will sleep in the Castle, and it will be safer
for the little dog to remain until morning."

Bobby did not quite understand this good English, but the excited talk
and the delay made him uneasy. He whimpered piteously. He lay across
the sergeant's feet, and through his boots the man could feel the little
creature's heart beat. Then he rose and uttered his pleading cry. The
sergeant stooped and patted the shaggy head consolingly, and tried to
explain matters.

"Be a gude doggie noo. Dinna fash yersel' aboot what canna be helped. I
canna tak' ye to the kirkyaird the nicht."

"I'll take charge of Bobby, Sergeant." The dog-loving guest ran out
hastily, but, with a wild cry of reproach and despair, Bobby was gone.

The group of soldiers who had been out on the cliff were standing in the
postern a moment to look down at the opaque flood that was rising around
the rock. They felt some flying thing sweep over their feet and caught a
silvery flash of it across the promenade. The sergeant cried to them to
stop the dog, and he and the guest were out in time to see Bobby go over
the precipice.

For a time the little dog lay in a clump of hazel above the fog, between
two terrors. He could see the men and the lights moving along the top
of the cliff, and he could hear the calls. Some one caught a glimpse of
him, and the sergeant lay down on the edge of the precipice and talked
to him, saying every kind and foolish thing he could think of to
persuade Bobby to come back. Then a drummer boy was tied to a rope and
let down to the ledge to fetch him up. But at that, without any sound at
all, Bobby dropped out of sight.

Through the smother came the loud moaning of fog-horns in the Firth.
Although nothing could be seen, and sounds were muffled as if the ears
of the world were stuffed with wool, odors were held captive and m