Bob and I are up, and find it is not over; a small thoroughbred,
white bull-terrier is busy throttling a large shepherd's dog,
unaccustomed to war but not to be trifled with. They are hard at
it; the scientific little fellow doing his work in great style, his
pastoral enemy fighting wildly, but with the sharpest of teeth and a
great courage. Science and breeding, however, soon had their own; the
Game Chicken, as the premature Bob called him, working his way up,
took his final grip of poor Yarrow's throat--and he lay gasping and
done for. His master, a brown, handsome, big, young shepherd from
Tweedsmuir, would have liked to have knocked down any man, would
"drink up Esil, or eat a crocodile," for that part, if he had a
chance; it was no use kicking the little dog; that would only make him
hold the closer. Many were the means shouted out in mouthfuls of the
best possible ways of ending it. "Water!" but there was none near, and
many cried for it who might have got it from the well at Blackfriar's
Wynd. "Bite the tail!" and a large, vague, benevolent, middle-aged
man, more desirous than wise, with some struggle got the bushy end of
Yarrow's tail into his ample mouth and bit it with all his might. This
was more than enough for the much-enduring, much-perspiring shepherd,
who, with a gleam of joy over his broad visage, delivered a terrific
facer upon our large, vague, benevolent, middle-aged friend, who went
down like a shot.

Still the Chicken holds; death not far off. "Snuff! a pinch of snuff!"
observed a calm, highly dressed young buck with an eye-glass in his
eye. "Snuff, indeed!" growled the angry crowd, affronted and glaring.
"Snuff! a pinch of snuff!" again observes the buck, but with more
urgency; whereon were produced several open boxes, and from a mull
which may have been at Culloden he took a pinch, knelt down, and
presented it to the nose of the Chicken, The laws of physiology and of
snuff take their course; the Chicken sneezes, and Yarrow is free!

The young pastoral giant stalks off with Yarrow in his
arms--comforting him.

But the bull-terrier's blood is up, and his soul unsatisfied; he grips
the first dog he meets, and, discovering she is not a dog, in Homeric
phrase, he makes a brief sort of _amende_ and is off. The boys, with
Bob and me at their head, are after him: down Niddry Street he goes,
bent on mischief; up the Cowgate like an arrow--Bob and I, and our
small men; panting behind.

There, under th