anything discreditable. There were legends of daring youth having
climbed this war-like cliff and laying hands on the fortress wall, but
Geordie expressed a popular feeling in declaring these tales "a' lees."

"No' ony laddie could gang a' the way up an' come doon wi' 'is heid
no' broken. Bobby couldna do it, an' he's mair like a wild fox than an
ordinar' dog. Noo, we're the Light Brigade at Balaklava. Chairge!"

The Crimean War was then a recent event. Heroes of Sebastopol answered
the summons of drum and bugle in the Castle and fired the hearts of
Edinburgh youth. Cannon all around them, and "theirs not to reason why,"
this little band stormed out Queensferry Street and went down, hand
under hand, into the fairy underworld of Leith Water.

All its short way down from the Pentlands to the sea, the Water of Leith
was then a foaming little river of mills, twisting at the bottom of a
gorge. One cliff-like wall or the other lay to the sun all day, so that
the way was lined with a profusion of every wild thing that turns green
and blooms in the Lowlands of Scotland. And it was filled to the brim
with bird song and water babble.

A crowd of laddies had only to go inland up this gorge to find wild and
tame bloom enough to bury "Jinglin' Geordie" all over again every year.
But adventure was to be had in greater variety by dropping seaward with
the bickering brown water. These waded along the shallow margin, walked
on shelving sands of gold, and, where the channel was filled, they clung
to the rocks and picked their way along dripping ledges. Bobby missed no
chance to swim. If he could scramble over rough ground like a squirrel
or a fox, he could swim like an otter. Swept over the low dam at Dean
village, where a cup-like valley was formed, he tumbled over and over in
the spray and was all but drowned. As soon as he got his breath and his
bearings he struck out frantically for the bank, shook the foam from
his eyes and ears, and barked indignantly at the saucy fall. The white
miller in the doorway of the gray-stone, red-roofed mill laughed, and
anxious children ran down from a knot of storybook cottages and gay
dooryards. "I'll gie ye ten shullin's for the sperity bit dog," the
miller shouted, above the clatter of the' wheel and the swish of the
dam.

"He isna oor ain dog," Geordie called back. "But he wullna droon. He's
got a gude heid to 'im, an' wullna be sic a bittie fule anither time."

Indeed he had a good head on h