ise ye to hae
muckle to say to 'im." Mistress Jeanie wore the arch look of the wifie
who is somewhat amused by a convalescent husband's ill humors. "The
pains grupped 'im sair, an' noo that he's easier he'd see us a' hanged
wi' pleesure. Is it onything by the ordinar'?"

"Nae. It's just a sma' matter I can attend to my ainsel'. Do you think
he could be out the morn?"

"No' afore a week or twa, an' syne, gin the bonny sun comes oot to bide
a wee."

Mr. Traill left the kirkyard and went out to George Square to call upon
the minister of Greyfriars auld kirk. The errand was unfruitful, and he
was back in ten minutes, to spend the evening alone, without even the
consolation of Bobby's company, for the little dog was unhappy outside
the kirkyard after sunset. And he took an unsettling thought to bed with
him.

Here was a pretty kettle of fish, indeed, for a respected member of a
kirk and middle-aged business man to fry in. Through the legal verbiage
Mr. Traill made out that he was summoned to appear before whatever
magistrate happened to be sitting on the morrow in the Burgh court, to
answer to the charge of owning, or harboring, one dog, upon which he had
not paid the license tax of seven shillings.

For all its absurdity it was no laughing matter. The municipal court of
Edinburgh was of far greater dignity than the ordinary justice court
of the United Kingdom and of America. The civic bench was occupied, in
turn, by no less a personage than the Lord Provost as chief, and by
five other magistrates elected by the Burgh council from among its own
membership. Men of standing in business, legal and University circles,
considered it an honor and a duty to bring their knowledge and
responsibility to bear on the pettiest police cases.

It was morning before Mr. Traill had the glimmer of an idea to take with
him on this unlucky business. An hour before the opening of court he
crossed the bridge into High Street, which was then as picturesquely
Gothic and decaying and overpopulated as the Cowgate, but high-set,
wind-swept and sun-searched, all the way up the sloping mile from
Holyrood Palace to the Castle. The ridge fell away steeply, through
rifts of wynds and closes, to the Cowgate ravine on the one hand, and to
Princes Street's parked valley on the other. Mr. Traill turned into the
narrow descent of Warriston Close. Little more than a crevice in the
precipice of tall, old buildings, on it fronted a business house whose
fir