ve the gate unlatched.
Mr. Traill refused to believe what Bobby's behavior indicated, and
reproved him in the broad Scotch to which the country dog was used.

"Nae, Bobby; be a gude dog. Gang doon to the Coogate noo, an' find Auld
Jock."

Uttering no cry at all, Bobby gave the man such a woebegone look and
dropped to the pavement, with his long muzzle as far under the wicket
as he could thrust it, that the truth shot home to Mr. Traill's
understanding. He opened the gate. Bobby slipped through and stood just
inside a moment, and looking back as if he expected his human friend
to follow. Then, very suddenly, as the door of the lodge opened and the
caretaker came out, Bobby disappeared in the shadow of the church.

A big-boned, slow-moving man of the best country house-gardener type,
serviceably dressed in corduroy, wool bonnet, and ribbed stockings,
James Brown collided with the small and wiry landlord, to his own very
great embarrassment.

"Eh, Maister Traill, ye gied me a turn. It's no' canny to be proolin'
aboot the kirkyaird i' the gloamin'."

"Whaur did the bit dog go, man?" demanded the peremptory landlord.

"Dog? There's no' ony dog i' the kirkyaird. It isna permeetted. Gin it's
a pussy ye're needin', noo--"

But Mr. Traill brushed this irrelevant pleasantry aside.

"Ay, there's a dog. I let him in my ainsel'."

The caretaker exploded with wrath: "Syne I'll hae the law on ye. Can ye
no' read, man?"

"Tut, tut, Jeemes Brown. Don't stand there arguing. It's a gude and
necessary regulation, but it's no' the law o' the land. I turned the dog
in to settle a matter with my ain conscience, and John Knox would have
done the same thing in the bonny face o' Queen Mary. What it is, is nae
beesiness of yours. The dog was a sma' young terrier of the Highland
breed, but with a drop to his ears and a crinkle in his frosty coat--no'
just an ordinar' dog. I know him weel. He came to my place to be fed,
near dead of hunger, then led me here. If his master lies in this
kirkyard, I'll tak' the bit dog awa' with me."

Mr. Traill's astonishing fluency always carried all walls of resistance
before it with men of slower wit and speech. Only a superior man could
brush time-honored rules aside so curtly and stand on his human rights
so surely. James Brown pulled his bonnet off deferentially, scratched
his shock head and shifted his pipe. Finally he admitted:

"Weel, there was a bit tyke i' the kirkyaird twa days syne. I put '