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Page 15
The last two flights ascended within the walls. The old man
stumbled into the pitch-black, stifling passage and sat down on
the lowest step to rest. On the landing above he must encounter
the auld wifie of a landlady, rousing her, it might be, and none
too good-tempered, from sleep. Unaware that he added to his
master's difficulties, Bobby leaped upon him and licked the
beloved face that he could not see.
"Eh, laddie, I dinna ken what to do wi' ye. We maun juist hae to
sleep oot." It did not occur to Auld Jock that he could abandon
the little dog. And then there drifted across his memory a bit of
Mr. Traill's talk that, at the time, had seemed to no purpose:
"Sir Walter happed the wee lassie in the pocket of his plaid--"
He slapped his knee in silent triumph. In the dark he found the
broad, open end of the plaid, and the rough, excited head of the
little dog.
"A hap, an' a stap, an' a loup, an' in ye gang. Loup in, laddie."
Bobby jumped into the pocket and turned 'round and 'round. His
little muzzle opened for a delighted bark at this original play,
but Auld Jock checked him.
"Cuddle doon noo, an' lie canny as pussy." With a deft turn he
brought the weighted end of the plaid up under his arm so there
would be no betraying drag. "We'll pu' the wool ower the auld
wifie's een," he chuckled.
He mounted the stairs almost blithely, and knocked on one of the
three narrow doors that opened on the two-by-eight landing. It
was opened a few inches, on a chain, and a sordid old face,
framed in straggling gray locks and a dirty mutch cap, peered
suspiciously at him through the crevice.
Auld Jock had his money in hand--a shilling and a sixpence--to
pay for a week's lodging. He had slept in this place for several
winters, and the old woman knew him well, but she held his coins
to the candle and bit them with her teeth to test them. Without a
word of greeting she shoved the key to the sleeping-closet he had
always fancied, through the crack in the door, and pointed to a
jug of water at the foot of the attic stairs. On the proffer of a
halfpenny she gave him a tallow candle, lighted it at her own and
fitted it into the neck of a beer bottle.
"Ye hae a cauld." she said at last, with some hostility. "Gin ye
wauken yer neebors yell juist hae to fecht it oot wi' 'em."
"Ay, I ken a' that," Auld Jock answered. He smothered a cough in
his chest with such effort that it threw him into a perspiration.
In some way, with the jug of water and the lighted candle in his
hands and the hidden terrier under one arm, the old man mounted
the eighteen-inch wide, walled-in attic stairs and unlocked the
first of a number of narrow doors on the passage at the top.
"Weel aboon the fou' smell," indeed; "weel worth the lang climb!"
Around the loose frames of two wee southward-looking dormer
windows, that jutted from the slope of the gable, came a gush of
rain-washed air. Auld Jock tumbled Bobby, warm and happy and
"nane the wiser," out into the cold cell of a room that was oh,
so very, very different from the high, warm, richly colored
library of Sir Walter! This garret closet in the slums of
Edinburgh was all of cut stone, except for the worn, oaken floor,
a flimsy, modern door, and a thin, board partition on one side
through which a "neebor" could be heard snoring. Filling all of
the outer wall between the peephole, leaded windows and running-
up to the slope of the ceiling, was a great fireplace of native
white freestone, carved into fluted columns, foliated capitals,
and a flat pediment of purest classic lines. The ballroom of a
noble of Queen Mary's day had been cut up into numerous small
sleeping closets, many of them windowless, and were let to the
chance lodger at threepence the night. Here, where generations of
dancing toes had been warmed, the chimney vent was bricked up,
and a boxed-in shelf fitted, to serve for a bed, a seat and a
table, for such as had neither time nor heart for dancing. For
the romantic history and the beauty of it, Auld Jock had no mind
at all. But, ah! he had other joy often missed by the more
fortunate.
"Be canny, Bobby," he cautioned again.
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