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Page 66
From tea to tattoo was playtime for the garrison. Many smartly
dressed soldiers, with passes earned by good behavior, went out to
find amusement in the city. Visitors, some of them tourists from
America, made the rounds under the guidance of old soldiers. The
sergeant followed such a group of sight-seers through a postern
behind the armory and out onto the cliff. There he lounged under a
fir-tree above St. Margaret's Well and smoked a dandified cigar,
while Bobby explored the promenade and scraped acquaintance with
the strangers.
On the northern and southern sides the Castle wall rose from the
very edge of sheer precipices. Except for loopholes there were no
openings. But on the west there was a grassy terrace without the
wall, and below that the cliff fell away a little less steeply. The
declivity was clothed sparsely with hazel shrubs, thorns, whins and
thistles; and now and then a stunted fir or rowan tree or a group
of white-stemmed birks was stoutly rooted on a shelving ledge. Had
any one, the visitors asked, ever escaped down this wild crag?
Yes, Queen Margaret's children, the guide answered. Their father
dead, in battle, their saintly mother dead in the sanctuary of her
tiny chapel, the enemy battering at the gate, soldiers had lowered
the royal lady's body in a basket, and got the orphaned children
down, in safety and away, in a fog, over Queen's Ferry to
Dunfirmline in the Kingdom of Fife. It was true that a false step
or a slip of the foot would have dashed them to pieces on the rocks
below. A gentleman of the party scouted the legend. Only a fox or
an Alpine chamois could make that perilous descent.
With his head cocked alertly, Bobby had stood listening. Hearing
this vague talk of going down, he may have thought these people
meant to go, for he quietly dropped over the edge and went, head
over heels, ten feet down, and landed in a clump of hazel. A lady
screamed. Bobby righted himself and barked cheerful reassurance.
The sergeant sprang to his feet and ordered him to come back.
Now, the sergeant was pleasant company, to be sure; but he was not
a person who had to be obeyed, so Bobby barked again, wagged his
crested tail, and dropped lower. The people who shuddered on the
brink could see that the little dog was going cautiously enough;
and presently he looked doubtfully over a sheer fall of twenty
feet, turned and scrambled back to the promenade. He was cried and
exclaimed over by the hysterical ladies, and scolded for a bittie
fule by the sergeant. To this Bobby returned ostentatious yawns of
boredom and nonchalant lollings, for it seemed a small matter to be
so fashed about. At that a gentleman remarked, testily, to hide his
own agitation, that dogs really had very little sense. The sergeant
ordered Bobby to precede him through the postern, and the little
dog complied amiably.
All the afternoon bugles had been blowing. For each signal there
was a different note, and at each uniformed men appeared and
hurried to new points. Now, near sunset, there was the fanfare for
officers' orders for the next day. The sergeant put Bobby into
Queen Margaret's Chapel, bade him remain there, and went down to
the Palace Yard. The chapel on the summit was a convenient place
for picking the little dog up on his way to the officers' mess.
Then he meant to have his own supper cozily at Mr. Traill's and to
negotiate for Bobby.
A dozen people would have crowded this ancient oratory, but, small
as it was, it was fitted with a chancel rail and a font for
baptizing the babies born in the Castle. Through the window above
the altar, where the sainted Queen was pictured in stained glass,
the sunlight streamed and laid another jeweled image on the stone
floor. Then the colors faded, until the holy place became an
austere cell. The sun had dropped behind the western Highlands.
Bobby thought it quite time to go home. By day he often went far
afield, seeking distraction, but at sunset he yearned for the grave
in Greyfriars. The steps up which he had come lay in plain view
from the doorway of the chapel. Bobby dropped down the stairs, and
turned into the main roadway of the Castle. At the first arch that
spanned it a red-coated guard paced on the other side of a closed
gate. It would not be locked until tattoo, at nine thirty, but,
without a pass, no one could go in or out. Bobby sprang on the bars
and barked, as much as to say: "Come awa', man, I hae to get oot."
The guard stopped, presented arms to this small, peremptory
terrier, and inquired facetiously if he had a pass. Bobby bristled
and yelped indignantly. The soldier grinned with amusement.
Sentinel duty was lonesome business, and any diversion a relief. In
a guardhouse asleep when Bobby came into the Castle, he had not
seen the little dog before and knew nothing about him. He might be
the property of one of the regiment ladies. Without orders he dared
not let Bobby out. A furious and futile onslaught on the gate he
met with a jocose feint of his bayonet. Tiring of the play,
presently, the soldier turned his back and paced to the end of his
beat.
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