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Page 69
For the first time since Queen Mary the gate of the historic garden
of the Greyfriars was left on the latch. And it was so that a
little dog, coming home in the night might not be shut out.
XI.
It was more than two hours after he left Bobby in Queen Margaret's
Chapel that the sergeant turned into the officers' mess-room and
tried to get an orderly to take a message to the captain who had
noticed the little dog in the barracks. He wished to report that
Bobby could not be found, and to be excused to continue the search.
He had to wait by the door while the toast to her Majesty was
proposed and the band in the screened gallery broke into "God Save
the Queen"; and when the music stopped the bandmaster came in for
the usual compliments.
The evening was so warm and still, although it was only mid-April,
that a glass-paneled door, opening on the terrace, was set ajar for
air. In the confusion of movement and talk no one noticed a little
black mop of a muzzle that was poked through the aperture. From the
outer darkness Bobby looked in on the score or more of men
doubtfully, ready for instant disappearance on the slightest alarm.
Desperate was the emergency, forlorn the hope that had brought him
there. At every turn his efforts to escape from the Castle had been
baffled. He had been imprisoned by drummer boys and young recruits
in the gymnasium, detained in the hospital, captured in the
canteen.
Bobby went through all his pretty tricks for the lads, and then
begged to be let go. Laughed at, romped with, dragged back, thrown
into the swimming-pool, expected to play and perform for them, he
rebelled at last. He scarred the door with his claws, and he howled
so dismally that, hearing an orderly corporal coming, they turned
him out in a rough haste that terrified him. In the old Banqueting
Hall on the Palace Yard, that was used as a hospital and
dispensary, he went through that travesty of joy again, in hope of
the reward.
Sharply rebuked and put out of the hospital, at last, because of
his destructive clawing and mournful howling, Bobby dashed across
the Palace Yard and into a crowd of good-humored soldiers who
lounged in the canteen. Rising on his hind legs to beg for
attention and indulgence, he was taken unaware from behind by an
admiring soldier who wanted to romp with him. Quite desperate by
that time, he snapped at the hand of his captor and sprang away
into the first dark opening. Frightened by the man's cry of pain,
and by the calls and scuffling search for him without, he slunk to
the farthest corner of a dungeon of the Middle Ages, under the
Royal Lodging.
When the hunt for him ceased, Bobby slipped out of hiding and made
his way around the sickle-shaped ledge of rock, and under the guns
of the half-moon battery, to the outer gate. Only a cat, a fox, or
a low, weasel-like dog could have done it. There were many details
that would have enabled the observant little creature to recognize
this barrier as the place where he had come in. Certainly he
attacked it with fury, and on the guards he lavished every art of
appeal that he possessed. But there he was bantered, and a feint
was made of shutting him up in the guard-house as a disorderly
person. With a heart-broken cry he escaped his tormentors, and made
his way back, under the guns, to the citadel.
His confidence in the good intentions of men shaken, Bobby took to
furtive ways. Avoiding lighted buildings and voices, he sped from
shadow to shadow and explored the walls of solid masonry. Again and
again he returned to the postern behind the armory, but the small
back gate that gave to the cliff was not opened. Once he scrambled
up to a loophole in the fortifications and looked abroad at the
scattered lights of the city set in the void of night. But there,
indeed, his stout heart failed him.
It was not long before Bobby discovered that he was being pursued.
A number of soldiers and drummer boys were out hunting for him,
contritely enough, when the situation was explained by the angry
sergeant. Wherever he went voices and footsteps followed. Had the
sergeant gone alone and called in familiar speech, "Come awa' oot,
Bobby!" he would probably have run to the man. But there were so
many calls--in English, in Celtic, and in various dialects of the
Lowlands--that the little dog dared not trust them. From place to
place he was driven by fear, and when the calling stopped and the
footsteps no longer followed, he lay for a time where he could
watch the postern. A moment after he gave up the vigil there the
little back gate was opened.
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