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.
Desperation led him to take another chance with men.Slipping into the shadow of the old Governor's House, the headquarters of commissioned officers, on the terrace above the barracks, he lay near the open door to the mess-room, listening and watching.
The pretty ceremony of toasting the bandmaster brought all the company about the table again, and the polite pause in the conversation, on his exit, gave an opportunity for the captain to speak of Bobby before the sergeant could get his message delivered.
"Gentlemen, your indulgence for a moment, to drink another toast to a little dog that is said to have slept on his master's grave in Greyfriars churchyard for more than eight years.Sergeant Scott, of the Royal Engineers, vouches for the story and will present the hero."The sergeant came forward then with the word that Bobby could not be found.He was somewhere in the Castle, and had made persistent and frantic efforts to get out.Prevented at every turn, and forcibly held in various places by well-meaning but blundering soldiers, he had been frightened into hiding.
Bobby heard every word, and he must have understood that he himself was under discussion.Alternately hopeful and apprehensive, he scanned each face in the room that came within range of his vision, until one arrested and drew him.
Such faces, full of understanding, love and compassion for dumb animals, are to be found among men, women and children, in any company and in every corner of the world.Now, with the dog's instinct for the dog-lover, Bobby made his way about the room unnoticed, and set his short, shagged paws up on this man's knee.
