And suddenly they were all inside,
overwrought Ailie on the floor, clasping the little dog and
crying hysterically.
"Bobby's no' deid! Bobby's no' deid! Oh, Maister Traill, ye
wullna hae to gie 'im up to the police! Tammy's got the seven
shullin's in 'is bonnet!"
And there was small Tammy, crutches dropped and pouring that
offering of love and mercy out at the foot of an altar in old St.
Giles. Such an astonishing pile of copper coins it was, that it
looked to the landlord like the loot of some shopkeeper's change
drawer.
"Eh, puir laddie, whaur did ye get it a' noo?" he asked, gravely.
Tammy was very self-possessed and proud. "The bairnies aroond the
kirkyaird gie'd it to pay the police no' to mak' Bobby be deid."
Mr. Traill flashed a glance at Glenormiston. It was a look at
once of triumph and of humility over the Herculean deed of these
disinherited children. But the Lord Provost was gazing at that
crowd of pale bairns, products of the Old Town's ancient slums,
and feeling, in his own person, the civic shame of it. And he was
thinking, thinking, that he must hasten that other project
nearest his heart, of knocking holes in solid rows of foul
cliffs, in the Cowgate, on High Street, and around Greyfriars. It
was an incredible thing that such a flower of affection should
have bloomed so sweetly in such sunless cells. And it was a new
gospel, at that time, that a dog or a horse or a bird might have
its mission in this world of making people kinder and happier.
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