“A gude day to you, Sandy McGregor; and whaur's your auld twin conspirator, Geordie Ross?”
“He's a student in the Medical College, Mr. Traill. He went by this meenit to the Botanical Garden for herbs my grandmither has aye known without books.” Sandy grinned in appreciation of this foolishness, but he added, with Scotch shrewdness, “It's gude for the book-prenting beesiness.”
“It is so,” the landlord agreed, heartily. “But you must no' be forgetting that the Chambers brothers war book readers and sellers before they war publishers. You are weel set up in life, laddie, and Heriot's has pulled the warst of the burrs from your tongue. I'm wanting to see Glenormiston.”
“Mr. William Chambers is no' in. Mr. Robert is aye in, but he's no' liking to be fashed about sma' things.”
“I'll no' trouble him. It's the Lord Provost I'm wanting, on ofeecial beesiness.” He requested Sandy to ask Glenormiston, if he came in, to come over to the Burgh court and spier for Mr. Traill.
“It's no' his day to sit as magistrate, and he's no' like to go unless it's a fair sairious matter.”
“Ay, it is, laddie. It's a matter of life and death, I'm thinking!” He smiled grimly, as it entered his head that he might be driven to do violence to that meddling policeman. The yellow gas-light gave his face such a sardonic aspect that Sandy turned pale.
“Wha's death, man?”
Mr. Traill kept his own counsel, but at the door he turned: “You'll no' be remembering the bittie terrier that lived in the kirkyard?”
The light of boyhood days broke in Sandy's grin. “Ay, I'll no' be forgetting the sonsie tyke. He was a deil of a dog to tak' on a holiday. Is he still faithfu' to his dead master?”