The music grew louder and came nearer. The first of the route-marching that the Castle garrison practiced on occasional, bright spring mornings was always a delightful surprise to the small boys and dogs of Edinburgh. Usually the soldiers went down High Street and out to Portobello on the sea. But a regiment of tough and wiry Highlanders often took, by preference, the mounting road to the Pentlands to get a whiff of heather in their nostrils. On they came, band playing, colors flying, feet moving in unison with a march, across the viaduct bridge into Greyfriars Place. Bobby was up on the wicket, his small, energetic body quivering with excitement from his muzzle to his tail. If Mr. Traill had been there he would surely have caught the infection, thrown care to this sweet April breeze for once, and taken the wee terrier for a run on the Pentland braes. The temptation was going by when a preoccupied lady, with a sheaf of Easter lilies on her sable arm, opened the wicket. Her ample Victorian skirts swept right over the little dog, and when he emerged there was the gate slightly ajar. Widening the aperture with nose and paws, Bobby was off, skirmishing at large on the rear and flanks of the troops, down the Burghmuir. It may never have happened, in the years since Auld Jock died and the farmer of Cauldbrae gave up trying to keep him on the hills, that Bobby, had gone so far back on this once familiar road; and he may not have recognized it at first, for the highways around Edinburgh were everywhere much alike. This one alone began to climb again. Up, up it toiled, for two weary miles, to the hilltop toll-bar of Fairmilehead, and there the sounds and smells that made it different from other roads began. Five miles out of the city the halt was called, and the soldiers flung themselves on the slope. Many experiences of route-marching had taught Bobby that there was an interval of rest before the return, so, with his nose to the ground, he started up the brae on a pilgrimage to old shrines, just as in his puppyhood days, at Auld Jock's heels, there was much shouting of men, barking of collies, and bleating of sheep all the way up. Once he had to leave the road until a driven flock had passed. Behind the sheep walked an old laborer in hodden-gray, woolen bonnet, and shepherd's two-fold plaid, with a lamb in the pouch of it. Bobby trembled at the apparition, sniffed at the hob-nailed boots, and then, with drooped head and tail, trotted on up the slope.