The Crimean War was then a recent event. Heroes of Sebastopol
answered the summons of drum and bugle in the Castle and fired
the hearts of Edinburgh youth. Cannon all around them, and
"theirs not to reason why," this little band stormed out
Queensferry Street and went down, hand under hand, into the fairy
underworld of Leith Water.

All its short way down from the Pentlands to the sea, the Water
of Leith was then a foaming little river of mills, twisting at
the bottom of a gorge. One cliff-like wall or the other lay to
the sun all day, so that the way was lined with a profusion of
every wild thing that turns green and blooms in the Lowlands of
Scotland. And it was filled to the brim with bird song and water
babble.

A crowd of laddies had only to go inland up this gorge to find
wild and tame bloom enough to bury "Jinglin' Geordie" all over
again every year. But adventure was to be had in greater variety
by dropping seaward with the bickering brown water. These waded
along the shallow margin, walked on shelving sands of gold, and,
where the channel was filled, they clung to the rocks and picked
their way along dripping ledges. Bobby missed no chance to swim.
If he could scramble over rough ground like a squirrel or a fox,
he could swim like an otter. Swept over the low dam at Dean
village, where a cup-like valley was formed, he tumbled over and
over in the spray and was all but drowned. As soon as he got his
breath and his bearings he struck out frantically for the bank,
shook the foam from his eyes and ears, and barked indignantly at
the saucy fall. The white miller in the doorway of the