In no part of Edinburgh did summer come up earlier, or with more lavish
bloom, than in old Greyfriars kirkyard. Sheltered on the north and east,
it was open to the moist breezes of the southwest, and during all the
lengthening afternoons the sun lay down its slope and warmed the
rear windows of the overlooking tenements. Before the end of May the
caretaker had much ado to keep the growth in order. Vines threatened
to engulf the circling street of sepulchers in greenery and bloom, and
grass to encroach on the flower plots.
A half century ago there were no rotary lawnmowers to cut off clover
heads; and, if there had been, one could not have been used on these
dropping terraces, so populous with slabs and so closely set with turfed
mounds and oblongs of early flowering annuals and bedding plants. Mr.
Brown had to get down on his hands and knees, with gardener's shears,
to clip the turfed borders and banks, and take a sickle to the hummocks.
Thus he could dig out a root of dandelion with the trowel kept ever in
his belt, consider the spreading crocuses and valley lilies, whether
to spare them, give a country violet its blossoming time, and leave a
screening burdock undisturbed until fledglings were out of their nests
in the shrubbery.
Mistress Jeanie often brought out a little old milking stool on balmy
mornings, and sat with knitting or mending in one of the narrow aisles,
to advise her gude-mon in small matters. Bobby trotted quietly about,
sniffing at everything with the liveliest interest, head on this side or
that, alertly. His business, learned in his first summer in Greyfriars,
was to guard the nests of foolish skylarks, song-thrushes, redbreasts
and wrens, that built low in lilac, laburnum, and flowering currant
bushes, in crannies of wall and vault, and on the ground. It cannot
but be a pleasant thing to be a wee young dog, full of life and good
intentions, and to play one's dramatic part in making an old garden of
souls tuneful with bird song. A cry of alarm from parent or nestling
was answered instantly by the tiny, tousled policeman, and there was a
prowler the less, or a skulking cat was sent flying over tomb and wall.
His duty done, without noise or waste of energy, Bobby returned to lie
in the sun on Auld Jock's grave. Over this beloved mound a coverlet of
rustic turf had been spread as soon as the frost was out of the ground,
and a bonny briar bush planted at the head. Then it bore nature's own
tribute of flowers, for violets, buttercups, daisies and clover blossoms
opened there and, later, a spike or so of wild foxglove and a knot of
heather. Robin redbreasts and wrens foraged around Bobby, unafraid;
swallows swooped down from their mud villages, under the dizzy dormers
and gables, to flush the flies on his muzzle, and whole flocks of little
blue titmice fluttered just overhead, in their rovings from holly and
laurel to newly tasseled firs and yew trees.
The click of the wicket gate was another sort of alarm altogether. At
that the little dog slipped under the fallen table-tomb and lay hidden
there until any strange visitor had taken himself away. Except for two
more forced returns and ingenious escapes from the sheepfarm on the
Pentlands, Bobby had lived in the kirkyard undisturbed for six months.
The caretaker had neither the heart to put him out nor the courage to
face the minister and the kirk officers with a plea for him to remain.
The little dog's presence there was known, apparently, only to Mr.
Traill, to a few of the tenement dwellers, and to the Heriot boys. If
his life was clandestine in a way, it was as regular of hour and duty
and as well ordered as that of the garrison in the Castle.
When the time-gun boomed, Bobby was let out for his midday meal at Mr.
Traill's and for a noisy run about the neighborhood to exercise his
lungs and legs. On Wednesdays he haunted the Grassmarket, sniffing at
horses, carts and mired boots. Edinburgh had so many shaggy little
Skye and Scotch terriers that one more could go about unremarked. Bobby
returned to the kirkyard at his own good pleasure. In the evening he was
given a supper of porridge and broo, or milk, at the kitchen door of the
lodge, and the nights he spent on Auld Jock's grave. The morning drum
and bugle woke him to the chase, and all his other hours were spent in
close attendance on the labors of the caretaker. The click of the wicket
gate was the signal for instant disappearance.
A scramble up the wall from Heriot's Hospital grounds, or the patter
of bare feet on the gravel, however, was notice to come out and greet
a friend. Bobby was host to the disinherited children of the tenements.
Now, at the tap-tap-tapping of Tammy Barr's crutches, he scampered up
the slope, and he suited his pace to the crippled boy's in coming down
again. Tammy chose a heap of cut grass on which to sit enthroned and
play king, a grand new crutch for a scepter, and Bobby for a courtier.
At command, the little dog rolled over and over, begged, and walked on
his hind legs. He even permitted a pair of thin little arms to come near
strangling him, in an excess of affection. Then he wagged his tail and
lolled his tongue to show that he was friendly, and trotted away about
his business. Tammy took an oat-cake from his pocket to nibble, and
began a conversation with Mistress Jeanie.
“I broucht a picnic wi' me.”
“Did ye, noo? An' hoo did ye ken aboot picnics, laddie?”
“Maister Traill was tellin' Ailie an' me. There's ilka thing to mak'
a picnic i' the kirkyaird. They couldna mak' my legs gude i' the
infairmary, but I'm gangin' to Heriot's. I'll juist hae to airn ma
leevin' wi' ma heid, an' no' remember aboot ma legs, ava. Is he no' a
bonny doggie?”
“Ay, he's bonny. An' ye're a braw laddie no' to fash yersel' aboot what
canna be helped.”
The wifie took his ragged jacket and mended it, dropped a tear in an
impossible hole, and a ha'penny in the one good pocket. And by and by
the pale laddie slept there among the bright graves, in the sun. After
another false alarm from the gate she asked her gude-mon, as she had
asked many times before:
“What'll ye do, Jamie, when the meenister kens aboot Bobby, an' ca's ye
up afore kirk sessions for brakin' the rule?”
“We wullna cross the brig till we come to the burn, woman,” he
invariably answered, with assumed unconcern. Well he knew that the
bridge might be down and the stream in flood when he came to it. But
Mr. Traill was a member of Greyfriars auld kirk, too, and a companion in
guilt, and Mr. Brown relied not a little on the landlord's fertile mind
and daring tongue. And he relied on useful, well-behaving Bobby to plead
his own cause.
“There's nae denyin' the doggie is takin' in 'is ways. He's had twa
gude hames fair thrown at 'is heid, but the sperity bit keeps to 'is ain
mind. An' syne he's usefu', an' hauds 'is gab by the ordinar'.” He often
reinforced his inclination with some such argument.
With all their caution, discovery was always imminent. The kirkyard was
long and narrow and on rising levels, and it was cut almost across by
the low mass of the two kirks, so that many things might be going on at
one end that could not be seen from the other. On this Saturday noon,
when the Heriot boys were let out for the half-holiday, Mr. Brown
kept an eye on them until those who lived outside had dispersed. When
Mistress Jeanie tucked her knitting-needles in her belt, and went up
to the lodge to put the dinner over the fire, the caretaker went down
toward Candlemakers Row to trim the grass about the martyrs' monument.
Bobby dutifully trotted at his heels. Almost immediately a half-dozen
laddies, led by Geordie Ross and Sandy McGregor, scaled the wall from
Heriot's grounds and stepped down into the kirkyard, that lay piled
within nearly to the top. They had a perfectly legitimate errand there,
but no mission is to be approached directly by romantic boyhood.
“Hist!” was the warning, and the innocent invaders, feeling delightfully
lawless, stole over and stormed the marble castle, where “Bluidy”
McKenzie slept uneasily against judgment day. Light-hearted lads can do
daring deeds on a sunny day that would freeze their blood on a dark and
stormy night. So now Geordie climbed nonchalantly to a seat over the old
persecutor, crossed his stout, bare legs, filled an imaginary pipe, and
rattled the three farthings in his pocket.
“I'm 'Jinglin' Geordie' Heriot,” he announced.
“I'll show ye hoo a prood goldsmith ance smoked wi' a'.” Then, jauntily:
“Sandy, gie a crack to 'Bluidy' McKenzie's door an' daur the auld hornie
to come oot.”
The deed was done amid breathless apprehensions, but nothing disturbed
the silence of the May noon except the lark that sprang at their feet
and soared singing into the blue. It was Sandy who presently whistled
like a blackbird to attract the attention of Bobby.
There were no blackbirds in the kirkyard, and Bobby understood the
signal. He scampered up at once and dashed around the kirk, all
excitement, for he had had many adventures with the Heriot boys at
skating and hockey on Duddingston Lock in the winter, and tramps over
the country and out to Leith harbor in the spring. The laddies prowled
along the upper wall of the kirks, opened and shut the wicket, to give
the caretaker the idea that they had come in decorously by the gate, and
went down to ask him, with due respect and humility, if they could take
Bobby out for the afternoon. They were going to mark the places where
wild flowers might be had, to decorate “Jinglin' Geordie's” portrait,
statue and tomb at the school on Founder's Day. Mr. Brown considered
them with a glower that made the boys nudge each other knowingly.
“Saturday isna the day for 'im to be gaen aboot. He aye has a washin'
an' a groomin' to mak' 'im fit for the Sabbath. An', by the leuk o' ye,
ye'd be nane the waur for soap an' water yer ainsel's.”
“We'll gie 'im 'is washin' an' combin' the nicht,” they volunteered,
eagerly.
“Weel, noo, he wullna hae 'is dinner till the time-gun.”
Neither would they. At that, annoyed by their persistence, Mr. Brown
denied authority.
“Ye ken weel he isna ma dog. Ye'll hae to gang up an' spier Maister
Traill. He's fair daft aboot the gude-for-naethin' tyke.”
This was understood as permission. As the boys ran up to the gate, with
Bobby at their heels, Mr. Brown called after them: “Ye fetch 'im hame
wi' the sunset bugle, an' gin ye teach 'im ony o' yer unmannerly ways
I'll tak' a stick to yer breeks.”
When they returned to Mr. Traill's place at two o'clock the landlord
stood in shirt-sleeves and apron in the open doorway with Bobby, the
little dog gripping a mutton shank in his mouth.
“Bobby must tak' his bone down first and hide it awa'. The Sabbath in
a kirkyard is a dull day for a wee dog, so he aye gets a catechism of a
bone to mumble over.”
'The landlord sighed in open envy when the laddies and the little dog
tumbled down the Row to the Grassmarket on their gypsying. His eyes
sought out the glimpse of green country on the dome of Arthur's Seat,
that loomed beyond the University towers to the east. There are times
when the heart of a boy goes ill with the sordid duties of the man.
Straight down the length of the empty market the laddies ran, through
the crooked, fascinating haunt of horses and jockeys in the street
of King's Stables, then northward along the fronts of quaint little
handicrafts shops that skirted Castle Crag. By turning westward into
Queensferry Street a very few minutes would have brought them to a bit
of buried country. But every expedition of Edinburgh lads of spirit of
that day was properly begun with challenges to scale Castle Rock from
the valley park of Princes Street Gardens on the north.
“I daur ye to gang up!” was all that was necessary to set any group of
youngsters to scaling the precipice. By every tree and ledge, by every
cranny and point of rock, stoutly rooted hazel and thorn bush and clump
of gorse, they climbed. These laddies went up a quarter or a third
of the way to the grim ramparts and came cautiously down again. Bobby
scrambled higher, tumbled back more recklessly and fell, head over heels
and upside down, on the daisied turf. He righted himself at once,
and yelped in sharp protest. Then he sniffed and busied himself with
pretenses, in the elaborate unconcern with which a little dog denies
anything discreditable. There were legends of daring youth having
climbed this war-like cliff and laying hands on the fortress wall, but
Geordie expressed a popular feeling in declaring these tales “a' lees.”
“No' ony laddie could gang a' the way up an' come doon wi' 'is heid
no' broken. Bobby couldna do it, an' he's mair like a wild fox than an
ordinar' dog. Noo, we're the Light Brigade at Balaklava. Chairge!”
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 gray-stone, red-roofed mill laughed, and
anxious children ran down from a knot of storybook cottages and gay
dooryards. “I'll gie ye ten shullin's for the sperity bit dog,” the
miller shouted, above the clatter of the' wheel and the swish of the
dam.
“He isna oor ain dog,” Geordie called back. “But he wullna droon. He's
got a gude heid to 'im, an' wullna be sic a bittie fule anither time.”
Indeed he had a good head on him! Bobby never needed a second lesson. At
Silver Mills and Canon Mills he came out and trotted warily around the
dam. Where the gorge widened to a valley toward the sea they all climbed
up to Leith Walk, that ran to the harbor, and came out to a wonder-world
of water-craft anchored in the Firth. Each boy picked out his ship to go
adventuring.
“I'm gangin' to Norway!”
Geordie was scornful. “Hoots, ye tame pussies. Ye're fleid o' gettin'
yer feet wat. I'll be rinnin' aff to be a pirate. Come awa' doon.”
They followed the leader along shore and boarded an abandoned and
evil-smelling fishingboat. There they ran up a ragged jacket for a black
flag. But sailing a stranded craft palled presently.
“Nae, I'm gangin' to be a Crusoe. Preserve me! If there's no' a futprint
i' the sand! Bobby's ma sma' man Friday.”
Away they ran southward to find a castaway's shelter in a hollow on the
golf links. Soon this was transformed into a wrecker's den, and
then into the hiding-place of a harried Covenanter fleeing religious
persecution. Daring things to do swarmed in upon their minds, for
Edinburgh laddies live in a city of romantic history, of soldiers, of
near-by mountains, and of sea rovings. No adventure served them five
minutes, and Bobby was in every one. Ah, lucky Bobby, to have such gay
playfellows on a sunny afternoon and under foot the open country!
And fortunate laddies to have such a merry rascal of a wee dog with
them! To the mile they ran, Bobby went five, scampering in wide circles
and barking and louping at butterflies and whaups. He made a detour to
the right to yelp saucily at the red-coated sentry who paced before the
Gothic gateway to the deserted Palace of Holyrood, and as far to the
left to harry the hoofs of a regiment of cavalry drilling before the
barracks at Piershill. He raced on ahead and swam out to scatter the
fleet of swan sailing or the blue mirror of Duddingston Loch.
The tired boys lay blissfully up the sunny side of Arthur's Seat in
a thicket of hazel while Geordie carried out a daring plan for which
privacy was needed. Bobby was solemnly arraigned before a court on the
charge of being a seditious Covenanting meenister, and was required to
take the oath of loyalty to English King and Church on pain of being
hanged in the Grassmarket. The oath had been duly written out on paper
and greased with mutton tallow to make it more palatable. Bobby licked
the fat off with relish. Then he took the paper between his sharp little
teeth and merrily tore it to shreds. And, having finished it, he barked
cheerful defiance at the court. The lads came near rolling down the
slope with laughter, and they gave three cheers for the little hero.
Sandy remarked, “Ye wadna think, noo, sic a sonsie doggie wad be leevin'
i' the murky auld kirkyaird.”
Bobby had learned the lay of the tipped-up and scooped-out and jumbled
auld toon, and he led the way homeward along the southern outskirts of
the city. He turned up Nicolson Street, that ran northward, past the
University and the old infirmary. To get into Greyfriars Place from the
east at that time one had to descend to the Cowgate and climb out again.
Bobby darted down the first of the narrow wynds.
Suddenly he turned 'round and 'round in bewilderment, then shot through
a sculptured door way, into a well-like court, and up a flight of stone
stairs. The slamming of a shutter overhead shocked him to a standstill
on the landing and sent him dropping slowly down again. What memories
surged back to his little brain, what grief gripped his heart, as he
stood trembling on a certain spot in the pavement where once a long deal
box had rested!
“What ails the bittie dog?” There was something here that sobered the
thoughtless boys. “Come awa', Bobby!”
At that he came obediently enough. But he trotted down the very
middle of the wynd, head and tail low, and turned unheeding into the
Saturday-evening roar of the Cowgate. He refused to follow them up
the rise between St. Magdalen's Chapel and the eastern parapet of the
bridge, but kept to his way under the middle arch into the Grassmarket.
By way of Candlemakers Row he gained the kirkyard gate, and when the
wicket was opened he disappeared around the church. When Bobby failed
to answer calls, Mr. Brown grumbled, but went after him. The little dog
submitted to his vigorous scrubbing and grooming, but he refused his
supper. Without a look or a wag of the tail he was gone again.
“Noo, what hae ye done to'im? He's no' like 'is ainsel' ava.”
They had done nothing, indeed. They could only relate Bobby's strange
behavior in College Wynd and the rest of the way home. Mistress Jeanie
nodded her head, with the wisdom of women that is of the heart.
“Eh, Jamie, that wad be whaur 'is maister deed sax months syne.” And
having said it she slipped down the slope with her knitting and sat on
the mound beside the mourning little dog.
When the awe-struck lads asked for the story Mr. Brown shook his head.
“Ye spier Maister Traill. He kens a' aboot it; an' syne he can talk like
a beuk.”
Before they left the kirkyard the laddies walked down to Auld Jock's
grave and patted Bobby on the head, and they went away thoughtfully to
their scattered homes.
As on that first morning when his grief was new, Bobby woke to a
Calvinistic Sabbath. There were no rattling carts or hawkers crying
their wares. Steeped in sunshine, the Castle loomed golden into the
blue. Tenement dwellers slept late, and then moved about quietly.
Children with unwontedly clean faces came out to galleries and stairs to
study their catechisms. Only the birds were unaware of the seventh day,
and went about their melodious business; and flower buds opened to the
sun.
In mid-morning there suddenly broke on the sweet stillness that clamor
of discordant bells that made the wayfarer in Edinburgh stop his ears.
All the way from Leith Harbor to the Burghmuir eight score of warring
bells contended to be heard. Greyfriars alone was silent in that
babblement, for it had lost tower and bell in an explosion of gunpowder.
And when the din ceased at last there was a sound of military music. The
Castle gates swung wide, and a kilted regiment marched down High
Street playing “God Save the Queen.” When Bobby was in good spirits the
marching music got into his legs and set him to dancing scandalously.
The caretaker and his wifie always came around the kirk on pleasant
mornings to see the bonny sight of the gay soldiers going to church.
To wee Bobby these good, comfortable, everyday friends of his must have
seemed strange in their black garments and their serious Sunday faces.
And, ah! the Sabbath must, indeed, have been a dull day to the little
dog. He had learned that when the earliest comer clicked the wicket he
must go under the table-tomb and console himself with the extra bone
that Mr. Traill never failed to remember. With an hour's respite for
dinner at the lodge, between the morning and afternoon services, he lay
there all day. The restaurant was closed, and there was no running about
for good dogs. In the early dark of winter he could come out and trot
quietly about the silent, deserted place.
As soon as the crocuses pushed their green noses through the earth in
the spring the congregation began to linger among the graves, for to
see an old burying ground renew its life is a peculiar promise of the
resurrection. By midsummer visitors were coming from afar, some even
from over-sea, to read the quaint inscriptions on the old tombs, or to
lay tributes of flowers on the graves of poets and religious heroes. It
was not until the late end of such a day that Bobby could come out of
hiding to stretch his cramped legs. Then it was that tenement children
dropped from low windows, over the tombs, and ate their suppers of oat
cake there in the fading light.
When Mr. Traill left the kirkyard in the bright evening of the last
Sunday in May he stopped without to wait for Dr. Lee, the minister of
Greyfriars auld kirk, who had been behind him to the gate. Now he was
nowhere to be seen. With Bobby ever in the background of his mind, at
such times of possible discovery, Mr. Traill reentered the kirkyard.
The minister was sitting on the fallen slab, tall silk hat off, with Mr.
Brown standing beside him, uncovered and miserable of aspect, and Bobby
looking up anxiously at this new element in his fate.
“Do you think it seemly for a dog to be living in the churchyard, Mr.
Brown?” The minister's voice was merely kind and inquiring, but the
caretaker was in fault, and this good English was disconcerting.
However, his conscience acquitted him of moral wrong, and his sturdy
Scotch independence came to the rescue.
“Gin a bit dog, wha hands 'is gab, isna seemly, thae pussies are the
deil's ain bairns.”
The minister lifted his hand in rebuke. “Remember the Sabbath Day. And I
see no cats, Mr. Brown.”
“Ye wullna see ony as lang as the wee doggie is leevin' i' the
kirkyaird. An' the vermin hae sneekit awa' the first time sin' Queen
Mary's day. An' syne there's mair singin' birdies than for mony a year.”
Mr. Traill had listened, unseen. Now he came forward with a gay
challenge in broad Scotch to put the all but routed caretaker at his
ease.
“Doctor, I hae a queistion to spier ye. Which is mair unseemly: a
weel-behavin' bittie tyke i' the kirkyaird or a scandalous organ i' the
kirk?”
“Ah, Mr. Traill, I'm afraid you're a sad, irreverent young dog yourself,
sir.” The minister broke into a genial laugh. “Man, you've spoiled a bit
of fun I was having with Mr. Brown, who takes his duties 'sairiously.”'
He sat looking down at the little dog until Bobby came up to him and
stood confidingly under his caressing hand. Then he added: “I have
suspected for some months that he was living in the churchyard. It is
truly remarkable that an active, noisy little Skye could keep so still
about it.”
At that Mr. Brown retreated to the martyrs' monument to meditate on
the unministerial behavior of this minister and professor of Biblical
criticism in the University. Mr. Traill, however, sat himself down
on the slab for a pleasant probing into the soul of this courageous
dominie, who had long been under fire for his innovations in the kirk
services.
“I heard of Bobby first early in the winter, from a Bible-reader at the
Medical Mission in the Cowgate, who saw the little dog's master buried.
He sees many strange, sad things in his work, but nothing ever shocked
him so as the lonely death of that pious old shepherd in such a
picturesque den of vice and misery.”
“Ay, he went from my place, fair ill, into the storm. I never knew whaur
the auld man died.”
The minister looked at Mr. Traill, struck by the note of remorse in his
tone.
“The missionary returned to the churchyard to look for the dog that had
refused to leave the grave. He concluded that Bobby had gone away to
a new home and master, as most dogs do go sooner or later. Some weeks
afterward the minister of a small church in the hills inquired for him
and insisted that he was still here. This last week, at the General
Assembly, I heard of the wee Highlander from several sources. The tales
of his escapes from the sheep-farm have grown into a sort of Odyssey of
the Pentlands. I think, perhaps, if you had not continued to feed him,
Mr. Traill, he might have remained at his old home.”
“Nae, I'm no' thinking so, and I was no' willing to risk the starvation
of the bonny, leal Highlander.”
Until the stars came out Mr. Traill sat there telling the story. At
mention of his master's name Bobby returned to the mound and stretched
himself across it. “I will go before the kirk officers, Doctor Lee,
and tak' full responseebility. Mr. Brown is no' to blame. It would have
tak'n a man with a heart of trap-rock to have turned the woeful bit dog
out.”
“He is well cared for and is of a hardy breed, so he is not likely to
suffer; but a dog, no more than a man, cannot live on bread alone. His
heart hungers for love.”
“Losh!” cried Mr. Brown. “Are ye thinkin' he isna gettin' it? Oor bairns
are a' oot o' the hame nest, an' ma woman, Jeanie, is fair daft aboot
Bobby, aye thinkin' he'll tak' the measles. An' syne, there's a' the
tenement bairns cryin' oot on 'im ilka meenit, an' ane crippled laddie
he een lets fondle 'im.”
“Still, it would be better if he belonged to some one master.
Everybody's dog is nobody's dog,” the minister insisted. “I wish you
could attach him to you, Mr. Traill.”
“Ay, it's a disappointment to me that he'll no' bide with me. Perhaps,
in time--”
“It's nae use, ava,” Mr. Brown interrupted, and he related the incident
of the evening before. “He's cheerfu' eneugh maist o' the time, an'
likes to be wi' the laddies as weel as ony dog, but he isna forgettin'
Auld Jock. The wee doggie cam' again to 'is maister's buryin'. Man, ye
ne'er saw the like o' it. The wifie found 'im flattened oot to a furry
door-mat, an' greetin' to brak 'is heart.”
“It's a remarkable story; and he's a beautiful little dog, and a leal
one.” The minister stooped and patted Bobby, and he was thoughtful all
the way to the gate.
“The matter need not be brought up in any formal way. I will speak
to the elders and deacons about it privately, and refer those wanting
details to you, Mr. Traill. Mr. Brown,” he called to the caretaker who
stood in the lodge door, “it cannot be pleasing to God to see the little
creature restrained. Give Bobby his liberty on the Sabbath.”