Given what was due him that morning and dismissed for the season to
find such work as he could in the city, Auld Jock did not question the
farmer's right to take Bobby “back hame.” Besides, what could he do with
the noisy little rascal in an Edinburgh lodging? But, duller of wit than
usual, feeling very old and lonely, and shaky on his legs, and dizzy in
his head, Auld Jock parted with Bobby and with his courage, together.
With the instinct of the dumb animal that suffers, he stumbled into
the foul nook and fell, almost at once, into a heavy sleep. Out of that
Bobby roused him but briefly.
Long before his master awoke, Bobby finished his series of refreshing
little naps, sat up, yawned, stretched his short, shaggy legs, sniffed
at Auld Jock experimentally, and trotted around the bed of the cart on
a tour of investigation. This proving to be of small interest and no
profit, he lay down again beside his master, nose on paws, and waited
Auld Jock's pleasure patiently. A sweep of drenching rain brought the
old man suddenly to his feet and stumbling into the market place. The
alert little dog tumbled about him, barking ecstatically. The fever was
gone and Auld Jock's head quite clear; but in its place was a weakness,
an aching of the limbs, a weight on the chest, and a great shivering.
Although the bell of St. Giles was just striking the hour of five, it
was already entirely dark. A lamp-lighter, with ladder and torch, was
setting a double line of gas jets to flaring along the lofty parapets
of the bridge. If the Grassmarket was a quarry pit by day, on a night
of storm it was the bottom of a reservoir. The height of the walls was
marked by a luminous crown from many lights above the Castle head, and
by a student's dim candle, here and there, at a garret window. The huge
bulk of the bridge cast a shadow, velvet black, across the eastern half
of the market.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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