The hour-bell of St. Giles was rung, and the sunset bugle blown in the Castle. It took Mr. Brown a long time to lift the wicket, close the tall leaves and lock the gate. The wind was rising, and the air hardening. One after one the gas lamps flared in the gusts that blew on the bridge. The huge bulk of shadow lay, velvet black, in the drenched quarry pit of the Grassmarket. The caretaker's voice was husky with a sudden “cauld in 'is heid.” “Ye're an auld dog, Bobby, an' ye canna deny it. Ye'll juist hae to sleep i' the hoose the misty nicht.” Loath to part with them, Bobby went up to the lodge with the old couple and saw them within the cheerful kitchen. But when the door was held open for him, he wagged his tail in farewell and trotted away around the kirk. All the concession he was willing to make to old age and bad weather was to sleep under the fallen table-tomb. Greyfriars on a dripping autumn evening! A pensive hour and season, everything memorable brooded there. Crouched back in shadowy ranks, the old tombs were draped in mystery. The mist was swirled by the wind and smoke smeared out, over their dim shapes. Where families sat close about scant suppers, the lights of candles and cruisey lamps were blurred. The faintest halo hung above the Castle head. Infrequent footsteps hurried by the gate. There was the rattle of a belated cart, the ring of a distant church bell. But even on such nights the casements were opened and little faces looked into the melancholy kirkyard. Candles glimmered for a moment on the murk, and sweetly and clearly the tenement bairns called down: “A gude nicht to ye, Bobby.” They could not see the little dog, but they knew he was there. They knew now that he would still be there when they could see him no more--his body a part of the soil, his memory a part of all that was held dear and imperishable in that old garden of souls. They could go up to the lodge and look at his famous collar, and they would have his image in bronze on the fountain. And sometime, when the mysterious door opened for them, they might see Bobby again, a sonsie doggie running on the green pastures and beside the still waters, at the heels of his shepherd master, for: If there is not more love in this world than there is room for in God's heaven, Bobby would just have “gaen awa' hame.” End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Greyfriars Bobby, by Eleanor Atkinson