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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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