ith 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