ssed bartender
who found the task distasteful; a stout, bent-backed fagot-carrier; a
drunken fisherman from New Haven, suddenly sobered by this uncanny
duty, and a furtive, gaol-bleached thief who feared a trap and tried to
escape.

Tailed by scuffling gamins, the strange little procession moved quickly
down the wynd and turned into the roaring Cowgate. The policemen went
before to force a passage through the press. The Bible-reader followed
the box, and Bobby, head and tail down, trotted unnoticed, beneath
it. The humble funeral train passed under a bridge arch into the empty
Grassmarket, and went up Candlemakers Row to the kirkyard gate. Such as
Auld Jock, now, by unnumbered thousands, were coming to lie among the
grand and great, laird and leddy, poet and prophet, persecutor and
martyr, in the piled-up, historic burying-ground of old Greyfriars.

By a gesture the caretaker directed the bearers to the right, past the
church, and on down the crowded slope to the north, that was circled
about by the backs of the tenements in the Grassmarket and Candlemakers
Row. The box was lowered at once, and the pall-bearers hastily departed
to delayed dinners. The policemen had urgent duties elsewhere. Only the
Bible reader remained to see the grave partly filled in, and to try to
persuade Bobby to go away with him. But the little dog resisted with
such piteous struggles that the man put him down again. The grave digger
leaned on his spade for a bit of professional talk.

"Many a dog gangs daft an' greets like a human body when his maister
dees. They're aye put oot, a time or twa, an' they gang to folic that
ken them, an' syne they tak' to ithers. Dinna fash yersel' aboot 'im. He
wullna greet lang."

Since Bobby would not go, there was nothing to do but leave him there;
but it was with many a backward look and disturbing doubt that the
good man turned away. The grave-digger finished his task cheerfully,
shouldered his tools, and left the kirkyard. The early dark was coming
on when the caretaker, in making his last rounds, found the little
terrier flattened out on the new-made mound.

"Gang awa' oot!" he ordered. Bobby looked up pleadingly and trembled,
but he made no motion to obey. James Brown was not an unfeeling man, and
he was but doing his duty. From an impulse of pity for this bonny wee
bit of loyalty and grief he picked Bobby up, carried him all the way to
the gate and set him over the wicket on the pavement.

"Gang aw