Greyfriars Bobby Part 6

"Ay, man, and it would be all right if the bit dog would just tak' to me."

This pleasantry annoyed a good man who had small sense of humor, and he remarked testily "The barkin' disturbs my customers so they canna read."

The place was a resort for student laddies who had to be saving of candles.

"That's no' right," the landlord admitted, sympathetically. "'Reading mak'th a full man.' Eh, what a deeference to the warld if Robbie Burns had aye preferred a book to a bottle." The bookseller refused to be beguiled from his just cause of complaint into the flowery meads of literary reminiscences and speculations.

"You'll stop that dog's cleaving noise, Mr. Traill, or I'll appeal to the Burgh police."

The landlord returned a bland and child-like smile. "You'd be weel within your legal rights to do it, neebor."

The door was shut with such a business-like click that the situation suddenly became serious. Bobby's vocal powers, however, gave no signs of diminis.h.i.+ng. Mr. Traill quieted the dog for a few moments by letting him into the outer room, but the swiftness and energy with which he renewed his attacks on the door and on the man's will showed plainly that the truce was only temporary. He did not know what he meant to do except that he certainly had no intention of abandoning the little dog. To gain time he put on his hat and coat, picked Bobby up, and opened the door.

The thought occurred to him to try the gate at the upper end of the kirkyard or, that failing, to get into Heriot's Hospital grounds and put Bobby over the wall. As he opened the door, however, he heard Geordie Ross's whistle around the bend in Forest Road.

"Hey, laddie!" he called. "Come awa' in a meenit." When the st.u.r.dy boy was inside and the door safely shut, he began in his most guileless and persuasive tone: "Would you like to earn a shulling, Geordie?"

"Ay, I would. Gie it to me i' pennies an' ha'pennies, Maister Traill. It seems mair, an' mak's a braw jinglin' in a pocket."

The price was paid and the tale told. The quick champions.h.i.+p of the boy was engaged for the gallant dog, and Geordie's eyes sparkled at the prospect of dark adventure. Bobby was on the floor listening, ears and eyes, brambly muzzle and feathered tail alert. He listened with his whole, small, excited body, and hung on the answer to the momentous question.

"Is there no' a way to smuggle the bit dog into the kirkyard?"

It appeared that nothing was easier, "aince ye ken hoo." Did Mr. Traill know of the internal highway through the old Cunzie Neuk at the bottom of the Row? One went up the stairs on the front to the low, timbered gallery, then through a pa.s.sage as black as "Bluidy" McKenzie's heart.

At the end of that, one came to a peep-hole of a window, set out on wooden brackets, that hung right over the kirkyard wall. From that window Bobby could be dropped on a certain n.o.ble vault, from which he could jump to the ground.

"Twa meenits' wark, stout hearts, sleekit footstaps, an' the fearsome deed is done," declared twelve-year-old Geordie, whose sense of the dramatic matched his daring.

But when the deed was done, and the two stood innocently on the brightly lighted approach to the bridge, Mr. Traill had his misgivings. A well-respected business man and church-member, he felt uneasy to be at the mercy of a laddie who might be boastful.

"Geordie, if you tell onybody about this I'll have to give you a licking."

"I wullna tell," Geordie rea.s.sured him. "It's no' so respectable, an'

syne ma mither'd gie me anither lickin', an' they'd gie me twa more awfu' aces, an' black marks for a month, at Heriot's."

V.

Word had been left at all the inns and carting offices about both markets for the tenant of Cauldbrae farm to call at Mr. Traill's place for Bobby. The man appeared Wednesday afternoon, driving a big Clydesdale horse to a stout farm cart. The low-ceiled dining-room suddenly shrank about the big-boned, long legged hill man. The fact embarra.s.sed him, as did also a voice cultivated out of all proportion to town houses, by shouting to dogs and shepherds on windy shoulders of the Pentlands.

"Hae ye got the dog wi' ye?"

Mr. Train pointed to Bobby, deep in a blissful, after dinner nap under the settle.

The farmer breathed a sigh of relief, sat at a table, and ate a frugal meal of bread and cheese. As roughly dressed as Auld Jock, in a metal-b.u.t.toned greatcoat of hodden gray, a woolen bonnet, and the shepherd's twofold plaid, he was a different species of human being altogether. A long, lean, sinewy man of early middle age, he had a smooth-shaven, bony jaw, far-seeing gray eyes under furzy brows, and a shock of auburn hair. When he spoke, it was to give bits out of his own experience.

"Thae terriers are usefu' eneugh on an ordinar' fairm an' i' the toon to keep awa' the vermin, but I wadna gie a twa-penny-bit for ane o' them on a sheep-fairm. There's a wee la.s.sie at Cauldbrae wha wants Bobby for a pet. It wasna richt for Auld Jock to win 'im awa' frae the bairn."

Mr. Traill's hand was lifted in rebuke. "Speak nae ill, man; Auld Jock's dead."

The farmer's ruddy face blanched and he dropped his knife. "He's no'

buried so sane?"

"Ay, he's buried four days since in Greyfriars kirkyard, and Bobby has slept every night on the auld man's grave."

"I'll juist tak' a leuk at the grave, moil, gin ye'll hae an ee on the dog."

Mr. Traill cautioned him not to let the caretaker know that Bobby had continued to sleep in the kirkyard, after having been put out twice. The farmer was back in ten minutes, with a canny face that defied reading.

He lighted his short Dublin pipe and smoked it out before he spoke again.

"It's ower grand for a puir auld shepherd body to be buried i'

Greyfriars."

"No' so grand as heaven, I'm thinking." Mr. Traill's response was dry.

"Ay, an' we're a' c.o.o.ntin' on gangin' there; but it's a prood thing to hae yer banes put awa' in Greyfriars, ance ye're through wi' 'em!"

"Nae doubt the gude auld man would rather be alive on the Pentland braes than dead in Greyfriars."

"Ay," the farmer admitted. "He was fair fond o' the hills, an' no'

likin' the toon. An', moil, he was a wonder wi' the lambs. He'd gang wi'

a collie ower miles o' country in roarin' weather, an' he'd aye fetch the lost sheep hame. The auld moil was nane so weel furnished i' the heid, but bairnies and beasts were unco' fond o' 'im. It wasna his fau't that Bobby was aye at his heels. The la.s.sie wad 'a' been after'im, gin 'er mither had permeeted it."

Mr. Traill asked him why he had let so valuable a man go, and the farmer replied at once that he was getting old and could no longer do the winter work. To any but a Scotchman brought up near the sheep country this would have sounded hard, but Mr. Traill knew that the farmers on the wild, tipped-up moors were themselves hard pressed to meet rent and taxes. To keep a shepherd incapacitated by age and liable to lose a flock in a snow-storm, was to invite ruin. And presently the man showed, unwittingly, how sweet a kernel the heart may lie under the sh.e.l.l of sordid necessity.

"I didna ken the auld man was fair ill or he micht hae bided at the fairm an' tak'n 'is ain time to dee at 'is ease."

As Bobby unrolled and stretched to an awakening, the farmer got up, took him unaware and thrust him into a covered basket. He had no intention of letting the little creature give him the slip again. Bobby howled at the indignity, and struggled and tore at the stout wickerwork. It went to Mr. Traill's heart to hear him, and to see the gallant little dog so defenseless. He talked to him through the latticed cover all the way out to the cart, telling him Auld Jock meant for him to go home. At that beloved name, Bobby dropped to the bottom of the basket and cried in such a heartbroken way that tears stood in the landlord's eyes, and even the farmer confessed to a sudden "cauld in 'is heid."

"I'd gie 'im to ye, mon, gin it wasna that the bit la.s.sie wad greet her bonny een oot gin I didna fetch 'im hame. Nae boot the bit tyke wad 'a'

deed gin ye hadna fed 'im."

"Eh, man, he'll no' bide with me, or I'd be bargaining for him. And he'll no' be permitted to live in the kirkyard. I know naething in this life more pitiful than a masterless, hameless dog." And then, to delay the moment of parting with Bobby, who stopped crying and began to lick his hand in frantic appeal through a hole in the basket, Mr. Traill asked how Bobby came by his name.

"It was a leddy o' the neeborhood o' Swanston. She cam' drivin' by Cauldbrae i' her bit cart wi' s.h.a.ggy Shetlands to it an' stapped at the dairy for a drink o' b.u.t.termilk frae the kirn. Syne she saw the sonsie puppy loupin' at Auld Jock's heels, bonny as a poodle, but mair knowin'.

The leddy gied me a poond note for 'im. I put 'im up on the seat, an'

she said that noo she had a smart Hieland groom to match 'er Hieland steeds, an' she flicked the ponies wi' 'er whup. Syne the bit dog was on the airth an' flyin' awa' doon the road like the deil was after 'im. An'

the leddy lauched an' lauched, an' went awa' wi'oot 'im. At the fut o'

the brae she was still lauchin', an' she ca'ed back: 'Gie 'im the name o' Bobby, gude mon. He's left the plow-tail an's aff to Edinburgh to mak' his fame an' fortune.' I didna ken what the leddy meant."

"Man, she meant he was like Bobby Burns."

Here was a literary flavor that gave added attraction to a man who sat at the feet of the Scottish muses. The landlord sighed as he went back to the doorway, and he stood there listening to the clatter of the cart and rough-shod horse and to the mournful howling of the little dog, until the sounds died away in Forest Road.

Mr. Traill would have been surprised to know, perhaps, that the confines of the city were scarcely pa.s.sed before Bobby stopped protesting and grieving and settled down patiently to more profitable work. A human being thus kidnapped and carried away would have been quite helpless.

But Bobby fitted his mop of a black muzzle into the largest hole of his wicker prison, and set his useful little nose to gathering news of his whereabouts.

If it should happen to a dog in this day to be taken from Ye Olde Greyfriars Dining-Rooms and carried southward out of Edinburgh there would be two miles or more of city and suburban streets to be traversed before coming to the open country. But a half century or more ago one could stand at the upper gate of Greyfriars kirkyard or Heriot's Hospital grounds and look down a slope dotted with semi-rustic houses, a village or two and water-mills, and then cultivated farms, all the way to a stone-bridged burn and a toll-bar at the bottom of the valley. This hillside was the ancient Burghmuir where King James of old gathered a great host of Scots to march and fight and perish on Flodden Field.