Greyfriars Bobby | Page 9

waited Auld
Jock's pleasure patiently. A sweep of drenching rain brought the old
man suddenly to his feet and stumbling into the market place. The alert
little dog tumbled about him, barking ecstatically. The fever was gone
and Auld Jock's head quite clear; but in its place was a weakness, an
aching of the limbs, a weight on the chest, and a great shivering.
Although the bell of St. Giles was just striking the hour of five, it was

already entirely dark. A lamp-lighter, with ladder and torch, was setting
a double line of gas jets to flaring along the lofty parapets of the bridge.
If the Grassmarket was a quarry pit by day, on a night of storm it was
the. bottom of a reservoir. The height of the walls was marked by a
luminous crown from many lights above the Castle head, and by a
student's dim candle, here and there, at a garret window. The huge bulk
of the bridge cast a shadow, velvet black, across the eastern half of the
market.
Had not Bobby gone before and barked, and run back, again and again,
and jumped up on Auld Jock's legs, the man might never have won his
way across the drowned place, in the inky blackness and against the
slanted blast of icy rain. When he gained the foot of Candlemakers
Row, a crescent of tall, old houses that curved upward around the lower
end of Greyfriars kirkyard, water poured upon him from the heavy
timbered gallery of the Cunzie Neuk, once the royal mint. The carting
office that occupied the street floor was closed, or Auld Jock would
have sought shelter there. He struggled up the rise, made slippery by
rain and grime. Then, as the street turned southward in its easy curve,
there was some shelter from the house walls. But Auld Jock was quite
exhausted and incapable of caring for himself. In the ancient guildhall
of the candlemakers, at the top of the Row, was another carting office
and Harrow Inn, a resort of country carriers. The man would have gone
in there where he was quite unknown or, indeed, he might even have
lain down in the bleak court that gave access to the tenements above,
but for Bobby's persistent and cheerful barking, begging and nipping.
"Maister, maister!" he said, as plainly as a little dog could speak,
"dinna bide here. It's juist a stap or two to food an' fire in' the cozy auld
ingleneuk."
And then, the level. roadway won at last, there was the railing of the
bridge-approach to cling to, on the one hand, and the upright bars of the
kirkyard gate on the other. By the help of these and the urging of wee
Bobby, Auld Jock came the short, steep way up out of the market, to
the row of lighted shops in Greyfriars Place.
With the wind at the back and above the housetops, Mr. Traill stood

bare-headed in a dry haven of peace in his doorway, firelight behind
him, and welcome in his shrewd gray eyes. If Auld Jock had shown any
intention of going by, it is not impossible that the landlord of Ye Olde
Greyfriars Dining-Rooms might have dragged him in bodily. The storm
had driven all his customers home. For an hour there had not been a
soul in the place to speak to, and it was so entirely necessary for John
Traill to hear his own voice that he had been known, in such straits, to
talk to himself. Auld Jock was not an inspiring auditor, but a deal better
than naething ; and, if he proved hopeless, entertainment was to be
found in Bobby. So Mr. Traill bustled in before his guests, poked the
open fire into leaping flames, and heaped it up skillfully at the back
with fresh coals. The good landlord turned from his hospitable task to
find Auld Jock streaming and shaking on the hearth.
"Man, but you're wet!" he exclaimed. He hustled the 'old shepherd out
of his dripping plaid and greatcoat and spread them to the blaze. Auld
Jock found a dry, knitted Tam-o'-Shanter bonnet in his little bundle and
set it on his head. It was a moment or two before he could speak
without the humiliating betrayal of chattering teeth.
"Ay, it's a misty nicht," he admitted, with caution.
"Misty! Man, it's raining like all the seven deils were abroad." Having
delivered himself of this violent opinion, Mr. Traill fell into his usual
philosophic vein. "I have sma' patience with the Scotch way of making
little of everything. If Noah had been a Lowland Scot he'd 'a' said the
deluge was juist fair wet."'
He laughed at his own wit, his thin-featured face and keen gray eyes
lighting up to a kindliness that