blossoms
opened there and, later, a spike or so of wild foxglove and a knot of
heather. Robin redbreasts and wrens foraged around Bobby, unafraid;
swallows swooped down from their mud villages, under the dizzy dormers
and gables, to flush the flies on his muzzle, and whole flocks of little
blue titmice fluttered just overhead, in their rovings from holly and
laurel to newly tasseled firs and yew trees.

The click of the wicket gate was another sort of alarm altogether. At
that the little dog slipped under the fallen table-tomb and lay hidden
there until any strange visitor had taken himself away. Except for two
more forced returns and ingenious escapes from the sheepfarm on the
Pentlands, Bobby had lived in the kirkyard undisturbed for six months.
The caretaker had neither the heart to put him out nor the courage to
face the minister and the kirk officers with a plea for him to remain.
The little dog's presence there was known, apparently, only to Mr.
Traill, to a few of the tenement dwellers, and to the Heriot boys. If
his life was clandestine in a way, it was as regular of hour and duty
and as well ordered as that of the garrison in the Castle.

When the time-gun boomed, Bobby was let out for his midday meal at Mr.
Traill's and for a noisy run about the neighborhood to exercise his
lungs and legs. On Wednesdays he haunted the Grassmarket, sniffing at
horses, carts and mired boots. Edinburgh had so many shaggy little
Skye and Scotch terriers that one more could go about unremarked. Bobby
returned to the kirkyard at his own good pleasure. In the evening he was
given a supper of porridge and broo, or milk, at the kitchen door of the
lodge, and the nights he spent on Auld Jock's grave. The morning drum
and bugle woke him to the chase, and all his other hours were spent in
close attendance on the labors of the caretaker. The click of the wicket
gate was the signal for instant disappearance.

A scramble up the wall from Heriot's Hospital grounds, or the patter
of bare feet on the gravel, however, was notice to come out and greet
a friend. Bobby was host to the disinherited children of the tenements.
Now, at the tap-tap-tapping of Tammy Barr's crutches, he scampered up
the slope, and he suited his pace to the crippled boy's in coming down
again. Tammy chose a heap of cut grass on which to sit enthroned and
play king, a grand new crutch for a scepter, and Bobby for a courtier.
At command, the little dog rolled over and over