e IV Bridge. This high-hung, viaduct
thoroughfare, that carried a double line of buildings within its
parapet, leaped the gorge, from the tall, old, Gothic rookeries on High
Street ridge, just below the Castle esplanade. It cleared the roofs
of the tallest, oldest houses that swarmed up the steep banks from the
Cowgate, and ran on, by easy descent, to the main gateway of Greyfriars
kirkyard at the lower top of the southern rise.

Greyfriars' two kirks formed together, under one continuous roof, a
long, low, buttressed building without tower or spire. The new kirk was
of Queen Anne's day, but the old kirk was built before ever the Pilgrims
set sail for America. It had been but one of several sacred buildings,
set in a monastery garden that sloped pleasantly to the open valley of
the Grassmarket, and looked up the Castle heights unhindered. In Bobby's
day this garden had shrunk to a long, narrow, high-piled burying-ground,
that extended from the rear of the line of buildings that fronted on the
market, up the slope, across the hilltop, and to where the land began
to fall away again, down the Burghmuir. From the Grassmarket, kirk and
kirkyard lay hidden behind and above the crumbling grandeur of noble
halls and mansions that had fallen to the grimiest tenements of
Edinburgh's slums. From the end of the bridge approach there was a
glimpse of massive walls, of pointed windows, and of monumental tombs
through a double-leafed gate of wrought iron, that was alcoved and
wedged in between the ancient guildhall of the candlemakers and a row of
prosperous little shops in Greyfriars Place.

A rock-rimmed quarry pit, in the very heart of Old Edinburgh, the
Grassmarket was a place of historic echoes. The yelp of a little dog
there would scarce seem worthy of record. More in harmony with its
stirring history was the report of the time-gun. At one o'clock every
day, there was a puff of smoke high up in the blue or gray or squally
sky, then a deafening crash and a back fire fusillade of echoes. The
oldest frequenter of the market never got used to it. On Wednesday, as
the shot broke across the babel of shrill bargaining, every man in
the place jumped, and not one was quicker of recovery than wee Bobby.
Instantly ashamed, as an intelligent little dog who knew the import
of the gun should be, Bobby denied his alarm in a tiny pink yawn of
boredom. Then he went briskly about his urgent business of finding Auld
Jock.

The market was closed