“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 awa' hame, noo,” he said, kindly. “A kirkya'rd isna a place for a bit dog to be leevin'.”
Bobby lay where he had been dropped until the caretaker was out of
sight. Then, finding the aperture under the gate too small for him
to squeeze through, he tried, in his ancestral way, to enlarge it by
digging. He scratched and scratched at the unyielding stone until his
little claws were broken and his toes bleeding, before he stopped and
lay down with his nose under the wicket.
Just before the closing hour a carriage stopped at the
kirkyard gate. A black-robed lady, carrying flowers, hurried through the
wicket. Bobby slipped in behind her and disappeared.
After nightfall, when the lamps were lighted on the bridge, when Mr. Traill had come out to stand idly in his doorway, looking for some one to talk to, and James Brown had locked the kirkyard yard gate for the night and gone into his little stone lodge to supper, Bobby came out of hiding and stretched himself prone across Auld Jock's grave.
IV.
Fifteen minutes after the report of the time-gun on Monday, when the bells were playing their merriest and the dining-rooms were busiest, Mr. Traill felt such a tiny tug at his trouser-leg that it was repeated before he gave it attention. In the press of hungry guests Bobby had little more than room to rise in his pretty, begging attitude. The landlord was so relieved to see him again, after five conscience stricken days, that he stooped to clap the little dog on the side and to greet him with jocose approval.
“Gude dog to fetch Auld Jock—”