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Page 22
Mr. Traill's astonishing fluency always carried all walls of
resistance before it with men of slower wit and speech. Only a
superior man could brush time-honored rules aside so curtly and
stand on his human rights so surely. James Brown pulled his
bonnet off deferentially, scratched his shock head and shifted
his pipe. Finally he admitted:
"Weel, there was a bit tyke i' the kirkyaird twa days syne. I put
'im oot, an' haena seen 'im aboot ony main" He offered, however,
to show the new-made mound on which he had found the dog. Leading
the way past the church, he went on down the terraced slope,
prolonging the walk with conversation, for the guardianship of an
old churchyard offers very little such lively company as John
Traill's.
"I mind, noo, it was some puir body frae the Coogate, wi' no' ony
mourners but the sma' terrier aneath the coffin. I let 'im pass,
no' to mak' a disturbance at a buryin'. The deal box was fetched
up by the police, an' carried by sic a crew o' gaol-birds as wad
mak' ye turn ower in yer ain God's hole. But he paid for his
buryin' wi' his ain siller, an' noo lies as canny as the
nobeelity. Nae boot here's the place, Maister Traill; an' ye can
see for yer ainsel' there's no' any dog."
"Ay, that would be Auld Jock and Bobby would no' be leaving him,"
insisted the landlord, stubbornly. He stood looking down at the
rough mound of frozen clods heaped in a little space of trampled
snow.
"Jeemes Brown," Mr. Trail said, at last, "the man wha lies here
was a decent, pious auld country body, and I drove him to his
meeserable death in the Cowgate."
"Man, ye dinna ken what ye're sayin'!" was the shocked response.
"Do I no'? I'm canny, by the ordinar', but my fule tongue will
get me into trouble with the magistrates one of these days. It
aye wags at both ends, and is no' tied in the middle."
Then, stanch Calvinist that he was, and never dreaming that he
was indulging in the sinful pleasure of confession, Mr. Traill
poured out the story of Auld Jock's plight and of his own.
shortcomings. It was a bitter, upbraiding thing that he, an
uncommonly capable man, had meant so well by a humble old body,
and done so ill. And he had failed again when he tried to undo
the mischief. The very next morning he had gone down into the
perilous Cowgate, and inquired in every place where it might be
possible for such a timid old shepherd to be known. But there! As
well look for a burr thistle in a bin of oats, as look for a
human atom in the Cowgate and the wynds "juist aff."
"Weel, noo, ye couldna hae dune aething wi' the auld body, ava,
gin he wouldna gang to the infairmary." The caretaker was trying
to console the self-accusing man.
"Could I no'? Ye dinna ken me as weel as ye micht." The disgusted
landlord tumbled into broad Scotch. "Gie me to do it ance mair,
an' I'd chairge Auld Jock wi' thievin' ma siller, wi' a wink o'
the ee at the police to mak' them ken I was leein'; an' syne
they'd hae hustled 'im aff, willy-nilly, to a snug bed."
The energetic little man looked so entirely capable of any daring
deed that he fired the caretaker into enthusiastic search for
Bobby. It was not entirely dark, for the sky was studded with
stars, snow lay in broad patches on the slope, and all about the
lower end of the kirkyard supper candles burned at every rear
window of the tall tenements.
The two men searched among the near-by slabs and table-tombs and
scattered thorn bushes. They circled the monument to all the
martyrs who had died heroically, in the Grassmarket and
elsewhere, for their faith. They hunted in the deep shadows of
the buttresses along the side of the auld kirk and among the
pillars of the octagonal portico to the new. At the rear of the
long, low building, that was clumsily partitioned across for two
pulpits, stood the ornate tomb of "Bluidy" McKenzie. But Bobby
had not committed himself to the mercy of the hanging judge, nor
yet to the care of the doughty minister, who, from the pulpit of
Greyfriars auld kirk, had flung the blood and tear stained
Covenant in the teeth of persecution.
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