|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 4
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. In five minutes the great open space was
as empty of living men as Greyfriars kirkyard on a week-day.
Drovers and hostlers disappeared at once into the cheap and noisy
entertainment of the White Hart Inn that fronted the market and
set its squalid back against Castle Rock. Farmers rapidly
deserted it for the clean country. Dwellers in the tenements
darted up wynds and blind closes, climbed twisting turnpike
stairs to windy roosts under the gables, or they scuttled through
noble doors into foul courts and hallways. Beggars and
pickpockets swarmed under the arches of the bridge, to swell the
evil smelling human river that flowed at the dark and slimy
bottom of the Cowgate.
A chill November wind tore at the creaking iron cross of the
Knights of St. John, on the highest gable of the Temple
tenements, that turned its decaying back on the kirkyard of the
Greyfriars. Low clouds were tangled and torn on the Castle
battlements. A few horses stood about, munching oats from
feed-boxes. Flocks of sparrows fluttered down from timbered
galleries and rocky ledges to feast on scattered grain. Swallows
wheeled in wide, descending spirals from mud villages under the
cornices to catch flies. Rats scurried out of holes and gleaned
in the deserted corn exchange. And 'round and 'round the empty
market-place raced the frantic little terrier in search of Auld
Jock.
Bobby knew, as well as any man, that it was the dinner hour. With
the time-gun it was Auld Jock's custom to go up to a snug little
restaurant; that was patronized chiefly by the decent poor small
shopkeepers, clerks, tenant farmers, and medical students living
in cheap lodgings--in Greyfriars Place. There, in Ye Olde
Greyfriars Dining-Rooms, owned by Mr. John Traill, and four doors
beyond the kirkyard gate, was a cozy little inglenook that Auld
Jock and Bobby had come to look upon as their own. At its back,
above a recessed oaken settle and a table, a tiny paned window
looked up and over a retaining wall into the ancient place of the
dead.
The view of the heaped-up and crowded mounds and thickets of old
slabs and throughstones, girt all about by time-stained monuments
and vaults, and shut in on the north and east by the backs of
shops and lofty slum tenements, could not be said to be cheerful.
It suited Auld Jock, however, for what mind he had was of a
melancholy turn. From his place on the floor, between his
master's hob-nailed boots, Bobby could not see the kirkyard, but
it would not, in any case, have depressed his spirits. He did not
know the face of death and, a merry little ruffian of a terrier,
he was ready for any adventure.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|