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Page 72
Everything warned Bobby to lie still in safety until morning and
the world was restored to its normal aspects. But ah! in the
highest type of man and dog, self-sacrifice, and not
self-preservation, is the first law. A deserted grave cried to him
across the void, the anguish of protecting love urged him on to
take perilous chances. Falling upon a narrow shelf of rock, he had
bounded off and into a thicket of thorns. Bruised and shaken and
bewildered, he lay there for a time and tried to get his bearings.
Bobby knew only that the way was downward. He put out a paw and
felt for the edge of the shelf. A thorn bush rooted below tickled
his nose. He dropped into that and scrambled out again. Loose earth
broke under his struggles and carried him swiftly down to a new
level. He slipped in the wet moss of a spring before he heard the
tinkle of the water, lost his foothold, and fell against a sharp
point of rock. The shadowy spire of a fir-tree looming in a parting
of the vapor for an instant, Bobby leaped to the ledge upon which
it was rooted.
Foot by foot he went down, with no guidance at all. It is the
nature of such long, low, earth dogs to go by leaps and bounds like
foxes, calculating distances nicely when they can see, and tearing
across the roughest country with the speed of the wild animals they
hunt. And where the way is very steep they can scramble up or down
any declivity that is at a lesser angle than the perpendicular.
Head first they go downward, setting the fore paws forward, the
claws clutching around projections and in fissures, the weight hung
from the stout hindquarters, the body flattened on the earth.
Thus Bobby crept down steep descents in safety, but his claws were
broken in crevices and his feet were torn and pierced by splinters
of rock and thorns. Once he went some distance into a cave and had
to back up and out again. And then a promising slope shelving under
suddenly, where he could not retreat, he leaped, turned over and
over in the air, and fell stunned. His heart filled with fear of
the unseen before him, the little dog lay for a long time in a
clump of whins. He may even have dozed and dreamed, to be awakened
with starts by his misery of longing, and once by the far-away
barking of a dog. It came up deadened, as if from fathoms below. He
stood up and listened, but the sound was not repeated. His
lacerated feet burned and throbbed; his bruised muscles had begun
to stiffen, so that every movement was a pain.
In these lower levels there was more smoke, that smeared out and
thickened the mist. Suddenly a breath of air parted the fog as if
it were a torn curtain. Like a shot Bobby went down the crag,
leaping from rock to rock, scrambling under thorns and hazel
shrubs, dropping over precipitous ledges, until he looked down a
sheer fall on which not even a knot of grass could find a foothold.
He took the leap instantly, and his thick fleece saved him from
broken bones; but when he tried to get up again his body was racked
with pain and his hind legs refused to serve him.
Turning swiftly, he snarled and bit, at them in angry disbelief
that his good little legs should play false with his stout heart.
Then he quite forgot his pain, for there was the sharp ring of iron
on an anvil and the dull glow of a forge fire, where a smith was
toiling in the early hours of the morning. A clever and resourceful
little dog, Bobby made shift to do without legs. Turning on his
side, he rolled down the last slope of Castle Rock. Crawling
between two buildings and dropping from the terrace on which they
stood, he fell into a little street at the west end and above the
Grassmarket.
Here the odors were all of the stables. He knew the way, and that
it was still downward. The distance he had to go was a matter of a
quarter of a mile, or less, and the greater part of it was on the
level, through the sunken valley of the Grassmarket. But Bobby had
literally to drag himself now; and he had still to pull him self up
by his fore paws over the wet and greasy cobblestones of
Candlemakers Row. Had not the great leaves of the gate to the
kirkyard been left on the latch, he would have had to lie there in
the alcove, with his nose under the bars, until morning. But the
gate gave way to his push, and so, he dragged himself through it
and around the kirk, and stretched himself on Auld Jock's grave.
It was the birds that found him there in the misty dawn. They were
used to seeing Bobby scampering about, for the little watchman was
awake and busy as early as the feathered dwellers in the kirkyard.
But, in what looked to be a wet and furry door-mat left out
overnight on the grass, they did not know him at all. The throstles
and skylarks were shy of it, thinking it might be alive. The wrens
fluffed themselves, scolded it, and told it to get up. The blue
titmice flew over it in a flock again and again, with much sweet
gossiping, but they did not venture nearer. A redbreast lighted on
the rose bush that marked Auld Jock's grave, cocked its head
knowingly, and warbled a little song, as much as to say: "If it's
alive that will wake it up."
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