the work-scarred hands upon it. "It's something by the ordinar'
to find a gude auld country body in such a foul place." He
stooped and patted Bobby, and noted the bun, untouched, upon the
floor. Turning to a wild elf of a barefooted child in the crowd
he spoke to her. "Would you share your gude brose with the bit
dog, lassie?"

She darted down the stairs, and presently returned with her own
scanty bowl of breakfast porridge. Bobby refused the food, but he
looked at her so mournfully that the first tears of pity her
unchildlike eyes had ever shed welled up. She put out her hand
timidly and stroked him.

It was just before the report of the time-gun that two policemen
cleared the stairs, shrouded Auld Jock in his own greatcoat and
plaid, and carried him down to the court. There they laid him in
a plain box of white deal that stood on the pavement, closed it,
and went away down the wynd on a necessary errand. The Bible-
reader sat on an empty beer keg to guard the box, and Bobby
climbed on the top and stretched himself above his master. The
court was a well, more than a hundred feet deep. What sky might
have been visible above it was hidden by tier above tier of
dingy, tattered washings. The stairway filled again, and throngs
of outcasts of every sort went about their squalid businesses,
with only a curious glance or so at the pathetic group.

Presently the policemen returned from the Cowgate with a motley
assortment of pallbearers. There was a good-tempered Irish
laborer from a near-by brewery; a decayed gentleman, unsteady of
gait and blear-eyed, in greasy frock-coat and broken hat; a