flashily dressed bartender who found the task distasteful; a
stout, bent-backed fagot-carrier; a drunken fisherman from New
Haven, suddenly sobered by this uncanny duty, and a furtive,
gaol-bleached thief who feared a trap and tried to escape.

Tailed by scuffling gamins, the strange little procession moved
quickly down the wynd and turned into the roaring Cowgate. The
policemen went before to force a passage through the press.
The Bible-reader followed the box, and Bobby, head and tail down,
trotted unnoticed, beneath it. The humble funeral train passed
under a bridge arch into the empty Grassmarket, and went up
Candlemakers Row to the kirkyard gate. Such as Auld Jock, now, by
unnumbered thousands, were coming to lie among the grand and
great, laird and leddy, poet and prophet, persecutor and martyr,
in the piled-up, historic burying-ground of old Greyfriars.

By a gesture the caretaker directed the bearers to the right,
past the church, and on down the crowded slope to the north, that
was circled about by the backs of the tenements in the
Grassmarket and Candlemakers Row. The box was lowered at once,
and the pall-bearers hastily departed to delayed dinners. The
policemen had urgent duties elsewhere. Only the Bible reader
remained to see the grave partly filled in, and to try to
persuade Bobby to go away with him. But the little dog
resisted with such piteous struggles that the man put him down
again. The grave digger leaned on his spade for a bit of
professional talk.

"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