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.

On the stone gate pillar was a notice in plain English that no
dogs were permitted in Greyfriars. As well as if he could read,
Bobby knew that the kirkyard was forbidden ground. He had learned
that by bitter experience. Once, when the little wicket gate that
held the two tall leaves ajar by day, chanced to be open, he had
joyously chased a cat across the graves and over the western wall
onto the broad green lawn of Heriot's Hospital.

There the little dog's escapade bred other mischief, for Heriot's
Hospital was not a hospital at all, in the modern English sense
of being a refuge for the sick. Built and christened in a day
when a Stuart king reigned in Holyrood Palace, and French was
spoken in the Scottish court, Heriot's was a splendid pile of a
charity school, all towers and battlements, and cheerful color,
and countless beautiful windows. Endowed by a beruffed and
doubleted goldsmith, "Jinglin' Geordie" Heriot, who had "nae
brave laddie o' his ain," it was devoted to the care and
education of "puir orphan an' faderless boys." There it had stood