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Updated: May 15, 2025
The temptation was going by when a preoccupied lady, with a sheaf of Easter lilies on her sable arm, opened the wicket. Her ample Victorian skirts swept right over the little dog, and when he emerged there was the gate slightly ajar. Widening the aperture with nose and paws, Bobby was off, skirmishing at large on the rear and flanks of the troops, down the Burghmuir.
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.
In mid-morning there suddenly broke on the sweet stillness that clamor of discordant bells that made the wayfarer in Edinburgh stop his ears. All the way from Leith Harbor to the Burghmuir eight score of warring bells contended to be heard. Greyfriars alone was silent in that babblement, for it had lost tower and bell in an explosion of gunpowder.
"Noo," he said, humbly, "gin it wad be ony satisfaction to ye, I'll gang up to the Castle an' put on fatigue dress, no' to disgrace the unifarm o' her Maijesty, an' let ye tak' me oot on the Burghmuir an' gie me a gude lickin'." Mr. Traill shrugged his shoulders. "Naething would satisfy me, man, but to get behind you and kick you over the Firth into the Kingdom of Fife."
This hillside was the ancient Burghmuir where King James of old gathered a great host of Scots to march and fight and perish on Flodden Field. Bobby had not gone this way homeward before, and was puzzled by the smell of prosperous little shops, and by the park-like odors from college campuses to the east, and from the well-kept residence park of George Square.
He has excitements that he does his best to share, and that send him flying in pursuit of phantom clues. From the top of the Burghmuir it was easy going to Bobby. The snow had gone off in a thaw, releasing a multitude of autumnal aromas.
It is not the least of a little dog's missions in life to communicate his own irresponsible gaiety to men. If the return had been over George IV Bridge Bobby would, no doubt, have dropped behind at Mr. Traill's or at the kirkyard. But on the Burghmuir the troops swung eastward until they rounded Arthur's Seat and met the cavalry drilling before the barracks at Piershill.
From the Burghmuir, all the way to the Grassmarket and the Cowgate, was downhill. So, with arms winged, and stout legs spread wide and braced, Geordie Ross was sliding gaily homeward, his knitted tippet a gallant pennant behind. Here was a Mercury for an urgent errand. "Laddie, do you know whaur's a doctor who can be had for a shulling or two for a poor auld country body in my shop?"
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