In such nipping weather there were no visitors to the kirkyard and the gate was not opened.  The music bells ran the gamut of old Scotch airs and ceased, while he sat there and waited patiently.  Once a man stopped to look at the little dog, and Bobby promptly jumped on the wicket, plainly begging to have it unlatched.  But the passer-by decided that some lady had left her pet behind, and would return for him.  So he patted the attractive little Highlander on the head and went on about his business.

Discouraged by the unpromising outlook for dinner that day, Bobby went slowly back to the grave.  Twice afterward he made hopeful pilgrimages to the gate.  For diversion he fell noiselessly upon a prowling cat and chased it out of the kirkyard.  At last he sat upon the table-tomb.  He had escaped notice from the tenements all the morning because the view from most of the windows was blocked by washings, hung out and dripping, then freezing and clapping against the old tombs.  It was half-past three o’clock when a tiny, wizened face popped out of one of the rude little windows in the decayed Cunzie Neuk at the bottom of Candlemakers Row.  Crippled Tammy Barr called out in shrill excitement

“Ailie!  O-o-oh, Ailie Lindsey, there’s the wee doggie!”

“Whaur?” The lassie’s elfin face looked out from a low, rear window of the Candlemakers’ Guildhall at the top of the Row.

“On the stane by the kirk wa’.”

“I see ‘im noo.  Isna he bonny?  I wish Bobby could bide i’ the kirkyaird, but they wadna let ‘im.  Tammy, gin ye tak’ ’im up to Maister Traill, he’ll gie ye the shullin’!”

“I couldna tak’ ’im by ma lane,” was the pathetic confession.  “Wad ye gang wi’ me, Ailie?  Ye could drap ower an’ catch ‘im, an’ I could come by the gate.  Faither made me some grand crutches frae an’ auld chair back.”

Tears suddenly drowned the lassie’s blue eyes and ran down her pinched little cheeks.  “Nae, I couldna gang.  I haena ony shoon to ma feet.”

“It’s no’ so cauld.  Gin I had twa guile feet I could gang the bit way wi’oot shoon.”

“I ken it isna so cauld,” Ailie admitted, “but for a lassie it’s no’ respectable to gang to a grand place barefeeted.”

That was undeniable, and the eager children fell silent and tearful.  But oh, necessity is the mother of makeshifts among the poor!  Suddenly Ailie cried:  “Bide a meenit, Tammy,” and vanished.  Presently she was back, with the difficulty overcome.  “Grannie says I can wear her shoon.  She doesna wear ’em i’ the hoose, ava.”

“I’ll gie ye a saxpence, Ailie,” offered Tammy.

The sordid bargain shocked no feeling of these tenement bairns nor marred their pleasure in the adventure.  Presently there was a tap-tap-tapping of crutches on the heavy gallery that fronted the Cunzie Neuk, and on the stairs that descended from it to the steep and curving row.  The lassie draped a fragment of an old plaid deftly over her thinly clad shoulders, climbed through the window, to the pediment of the classic tomb that blocked it, and dropped into the kirkyard.  To her surprise Bobby was there at her feet, frantically wagging his tail, and he raced her to the gate.  She caught him on the steps of the dining room, and held his wriggling little body fast until Tammy came up.