“What’ll ye do, Jamie, when the meenister kens aboot Bobby, an’ ca’s ye up afore kirk sessions for brakin’ the rule?”

“We wullna cross the brig till we come to the burn, woman,” he invariably answered, with assumed unconcern.  Well he knew that the bridge might be down and the stream in flood when he came to it.  But Mr. Traill was a member of Greyfriars auld kirk, too, and a companion in guilt, and Mr. Brown relied not a little on the landlord’s fertile mind and daring tongue.  And he relied on useful, well-behaving Bobby to plead his own cause.

“There’s nae denyin’ the doggie is takin’ in ’is ways.  He’s had twa gude hames fair thrown at ’is heid, but the sperity bit keeps to ‘is ain mind.  An’ syne he’s usefu’, an’ hauds ’is gab by the ordinar’.”  He often reinforced his inclination with some such argument.

With all their caution, discovery was always imminent.  The kirkyard was long and narrow and on rising levels, and it was cut almost across by the low mass of the two kirks, so that many things might be going on at one end that could not be seen from the other.  On this Saturday noon, when the Heriot boys were let out for the half-holiday, Mr. Brown kept an eye on them until those who lived outside had dispersed.  When Mistress Jeanie tucked her knitting-needles in her belt, and went up to the lodge to put the dinner over the fire, the caretaker went down toward Candlemakers Row to trim the grass about the martyrs’ monument.  Bobby dutifully trotted at his heels.  Almost immediately a half-dozen laddies, led by Geordie Ross and Sandy McGregor, scaled the wall from Heriot’s grounds and stepped down into the kirkyard, that lay piled within nearly to the top.  They had a perfectly legitimate errand there, but no mission is to be approached directly by romantic boyhood.

“Hist!” was the warning, and the innocent invaders, feeling delightfully lawless, stole over and stormed the marble castle, where “Bluidy” McKenzie slept uneasily against judgment day.  Light-hearted lads can do daring deeds on a sunny day that would freeze their blood on a dark and stormy night.  So now Geordie climbed nonchalantly to a seat over the old persecutor, crossed his stout, bare legs, filled an imaginary pipe, and rattled the three farthings in his pocket.

“I’m ‘Jinglin’ Geordie’ Heriot,” he announced.

“I’ll show ye hoo a prood goldsmith ance smoked wi’ a’.”  Then, jauntily:  “Sandy, gie a crack to ‘Bluidy’ McKenzie’s door an’ daur the auld hornie to come oot.”

The deed was done amid breathless apprehensions, but nothing disturbed the silence of the May noon except the lark that sprang at their feet and soared singing into the blue.  It was Sandy who presently whistled like a blackbird to attract the attention of Bobby.