on even a little dog's brain.  Bobby had heard it many times, and
he never failed to yelp a sharp protest at the outrage to his
ears; but, as the gunshot was always followed by a certain happy
event, it started in his active little mind a train of pleasant
associations. 

In Bobby's day of youth, and that was in 1858, when Queen
Victoria was a happy wife and mother, with all her bairns about
her knees in Windsor or Balmoral, the Grassmarket of Edinburgh
was still a bit of the Middle Ages, as picturesquely decaying and
Gothic as German Nuremberg.  Beside the classic corn exchange, it
had no modern buildings.  North and south, along its greatest
length, the sunken quadrangle was faced by tall, old,
timber-fronted houses of stone, plastered like swallows' nests to
the rocky slopes behind them. 

Across the eastern end, where the valley suddenly narrowed to the
ravine-like street of the Cowgate, the market was spanned by the
lofty, crowded arches of George IV Bridge.  This high-hung,
viaduct thoroughfare, that carried a double line of buildings