Edinburgh, 1858: a shepherd's dog follows his master's coffin to Greyfriars kirkyard and refuses to leave the grave — for fourteen years, through the dog-licence laws, the Lord Provost, and the whole of the Old Town. Atkinson was an Indiana teacher and journalist who wrote for the Chicago Tribune under a pen name; she came to Edinburgh, and made the tenements and the kirkyard as much the subject as the terrier.