St. Mungo's ancient burying
ground to share Jessie's grave.

"It's nigh on sixty years sin'," said Bell apologetically, as she wiped
her streaming eyes with her apron; "but the thocht o' that time brings
the tears up yet."

III

ARCHIE

"Thus let me live, unseen, unknown,
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie."
(_Pope--"Ode to Solitude"_)

He was an unusually wretched semblance of a man. A tattered coat--some
one's cast-off overcoat--green, greasy, mud-stained, clung round his
shaking knees; trousers which might have been of any hue originally,
but were now "sad-colored," flapped about his thin legs and fringed his
ankles; shoes, slashed across the front for ease, revealed bare feet
beneath; an antique and dirty red woolen muffler swathed his neck
almost to the ears. Surmounting these woeful garments appeared a
yellow, wrinkled face surrounded by a straggling fringe of gray
whisker; gray locks strayed from an old red handkerchief tied round the
brows under a dilapidated wide-awake hat. To add to his woe-begone
aspect, the poor wretch was streaming with wet, for a Scottish mist had
been steadily falling all the morning.

Leaning on his stick, the man slowly shuffled up the central path
toward the porch in which I was sitting, striving to get the nearest
possible approach to an open-air pipe. Touching his sorry headgear, he
looked at me with mild eyes of faded blue, and smiled benignly as he
asked:

"Could I see himsel'?"

I had not long come to that part of the country, and I was not
thoroughly conversant with the terminology of the people, but it
flashed upon me what he meant.

"Did you wish to see the priest?" I rejoined.

"Aye," replied the old vagrant--for so I deemed him. The smile seemed
stereotyped, for it never faded. His face, when one regarded it
attentively, had a quite attractive pleasantness.

"I'm sorry to say he's out just now," I said. "But you may go round to
the back and get something to eat, if you wish."

It struck me as strange that he did not ask for money, but thanked me
profusely and politely, as he touched his wretched hat once more and
shuffled off toward the kitchen quarters.

He did not reappear for so long a time that I began to think it would
be prudent to investigate. Traveling gentry of such a class are not
always desirable visitors when the kitchen happens to be unoccupied for
the non