the red morocco
collar about its neck, bruised as flat as a flounder, and as dead as a
mawk!!!

The Deacon had sat down upon it without thinking; and the poor animal,
that our neighbours' bairns used to play with, and be so fond of, was
crushed out of life without a cheep. The thing, doubtless, was not
intended, but it gave Nanse and me a very sore heart.

CHAPTER TEN--RESURRECTION MEN

About this time there arose a great sough and surmise, that some loons
were playing false with the kirkyard, howking up the bodies from their
damp graves, and harling them away to the College. Words cannot describe
the fear, and the dool, and the misery it caused. All flocked to the
kirk-yett; and the friends of the newly buried stood by the mools, which
were yet dark, and the brown newly cast divots, that had not yet taken
root, looking, with mournful faces, to descry any tokens of sinking in.

I'll never forget it. I was standing by when three young lads took
shools, and, lifting up the truff, proceeded to houk down to the coffin,
wherein they had laid the grey hairs of their mother. They looked wild
and bewildered like, and the glance of their een was like that of folk
out of a mad-house; and none dared in the world to have spoken to them.
They did not even speak to one another; but wrought on with a great
hurry, till the spades struck on the coffin lid--which was broken. The
dead-clothes were there huddled together in a nook, but the dead was
gone. I took hold of Willie Walker's arm, and looked down. There was a
cold sweat all over me;--losh me! but I was terribly frighted and eerie.
Three more graves were opened, and all just alike; save and except that
of a wee unchristened wean, which was off bodily, coffin and all.

There was a burst of righteous indignation throughout the parish; nor
without reason. Tell me that doctors and graduates must have the dead;
but tell it not to Mansie Wauch, that our hearts must be trampled in the
mire of scorn, and our best feelings laughed at, in order that a bruise
may be properly plastered up, or a sore head cured. Verily, the remedy
is worse than the disease.

But what remead? It was to watch in the session-house, with loaded guns,
night about, three at a time. I never liked to go into the kirkyard
after darkening, let-a-be to sit there through a long winter night, windy
and rainy it may be, with none but the dead around us. Save us! it was
an unco thought, and garred a