on the breeze through the sinuous
labyrinths: of the mountains in company with the Catholic chaunts and
anthems which attended the body of Captain le Harnois. Never man had
merrier funeral. Singing being over, then commenced every possible
variety of ingenious mimicry oft every possible sound known to the
earth beneath or the waters under the earth--howling, braying,
bleating, lowing, neighing, whinnying, hooting, barking, catterwauling;
until at length a grave and well-dressed man stepped forward to
expostulate with the insurgents. In this person Bertram immediately
recognised the manager of the theatre, and was thus at once able to
account for the motley-colored dresses which he had seen and the plumes
of feathers. Him however the seceders refused to hear: 'what! listen to
a harlequin whom every man may see for sixpence?' And the insurrection
seemed likely to prosper. The conductors of the funeral however, who
had advanced far a-head with the van of the procession, now returned
and proposed an accommodation with the malcontents--by virtue of which
they should be allowed triple allowance of wine and spirits at the
place of their destination in lieu of all demands on the road, which on
certain considerations it was dangerous to concede. Even this
proposition however would not perhaps have been accepted by the musical
insurgents, but for a sudden alarm which occurred at this moment: a
sailor, who had been reconnoitring from the neighbouring heights,
hastily ran down with the intelligence that the excise officers were
approaching. Under this pressure of common danger the treaty was
immediately concluded: all resumed their places in the procession; and
the funeral anthems began to peal through the winding valleys again.
Bertram indeed, who heard some persons in his neighbourhood still
uttering snatches of ribaldry, anticipated some serious collision of
the sacred music with the profane just as the officers were passing.
But on the contrary the vilest of the ribalds passed from their
ale-house songs into the choral music of the funeral service with as
much ease as a musician modulates out of one key into another.

In a few minutes a halt, which ran through the whole long line of the
procession, announced by a kind of sympathy what was taking place in
it's head. Some stop and cross-questioning it had to parry from a small
party of excise-officers; but that was soon over; the excisemen rode
slowly past them on their sorry ja