n us; and though the means of both parties
were small, we were young, and able and willing to help one another.
Nanse and me laid our heads together towards the taking a bit house in
the fore-street of Dalkeith, and at our leisure bought the plenishing.

Two or three days after Maister Wiggie, the minister, had gone through
the ceremony of tying us together, my sign was nailed up, painted in
black letters on a blue ground, with a picture of a jacket on one side
and a pair of shears on the other; and I hung up a wheen ready-made
waistcoats, caps, and Kilmarnock cowls in the window. Business in fact,
flowed in upon us in a perfect torrent.

Both Nanse and I found ourselves so proud of our new situation that we
slipped out in the dark and had a prime look with a lantern at the sign,
which was the prettiest ye ever saw, although some sandblind creatures
had taken the neatly painted jacket for a goose.

_II.--The Resurrection Men_

A year or two after the birth and christening of wee Benjie, my son, I
was cheated by a swindling black-aviced Englishman out of some weeks'
lodgings and keep, and a pair of new velveteen knee-breeches.

Then there arose a great surmise that some loons were playing false with
the kirkyard; and, on investigation, it was found that four graves had
been opened, and the bodies harled away to the college. Words cannot
describe the fear, the dool, and the misery it caused, and the righteous
indignation that burst through the parish.

But what remead? It was to watch in the session-house with loaded guns,
night about, three at a time. It was in November when my turn came. I
never liked to go into the kirkyard after darkening, let-a-be sit
through a long winter night with none but the dead around us. I felt a
kind of qualm of faintness and downsinking about my heart and stomach,
to the dispelling of which I took a thimbleful of spirits, and, tying my
red comforter about my neck, I marched briskly to the session-house.

Andrew Goldie, the pensioner, lent me his piece and loaded it to me. Not
being well acquaint with guns, I kept the muzzle aye away from me, as it
is every man's duty not to throw his precious life into jeopardy. A
bench was set before the sessions-house fire, which bleezed brightly. My
spirits rose, and I wondered, in my bravery, that a man like me should
be afraid of anything. Nobody was there but a towzy, carroty-haired
callant.

The night was now pitmirk. The wind soughed ami