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 plaistered 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 all my flesh creep; but the cause was good--my
corruption was raised--and I was determined not to be dauntened.

I counted and counted, but the dread day at length came and I was
summoned. All the live-long afternoon, when ca'ing the needle upon the
board, I tried to whistle Jenny Nettles, Neil Gow, and other funny tunes,
and whiles crooned to myself between hands; but my consternation was
visible, and all would not do.

It was in November; and the cold glimmering sun sank behind the
Pentlands. The trees had been shorn of their frail leaves, and the misty
night was closing fast in upon the dull and short day; but the candles
glittered at the shop windows, and leery-light-the-lamps was brushing
about with his ladder in his oxter, and bleezing flamboy sparking out
behind him. I felt a kind of qualm of faintness and down-sinking 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. A neighbour (Andrew Goldie, the pensioner) lent me
his piece, and loaded it to me. He took tent that it was only half-cock,
and I wrapped a napkin round the dog-head, for it was raining. 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 furm was set before the session-house fire, which bleezed brightly, nor
had I any thought that such an unearthly place could have been made to
look half so comfortable either by coal or candle; so my spirits rose up
as if a weight had been taken o