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 off them, and I wondered, in my bravery, that a man like me could be afraid of anything. Nobody was there but a touzy, ragged, halflins callant of thirteen, (for I speired his age,) with a desperate dirty face, and long carroty hair, tearing a speldrin with his teeth, which looked long and sharp enough, and throwing the skin and lugs into the fire.
We sat for mostly an hour together, cracking the best way we could in such a place; nor was anybody more likely to cast up. The night was now pitmirk; the wind soughed amid the head-stones and railings of the gentry, (for we must all die,) and the black corbies in the steeple-holes cackled and crawed in a fearsome manner. All at once we heard a lonesome sound; and my heart began to play pit-pat—my skin grew all rough, like a pouked chicken—and I felt as if I did not know what was the matter with me. It was only a false alarm, however, being the warning of the clock; and, in a minute or two thereafter, the bell struck ten. Oh, but it was a lonesome and dreary sound! Every chap went through my breast like the dunt of a fore-hammer.
Then up and spak the red-headed laddie:—“It’s no fair; anither should hae come by this time. I wad rin awa hame, only I am frighted to gang out my lane.—Do ye think the doup of that candle wad carry i’ my cap?”
“Na, na, lad; we maun bide here, as we are here now.—Leave me alane? Lord safe us! and the yett lockit, and the bethrel sleeping with the key in his breek pouches!—We canna win out now though we would,” answered I, trying to look brave, though half frightened out of my seven senses:—“Sit down, sit down; I’ve baith whisky and porter wi’ me. Hae, man, there’s a cawker to keep your heart warm; and set down that bottle,” quoth I, wiping the saw-dust affn’t with my hand, “to get a toast; I’se warrant it for Deacon Jaffrey’s best brown stout.”
The wind blew higher, and like a hurricane; the rain began to fall in perfect spouts; the auld kirk rumbled and rowed, and made a sad soughing; and the branches of the bourtree behind