"A good haul," at last one man remarked; "a young chap—in fine condition."
"A heavy load for the little mare," said he who held the reins; "fifteen stone if he's a pound. Not an easy one to tackle afore he died for want o' breath."
Packman Jim lurched against the speaker ere the words were well out of his mouth. With an oath the man shoved him back, and Jim stiffly leaned against the seat in as nearly the attitude of the corpse, to whom he was acting as understudy, as he was able to assume. They had got a little beyond Kalefoot, and the flooded river was sending its moaning voice above the sough of the wind and the drip of the rain when one of the men spoke again to his companion. His voice was husky, and he spoke in a low tone as though he feared some eavesdropper.
"Before God, man," he said, "I can feel the body moving." The other, in his voice all the horror of a dread he had been trying to hide, answered in a shrill scream, "It's warm, I tell ye!—the corpse is warm!"
Then came Dandy Jim's opportunity. His face was white enough in the uncertain glimmer of the gig's lamps when he thrust his head out of the sack and looked first at one and then at another of his companions. In a deep and hollow voice he spoke:
"If you had been where I hae been, your body would burn too," said he.
A screech and a roar were, according to Dandy Jim, the result of his remark, and on either side of the gig a man cast himself out into the darkness, the rain, and the mud, and ran—ran—in heedless terror for an unknown sanctuary. What happened to the pair no subsequent historian has recorded, but when Dandy Jim shortly afterwards wed an apple-cheeked cook and took up his abode in a rose-covered cottage near Hexham, he no longer trudged the Border roads with a pack on his back, but drove a useful gig, drawn by a very willing, strong-shouldered, chestnut mare.
THE VAMPIRES OF BERWICK AND MELROSE
At Berwick-on-Tweed a man had died. In life he was a man of much weight, one of the wealthiest of the freemen. He did his good deeds with pomp. The devoutness of his religion was visible for every man to see, and his look of sanctity as he went to pray was surely an example and a reproach to every rough mariner whose boat was moored in the harbour beneath the walls.
But when death came to him, an evil thing befell the reputation of that holy man of means.