“Ay, Jamie,” cried the Laird, who had been an unseen listener, “ay, ay, Jamie, the truth aye tells best.”
In course of time Jamie was waited on to pay the debt of Nature, and, while standing round his death-bed, one said to another—
“I wonder if he has any sense of another world or a future reckoning?”
“Oh, no, he is a fool!” replied the other. “What can he know of such things?”
Jamie opened his eyes, and looking this man in the face said, “I never heard that God seeks where He did not give.”
After this he lay quiet for a short time, when he again opened his eyes, and looking up into the face of one standing near, whom he respected, he said in a firm tone, “I’m of the gentle persuasion, dinna bury me like a beast!”
His remains lie in the churchyard of Longside, in close proximity to the grave of the Rev. John Skinner, the author of “Tullochgorum”; and in kindly recognition of the humanity in poor Jamie, a handsome polished granite obelisk has been erected as near as is known to his grave, which bears the following inscription:—
Erected
in 1861
to indicate the grave
of
JAMIE FLEEMAN,
in answer to his prayer,
“Dinna Bury Me like a Beast.”