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 amid the headstones 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. Oh, but it was lonesome and dreary; and in about an hour the laddie wanted to rin awa hame; but, trying to look brave, though half-frightened out of my seven senses, I said, "Sit down, sit down; I've baith whiskey and porter wi' me. Hae, man, there's a cawker to keep your heart warm; and set down that bottle of Deacon Jaffrey's best brown stout to get a toast."
The wind blew like a hurricane; the rain began to fall in perfect spouts. Just in the heart of the brattle the grating of the yett turning on its rusty hinges was but too plainly heard.
"The're coming; cock the piece, ye sumph!" cried the laddie, while his red hair rose, from his pow like feathers. "I hear them tramping on the gravel," and he turned the key in the lock and brizzed his back against the door like mad, shouting out, "For the Lord's sake, prime the gun, or our throats will be cut before you can cry Jack Robinson."
I did the best I could, but the gun waggled to and fro like a cock's tail on a rainy day. I trust I was resigned to die, but od' it was a frightful thing to be out of one's bed to be murdered in an old session-house at the dead hour of the night by devils incarnate of ressurrection men with blacked faces, pistols, big sticks, and other deadly weapons.