Two or three days after Maister Wiggie, the minister, had gone through the ceremony of tying us together, my sign was nailed up, painted in black letters on a blue ground, with a picture of a jacket on one side and a pair of shears on the other; and I hung up a wheen ready-made waistcoats, caps, and Kilmarnock cowls in the window.  Business in fact, flowed in upon us in a perfect torrent.

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.