Very black and sombre looked the silent company of mourners who now drew together about the open grave—­a fearsome gash on the white spread of the new-fallen snow.  There was no religious service at the minister’s grave save that of the deepest silence.  Ranked round the coffin, which lay on black bars over the grave-mouth, stood the elders, but no one of them ventured to take the posts of honour at the head and the foot.  The minister had left not one of his blood with a right to these positions.  He was the last Anderson of Deeside.

“Preserve us! wha’s yon they’re pittin’ at the fit o’ the grave?  Wha can it be ava?” was whispered here and there back in the crowd.  “It’s Jean Grier’s boy, I declare—­him that the minister took oot o’ the puirhoose, and schuled and colleged baith.  Weel, that cowes a’!  Saw ye ever the like o’ that?”

It was to Rob Adair that this good and worthy thought had come.  In him more than in any of his fellow-elders the dead man’s spirit lived.  He had sat under him all his life, and was sappy with his teaching.  Some would have murmured had they had time to complain, but no one ventured to say nay to Rob Adair as he pushed the modest, clear-faced youth into the vacant place.

Still the space at the head of the grave was vacant, and for a long moment the ceremony halted as if waiting for a manifestation.  With a swift, sudden startle the coil of black cord, always reserved for the chief mourner, slipped off the coffin-lid and fell heavily into the grave.

“He’s there afore his faither,” said Saunders M’Quhirr.

So sudden and unexpected was the movement, that, though the fall of the cord was the simplest thing in the world, a visible quiver passed through the bowed ranks of the bearers.  “It was his ain boy Wattie come to lay his faither’s heid i’ the grave!” cried Daft Jess, the parish “natural,” in a loud sudden voice from the “thruch” stone near the kirkyaird wall where she stood at gaze.

And there were many there who did not think it impossible.

As the mourners “skailed” slowly away from the kirkyaird in twos and threes, there was wonderment as to who should have the property, for which the late laird and minister had cared so little.  There were very various opinions; but one thing was quite universally admitted, that there would be no such easy terms in the matter of rent and arrears as there had been in the time of “him that’s awa’.”  The snow swept down with a biting swirl as the groups scattered and the mourners vanished from each other’s sight, diving singly into the eddying drifts as into a great tent of many flapping folds.  Grave and quiet is the Scottish funeral, with a kind of simple manfulness as of men in the presence of the King of Terrors, but yet possessing that within them which enables every man of them to await without unworthy fear the Messenger who comes but once.  On the whole, not so sad as many things that are called mirthful.