“Aye, aye,” said Jim to himself, “it was a six-foot coffin when they planted Jock the day.  Him an’ me was much of an age and of a height, poor lad; and here he is now, off to Edinburgh to be made mincemeat of.”

But even as he thought, he acted.  The mare threw up an inquiring head as she felt a light step in the gig, and a sudden lightening of her load.  But the wind wailed round the church and the rain beat down, dimming the glass in the flickering lantern, and every now and then Jim could hear a pick striking against a stone or a heavy thud as of a spadeful of damp earth being beaten down.  Out of the gig came the sack, and out of the sack speedily came the packman’s erstwhile acquaintance, Jock.  A gap in the hedge across the road conveniently accommodated Jock’s unresisting body, over he went into the next field, and once again the mare started as Dandy Jim sprang into the gig with one bound and quickly struggled into the empty sack.  He was only just in time.  A parting clatter of pickaxe and thud of spade, a swing of the lantern, that sent a yellow light athwart some grey old headstones, rough voices and hasty steps, and two men appeared, pushed their implements into the back of the gig, released the mare from her nose-bag, clambered in, one on either side of the upright sack, and drove off at a quick trot.

For some time they proceeded in silence.

“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.