It was when Saunders came over from his house by the kirkyard that Ralph left his books and went down to find him.  Saunders was in the stable, occupying himself with the mysteries of Birsie’s straps and buckles, about which he was as particular as though he were driving a pair of bays every day.

“An’ this is the letter, an’ I’m to gie it to the same lass as I gied the last yin till?  I’ll do that, an’ thank ye kindly,” said Saunders, putting the letter into one pocket and Ralph’s shilling into the other; “no that I need onything but white silver kind o’ buckles friendship.  It’s worth your while, an’ its worth my while —­that’s the way I look at it.”

Ralph paused a moment.  He would have liked to ask what Meg said, and how Winsome looked, and many other things about Saunders’s last visit; but the fear of appearing ridiculous even to Saunders withheld him.

The grave-digger went on:  “It’s a strange thing—­love—­it levels a’.  Noo there’s me, that has had a wife an’ burriet her; I’m juist as keen aboot gettin’ anither as if I had never gotten the besom i’ the sma’ o’ my back.  Ye wad never get a besom in the sma’ o’ yer back?” he said inquiringly.

“No,” said Ralph, smiling in spite of himself.

“Na, of course no; ye havna been mairrit.  But bide a wee; she’s a fell active bit lass, that o’ yours, an’ I should say”—­here Saunders spoke with the air of a connoisseur—­“I wad say that she micht be verra handy wi’ the besom.”

“You must not speak in that way,” began Ralph, thinking of Winsome.  But, looking at the queer, puckered face of Saunders, he came to the conclusion that it was useless to endeavour to impress any of his own reverence upon him.  It was not worth the pains, especially as he was assuredly speaking after his kind.

“Na, of course no,” replied Saunders, with a kind of sympathy for youth and inexperience in his tone; “when yer young an’ gaun coortin’ ye dinna think o’ thae things.  But bide a wee till ye gann on the same errand the second time, and aiblins the third time—­I’ve seen the like, sir—­an’ a’ thae things comes intil yer reckoning, so so speak.”

“Really,” said Ralph, “I have not looked so far forward.”

Saunders breathed on his buckle and polished it with the tail of his coat, after which he rubbed it on his knee.  Then he held it up critically in a better light.  Still it did not please him, so he breathed on it once more.

“‘Deed, an’ wha could expect it?  It’s no in youth to think o’ thae things—­no till it’s ower late.  Noo, sir, I’ll tell ye, whan I was coortin’ my first, afore I gat her, I could hae etten [eaten] her, an’ the first week efter Maister Teends mairrit us, I juist danced I was that fond o’ her.  But in anither month, faith, I thocht that she wad hae etten me, an’ afore the year was oot I wussed she had.  Aye, aye, sir, it’s waur nor a lottery, mairriage—­it’s a great mystery.”

“But how is it, then, that you are so anxious to get married again?” asked Ralph, to whom these conversations with the Cuif were a means of lightening his mind of his own cares.