While Malcolm gazed, trying to think what his master would have him think, the latter resumed.
“If he is risen—if the sun is up, Malcolm—then the morning and not the evening is the season for the place of tombs; the morning when the shadows are shortening and separating, not the evening when they are growing all into one. I used to love the churchyard best in the evening, when the past was more to me than the future; now I visit it almost every bright summer morning, and only occasionally at night.”
“But, sir, isna deith a dreidfu’ thing?” said Malcolm.
“That depends on whether a man regards it as his fate, or as the will of a perfect God. Its obscurity is its dread; but if God be light, then death itself must be full of splendour—a splendour probably too keen for our eyes to receive.”
“But there’s the deein’ itsel’: isna that fearsome? It’s that I wad be fleyed at.”
“I don’t see why it should be. It’s the want of a God that makes it dreadful, and you will be greatly to blame, Malcolm, if you haven’t found your God by the time you have to die.”
They were startled by a gruff voice near them. The speaker was hidden by a corner of the church.
“Ay, she’s weel happit (covered),” it said. “But a grave never luiks richt wantin’ a stane, an’ her auld cousin wad hear o’ nane bein’ laid ower her. I said it micht be set up at her heid, whaur she wad never fin’ the weicht o’ ’t; but na, na! nane o’ ’t for her! She’s ane ’at maun tak her ain gait, say the ither thing wha likes.”
It was Watty Witherspail who spoke—a thin shaving of a man, with a deep, harsh, indeed startling voice.
“An’ what ailed her at a stane?” returned the voice of Jonathan Auldbuird, the sexton. “—Nae doobt it wad be the expense?”