“Amna I tellin’ ye what it was? Deil a bit o’ the expense cam intill the calcalation! The auld maiden’s nane sae close as fowk ’at disna ken her wad mak her oot. I ken her weel. She wadna hae a stane laid upon her as gien she wanted to haud her doon, puir thing! She said, says she, ‘The yerd’s eneuch upo’ the tap o’ her, wantin’ that!’”
“It micht be some sair, she wad be thinkin’ doobtless, for sic a waik worn cratur to lift whan the trump was blawn,” said the sexton, with the feeble laugh of one who doubts the reception of his wit.
“Weel, I div whiles think,” responded Watty,—but it was impossible from his tone to tell whether or not he spoke in earnest,—“’at maybe my boxies is a wheen ower weel made for the use they’re pitten till. They sudna be that ill to rive—gien a’ be true ’at the minister says. Ye see, we dinna ken whan that day may come, an’ there may na be time for the wat an’ the worm to ca (drive) the boords apairt.”
“Hoots, man! it’s no your lang nails nor yet yer heidit screws ’ll haud doon the redeemt, gien the jeedgement war the morn’s mornin’,” said the sexton; “an’ for the lave, they wad be glaid eneuch to bide whaur they are; but they’ll a’ be howkit oot,—fear na ye that.”
“The Lord grant a blessed uprisin’ to you an’ me, Jonathan, at that day!” said Watty, in the tone of one who felt himself uttering a more than ordinarily religious sentiment; and on the word followed the sound of their retreating footsteps.
“How closely together may come the solemn and the grotesque! the ludicrous and the majestic!” said the schoolmaster. “Here, to us lingering in awe about the doors beyond which lie the gulfs of the unknown—to our very side come the wright and the grave-digger with their talk of the strength of coffins and the judgment of the living God!”
“I hae whiles thoucht mysel’, sir,” said Malcolm, “it was gey strange-like to hae a wuman o’ the mak o’ Mistress Catanach sittin’ at the receipt o’ bairns, like the gate-keeper o’ the ither warl’, wi’ the hasp o’ ’t in her han’: it doesna promise ower weel for them ’at she lats in. An’ noo ye hae pitten ’t intill my heid that there’s Watty Witherspail an’ Jonathan Auldbuird for the porters to open an’ lat a’ that’s left o’ ’s oot again! Think o’ sic like haein’ sic a han’ in sic solemn maitters!”
“Indeed some of us have strange porters,” said Mr Graham, with a smile, “both to open to us and to close behind us! yet even in them lies the human nature, which, itself the embodiment of the unknown, wanders out through the gates of mystery, to wander back, it may be, in a manner not altogether unlike that by which it came.”
In contemplative moods, the schoolmaster spoke in a calm and loftily sustained style of book-English—quite another language from that he used when he sought to rouse the consciences of his pupils, and strangely contrasted with that in which Malcolm kept up his side of the dialogue.
“I houp, sir,” said the latter, “it’ll be nae sort o’ a celestial Mistress Catanach ’at’ll be waitin’ for me o’ the ither side; nor yet for my puir daddy, wha cud ill bide bein’ wamled aboot upo’ her knee.”