pon
the transitory nature of all things. Besides, I liked to watch the
mourners' daylit faces and then think of Jeremy's twelve hours later,
seen perhaps by the light of a late-rising, cloudy, out-worn moon!

"Good fortune such as this (the timely burial of Elder Rae, that is) we
could not always depend upon. But as far as possible, of course, we
arranged our business transactions so that they fell due on the day of
a funeral, either at Over Breckonton or Breckonside. Bewick was of no
use to us--the graveyard there having the fatal fault of being placed
under the windows of the manse, and the minister being a bachelor, who
never cared whether he went to bed at all or not, keeping his light
burning till three of the morning. Such men have no right to be
ministers. Still, for the time being, the other two parishes served us
very well.

"I saw, however, that a change was becoming necessary, indeed
imperative. Also, thanks to a certain drover of the name of Lang
Hutchins, I had the money. It was most providential (I shall always so
regard it) that at this very time the place and policies of Deep Moat
Grange came into the market.

"Lang Hutchins was a pure windfall--a catch of Jeremy's. I had nothing
to do with that. One night Jeremy walked into the weaving-room with a
great leathern pocket-book.

"'Where did you get that?' I asked. I was, I remember, at the loom,
and the pattern being an interesting one, the time had passed without
my regarding its flight. It was, as a matter of fact, past one of the
morning.

"'Lang Hutchins, the Bewick drover, gied it to me,' said Jeremy Orrin,
'and as there were nae funerals in Breckonside, and that minister man
at Bewick willna put his candle oot, I had e'en to make Lang Hutchins
up a bonnie bed in the gairden at the Grange o' the Moat!'

"I rose instantly to my feet. This was indeed terrible. I had a
vision (which I have often seen in reality since) of Jeremy scratching
the earth with his fingers, and creeping about on the black soil like
some unclean beast, leaving marks easy to be read by the first
passer-by. We should be discovered. Jeremy would be tracked, and I
saw in appalling perspective two gibbets, and on one the murderer, and
on the other his master--the same Miser Hobby who had thought to make a
lady of his daughter; now Howard Stennis, Esquire--both raised to the
dignity of the hempen cravat.

"For a moment I did not know what to do--yes, even I, to