g us a fright. Isn't that true, Isaac?"

"Yes, I'm joking--and what for no?--but they might have been, for
onything ye wad hae hindered them to the contrair, I'm thinking. Na, na,
ye maunna lock the door; that's no fair play."

When the door was put ajee, and the furm set fornent the fire, I gave
Isaac a dram to keep his heart up on such a cold stormy night. 'Od, but
he was a droll fellow, Isaac. He sung and leuch as if he had been
boozing in Luckie Thamson's, with some of his drucken cronies. Feint a
hair cared he about auld kirks, or kirkyards, or vouts, or
through-stanes, or dead folk in their winding-sheets, with the wet grass
growing over them, and at last I began to brighten up a wee myself; so
when he had gone over a good few funny stories, I said to him, quoth I,
"Mony folk, I daresay, mak mair noise about their sitting up in a
kirkyard than it's a' worth. There's naething here to harm us?"

"I beg to differ wi' ye there," answered Isaac, taking out his horn mull
from his coat pouch, and tapping on the lid in a queer style--"I could
gie anither version of that story. Did ye no ken of three young
doctors--Eirish students--alang with some resurrectioners, as waff and
wile as themsells, firing shottie for shottie with the guard at
Kirkmabreck, and lodging three slugs in ane of their backs, forbye firing
a ramrod through anither ane's hat?"

This was a wee alarming--"No," quoth I; "no, Isaac, man; I never heard of
it."

"But, let alane resurrectioners, do you no think there is sic a thing as
ghaists? Guide ye, man, my grannie could hae telled as muckle about them
as would have filled a minister's sermons from June to January."

"Kay--kay--that's all buff," I said. "Are there nae cutty-stool
businesses--are there nae marriages going on just now, Isaac?" for I was
keen to change the subject.

"Ye may kay--kay, as ye like, though; I can just tell ye this:--Ye'll
mind auld Armstrong with the leather breeks, and the brown three-story
wig--him that was the grave-digger? Weel, he saw a ghaist, wi' his
leeving een--aye, and what's better, in this very kirkyard too. It was a
cauld spring morning, and daylight just coming in when he came to the
yett yonder, thinking to meet his man, paidling Jock--but Jock had
sleepit in, and wasna there. Weel, to the wast corner ower yonder he
gaed, and throwing his coat ower a headstane, and his hat on the tap o't,
he dug away with his spade, casting out the mools, and th