would keep a small family in loaves for a week, requiring air and
exercise, after sentencing vagabonds to be first hanged, and then their
clothes given to Jock Heich, and their bodies to Doctor Monro.

Before going out to inspect the wonderfuls, we had taken the natural
precaution to tell the goodman of the inn, that we would be back to take
a smack of something from him, at such and such an hour; and, having had
our bellyful of the Chapel,--and the Prentice's Pillar,--and the
vaults,--and the cleipy auld wife with the lang stick,--we found that we
had still half an hour to spare; so took a stroll into the Kirkyard, to
see if we could find out any of the martyrs had been buried
there-away-abouts.

We saw a good few head-stones, you may make no doubt, both ancient and
modern; but nothing out of the course of nature; so, the day being
pleasant, Mr Farrell and me sat down on a throughstane, below an old
hawthorn, and commenced chatting on the Pentland Hills--the river
Esk--Penicuik--Glencorse--and all the rest of the beautiful country
within sight. A mooly auld skull was lying among the grass, and Peter,
as he spoke, was aye stirring it about with his stick.

"I never touched a dead man's bones in my life," said I to Peter, "nor
would I for a sixpence. Who might that have belonged to, now, I wonder?
Maybe to a baker or a tailor, in his day and generation, like you and I,
Peter; or maybe to ane of the great Sinclairs with their coats-of-mail,
that the auld wife was cracking so crousely about?"

"Deil may care," said Peter; "but are you really frighted to touch a
skull, Mansie? You would make a bad doctor, I'm doubting, then; to say
nothing of a resurrection man."

"Doctor! I would not be a doctor for all the gold and silver on the
walls of Solomon's Temple--"

"Yet you would think the young doctors suck in their trade with their
mother's milk, and could cut off one another's heads as fast as look at
you.--Speaking of skulls," added Peter, "I mind when my father lived in
the under-flat of the three-storey house at the top of Dalkeith Street,
that the Misses Skinflints occupied the middle story, and Doctor
Chickenweed had the one above, with the garrets, in which was the
laboratory.

"Weel, ye observe, in getting to the shop, it was not necessary to knock
at the Doctor's door, but just proceed up the narrow wooden stairs,
facing the top of which was the shop-door, which, for light to the
customer's feet, was gener