kirk on its windy height the scanty
funerals wended their way. For three weeks they say that in the
kirkyard, from dawn to dusk, there was always a grave uncovered or a
funeral in sight. There was no burial service in the kirkyard save the
rattle of the clods; for now the minister had set the carpenters to
work and coffins were being made. But the minister had prayer in all the
houses ere the dead was lifted.

Then he went off to lay hot stones to the feet of another, and to get a
nurse for yet another. For twenty days he never slept and seldom ate,
till the plague was stayed.

The last case was on the 27th of September. Then Abraham Ligartwood
himself was stricken in one of the village hovels, and fell forward
across a sick man's bed. They carried him to the manse of Dour, and wept
as they went. The next day all the men that were alive in the parish of
Dour stood about the minister's grave in the kirkyard on the hill. There
was none there that could pray. But as they were about to separate, some
one, it was never known who, raised the tune of the first Psalm. And the
wind wafted to the weeping wives in the cottages of the stricken parish
of Dour the sound of the hoarse and broken singing of men. In three
weeks the minister had brought the evil parish of Dour into the presence
of God.

And these were the words of their singing, while the gravediggers stood
with the red earth ready on their spades, but before a clod fell on the
minister's grave:--

"That man hath perfect blessedness
Who walketh not astray
In counsel of ungodly men,
Nor stands in sinners' way,
Nor sitteth in the scorner's chair;
But placeth his delight
Upon God's law, and meditates
On his law day and night."

The new minister who succeeded had an easy time and a willing people.
But he can never be to them what Abraham Ligartwood was. They graved on
his tomb, and that with good cause, the words, "Here lyes a Man who
never feared the face of Man."

_The lovers are whispering under thy shade,
Grey Tower of Dalmeny!
I leave them and wander alone in the glade
Beneath thee, Dalmeny.
Their thoughts are of all the bright years coming on,
But mine are of days and of dreams that are gone;
They see the fair flowers Spring has thrown on the grass,
And the clouds in the blue light their eyes as they pass;
But my feet are deep dawn in a drift of dead leaves,
And I hear what they hear not--a lone