t down
with a biting swirl as the groups scattered and the mourners vanished
from each other's sight, diving singly into the eddying drifts as into a
great tent of many flapping folds. Grave and quiet is the Scottish
funeral, with a kind of simple manfulness as of men in the presence of
the King of Terrors, but yet possessing that within them which enables
every man of them to await without unworthy fear the Messenger who comes
but once. On the whole, not so sad as many things that are called
mirthful.

So the last Anderson of Deeside, and the best of all their ancient line,
was gathered to his fathers in an equal sleep that snowy January
morning. There were two inches of snow in the grave when they laid the
coffin in. As Saunders said, "Afore auld Elec could get him happit, his
Maister had hidden him like Moses in a windin'-sheet o' His ain." In the
morning, when Elec went hirpling into the kirkyaird, he found at the
grave-head a bare place which the snow had not covered. Then some
remembered that, hurrying by in the rapidly darkening gloaming of the
night after the funeral, they had seen some one standing immovable by
the minister's grave in the thickly drifting snow. They had wondered why
he should stand there on such a bitter night.

There were those who said that it was just the lad Archibald Grier, gone
to stand a while by his benefactor's grave.

But Daft Jess was of another opinion.

II

A SCOTTISH SABBATH DAY

"_On this day
Men consecrate their souls,
As did their fathers_."

* * * * *

_And ah! the sacred morns that crowned the week--
The path betwixt the mountains and the sea,
The Sannox water and the wooden bridge,
The little church, the narrow seats--and we
That through the open window saw the ridge
Of Fergus, and the peak
Of utmost Cior Mohr--nor held it wrong,
When vext with platitude and stirless air,
To watch the mist-wreaths clothe the rock-scarps bare
And in the pauses hear the blackbird's song_.

"_Memory Harvest_."

I. THE BUIK

Walter Carmichael often says in these latter days that his life owed
much of its bent to his first days of the week at Drumquhat.

The Sabbath morning broke over the farm like a benediction. It was a
time of great stillness and exceeding peace. It was, indeed, generally
believed in the parish that Mrs. M'Quhirr had trained her cocks to crow
in a fittingly subdued way upo