out, Tammas, without taking any one into
his confidence, determined to treat Chirsty as dead, and celebrate her
decease in a "lyke wake"--a last wake. These wakes were very general
in Thrums in the old days, though they had ceased to be common by the
date of Little Rathie's death. For three days before the burial the
friends and neighbours of the mourners were invited into the house to
partake of food and drink by the side of the corpse. The dead lay on
chairs covered with a white sheet. Dirges were sung, and the deceased
was extolled, but when night came the lights were extinguished, and the
corpse was left alone. On the morning of the funeral tables were
spread with a white cloth outside the house, and food and drink were
placed upon them. No neighbour could pass the tables without paying
his respects to the dead; and even when the house was in a busy, narrow
thoroughfare, this part of the ceremony was never omitted. Tammas did
not give Chirsty a wake inside the house; but one Friday morning--it
was market-day, and the square was consequently full--it went through
the town that the tables were spread before his door. Young and old
collected, wandering round the house, and Tammas stood at the tables in
his blacks inviting every one to eat and drink. He was pressed to tell
what it meant; but nothing could be got from him except that his wife
was dead. At times he pressed his hands to his heart, and then he
would make wry faces, trying hard to cry. Chirsty watched from a
window across the street, until she perhaps began to fear that she
really was dead. Unable to stand it any longer, she rushed out into
her husband's arms, and shortly afterwards she could have been seen
dismantling the tables.

"She's gone this fower year," Tammas said, when he had finished his
story, "but up to the end I had no more trouble wi' Chirsty. No, I had
the knack o' her."

"I've heard tell, though," said the sceptical Craigiebuckle, "as
Chirsty only cam back to ye because she cudna bear to see the fowk
makkin' sae free wi' the whisky."

"I mind hoo she bottled it up at ance, and drove the laddies awa',"
said Bowie, "an' I hae seen her after that, Tammas, giein' ye up yer
fut an' you no sayin' a word."

"Ou, ay," said the wife-tamer, in the tone of a man who could afford to
be generous in trifles, "women maun talk, an' a man hasna aye time to
conterdick them, but frae that day I had the knack o' Chirsty."

"Donal Elshioner's