tenance at once assumed that stern and expressive cast
which characterized her intervals of intelligence. She drew up her head
and body, shook her head in a manner that showed at least impatience,
if not scorn of his counsel, and waved her hand slightly, but with a
gesture so expressive, as to indicate to all who witnessed it a marked
and disdainful rejection of the ghostly consolation proffered to her.
The minister stepped back as if repulsed, and, by lifting gently and
dropping his hand, seemed to show at once wonder, sorrow, and compassion
for her dreadful state of mind. The rest of the company sympathized, and
a stifled whisper went through them, indicating how much her desperate
and determined manner impressed them with awe, and even horror.

In the meantime, the funeral company was completed, by the arrival of
one or two persons who had been expected from Fairport. The wine
and spirits again circulated, and the dumb show of greeting was anew
interchanged. The grandame a second time took a glass in her hand, drank
its contents, and exclaimed, with a sort of laugh,--"Ha! ha! I hae tasted
wine twice in ae day--Whan did I that before, think ye, cummers?--Never
since"--and the transient glow vanishing from her countenance, she set
the glass down, and sunk upon the settle from whence she had risen to
snatch at it.

As the general amazement subsided, Mr. Oldbuck, whose heart bled to
witness what he considered as the errings of the enfeebled intellect
struggling with the torpid chill of age and of sorrow, observed to the
clergyman that it was time to proceed with the ceremony. The father was
incapable of giving directions, but the nearest relation of the family
made a sign to the carpenter, who in such cases goes through the duty of
the undertaker, to proceed in his office. The creak of the screw-nails
presently announced that the lid of the last mansion of mortality was in
the act of being secured above its tenant. The last act which separates
us for ever, even from the mortal relies of the person we assemble to
mourn, has usually its effect upon the most indifferent, selfish, and
hard-hearted. With a spirit of contradiction, which we may be pardoned
for esteeming narrow-minded, the fathers of the Scottish kirk rejected,
even on this most solemn occasion, the form of an address to the
Divinity, lest they should be thought to give countenance to the rituals
of Rome or of England. With much better and more liberal judgment