o had so long struggled with an internal sense
of concealed guilt, joined to all the distresses of age and poverty.

"God grant that she be gane to a better place!" said Edie, as he looked
on the lifeless body; "but oh! there was something lying hard and heavy
at her heart. I have seen mony a ane dee, baith in the field o' battle,
and a fair-strae death at hame; but I wad rather see them a' ower again,
as sic a fearfu' flitting as hers!"

"We must call in the neighbours," said Oldbuck, when he had somewhat
recovered his horror and astonishment, "and give warning of this
additional calamity. I wish she could have been brought to a confession.
And, though of far less consequence, I could have wished to transcribe
that metrical fragment. But Heaven's will must be done!"

They left the hut accordingly, and gave the alarm in the hamlet, whose
matrons instantly assembled to compose the limbs and arrange the body of
her who might be considered as the mother of their settlement. Oldbuck
promised his assistance for the funeral.

"Your honour," said Alison Breck, who was next in age to the deceased,
"suld send doun something to us for keeping up our hearts at the
lykewake, for a' Saunders's gin, puir man, was drucken out at the burial
o' Steenie, and we'll no get mony to sit dry-lipped aside the corpse.
Elspeth was unco clever in her young days, as I can mind right weel, but
there was aye a word o' her no being that chancy. Ane suldna speak ill
o' the dead--mair by token, o' ane's cummer and neighbour--but there
was queer things said about a leddy and a bairn or she left the
Craigburnfoot. And sae, in gude troth, it will be a puir lykewake,
unless your honour sends us something to keep us cracking."

"You shall have some whisky," answered Oldbuck, "the rather that you
have preserved the proper word for that ancient custom of watching the
dead. You observe, Hector, this is genuine Teutonic, from the Gothic
Leichnam, a corpse. It is quite erroneously called Late-wake, though
Brand favours that modern corruption and derivation."

"I believe," said Hector to himself, "my uncle would give away Monkbarns
to any one who would come to ask it in genuine Teutonic! Not a drop of
whisky would the old creatures have got, had their president asked it
for the use of the Late-wake."

While Oldbuck was giving some farther directions, and promising
assistance, a servant of Sir Arthur's came riding very hard along the
sands, and stopped his