Page:Remarkable family adventure of Saunders Watson (1).pdf/6

Rh alarm prevailed, and the most fearful stories were circulating through the country regarding the resurrectionists, as they are appropriately called. In consequence of this, Saunders in a solemn divan of his neighbours, came to the resolution of watching his daughter’s grave, for a fortnight or so, till decay should have so far done its work as to render the corpse of no use to any anatomist. Every neighbour cheerfully volunteered his services in this pious work, and on the night after the funeral, two men were accordingly appointed sentinels, well armed with large sticks, a musquet each, and several rounds of shot.

The church-yard was a spot which from its retired situation,—without a house, save the church, within a quarter of a mile of it,—seemed the very sanctuary of holiness and solitude. It was surrouded with a strong high dyke, on the outside of which a line of tall ash trees formed a second circle; so that nothing of the external world was visable to an internal observer, save the tops of two long parallel ranges of mountains that walled in the valley, or rather the glen. The church stood in gloomy loneliness on the top of a small knoll, exactly in the centre of the burying ground. From thence the earth fell with a gradual inclination on all sides, towards the dyke, closs to the inside of which