Page:Scott - Tales of my Landlord - 3rd series, vol. 2 - 1819.djvu/234

224 buried in a solitary churchyard near the little inn of the Tod's-hole, called the Hermitage, or more commonly Armitage, in which lay interred some of the Ravenswood family, and many of their followers. Ravenswood conceived it his duty to gratify this predilection, so commonly found to exist among the Scottish peasantry, and dispatched Babie to the neighbouring village to procure the assistance of some females, assuring her that, in the meanwhile, he would himself remain with the dead body, which, as in Thessaly of old, it is accounted highly unfit to leave without a watch.

Thus, in the course of a quarter of an hour, or little more, he found himself sitting, a solitary guard over the inanimate corse of her, whose dismissed spirit, unless his eyes had strangely deceived him, had so shortly before manifested itself before him. Notwithstanding his natural courage, the Master was considerably affected by a concurrence of circumstances so