If he was wrong, then there was much well worth his unlearning.
The prayer was soon over, and the company again seated themselves, waiting till the coffin should be placed in the hearse, which now stood at the door.
"We'll jist draw the cork o' anither boatle," whispered a sharp-faced man to his neighbour.
And rising, he opened two bottles, and filled the glasses the second time with wine, red and white, which he handed to the minister first.
"Tak' a drappy mair, sir," he whispered in a coaxing, old-wivish tone; "it's a lang road to the kirkyard." But the minister declining, most of the others followed his example.
One after another they withdrew to the door, where the hearse was now laden with the harvest of the grave.
Falling in behind the body, they moved in an irregular procession from the yard.

Outside, they were joined by several more in gigs and on horseback; and thus they crept, a curious train, away towards the resting-place of the dead.
It were a dreary rest, indeed, if that were their resting-place--on the side of a low hill, without tree or shrub to beautify it, or even the presence of an old church to seem to sanctify the spot.

There was some long grass in it, though, clambering up as if it sought to bury the gravestones in their turn.

And that long grass was a blessing.

Better still, there was a sky overhead, in which men cannot set up any gravestones.