I never liked to go into the kirkyard after darkening, let-a-be to sit there through a long winter night, windy and rainy it may be, with none but the dead around us.

Save us! it was an unco thought, and garred all my flesh creep; but the cause was good--my corruption was raised--and I was determined not to be dauntened.
I counted and counted, but the dread day at length came and I was summoned.

All the live-long afternoon, when ca'ing the needle upon the board, I tried to whistle Jenny Nettles, Neil Gow, and other funny tunes, and whiles crooned to myself between hands; but my consternation was visible, and all would not do.
It was in November; and the cold glimmering sun sank behind the Pentlands.

The trees had been shorn of their frail leaves, and the misty night was closing fast in upon the dull and short day; but the candles glittered at the shop windows, and leery-light-the-lamps was brushing about with his ladder in his oxter, and bleezing flamboy sparking out behind him.

I felt a kind of qualm of faintness and down-sinking about my heart and stomach, to the dispelling of which I took a thimbleful of spirits, and, tying my red comforter about my neck, I marched briskly to the session-house.