THE OLD DOMINIE From the new cemetery, which is the highest point in Thrums, you just fail to catch sight of the red schoolhouse that nestles between two bare trees, some five miles up the glen of Quharity.

This was proved by Davit Lunan, tinsmith, whom I have heard tell the story.

It was in the time when the cemetery gates were locked to keep the bodies of suicides out, but men who cared to risk the consequences could get the coffin over the high dyke and bury it themselves.

Peter Lundy's coffin broke, as one might say, into the churchyard in this way, Peter having hanged himself in the Whunny wood when he saw that work he must.

The general feeling among the intimates of the deceased was expressed by Davit when he said: "It may do the crittur nae guid i' the tail o' the day, but he paid for's bit o' ground, an' he's in's richt to occupy it." The custom was to push the coffin on to the wall up a plank, and then let it drop less carefully into the cemetery.