Ay, the aurelia-born image of grace sees a difference when it looks from
the sun to the epigenetic thing which He raises out of corruption. There
was, in that small place of skulls, a rehearsal of the great day. We
hear little of these freaks now-a-days; but it was different then, when
men made themselves demons by drink. One night William Maule of Panmure,
then in his days of graceless frolic; Fletcher Read, the nephew of the
laird, and subsequently the laird himself, of Logie; Rob Thornton, the
merchant, Dudhope, and other kindred spirits, who used to sing in the
inn of Sandy Morren, the hotel-keeper, "Death begone, here's none but
souls," sallied drunk from the inn. The story goes that the night was
dark, and there stood at the door a hearse, which had that day conveyed
to the "howf," now about to be shut up because of its offence against
the nostrils of men who are not destined to need a grave, the wife of an
inconsolable husband and the mother of children; and thereupon came from
Maule's mouth--for wickedness will seek its playful function in a
pun--the proposition that the bacchanals should have a rehearsal in the
kirkyard of Logie.
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