class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 34]"/> to enable them to escape observation. But just as they were about to land they observed the figure of a young woman sitting near one of the head-stones. The stillness all about enabled them to hear deep sobs, as if the heart had been convulsed, and tried by these efforts to throw off the weight of a deep grief. The story was readable enough even by gouls, but so intent were they on their prey that they felt no response to these offerings of the stricken heart to Him who, for His own purposes, had struck it. The scene continued beyond the endurance of their patience, and science, as usual, murmured against Nature’s decrees; but at length she who was thought an intruder rose, and after some movement of the arms, which came afterwards to be understood, slowly left the spot.

The coast, as the saying goes, was now at last clear, and with a bound the myrmidons overleaped the wall. They were presently on the spot where the female had been seated, and even in their hurry observed that the heart-broken creature had been occupied as her last act by throwing some silly bits of flowers over the grave,—signs which as little physically as morally interfered with their design of spoliation. In a few minutes the object they sought was in their possession, and if there was any care more than ordinary observed in putting all matters to right on the surface, it was the selfish wish to keep so convenient a place free from those suspicions which might bar another visit. Nay, so heartless were they, that one of the party, whether Liston himself we cannot say, though it would not have been unlike him, decorated his jacket by sticking one of the slips of offering into the button-hole. They now hurried with their burden to the boat and pushed off, but they had scarcely got beyond a few yards when they saw the same figure hurrying to the dike. The light of the moon was now brighter, and they could easily observe the figure as it passed hurriedly, as if in great excitement, backwards and forwards, occasionally holding out the arms, and uttering the most melancholy sounds that ever came from the human heart. It might be that as yet she had hope in mere adjuration, but as the boat moved further and further away, there came a shrill wail, so piercing that it might have been heard even at the distance of the village. But heedless of an appeal, which nature responded to faithfully by an echo, they rowed away, still hearing, in spite of the splash of the oars, the same wail as it gradually became faint in their increasing distance. At length they could hear nothing but the sweltering of the waters, and Rosyth with its solitary mourner bade fair to be forgotten under the Lethe of the flask, which on such occasions was never awanting.

This story was very soon made readable to Liston and the others by the concatenation of certain very simple circumstances. A newspaper report which Liston had seen some days before, had announced the death, by drowning, of a young sailor belonging to Limekilns. The account was sufficiently lugubrious for any readers; but the editor, as usual, had mixed up with it, whether truly or not, the old story of love and impending marriage; the object too being, of course, young, brave, virtuous, and comely. Then came the account of the funeral, also touchingly given. But it seemed that all this poetry had been thrown away upon the ardent anatomist; nor even when afterwards, in the hall, he became satisfied that he had secured the right object, would he in his heart admit that he had in this adventure done anything more than would be justified by the use he could make of his knowledge in ameliorating physical evils in his fellow-men, however dearly that advantage might have been acquired in the agony of that figure he had left wailing at Rosyth. Yet it is but fair to say that Liston himself admitted that the sound of that cry, the sight of those wringing hands, and the rapid goings to and fro of the shade on the shore, never passed from his memory.

Robert Liston, beyond all the others, carried so much of the spirit of chivalry into his adventures of body-snatching, that he thought it as noble an act to carry off a corpse as an ancient knight-errant did to bear off a prisoner; but his followers were more like mimallons than myrmidons, and required more of the flask to keep up their spirits. Some of these youths once made a mistake at Rosyth. Having run up their boat, they proceeded to the little death’s croft to take up the body of a woman who had died in child-bed. The night was dark and gusty, and the wind whistled through the long grass as if Nænia had been presiding there to hear her own doleful music; but our youths cared little for these things, and, after twenty minutes’ work, they pulled up “the tall beauty,” as they called her after they got home. Away they hurried her to the dike, upon which they laid her, till two got over to place her in the boat. All seemed fair, but just at the moment, some ill-mannered tyke set up, without the excuse of a moon,—for she was far enough away beyond the shadows,—a deep howl, so prolonged and mournful, that even all the potency of the flask could not save them from being struck with awe, as well as a fear of detection. But they had more to be afraid of, for almost immediately after, one of them called out, “There’s a lantern among the graves;” and thus flurried, yet determined not to lose their prize, they rugged the body from the top of the rubble dike so roughly, if not violently, that a great portion of the long hair, which had got entangled among the stones, was, along with a piece of the scalp, torn away, and left hanging on the other side. Safe on board, they lost no time in pushing off, in spite of the surly breakers that threatened to detain them; nor did they now care for either the dog or the lantern, the latter of which they saw through the dark medium, dodging towards the very spot they had left, and then remain stationary there, as if the bearer had been stayed and petrified by the relic they had left. Up to not a very late period, the story went in the neighbourhood that he who bore the lantern was the husband of “the tall beauty,” and that he discovered the hair, and knew from the colour, which nearly approached flaxen, that it was that of his wife, whose untimely death had rendered him frantic.

There was no loss in that case; but another which was current among the classes not long after was less fortunate, though not less true, as indeed may be verified by the brother, still living, of the young student who figured in it. Somewhere about Gilmerton or Liberton, we are uncertain which, a small farmer who had lost his wife went out one morning very early, probably because he could not rest in his bed for the dreary blank that was there,—that negative so much more appalling to love than the dead positive. On going along the Edinburgh road, he observed some white figure lying close by the footpath, and making up to see what it was, he came upon the corpse of a woman, dressed in her scolloped dead-clothes, and lying extended upon her back, with the “starr eyes” open, glazed, and fixed. On looking more narrowly, he discovered that it was his own wife, and, all dismayed and wild as he became, he could still have the power to think that she had come back to life after having been buried and lain in the grave for three days, and had thus far struggled to get to her beloved home. Frenzy knows nothing of logic, and was he to think how she could have thrown off a ton of earth and got up again to the light of the sun? The idea took him by force, and, throwing himself upon the body, he looked into the dead orbs, and watched the cold stiff lips, and listened for a breath. Vain heart, with all its hopes