He went down the aisle a little further, and drew near to the door,
and began raising the flags again, looking for another bed for the
corpse on his back. He took up three or four flags and put them aside,
and then he dug the clay. He was not long digging until he laid bare
an old woman without a thread upon her but her shirt. She was more
lively than the first corpse, for he had scarcely taken any of the
clay away from about her, when she sat up and began to cry, "Ho, you
_bodach_ (clown)! Ha, you _bodach_! Where has he been that he got no
bed?"
Poor Teig drew back, and when she found that she was getting no answer,
she closed her eyes gently, lost her vigour, and fell back quietly and
slowly under the clay. Teig did to her as he had done to the man--he
threw the clay back on her, and left the flags down overhead.
He began digging again near the door, but before he had thrown up
more than a couple of shovelfuls, he noticed a man's hand laid bare by
the spade. "By my soul, I'll go no further, then," said he to himself;
"what use is it for me?" And he threw the clay in again on it, and
settled the flags as they had been before.
He left the church then, and his heart was heavy enough, but he shut
the door and locked it, and left the key where he found it. He sat
down on a tombstone that was near the door, and began thinking. He was
in great doubt what he should do. He laid his face between his two
hands, and cried for grief and fatigue, since he was dead certain at
this time that he never would come home alive. He made another attempt
to loosen the hands of the corpse that were squeezed round his neck,
but they were as tight as if they were clamped; and the more he tried
to loosen them, the tighter they squeezed him. He was going to sit
down once more, when the cold, horrid lips of the dead man said to
him, "Carrick-fhad-vic-Orus," and he remembered the command of the
good people to bring the corpse with him to that place if he should be
unable to bury it where he had been.
He rose up, and looked about him. "I don't know the way," he said.
As soon as he had uttered the word, the corpse stretched out suddenly
its left hand that had been tightened round his neck, and kept it
pointing out, showing him the road he ought to follow. Teig went in
the direction that the fingers were stretched, and passed out of the
churchyard. He found himself on an old rutty, stony road, and he stood
still again, not knowing where to turn. The corpse stretched out its
bony hand a second time, and pointed out to him another road--not the
road by which he had come when approaching the old church. Teig
followed that road, and whenever he came to a path or road meeting it,
the corpse always stretched out its hand and pointed with its fingers,
showing him the way he was to take.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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