“Ten,” interrupted Duncan, “she’ll pe crowing up out of her crave like a seed crowing up to pe a corn or a parley?” The schoolmaster began to despair of ever conveying to the piper the idea that the living man is the seed sown, and that when the body of this seed dies, then the new body, with the man in it, springs alive out of the old one--that the death of the one is the birth of the other. Far more enlightened people than Duncan never imagine, and would find it hard to believe, that the sowing of the seed spoken of might mean something else than the burying of the body; not perceiving what yet surely is plain enough, that that would be the sowing of a seed already dead, and incapable of giving birth to anything whatever. “No, no,” he said, almost impatiently, “_you_ will never be in the grave: it is only your body that will go there, with nothing _like_ life about it except the smile the glad soul has left on it. The poor body when thus forsaken is so dead that it can’t even stop smiling. Get Malcolm to read to you out of the book of the Revelation how there were multitudes even then standing before the throne. They had died in this world, yet there they were, well and happy.” “Oh, yes!” said Duncan, with no small touch of spitefulness in his tone, “--twang-twanging at teir fine colden herps! She’ll not be thinking much of ta herp for a music-maker! And peoples tells her she’ll not pe hafing her pipes tere! Och hone! Och hone!--She’ll chust pe lying still and not pe ketting up, and when ta work is ofer, and eferypody cone away, she’ll chust pe ketting up, and taking a look apout her, to see if she’ll pe finding a stand o’ pipes that some coot highlandman has peen left pehint him when he tied lately.” “You’ll find it rather lonely--won’t you?” “Yes; no toubt, for tey’ll aal be cone up. Well, she’ll haf her pipes; and she could not co where ta pipes was looked town upon by all ta creat people--and all ta smaal ones too.” They had now reached the foot of the promontory, and turned northwards, each of his companions taking an arm of the piper to help him over the rocks that lay between them and the mouth of the cave, which soon yawned before them like a section of the mouth of a great fish. Its floor of smooth rock had been swept out clean, and sprinkled with dry sea sand. There were many hollows and projections along its sides rudely fit for serving as seats, to which had been added a number of forms extemporized of planks and thwarts. No one had yet arrived when they entered, and they went at once to the further end of the cave, that Duncan, who was a little hard of hearing, might be close to the speakers. There his companions turned and looked behind them: an exclamation, followed by a full glance at each other, broke from each.