“I don’t know what we are coming to,” said Miss Jean. “You may like these new-fangled ways, Mrs. Murray; but for my part, I would just as soon take to the Prayer-book for good and a’, and be done with compromises; or even the mass-book, for that matter. When you once begin to pray over a grave, how long do you think it’ll be before you pray for the dead?” “It will never be in the doctor’s time, that I can answer for,” said the Minister’s wife, with firmness. “For my part, if it’s an innovation, it pleases me. Oh! to hear the thud of the earth, and no’ a word said! It is bad enough--bad enough, even when it’s done like baptism, in the name of the Father, and the Son.” “If you had not been there, you would not have heard,” interrupted Miss Jean. “I hate to see women trailing after a funeral; it’s no their place.” “I was not there, and yet I heard,” said Mrs. Murray; “there are things you hear with your heart, though you’re far away. And why should not women go to the grave with those that belong to them? It is us that takes care of them to their last breath. Why should not May come with the rest to lay her brother in his grave? after standing by him, poor lad, till his end.” “It would fit her best to stay at home,” said Aunt Jean; “women are always best at home, especially when they’re young. Thomas has brought up that girl his own way, not my way. I would have trained her very different. When I was Marjory’s age I never dared lift up my face to my mother. What she said should be, it was--no contradiction; no setting up to know better than your elders; whereas it’s my devout opinion that girl thinks herself wiser than the likes of you or me.” “And so she is in some things,” said Mrs. Murray; “far wiser than me, at least, Miss Jean. I’ve seen her pose the doctor himself, which is not saying little. And here they are, coming down by the east knoll. Oh! what a black, black procession! And to think it’s Tom Heriot! waes me! waes me!--him that should have been bidding us all to his bridal instead of this cruel grave-side!” Miss Jean said nothing for the moment. She put her aged head close to the window, and followed with an intent gaze of her bright old eyes the dark line that wound down into the churchyard from the higher ground above. What strange sense of the wonder of it may have passed through her mind, who can tell? She was old; her generation was over; not one of those who had been with her in her youth was with her now. Alone, a spectator of the works and ways that were not as her ways and works, she had been keenly looking on and criticising the younger world around for many a day. She had seen the boy born whose remains were now carried before her; she had almost seen his father born. Yet she was here, still a keen spectator, looking on while that young representative of the race was laid among their ancestors.