James had not a word to answer. Greatly as he shrank from the ordeal, he must encounter it without show of reluctance! He dared not even propose to sit in the kitchen and smoke. With better courage than will, he consented to share their vigil. “And then,” he reflected, “if she should come to herself, there would be the advantage he had foreseen and even half desired!” His mother went to prepare supper for them. His father rose, and saying he would have a look at the night, went toward the door; for even his strange situation could not entirely smother the anxiety of the husbandman. But James glided past him to the door, determined not to be left alone with that thing in the chamber. But in the meantime the wind had been rising, and the coffin had been tilting and resettling on its narrower end. At last, James opening the door, the gruesome thing fell forward just as he crossed the threshold, knocked him down, and settled on the top of him. His father, close behind him, tumbled over the obstruction, divined, in the light of a lamp in the passage, what the prostrate thing was, and scrambling to his feet with the only oath he had, I fully believe, ever uttered, cried: “Damn that fule, Willie Wabster! Had he naething better to dee nor sen’ to the hoose coffins naebody wantit—and syne set them doon like rotten-traps (_rat-traps_) to whomel puir Jeemie!” He lifted the thing from off the minister, who rose not much hurt, but both amazed and offended at the mishap, and went to his mother in the kitchen. “Dinna say muckle to yer mither, Jeames laad,” said his father as he went; “that is, dinna explain preceesely hoo the ill-faured thing happent. _I’ll_ hae amen’s (_amends, vengeance_) upon him!” So saying, he took the offensive vehicle, awkward burden as it was, in his two arms, and carrying it to the back of the cornyard, shoved it over the low wall into the dry ditch at its foot, where he heaped dirty straw from the stable over it. “It’ll be lang,” he vowed to himsel, “or Willie Wabster hear the last o’ this!—and langer yet or he see the glint o’ the siller he thoucht he was yirnin by ’t!—It’s come and cairry ’t hame himsel he sall, the muckle idiot! He may turn ’t intil a breid-kist, or what he likes, the gomf!” “Fain wud I screw the reid heid o’ ’im intil that same kist, and haud him there, short o’ smorin!” he muttered as he went back to the house.—“Faith, I could ’maist beery him ootricht!” he concluded, with a grim smile. Ere he re-entered the house, however, he walked a little way up the hill, to cast over the vault above him a farmer’s look of inquiry as to the coming night, and then went in, shaking his head at what the clouds boded.