I now take up the story as given by Umphrey Spurway, described as an Englishman and clothier at New Mills. His suspicions caused him to write to Edinburgh that the Lord Advocate might be warned. Philip lost no time in trying to prevent an inquiry. At three or four of the clock on Monday morning Spurway, coming out of his house, saw “great lights at Sir James’ Gate;” grouped round were men and horses. He was told they were taking away the body to be buried at Morham, whereat honest Umphrey, much disturbed at this suspicious haste, sighed for the “crowner’s quest law” of his fatherland. But on the next Tuesday night after he had gone to bed a party of five men, two of them surgeons, came post haste to his house from Edinburgh, and showing him an order “from my Lord Advocat for the taking up again the body of Sir James Standsfield,” bid him rise and come. Philip also must go with the party to Morham. Here the grave was opened, the body taken out and carried into the church, where the surgeons made their examination, which clearly pointed to death by strangulation not by drowning (possibly it struck Spurway as an odd use for a church; it had not seemed so to a presbyterian Scot of the period). The dead being re-dressed in his grave clothes must now be set back in his coffin. A terrible thing happened. According to Scots custom the nearest relative must lift the body, and so Philip took the head, when lo! the corpse gushed forth blood on his hands! He dropped the head--the “considerable noise” it made in falling is noted by one of the surgeons--frantically essayed to wipe off the blood on his clothes, and with frenzied cries of “Lord have mercy upon me, Lord have mercy upon us!” fell half swooning across a seat. Strong cordials were administered, and in time he regained his sullen composure. A strange scene to ponder over, but how terrible to witness! Think of it! The lonely church on the Lammermoors, the dead vast and middle of the dreary night (November 30, 1687), the murdered man, and the Parricide’s confession (it is so set forth in the “ditty”) wrung from him (as all believed) by the direct interposition of Providence. What fiction ever equalled this gruesome horror? Even his mother, who had sided with him against the father, scarce professed to believe his innocence. “What if they should put her bairn in prison?” she wailed. “Her bairn” was soon hard and fast in the gloomy old Tolbooth of Edinburgh, to which, as the _Heart of Midlothian_, Scott’s novel was in future days to give a world-wide fame.