“Heaven pe merciful to us!” they both muttered, as they crouched down beside the stove, and eyed fearfully the moving corpse, through the dim light that came from the half-concealed fire; and their fears had a small chance of being removed or alleviated by what they farther heard and saw; for, as they watched and trembled, they witnessed the rising terrors of Julia herself, who, looking around her, and seeing herself placed in the coffin, had never a shadow of doubt that she was actually buried, and that she was in the region appointed for the wicked daughters of men. She began to groan piteously; and, being yet only half sober, mixed up her thoughts of the lower regions with the feelings she cherished on earth, in such a grotesque manner, that it would have been impossible for an ordinary person to have heard her without at once trembling and laughing. “And am I, of a surety, here at the long run,” she muttered, “among devils and devils’ dams, who will have never a qualm of mercy for me any more than they have for their other victims, who have broken the laws of the upper world?” And, sighing as deep as her stomach, she paused and again soliloquised:—“But did I not see my good friends, Angus M’Guire and Donald M’Nair, drinking by my side, even at this moment? There cannot be a doubt on’t, and they will be dead and damned too for a certainty; but, faith, I care not if I should be here after all, if I fare as they were faring even now, when I saw them with the quaichs in their very hands, as I have seen before in the distillery in the wood of Balmaclallan, so often when I was in the body. Ho! there! Donald M’Nair, it is no other than Julia Briggs that calls you, and she is as thirsty as fire can make her.” The truth now began to dawn on the minds of the Highlanders. “She is no more tead than I am, or any living pody,” cried Donald, as he began to move from his dark hole. “I am coming, my tarling Julia; and, py te Holy Virgin, you shall not want what ye are now asking for!” And, pulling Angus along with him, he again approached the coffin, where he saw his old friend looking up from her prostrate position with a pair of as clear eyes as whisky ever illuminated. “Are ye tead or living, Julia?” cried Angus. “I cannot tell you till I get a quaich,” answered Julia; and the medicine was on the instant administered by Donald, when all doubt on the mysterious subject having been dispelled, her friends lifted her from the coffin, and they set to work after their usual manner, which was no other than indulging in numerous potations. The recollection of Gustavus’s threat enabled her to explain everything; and as they sat carousing and singing in great glee, they laughed heartily at the circumstance of Gustavus having buried his wife in a distillery, with the view of curing her of a love of whisky. CHAPTER VIII. GUSTAVUS GETS INTO TROUBLE AND OUT OF IT.