“Why trouble me?” he exclaimed. “Why stare with your white dead eyes on me? Away, old man! the little black shells are sticking in your grey hairs; away to your place! Was it I who raised the wind or the sea?--was it I--was it I? Aha!--no--no--you were asleep--you were fast asleep, and could not see me cut the _swing_; and, besides, it was only a piece of rope. Keep away--touch me not! I am a freeman, and will plead for my life. Please your honour, I did not murder these two men; _I only cut the rope that fastened their boat to the land_. Ha! ha! ha! he has ordered them away, and they have both left me unskaithed.” At this moment Ernest Beth entered the apartment, and approached the bed. The miserable old man raised himself on his elbow, and, regarding him with a horrid stare, shrieked out--“Here is Ernest Beth come for me a second time!” and, sinking back on the pillow, instantly expired. CHAPTER XIII. “The silent earth Of what it holds shall speak, and every grave Be as a volume, shut, yet capable Of yielding its contents to ear and eye.”--WORDSWORTH. [Sidenote: THE STORY OF JOHN FEDDES.] In the woods to the east of Cromarty, occupying the summit of a green insulated eminence, is the ancient burying-ground and chapel of St. Regulus. Bounding the south there is a deep narrow ravine, through which there runs a small tinkling streamlet, whose voice, scarcely heard during the droughts of summer, becomes hoarser and louder towards the close of autumn. The sides of the eminence are covered with wood, which, overtopping the summit, forms a wall of foliage that encloses the burying-ground except on the east, where a little opening affords a view of the northern Sutor over the tops of trees which have not climbed high enough to complete the fence. In this burying-ground the dead of a few of the more ancient families of the town and parish are still interred; but by far the greater part of it is occupied by nameless tenants, whose descendants are unknown, and whose bones have mouldered undisturbed for centuries. The surface is covered by a short yellow moss, which is gradually encroaching on the low flat stones of the dead, blotting out the unheeded memorials which tell us that the inhabitants of this solitary spot were once men, and that they are now dust--that they lived, and that they died, and that they shall live again.