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business of the class; they received their orders together
from Mr. K-. At times they had a word or two in private, and
Macfarlane was from first to last particularly kind and
jovial. But it was plain that he avoided any reference to
their common secret; and even when Fettes whispered to him
that he had cast in his lot with the lions and foresworn the
lambs, he only signed to him smilingly to hold his peace.
At length an occasion arose which threw the pair once more
into a closer union. Mr. K- was again short of subjects;
pupils were eager, and it was a part of this teacher's
pretensions to be always well supplied. At the same time
there came the news of a burial in the rustic graveyard of
Glencorse. Time has little changed the place in question.
It stood then, as now, upon a cross road, out of call of
human habitations, and buried fathom deep in the foliage of
six cedar trees. The cries of the sheep upon the
neighbouring hills, the streamlets upon either hand, one
loudly singing among pebbles, the other dripping furtively
from pond to pond, the stir of the wind in mountainous old
flowering chestnuts, and once in seven days the voice of the
bell and the old tunes of the precentor, were the only sounds
that disturbed the silence around the rural church. The
Resurrection Man - to use a byname of the period - was not to
be deterred by any of the sanctities of customary piety. It
was part of his trade to despise and desecrate the scrolls
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