Chapter 24

Hamlet: Has this fellow no feeling of his business? he sings
at grave making.
Horatio: Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.
Hamlet: 'Tis e'en so: the hand of little employment hath the
daintier sense.

Hamlet, Act V. Scene 1.

THE sleep of Ravenswood was broken by ghastly and agitating visions, and
his waking intervals disturbed by melancholy reflections on the past and
painful anticipations of the future. He was perhaps the only traveller
who ever slept in that miserable kennel without complaining of his
lodgings, or feeling inconvenience from their deficiencies. It is when
"the mind is free the body's delicate." Morning, however, found the
Master an early riser, in hopes that the fresh air of the dawn might
afford the refreshment which night had refused him. He took his way
towards the solitary burial-ground, which lay about half a mile from the
inn.

The thin blue smoke, which already began to curl upward, and to
distinguish the cottage of the living from the habitation of the dead,
apprised him that its inmate had returned and was stirring. Accordingly,
on entering the little churchyard, he saw the old man labouring in a
half-made grave. "My destiny," thought Ravenswood, "seems to lead me to
scenes of fate and of death; but these are childish thoughts, and they
shall not master me. I will not again suffer my imagination to beguile
my senses." The old man rested on his spade as the Master approached
him, as if to receive his commands; and as he did not immediately speak,
the sexton opened the discourse in his own way.

"Ye will be a wedding customer, sir, I'se warrant?"

"What makes you think so, friend?" replied the Master.

"I live by twa trades, sir," replied the blythe old man--"fiddle, sir,
and spade; filling the world, and emptying of it; and I suld ken baith
cast of customers by head-mark in thirty years' practice."

"You are mistaken, however, this morning," replied Ravenswood.

"Am I?" said the old man, looking keenly at him, "troth and it may be;
since, for as brent as your brow is, there is something sitting upon it
this day that is as near akin to death as to wedlock. Weel--weel; the
pick and shovel are as ready to your order as bow and fiddle."

"I wish you," said Ravenswood, "to look after the descent interment
of an old woman, Alice Gray, who lived at the Graigfoot in Ravenswood
Park."

"Alice Gray!--blind Alice!" said the sexton; "and is she gane at last?
that's another jow of the bell to bid me be ready. I mind when Habbie
Gray brought her down to this land; a likely lass she was then,
and