As the mourners "skailed" slowly away from the kirkyaird in twos and
threes, there was wonderment as to who should have the property, for
which the late laird and minister had cared so little. There were very
various opinions; but one thing was quite universally admitted, that
there would be no such easy terms in the matter of rent and arrears as
there had been in the time of "him that's awa'." The snow swept down
with a biting swirl as the groups scattered and the mourners vanished
from each other's sight, diving singly into the eddying drifts as into a
great tent of many flapping folds. Grave and quiet is the Scottish
funeral, with a kind of simple manfulness as of men in the presence of
the King of Terrors, but yet possessing that within them which enables
every man of them to await without unworthy fear the Messenger who comes
but once. On the whole, not so sad as many things that are called
mirthful.

So the last Anderson of Deeside, and the best of all their ancient line,
was gathered to his fathers in an equal sleep that snowy January
morning. There were two inches of snow in the grave when they laid the
coffin in. As Saunders said, "Afore auld Elec could get him happit, his
Maister had hidden him like Moses in a windin'-sheet o' His ain." In the
morning, when Elec went hirpling into the kirkyaird, he found at the
grave-head a bare place which the snow had not covered. Then some
remembered that, hurrying by in the rapidly darkening gloaming of the
night after the funeral, they had seen some one standing immovable by
the minister's grave in the thickly drifting snow. They had wondered why
he should stand there on such a bitter night.

There were those who said that it was just the lad Archibald Grier, gone
to stand a while by his benefactor's grave.