brought, while his brother again worked. But first he gave Alister
the history of what he was going to read. It was suggested, he said,
by that strange poem of William Mayne's, called "The Dead Man's
Moan," founded on the silly notion that the man himself is buried,
and not merely his body.

"I wish I were up to straught my banes,
And drive frae my face the cauld, dead air;
I wish I were up, that the friendly rains
Micht wash the dark mould frae my tangled hair!"

quoted Ian, and added,

"I thought I should like to follow out the idea, and see what ought
to come of it. I therefore supposed a person seized by something of
the cataleptic kind, from which he comes to himself still in the
body, but unable to hold communication with the outer world. He
thinks therefore that he is dead and buried. Recovering from his
first horror, he reflects that, as he did not make himself think and
feel, nor can cease to think and feel if he would, there must be
somewhere--and where but within himself?--the power by which he
thinks and feels, a power whose care it must be, for it can belong
to no other, to look after the creature he has made. Then comes to
him the prayer of Job, 'Oh that thou wouldst hide me in the grave
till thy anger with me was past! Then wouldst thou desire to see
again the work of thy hands, the creature thou hadst made! Then
wouldst thou call, and I would answer.' So grandly is the man
comforted thereby, that he breaks out in a dumb song of triumph over
death and the grave. As its last tone dies in him, a kiss falls upon
his lips. It is the farewell of the earth; the same moment he bursts