The peculiar dress in which he had been attired in
better days, showed only miserable rags of its whimsical finery, the
lack of which was oddly supplied by the remnants of tapestried hangings,
window-curtains, and shreds of pictures, with which he had bedizened his
tatters. His face, too, had lost its vacant and careless air, and the
poor creature looked hollow-eyed, meagre, half-starved, and nervous to
a pitiable degree.--After long hesitation, he at length approached
Waverley with some confidence, stared him sadly in the face, and said,
'A' dead and gane--a' dead and gane!'
'Who are dead?' said Waverley, forgetting the incapacity of Davie to
hold any connected discourse.
'Baron--and Bailie and Saunders Saunderson and Lady Rose, that sang sae
sweet--A' dead and gane--dead and gane!
But follow, follow me,
While glow-worms light the lea;
I'll show you where the dead should be--
Each in his shroud,
While winds pipe loud,
And the red moon peeps dim through the cloud.
Follow, follow me;
Brave should he be
That treads by night the dead man's lea.'
With these' words, chanted in a wild and earnest tone, he made a sign
to Waverley to follow him, and walked rapidly towards the bottom of the
garden, tracing the bank of the stream, which, it may be remembered, was
its eastern boundary.
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