'It's his
ghaist,' muttered Davie; yet, coming nearer, he seemed to acknowledge his
living acquaintance. The poor fool himself appeared the ghost of what he
had been. 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 glowworms light the lea,
I'll show ye where the dead should be--
Each in his shroud,
While winds pipe loud,
And the red moon peeps dim through the cloud.
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