It was necessary, as well from his respect to the departed as in common
humanity to her terrified attendant, that he should take some measures
to relieve the girl from her distressing situation. The deceased,
he understood, had expressed a desire to be buried in a solitary
churchyard, near the little inn of the Tod's Hole, called the Hermitage,
or more commonly Armitage, in which lay interred some of the Ravenswood
family, and many of their followers. Ravenswood conceived it his duty
to gratify this predilection, commonly found to exist among the Scottish
peasantry, and despatched Babie to the neighbouring village to procure
the assistance of some females, assuring her that, in the mean while, he
would himself remain with the dead body, which, as in Thessaly of old,
it is accounted highly unfit to leave without a watch.
Thus, in the course of a quarter of an hour or little more, he found
himself sitting a solitary guard over the inanimate corpse of her whose
dismissed spirit, unless his eyes had strangely deceived him, had so
recently manifested itself before him.
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