Page:Tales of my landlord (Volume 2).djvu/33

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OLD MORTALITY.
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mortal toils, being found on the highway near Lockerby, in Dumfries-shire, exhausted and just expiring. The old white poney, the companion of all his wanderings, was standing by the side of his dying master. There was found about his person a sum of money sufficient for his decent interment, which serves to shew that his death was in no ways hastened by violence or by want. The common people still regard his memory with great respect; and many are of opinion, that the stones which he repaired will not again require the assistance of the chisel. They even assert, that on the tombs where the manner of the martyrs' murder is recorded, their names have remained indelibly legible since the death of Old Mortality, while those of the persecutors, sculptured on the same monuments, have been entirely defaced It is hardly necessary to say that this is a fond imagination, and that, since the time of the pious pilgrim, the monu-