midnight
To bodies that had been laid in earth , in joyful expectation of a far different awakening , there came that hasty , lamp-lit , terror-haunted resurrection of the spade and mattock . The coffin was forced , the cerements torn , and the melancholy relics , clad in sackcloth , after being rattled for hours on moonless byways , were at length exposed to uttermost indignities before a class of gaping boys . Somewhat as two vultures may swoop upon a dying lamb , Fettes and Macfarlane were to be let loose upon a grave in that green and quiet resting-place . The wife of a farmer , a woman who had lived for sixty years , and been known for nothing but good butter and a godly conversation , was to be rooted from her grave at midnight and carried , dead and naked , to that far-away city that she had always honoured with her Sunday 's best ; the place beside her family was to be empty till the crack of doom ; her innocent and almost venerable members to be exposed to that last curiosity of the anatomist . Late one afternoon the pair set forth , well wrapped in cloaks and furnished with a formidable bottle . It rained without remission -- a cold , dense , lashing rain . Now and again there blew a puff of wind , but these sheets of falling water kept it down .