to
witness.

In the lea of the kirk many hundreds of the town were gathered together;
but there was no discourse among them. The major part were sailors'
wives and weans, and at every new thud of the blast, a sob rose, and the
mothers drew their bairns closer in about them, as if they saw the
visible hand of a foe raised to smite them. Apart from the multitude, I
observed three or four young lasses standing behind the Whinnyhill
families' tomb, and I jealoused that they had joes in the ships; for they
often looked to the bay, with long necks and sad faces, from behind the
monument. A widow woman, one old Mary Weery, that was a lameter, and
dependent on her son, who was on board the Louping Meg, (as the Lovely
Peggy was nicknamed at the shore,) stood by herself, and every now and
then wrung her hands, crying, with a woeful voice, "The Lord giveth and
the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord;"--but it was
manifest to all that her faith was fainting within her. But of all the
piteous objects there, on that doleful evening, none troubled my thoughts
more than three motherless children, that belonged to the mate of one of
the vessels in the jeopardy. He was an Englishman that had been settled
some years in the town, where his family had neither kith nor kin; and
his wife having died about a month before, the bairns, of whom the eldest
was but nine or so, were friendless enough, though both my gudewife, and
other well-disposed ladies, paid them all manner of attention till their
father would come home. The three poor little things, knowing that he
was in one of the ships, had been often out and anxious, and they were
then sitting under the lea of a headstone, near their mother's grave,
chittering and creeping closer and closer at every squall. Never was
such an orphan-like sight seen.

When it began to be so dark that the vessels could no longer be discerned
from the churchyard, many went down to the shore, and I took the three
babies home with me, and Mrs Pawkie made tea for them, and they soon
began to play with our own younger children, in blythe forgetfulness of
the storm; every now and then, however, the eldest of them, when the
shutters rattled and the lum-head roared, would pause in his innocent
daffing, and cower in towards Mrs Pawkie, as if he was daunted and
dismayed by something he knew not what.

Many a one that night walked the sounding shore in sorrow, and fires were
lighted along it to a