nsideration for
the situation of the parents, carried along with them the girls of the
family, to give the unhappy pair time and opportunity to open their
hearts to each other and soften their grief by communicating it. But
their kind intention was without effect. The last of them had darkened
the entrance of the cottage, as she went out, and drawn the door softly
behind her, when the father, first ascertaining by a hasty glance that
no stranger remained, started up, clasped his hands wildly above his
head, uttered a cry of the despair which he had hitherto repressed,
and, in all the impotent impatience of grief, half rushed half staggered
forward to the bed on which the coffin had been deposited, threw
himself down upon it, and smothering, as it were, his head among the
bed-clothes, gave vent to the full passion of his sorrow. It was in vain
that the wretched mother, terrified by the vehemence of her husband's
affliction--affliction still more fearful as agitating a man of hardened
manners and a robust frame--suppressed her own sobs and tears, and,
pulling him by the skirts of his coat, implored him to rise and
remember, that, though one was removed, he had still a wife and children
to comfort and support. The appeal came at too early a period of
his anguish, and was totally unattended to; he continued to remain
prostrate, indicating, by sobs so bitter and violent, that they shook
the bed and partition against which it rested, by clenched hands which
grasped the bed-clothes, and by the vehement and convulsive motion of
his legs, how deep and how terrible was the agony of a father's sorrow.

"O, what a day is this! what a day is this!" said the poor mother, her
womanish affliction already exhausted by sobs and tears, and now almost
lost in terror for the state in which she beheld her husband--"O, what an
hour is this! and naebody to help a poor lone woman--O, gudemither, could
ye but speak a word to him!--wad ye but bid him be comforted!"

To her astonishment, and even to the increase of her fear, her husband's
mother heard and answered the appeal. She rose and walked across
the floor without support, and without much apparent feebleness, and
standing by the bed on which her son had extended himself, she said,
"Rise up, my son, and sorrow not for him that is beyond sin and sorrow
and temptation. Sorrow is for those that remain in this vale of sorrow
and darkness--I, wha dinna sorrow, and wha canna sorrow for ony ane, ha