idol of the family,
brought his mother in sorrow to the grave. The girls, by some strange
fatality, only survived her a few weeks; and the good old man, bereft of
every kindred tie, pined away and died of a broken heart!

Some years after Flora had been settled in Canada, a gentleman from
Scotland, who had been acquainted with the W. family, told her that he
called upon the old gentleman on a matter of business, a few days after
the funeral of his youngest daughter. The old man opened the door: he
was shrunk to a skeleton, and a perfect image of woe. When he saw who
his visitor was, he shook his thin, wasted hand at him, with a
melancholy, impatient gesture, exclaiming, "What brings you here, P----?
Leave this death-doomed house! I am too miserable to attend to anything
but my own burden of incurable grief." He called again the following
morning. The poor old man was dead!

The next day the emigrants bade farewell to the beautiful capital of
Scotland. How gladly would Flora have terminated her earthly pilgrimage
in that land of poetry and romance, and spent the rest of her days among
its truthful, high-minded, hospitable people! But vain are regrets. The
inexorable spirit of progress points onward; and the beings she chooses
to be the parents of a new people, in a new land, must fulfil their
destiny.

On the 1st of July, 1832, the Lyndsays embarked on board the brig
_Anne_, to seek a new home beyond the Atlantic, and friends in a land of
strangers.

CHAPTER XXVII.

A NEW SCENE AND STRANGE FACES.

Four o'clock P.M. had been tolled from all the steeples in Edinburgh,
when Flora stood upon the pier "o' Leith," watching the approach of the
small boat which was to convey her on board the ugly black vessel which
lay at anchor at the Berwick Law. It was a warm, close, hazy afternoon;
distant thunder muttered among the hills, and dense clouds floated
around the mountain from base to summit, shrouding its rugged outline in
a mysterious robe of mist. Ever and anon, as the electrical breeze
sprang up and stirred these grey masses of vapour, they rolled up in
black shadowy folds which took all sorts of Ossianic and phantom-like
forms--spirits of bards and warriors, looking from their grey clouds
upon the land their songs had immortalised, or their valour saved.

Parties of emigrants and their friends were gathered together in small
picturesque groups on the pier. The cheeks of the women were pale and
wet with tear