kirkyard, where I beheld such an assemblage of sorrow, as few men in
situation have ever been put to the trial 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