In less than fifteen minutes almost every soul in the village was down at the pier-head, on each side of which a roaring fire had been lit, that the skippers of the boats might make no mistake in steering in.
On and on, nearer and nearer, slowly came the great black boats.
The anxiety in the crowd was painful to witness. There were many there over whose drowned relatives the grave had that day closed. Neither hope nor anxiety could trouble them. But there were many others who had yet received no certain account of the fate of their friends. In their hearts burned the anxiety, the hope, the doubt. This boat coming slowly in might contain a missing husband or father for them.
Well, those boats landed at last, and joyful recognition was the result, while grief once more took the place of hope in those who had now suffered disappointment.
. . . . . .
It was but a short walk to the graveyard that surrounded the wee steepleless church of Blackhive. Had it been miles, Eppie would have trudged it all the same, behind the little coffin—it was but a size larger than a boy’s—of her wee man.
Meanwhile the chiming of the bell sounded mournful in the extreme. Everybody noticed how altered Eppie was, and how strange she looked.
Her hair, which was grey before, appeared to have turned white under the influence of her terrible affliction. She was sadly bent, too, and needed the support of a stick to aid her in tottering along.
Around the grave, spades in hand, and with heads bare, stood the friends and chief mourners, for in Scotland it is their duty to fill in the clods, to add the earth to earth, the dust to dust.
The coffin is lowered, the ropes are pulled up. The mourners, among whom are Sandie M‘Crae, wait for a moment, each silently breathing a prayer.