that alone can give and take, to pluck him from this life, as the
fruit ripened and ready for the gathering, his death, to all that
knew him, was a gentle dispensation, for truly he had been in sore
trouble.

It was in this year that Charlie Malcolm, Mrs Malcolm's eldest son,
was sent to be a cabin-boy in the Tobacco trader, a three-masted
ship, that sailed between Port-Glasgow and Virginia in America. She
was commanded by Captain Dickie, an Irville man; for at that time
the Clyde was supplied with the best sailors from our coast, the
coal-trade with Ireland being a better trade for bringing up good
mariners than the long voyages in the open sea; which was the
reason, as I often heard said, why the Clyde shipping got so many of
their men from our country side. The going to sea of Charlie
Malcolm was, on divers accounts, a very remarkable thing to us all;
for he was the first that ever went from our parish, in the memory
of man, to be a sailor, and everybody was concerned at it, and some
thought it was a great venture of his mother to let him, his father
having been lost at sea. But what could the forlorn widow do? She
had five weans, and little to give them; and, as she herself said,
he was aye in the hand of his Maker, go where he might; and the will
of God would be done, in spite of all earthly wiles and devices to
the contrary.

On the Monday morning, when Charlie was to go away to meet the
Irville carrier on the road, we were all up, and I walked by myself
from the manse into the clachan to bid him farewell, and I met him
just coming from his mother's door, as blithe as a bee, in his
sailor's dress, with a stick, and a bundle tied in a Barcelona silk
handkerchief hanging o'er his shoulder, and his two little brothers