's mother had
long been almost bedrid with severe and chronic rheumatism;
consequently, the burden of supporting this helpless family devolved
upon Sarah, who was now in the bloom and in the strength of her
womanhood. Instead of sitting down, however, to lament what could not be
helped, Sarah immediately redoubled her diligence. She even learned to
row a boat as well as a man, and contrived, by the help of the men her
father used to employ, to keep his boat still going. Things prospered
with her for a while; but, in a sudden storm, wherein five boats
perished with all on board, she lost her whole resources. They are a
high-minded people those Cellardyke fishers. The Blacks scorned to come
upon the session. The young girls salted herrings, and cried haddocks in
small baskets through the village and the adjoining burghs, and Sarah
contrived still to keep up a cart for country service. Meanwhile, Sarah
became the object of attention through the whole neighbourhood. Though
somewhat larger in feature and limb than the Venus de Medicis, she was,
notwithstanding, tight, clean, and sunny--her skin white as snow, and
her frame a well-proportioned Doric--just such a help-mate as a husband
who has to rough it through life might be disposed to select. Captain
William M'Guffock, or, as he was commonly called, Big Bill, was the
commander of a coasting craft, and a man of considerable substance.
True, he was considerably older than Sally, and a widower, but he had no
family, and a "bien house to bide in." You see that manse-looking
tenement there, on the broad head towards the east--that was Captain
M'Guffock's residence when his seafaring avocations did not demand his
presence elsewhere. Well, Bill came acourting to Sally; but Sally
"looked asclent and unco skeich." Someway or other, whenever she thought
of matrimony--which she did occasionally--she at the same time thought
of Thomas Laing, and, as she expressed it, her heart _scunnered_ at the
thought. Consequently, Bill made little progress in his courtship; which
was likewise liable to be interrupted, for weeks at a time, by his
professional voyages. At last a letter arrived from on board a king's
vessel, then lying in Leith Roads, apprising Thomas Laing's relatives
that he had died of fever on the West India station. This news affected
Sally more than anything which had hitherto happened to her. She shut
herself up for two hours in her mother's bedroom, weeping aloud and
bitterly,