t or market, to see the remains of persons,
whom they so loved and respected in life, bleaching in the winds and the
rains of Heaven. It was, indeed, a matter of great heart-sadness, to
behold such animosity carried beyond the grave; and few they were who
could withstand the sight of the orphans that came thither, pointing out
to one another their fathers' bones, and weeping as they did so, and
vowing, with an innocent indignation, that they would avenge their
martyrdom.

Well do I remember the great sorrow that arose one market-day in Irvine,
some five or six years after the Pentland raid, when Mrs M'Coul came,
with her four weans and her aged gudemother, to look at the relics of
her husband, who was martyred for his part in that rising. The bones
were standing, with those of another martyr of that time, on a shelf
which had been put up for the purpose, below the first wicket-hole in
the steeple, just above the door. The two women were very decent in
their apparel, rather more so than the common country wives. The
gudemother, in particular, had a cast of gentility both in her look and
garments; and I have heard the cause of it expounded, from her having
been the daughter of one of the Reformation preachers in the
Gospel-spreading epoch of John Knox. She had a crimson satin plaid over
her head, and she wore a black silk apron and a grey camlet gown. With
the one hand she held the plaid close to her neck, and the youngest
child, a lassie of seven years or so, had hold of her by the fore-finger
of the other.

Mrs M'Coul was more of a robust fabric, and she was without any plaid,
soberly dressed in the weeds of a widow, with a clean cambric
handkerchief very snodly prined over her breast. The children were
likewise beinly apparelled, and the two sons were buirdly and brave
laddies, the one about nine, and the other maybe eleven years old.

It would seem that this had been the first of their pilgrimages of
sorrow; for they stood some time in a row at the foot of the tolbooth
stair, looking up at the remains, and wondering, with tears in their
eyes, which were those they had come to see.

Their appearance drew around them many onlookers, both of the country
folk about the Cross and inhabitants of the town; but every one
respected their sorrow, and none ventured to disturb them with any
questions; for all saw that they were kith or kin to the godly men who
had testified to the truth and the Covenant in death.

It happen