Page:Auld Robin Gray (2).pdf/22

 was shot in a sea-fight off the Nore, and others that he was the stranger that throw himsell oure the pier of Leith, The truth is that naebody ever heard mair about him.

Auld Laird Gray spun out ten years after Jeanie’s judgment-like departure; but he never could be said from that time, to be properly in his right mind, losing his faculties, ane after anither, and growing, wi’ the frailties of age, a kind o’ second bairn, or rather natural. However, let the truth ay be spoken, he had his beef-tea, or chicken-soup, regularly every day; and his swelled legs carefully wrappit up in the finest Welch flannel, were laid on a stool wi’ a silk cushion, by the dutifu’ hands of sand-blind Nancy.

Jeanie’s gravestone is in the southermost corner of the kirkyard of Dysart; but the reading is now scarcely legible, from the effects of the rain and sea winds on a soft stane. On the tap o’t there’s the figure of a wee angel, blawing a trumpet; but sae defaced as not to be able to scare away the sea-gulls that come up frae the shore, sail round and round about it, and at last light upon’t wi’ a scream, as if it was the grave of some auld sailor of their acquaintance they had come up on purpose to pay a visit to.