Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/119

Rh me, but it darkened suddenly down. We said little for awhile; the histories of our own sorrows were written on our faces; there was no need for speech. 'Alas! alas!' said she, 'a kind husband and three sweet bairns all gone to the green churchyard! But ye were blessed in the departure of your children compared to me. A mother's eye wept over them, a mother's knees nursed them, and a mother's hand did all that a mother's hand could do, till the breath went to Heaven from between their sweet lips. O woman, woman! ye were blessed compared with me!' And she sobbed aloud, and looked upon the lake, which lay clear and unruffled before us. At the sound of her voice the young man raised himself from the ground, gave one wild look at my companion, and uttering a cry, and covering his face with his hands, dropped flat on the earth, and lay mute and without motion.

See him, see him!' said she to me. 'His name is Benjie Spedlands; he was once the sweetest youth in the parish, but now the hand of Heaven is heavy upon him, and sore; he is enduring punishment for a season and a time; and heavy as was his trespass, so heavy has been his chastening.' I entreated her to tell me how he had offended, and also how it happened that her appearance gave him such pain, and made him cry and cover his face. 'It is a strange and a mournful story,' she answered; 'but it eases my spirit to relate it. O woman! I was once a merry and a happy creature, with a face as gladsome as the light of day; but for these eight long years I have had nought but cheerless days and joyless nights, sad thoughts and terrible dreams. Sorrow came in a dream to me, but it will not pass from me till I go to the grave.

"It happened during the summer-time, after I had lost my husband, that I was very down-spirited and lonesome, and my chief and only consolation was to watch over my fatherless son. He was a sweet child; and on the day he was two years old, when I ought to have been glad, and praised Him who had protected the widow and the orphan, I became more than usually melancholy, for evil forebodings kept down my spirits sorely, and caused me to wet the cheeks of my child with tears. You have been a mother, and may have known the tenderness and love which an infant will show her when she is distressed. He hung his little arms round my neck, hid his head in my bosom, and