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Poor Jenny Gaffaw happened to take a heavy cold, and soon thereafter died. Meg went about from house to house, begging dead- clothes, and got the body straighted in a wonderful decent manner, with a plate of earth and salt placed upon it an admonitory type of mortality and eternal life that has ill-advisedly gone out of fashion.
Among others that shared in his attention, was daft Meg Gaffaw, whom he had forgathered with one day in coming to see me; and after conversing with her for some time, he handed her, as she told me herself, over the kirk-stile like a lady of high degree, and came with her to the manse door linking by the arm.
When I have seen in my walks the irrational creatures of God, the birds and the beasts, governed by a kindly instinct in attendance on their young, often has it come into my head that love and charity, far more than reason or justice, formed the tie that holds the world, with all its jarring wants and woes, in social dependence and obligation together; and, in this year, a strong verification of the soundness of this notion was exemplified in the conduct of the poor haverel lassie Meg Gaffaw, whose naturality on the occasion of her mother's death I have related at length in this chronicle.
We had, as may be read, trials and tribulations in the days that were past; and in the rank and boisterous times of the smuggling there was much sin and blemish among us, but nothing so dark and awful as what fell out in the course of this unhappy year. The evil omen of daft Jenny Gaffaw and her daughter's sacrilege, had soon a bloody verification.
But, och how! this was the last happy summer that we had for many a year in the parish; and an omen of the dule that ensued, was in a sacrilegious theft that a daft woman, Jenny Gaffaw, and her idiot daughter, did in the kirk, by tearing off and stealing the green serge lining of my lord's pew, to make, as they said, a hap for their shoulders in the cold weather saving, however, the sin, we paid no attention at the time to the mischief and tribulation that so unheard-of a trespass boded to us all.
But I should not forget a most droll thing that took place with Jenny Gaffaw, and her daughter. They had been missed from the parish for some days, and folk began to be uneasy about what could have become of the two silly creatures; till one night, at the dead hour, a strange light was seen beaming and burning at the window of the bit hole where they lived.
But when I saw around me so many of my people clad in complimentary mourning for the gallant Charles Malcolm, and that even poor daft Jenny Gaffaw, and her daughter, had on an old black riband; and when I thought of him, the spirited laddie, coming home from Jamaica with his parrot on his shoulder, and his limes for me, my heart filled full, and I was obliged to sit down in the pulpit, and drop a tear.
On the Sunday morning after, her ladyship sent for Jenny Gaffaw, and her daft daughter Meg, and showed them the mantles, and said she would give then half-a-crown if they would go with them to the kirk, and take their place in the bench beside the elders, and, after worship, walk home before Miss Betty Wudrife.
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