XV111 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



a silver lining to every cloud, and surely it is a gift of God 

 that it has ever been so, that in the darkest hours of the 

 sorrows, privations and troubles of after years I could look 

 up and say, 'Thy will be done.' " 



After a stay of two or three days in Edinburgh, the Traills 

 embarked in the old Pomona packet for Kirkwall. 



Mrs. Traill was received by her husband's relations and by 

 his first wife's sisters and father with the utmost kindness 

 and affection, although no one could have appeared in worse 

 plight to captivate unknown relatives than she did that morn- 

 ing, wet from the sea spray, weary and weak from the effects of 

 the stormy passage. One of these sisters, Miss Fotheringham, 

 is still living in London at the advanced age of ninety-one, 

 and I have sat beside the beautiful white-haired old lady and 

 listened with delight to her description of the arrival of the 

 English bride their brother-in-law brought so unexpectedly 

 to their house at Kirkwall. 



" We were not altogether pleased at the tidings of his mar : 

 riage, but we fell in love with his second wife before she had 

 been a day in the house ; and truly she was a lovely, bright 

 sunny creature to take out to the untracked wilds of a colony." 



After a stay of some weeks in the Islands, they returned 

 to Scotland to sail from the Clyde in the last vessel of the 

 season bound for Quebec and Montreal. 



The following word-picture of the parting at Kirkwall is 

 descriptive of the tenacious affection felt by the tenantry and 

 dependents for their feudal lairds, who hold rank and titles 

 peculiar to the islands, and which are derived from their 

 descent from the Norse Vikings who in former ages so often 

 defied the power of the Scottish kings : 



"Assembled on the Kirkwall pier we found about twenty- 

 five of the Westove tenantry. They had come down to take 

 leave of their old master. Among them was auld Jean Scott, 

 the nurse or moome of my husband. He, wishing to propitiate 

 her in my favor, had provided me with a handful of coins to 



