328 JEAjr eowiE. 



an earnest manner, enjoining them to leave ofif the evil tenor of 

 their ways, and at once seek the path to heaven. From that 

 night there was a striking change in the village ; after that it 

 was no uncommon thing to hear a motley crowd of fishermen, 

 coopers, and herring-gutters, singiiig a hymn in the curing-yard 

 after they had finished the labours of the day. The revival was 

 a great triumph to Psalm John,: for next season the herrings 

 were more abundant in the bay than they had ever before been 

 known to be. 



The reader is assured that this is a true sketch ; all that is 

 fanciful in it is the name of the village. The revival movement 

 was very general on the shores of the Moray Firth ; and although 

 some very inexcusable extravagances were perpetrated, a residue 

 of good has been left behind. 



" Preaching Cowie" had been left fatherless at the early age 

 of eight years, his father having been drowned in one of those 

 awful storms of the north-east coast, and his boat, with all its 

 dearly-bought fishing gear, lost ; but, in spite of aU the disad- 

 vantages his son laboured under in, consequence, he became at 

 length a comparatively rich man, in the community of Shellbraes. 

 Jean Cowie, his mother, Bull Cowie's widow, had since her be- 

 reavement grown a business of her own. She travelled for many 

 years to aU the neighbouring towns, both with fresh and cured 

 fish, and only gave up doing so when her well-doing son had be- 

 come a curer, and when she had herself^ by means of her indomi- 

 table industry, become in the circumstances a wealthy woman. 

 During the latter years of her life she was a rollicking self- 

 possessed widow, with a great " gift of the gab." She bought 

 fresh haddocks by the hundred from the fishers, and smoked 

 them yellow in old barrels with smouldering pinewood, then 

 packing up the fish in creels and other baskets, she carried 

 them by rail or cart to market, where she chaffered and bar- 

 gained, and sold and exchanged, and laughed and joked, or 

 wept, according to her humour, with all whom she met. But 

 those who scanned her countenance inj the early years of her 

 widowhood could easily observe the deep furrows that had 

 been worn by the tears in her face. There was a perpetual 

 sadness under Jean's forced gaiety, even when she was in the 

 busy market-place; and where, in the intervals of business, 

 when she could gain a solitary place, she " smoked like mad " 

 to stifle thought and tranquDlise her feelings. No one who 

 encountered widow Cowie, as she sallied forth to the nearer 



