Abundant as their kindness was, the blessings and good wishes they heaped upon the emigrants were more abundant still; the kind-hearted mother and her bonnie girls, kissing them at parting, with tears coursing down their rosy cheeks. Mr. Gregg, who was terribly afraid of the cholera, tried to raise his own spirits, by describing all the fatal symptoms of the disease, and gave them a faithful catalogue of those who had died of it that morning in the city. He had great faith in a new remedy, which was just then making a noise in the town, which had been tried the day before, on a relation of his own—the injection of salt into veins of the sufferer. “Did it cure him?” asked Flora, rather eagerly. “Why no, I canna jest say that it did. But it enabled him to mak’ his will an’ settle a’ his worldly affairs, which was a great point gained.” “For the living,” sighed Flora. “Small satisfaction to the dying, to be disturbed in their last agonies, by attending to matters of business, while a greater reckoning is left unpaid.” “You look ill yoursel, Mistress Lyndsay,” continued the gude man. “Let’s hope that it’s not the commencement of the awfu’ disease.” “I thought so myself two days ago,” said Flora. “I am grateful to God that it was not the cholera. Does it ever break out on board ship?” “It is an affliction sae lately sent upon the nations by the Lord, that we have had sma’ experience o’ the matter,” quoth Mr. Gregg. “Your best chance is to trust in Him. For let us be ever so cautious, an He wills it, we canna’ escape out o’ His hand.” “Perhaps it is the best way to confide ourselves entirely to His care, and to think as little about it as we possibly can. All our precautions remind me of the boy who hid up in the cellar during a terrible thunderstorm, in the hope that the lightning would never find him there, little dreaming, that his place of safety exposed him to as much danger as a stand on the house-top. A man may run away from a battle, and escape from a fire, but it seems to me of little use attempting to fly from a pestilence which lurks in the very air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we take to nourish us. Faith in the mercy of God, and submission to His will appear to me the only remedies at all likely to avert the danger we shrink from with so much fear.” “It comes like a thief in the night,” said Mr. Gregg; “and it behoves us all to mind the warning o’ the Saviour, to watch an’ pray, for we know not at what hour the Master of the house cometh.” After the good Greggs had made their adieus, Flora felt so much recovered that she accompanied her husband in a coach, to bid the rest of their kind friends in Edinburgh farewell.