Mrs. Graham retired to a private room, to offer up thanksgiving to God for his goodness, and to commend herself and her orphans to his future care.

A gentleman from Ayr, hearing of the shipwreck, came down to offer assistance; and in him Mrs. Graham was happy to recognize an old friend.  This gentleman paid her and her family much attention, carrying them to his own house, and treating them with kindness and hospitality.

In a day or two after this she reached Cartside, and entered her father’s dwelling; not the large ancient mansion in which she had left him, but a thatched cottage, consisting of three apartments.  Possessed of a too easy temper and unsuspecting disposition, Mr. Marshall had been induced to become security for some of his friends, whose failure in business had reduced him to poverty.  He now acted as factor of a gentleman’s estate in this neighborhood, of whose father he had been the intimate friend, with a salary of twenty pounds sterling per annum and the use of a small farm.

In a short time, however, his health failed, and he was deprived of this scanty pittance, being incapable, as the proprietor was pleased to think, of fulfilling the duties of factor.

Alive to every call of duty, Mrs. Graham now considered her father as added, with her children, to the number of dependents on her industry.  She proved indeed a good daughter—­faithful, affectionate, and dutiful, she supported her father through his declining years; and he died at her house, Feb. 13, 1783, aged 75, during her residence in Edinburgh, surrounded by his daughter and her children, who tenderly watched him during his last illness.

Having resided two years at Cartside, she removed to Paisley in 1778, where she taught a small school.  The slender profits of such an establishment, with a widow’s pension of sixteen pounds sterling, were the means of subsistence for herself and her family.  When she first returned to Cartside a few religious friends called to welcome her home.  The gay and wealthy part of her former acquaintances, who, like the butterfly, spread their silken wings only to bask in the warmth of a summer sun, found not their way to the lonely cottage of an afflicted widow.  Her worth, though in after-life rendered splendid by its own fruits, was at this time hidden, excepting to those whose reflection and wisdom had taught them to discern it more in the faith and submission of the soul, than in the selfish and extravagant exhibitions of that wealth bestowed by the bounty of Providence, but expended too often for the purposes of vanity and dissipation.