Thus, then, with every heart rejoicing, every house teeming with
numbers to swell the ranks of Wallace, did he, the day after he had
entered Ayr, see all arranged for its peaceful establishment. But ere
he bade that town adieu, in which he had been educated, and where
almost every man, remembering its preserver's boyish years, thronged
round him with recollections of former days, one duty yet demanded his
stay: to pay funeral honors to the remains of his beloved grandfather.
Accordingly, the time was fixed; and with every solemnity due to his
virtues and his rank, Sir Ronald Crawford was buried in the chapel of
the citadel. It was not a scene of mere ceremonious mourning. As he
had been the father of the fatherless, he was followed to the grave by
many an orphan's tears; and as he had been the protector of the
distressed of every degree, a procession, long and full of lamentation,
conducted his shrouded corpse to its earthly rest. The mourning
families of the chiefs who had fallen in the same bloody theater with
himself, closed the sad retinue; and while the holy rites committed his
body to the ground, the sacred mass was extended to those who had been
plunged into the weltering element.
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