at the university of Glasgow under the Lord Eaglesham's patronage,
was like to have suffered a blight. However, Major Macadam, when I
spoke to him anent the young man's loss of his patron, said, with a
pleasant generosity, he should not be stickit; and, accordingly, he
made up, as far as money could, for the loss of his lordship; but
there was none that made up for the great power and influence,
which, I have no doubt, the Earl would have exerted in his behalf,
when he was ripened for the church. So that, although in time
William came out a sound and heart-searching preacher, he was long
obliged, like many another unfriended saint, to cultivate sand, and
wash Ethiopians in the shape of an east country gentleman's
camstrairy weans; than which, as he wrote me himself, there cannot
be on earth a greater trial of temper. However, in the end he was
rewarded, and is not only now a placed minister, but a doctor of
divinity.

The death of Lady Macadam was followed by another parochial
misfortune; for, considering the time when it happened, we could
count it as nothing less. Auld Thomas Howkings, the betheral, fell
sick, and died in the course of a week's illness, about the end of
November; and the measles coming at that time upon the parish, there
was such a smashery of the poor weans as had not been known for an
age; insomuch that James Banes, the lad who was Thomas Howkings'
helper, rose in open rebellion against the session during his
superior's illness; and we were constrained to augment his pay, and
to promise him the place if Thomas did not recover, which it was
then thought he could not do. On the day this happened, there were
three dead children in the clachan, and a panic and consternation
spread about the burial of them when James Bane's insurrection was
known, which made both me and the session glad to hush up the