I laid her by the side of my first love, Betty Lanshaw, and I inscribed her name upon the same headstone.  Time had drained my poetical vein, and I have not yet been able to indite an epithet on her merits and virtues, for she had an eminent share of both.  Above all, she was the mother of my children.  She was not long deposited in her place of rest until things fell into amazing confusion, and I saw it would be necessary, as soon as decency would allow, for me to take another wife, both for a helpmate, and to tend me in my approaching infirmities.

I saw it would not do for me to look out for an overly young woman, nor yet would it do for one of my way to take an elderly maiden, ladies of that sort being liable to possess strong-set particularities.  I therefore resolved that my choice should lie among widows of a discreet age, and I fixed my purpose on Mrs. Nugent, the relict of a professor in the University of Glasgow, both because she was a well-bred woman without any children, and because she was held in great estimation as a lady of Christian principle.  And so we were married as soon as a twelve-month and a day had passed from the death of the second Mrs. Balwhidder; and neither of us have had occasion to rue the bargain.

VI.—­The Last Sermon

Two things made 1799 a memorable year; the marriage of my daughter Janet with the Rev. Dr. Kittleword of Swappington, a match in every way commendable; and the death of Mrs. Malcolm.  If ever there was a saint on earth she was surely one.  She bore adversity with an honest pride; she toiled in the day of penury and affliction with thankfulness for her little earnings.

The year 1803 saw tempestuous times.  Bonaparte gathered his host fornent the English coast, and the government at London were in terror of their lives for an invasion.  All in the country saw that there was danger, and I was not backward in sounding the trumpet to battle.  I delivered on Lord’s Day a religious and political exhortation on the present posture of public affairs before a vast congregation of all ranks.  The week following there were meetings of weavers and others, and volunteers were enrolled in defence of king and country.

In the course of the next four or five years many changes took place in the parish.  The weavers and cotton-mill folk and seceders from my own kirk built a meeting-house in Cayenneville, where there had been for a while great suffering on account of the failure of the cotton-mill company.  In the year 1809 the elders came in a body to the manse, and said that, seeing that I was now growing old, they thought they could not testify their respect for me in a better manner than by agreeing to get me a helper; and the next year several young ministers spared me from the necessity of preaching.