The Annals of the Parish | Page 7

it."
I wrote the letter that night to Provost Maitland, and, by the retour of
the post, I got an answer, with twenty pounds for Mrs Malcolm, saying,
"That it was with sorrow he heard so small a trifle could be
serviceable." When I took the letter and the money, which was in a
bank-bill, she said, "This is just like himsel'." She then told me that Mr
Maitland had been a gentleman's son of the east country, but driven out
of his father's house, when a laddie, by his stepmother; and that he had

served as a servant lad with her father, who was the Laird of Yillcogie,
but ran through his estate, and left her, his only daughter, in little better
than beggary with her auntie, the mother of Captain Malcolm, her
husband that was. Provost Maitland in his servitude had ta'en a notion
of her; and when he recovered his patrimony, and had become a great
Glasgow merchant, on hearing how she was left by her father, he
offered to marry her, but she had promised herself to her cousin the
captain, whose widow she was. He then married a rich lady, and in time
grew, as he was, Lord Provost of the city; but his letter with the twenty
pounds to me, showed that he had not forgotten his first love. It was a
short, but a well-written letter, in a fair hand of write, containing much
of the true gentleman; and Mrs Malcolm said, "Who knows but out of
the regard he once had for their mother, he may do something for my
five helpless orphans."
Thirdly, Upon the subject of taking my cousin, Miss Betty Lanshaw,
for my first wife, I have little to say.--It was more out of a
compassionate habitual affection, than the passion of love. We were
brought up by our grandmother in the same house, and it was a thing
spoken of from the beginning, that Betty and me were to be married. So,
when she heard that the Laird of Breadland had given me the
presentation of Dalmailing, she began to prepare for the wedding; and
as soon as the placing was well over, and the manse in order, I gaed to
Ayr, where she was, and we were quietly married, and came home in a
chaise, bringing with us her little brother Andrew, that died in the East
Indies, and he lived and was brought up by us.
Now, this is all, I think, that happened in that year worthy of being
mentioned, except that at the sacrament, when old Mr Kilfuddy was
preaching in the tent, it came on such a thunder-plump, that there was
not a single soul stayed in the kirkyard to hear him; for the which he
was greatly mortified, and never after came to our preachings.
CHAPTER II
YEAR 1761

It was in this year that the great smuggling trade corrupted all the west
coast, especially the laigh lands about the Troon and the Loans. The tea
was going like the chaff, the brandy like well- water, and the wastrie of
all things was terrible. There was nothing minded but the riding of
cadgers by day, and excisemen by night--and battles between the
smugglers and the king's men, both by sea and land. There was a
continual drunkenness and debauchery; and our session, that was but
on the lip of this whirlpool of iniquity, had an awful time o't. I did all
that was in the power of nature to keep my people from the contagion: I
preached sixteen times from the text, "Render to Caesar the things that
are Caesar's." I visited, and I exhorted; I warned, and I prophesied; I
told them that, although the money came in like sclate stones, it would
go like the snow off the dyke. But for all I could do, the evil got in
among us, and we had no less than three contested bastard bairns upon
our hands at one time, which was a thing never heard of in a parish of
the shire of Ayr since the Reformation. Two of the bairns, after no
small sifting and searching, we got fathered at last; but the third, that
was by Meg Glaiks, and given to one Rab Rickerton, was utterly
refused, though the fact was not denied; but he was a termagant fellow,
and snappit his fingers at the elders. The next day he listed in the
Scotch Greys, who were then quartered at Ayr, and we never heard
more of him, but thought he had been slain in battle, till one of the
parish, about three years since, went up to London to lift a legacy from
a cousin that died among the Hindoos. When he was walking about,
seeing the curiosities, and among others