The disappointment to Doctor Brown was not slight. He felt himself rapidly failing, and he had hoped to find in his son an assistant and successor in whose hands he might contentedly leave the care of his beloved flock, and pass on to an uninterrupted fulfilment the many good works he had commenced in his parish. Besides his parish, the future of his daughter may also have weighed much on the old man's mind. She had been born and bred in the manse, and was as well known to every one of the parishioners, as the minister himself. To the poor she had been the recognised messenger of mercy. Ever since her mother's death (when she was thirteen), had devolved on her with the assistance of the old housekeeper, the many and onerous duties that fall to the country minister's wife; and in fulfilling these she had won the love of rich and poor alike. Roderick too had been bred in the manse, and was known to every living soul in the parish. He had fished the burns with the sons of the farmers and crofters, when a lad, and as he grew older shot on the moors with the lairds. Gentle and simple alike had only kind words to say of the minister's son, and to these was added sincere respect when he entered on his theological studies, and afforded such assistance to his father in his sacred duties as the laws of the Church permit to the unordained. There would have been but one voice in the parish from Patron, Heritors, and People, as to who should succeed Doctor Brown in his charge, and it was very bitter to the old man to find that for an enthusiastic scruple all his hopes were to be laid low. In the year of the Disruption, Dr. Brown died, and in the same year his son Roderick was licensed to preach by the Free Church. On many therefore fell a double bereavement; his father was taken away, and forthwith it became necessary to gather up his household gods, the relics of his past, steeped in all the memories of childhood and of those who had made it glad, and to move forth into a new and an untried life.