It has been to me a labour of perfect love to re-write and revise the same, pruning here and expanding there, and preparing the whole for the press. In the incidents of personal experience, constituting the larger part of the book, the reader peruses in an almost unaltered form the graphic and simple narrative as it came from my brother’s pen. But, as many sections have been re-cast and largely modified, especially in those Chapters of whose events I was myself an eye-witness, or regarding which I had information at first hand from the parties concerned therein,—and as circumstances make it impossible to submit these in their present shape to my brother before publication,—I must request the Public to lay upon me, and not on him, all responsibility for the final shape in which the Autobiography appears. I publish it, because Something tells me there is a blessing in it. _January, 1889._ JAMES PATON. NOTE TO SECOND EDITION. The Editor desires very gratefully to acknowledge his joy in receiving, not only through Press Notices, but from Correspondents in every rank, most ample confirmation of the assurance expressed by him in the last sentence of the Original Preface—“There is a blessing in it.” He has been urging his Brother to complete, as soon as he possibly can, Part Second of the Autobiography; and he hopes that the call for this Second Edition of Part First at so early a date will successfully enforce his appeal. _February, 1889._ CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. _EARLIER DAYS._ PAGE Introductory Note 3 Kirkmahoe 4 Torthorwald Village 5 Our Villagers 6 Nithsdale Scenes 7 Our Cottage Home 9 Our Forebears 12 An Idyll of the Heart 16 A Consecrated Father 19 Accepted Vows 21 Happy Sabbath Days 22 Golden Autumn of Life 26