But the lown of that time was as a pet day in winter. In the harvest, however, when the proposal came out that we should give bonds to keep the peace, I made no scruple of signing the same, and of getting my wife's father, who was not out in the raid, to be my cautioner. In the doing of this I did not renounce the Covenant; but, on the contrary, I considered that by the bonds the King was as much bound to preserve things in the state under which I granted the bond as I was to remain in the quiet condition I was when I signed it. After the bonds of peace came the indulgence, and the chief heritors of our parish having something to say with the Lord Tweeddale, leave was obtained for Mr Swinton to come back, and we had made a paction with Andrew Dornock, the prelatic curate and incumbent, to let him have his manse again. But although Mr Swinton did return, and his family were again gathered around him, he would not, as he said himself to me, so far bow the knee to Baal as to bring the church of Christ in any measure or way into Erastian dependence on the civil magistrate. So he neither would return to the manse nor enter the pulpit, but continued, for the space of several years, to reside at Quharist, and to preach on the summer Sundays from the window in the gable. In the spring, however, of the year 1674, he, after a lingering illness, closed his life and ministry. For some time he had felt himself going hence, and the tenour of his prayers and sermons had for several months been of a high and searching efficacy; and he never failed, Sabbath after Sabbath, just before pronouncing the blessing, to return public thanks that the Lord was drawing him so softly away from the world, and from the storms that were gathering in the black cloud of prelacy which still overhung and darkened the ministry of the Kirk of Scotland,--a method of admonition that was awfully awakening to the souls of his hearers, and treasured by them as a solemn breathing of the inspiration of prophecy. When he was laid in the earth, and Mr Witherspoon, by some handling on my part, was invited to fill the void which his removal had left among us, the wind again began to fisle, and the signs of a tempest were seen in the changes of the royal Councils. The gracious-hearted statesmen before spoken of were removed from their benignant spheres like falling stars from the firmament, and the Duke of Lauderdale was endowed with the power to persecute and domineer.