Time passed on, and "brought healing on its wings." After the lapse of several years, my father felt that it was not meet for man to be alone; and, whilst he cherished the fondest remembrance of his first domestic companion, he had too much good sense to go into the affectation of continuing single during the rest of his life "for her sake;" more especially as he had no female relative to whom he could confide the maternal charge of his boys in their nursery days. He accordingly discerned, in the daughter of one of his flock, a respectable farmer in the neighbourhood, those personal attractions and amiable dispositions which awakened his manly sympathies; and, too high-minded to stoop to mercenary considerations, he married a second time, without hunting for a _tocher_, as is sometimes imputed sarcastically to the Scottish clergy. Isobel Wilson was lovely and virtuous. About the time the American war ended, I came into this earthly part of the universe; but nothing occurred for several years of my father's life to diversify the peaceful enjoyments of his domestic life, or to interrupt the conscientious and zealous discharge of his pastoral duties. At length, however, a cloud gathered in the firmament, which ere long burst on his head, in the wrath of his patron, the Earl of Bellersdale. Local, rather than general politics agitated the district in which his humble life was cast; and there was a vehement struggle betwixt his lordship and a neighbouring nobleman for ascendancy in the county. The ranks of either party were swelled by the multiplication of freehold qualifications, for the purpose of acquiring votes. One of the expedients, as is well known, for the attainment of such objects, is the creation of nominal and fictitious voters, by conferring on the _friends_ of a political party an apparent, but not a real interest in a landed estate; and this is practised and justified by a legal fiction, and a little casuistry, with which political agents are quite familiar. The ordinary mode in these cases, is to confer such _parchment_ franchises on dependents and personal connections of the great man who needs their support--and the Earl of Bellersdale, who had the patronage of many churches of greater or less value, found, even among the clergy who had hopes of preferment from his hand, several individuals sufficiently unscrupulous to accept of such discreditable titles to a political franchise as freeholders.[I] Amongst others, my father, who was in good odour at the castle, was deemed a _likely_ person to be intrusted with so precious a privilege as a right to vote for any tool of the earl who might be brought forward as a candidate for representing the shire in Parliament. The factor was despatched to Bellerstown to offer this high behest to the poor parson, whose ready compliance was expected, _as a matter of course_. But he calmly and peremptorily refused the proffered vote, and intimated that he held it derogatory to