Mr Austin continued to recover from his severe indisposition, and spent some months at Moffat in comparative peace and safety. It was here that he met with his brother-in-law, the worthy and beloved Mr Shiels, minister of Kilbride. Indeed, all the ten ministers of the Presbytery of Penpont, with the exception of Black of Closeburn, and Wishart of Keir, had refused to conform, and, along with nearly four hundred ministers in the south and west of Scotland in particular, had been compelled to fly from their homes and their flocks, and were, in many cases, conveyed in droves beyond the Tay; compelled to emigrate to foreign lands, or to take up their abode with the curlews and gleds of the lake and the mountain. It was indeed a sad day for Scotland the 23rd of December, 16—, when, by Middleton’s drunken act of Privy Council, so many conscientious and pious men were laid aside for so long a time (many of them for ever), from their sphere of useful and acceptable ministration in the Presbyterian church. As the faithful historian of these dismal times very expressively observes—“When those I am now speaking of took leave of their dear flocks, it was a day not only of weeping but howling, like the weeping of Jazer, as when a besieged city is sacked.” Mothers were seen carrying their infants through snow and storm, and large families of children accompanying their helpless parents with tears and lamentations to the cold and often houseless desert. Whoever gave them food or shelter was liable to be fined; to have soldiers billeted upon them; or even to suffer imprisonment.