than did that worthy and innocent creature, Nanse Banks, the
schoolmistress; and she was a great loss when she was removed, as it
is to be hoped, to a better world; but anent this I shall have to
speak more at large hereafter.

It was in this year that my patron, the Laird of Breadland, departed
this life, and I preached his funeral sermon; but he was non-beloved
in the parish; for my people never forgave him for putting me upon
them, although they began to be more on a familiar footing with
myself. This was partly owing to my first wife, Betty Lanshaw, who
was an active throughgoing woman, and wonderfu' useful to many of
the cottars' wives at their lying-in; and when a death happened
among them, her helping hand, and any thing we had at the manse, was
never wanting; and I went about myself to the bedsides of the frail,
leaving no stone unturned to win the affections of my people, which,
by the blessing of the Lord, in process of time, was brought to a
bearing.

But a thing happened in this year, which deserves to be recorded, as
manifesting what effect the smuggling was beginning to take in the
morals of the country side. One Mr Macskipnish, of Highland
parentage, who had been a valet-de-chambre with a major in the
campaigns, and taken a prisoner with him by the French, he having
come home in a cartel, took up a dancing-school at Irville, the
which art he had learnt in the genteelest fashion, in the mode of
Paris, at the French court. Such a thing as a dancing-school had
never, in the memory of man, been known in our country side; and
there was such a sound about the steps and cottillions of Mr
Macskipnish, that every lad and lass, that could spare time and
siller, went to him, to the great neglect of their work. The very