Troubled as I was with the mystery in my family, I yet did not neglect my public duty. At the time appointed, the session met, and I repeated what had passed with Mr. Dinleloof, expressing my persuasion that we would find him a man of more efficacy than we suspected from the simplicity of his demeanour. But when it was proposed to issue the handbill which I myself had suggested, I was startled; the bare possibility of a connection between my family and Mr. Bell's shook me; and under the constraint of that apprehension, I blemished mine own esteem by weakly persuading the elders to abandon the intention.

It was, however, a lesson of awe and wonder to see how rapidly one humiliation after another came to stir up the worst sediment of Mr. Bell's nature. I sometimes thought of it with alarm, for it was as if Fate were giving pledges for the performance of some dreadful thing. In all the instances wherein I was myself the agent, an irresistible impulse was upon me, an impassioned necessity to do as I did, which could not be withstood.

When he heard, which was not until late in the afternoon, that the handbills were not to be circulated, he believed the design was only postponed in order to be executed with the greater effect on the Sabbath morning, and his ire against me became as the unquenchable fire. It may, therefore, easily be conceived how the furnace raged, when in the course of the evening Mr. Oliver Cockspur waited upon him from me regarding the clandestine conduct of his son towards my daughter. The immediate cause of sending that message was this:—

During the time I was absent on the business of the minister, my wife found an opportunity to let Mary know of the discovery I had made; and the maiden, unable to equivocate with the circumstances, acknowledged that Walter Bell had been with her.