SHORTLY after, the necessary formalities having been complied with, Mr Blair resumed his office, and he continued, during a long series of years, to discharge all its duties in the midst of an affectionate and confiding people. He did so, however, with a modesty—a humility, such as became one that had passed through such scenes as I have attempted to narrate; and one thing, in particular, did not fail to make a very strong impression among the people of his flock.

In those days, persons guilty of offences against the discipline of the church, were uniformly, after confession, and expression of penitence, rebuked from the pulpit after divine service on Sunday in presence of the congregation. Whenever Mr Blair had occasion to discharge this duty, which is, perhaps, under any circumstances, one of the most painful that fall to the lot of the parish priest, he did it with deep and earnest simplicity; but he never failed to commence his address to the penitent before him, by reminding him, and all present, of his own sin and its consequences. I have said that this produced a strong and powerful impression on the minds of his people; I might have said, with equal truth, that it exerted a most salutary influence upon their conduct. That primitive race were generous enough to sympathise with generosity, and I believe not few among them found an additional safeguard against guilt in the feeling, that by their guilt, the old but deep wounds might be reopened in the bosom of a man, whose own errors, fatal as they were, and fatal in their effects, they had unconsciously come to look upon somewhat in the light of a mysterious and inscrutable infliction, rather than of common human frailty.

In the midst of this kind people, Mr Blair at last closed his eyes upon all earthly scenes, after he had laboured among them during a space of not less than twenty years after his restoration. His daughter, fair and lovely as she was, had, in her time, received the addresses of many wooers, but she never would listen to any of them—continuing to devote herself in all things to her father.