[H] A little reflection will enable the reader to see what true name this fictitious one is intended to cover.--ED.
The chapel being built, and endowed with a stipend of "forty pounds a-year" (the hint, I suppose, was taken from Oliver Goldsmith), it was necessary to provide a clergyman to officiate in it; and William Douglas being one of the most approved young men in the district, had the honour to be preferred by the patron. The period to which I now refer was long before the church, in its wisdom, enacted a law for regulating chapels of ease; and not only the amount of stipend, but the continuance of clergymen who officiated in such chapels, depended on the arbitrary and sovereign will of their pious founders. Bellerstown, though a step in William Douglas' professional progress, yielded too scanty a revenue to admit of matrimony; but the talents, respectability, and prepossessing manners of the chaplain made him a favourite at the castle, and rendered it practicable to eke out the slender living by the addition of a small farm, at what was called a moderate rent. But this appendage, too, was held by the same precarious tenure--Lord Bellersdale's will. The probationer was inducted as pastor of the Bellerstown chapel, according to the rules of the church; and, after the lapse of a few months, he and Miss Jane Malcolm thought--although no other person thought--that they might venture to enter into the holy bands of wedlock, and, with frugality and mutual love in their household, look forward to happiness in their humble and unambitious sphere of life. This thought ended in deed--and they were married.
The tenor of a clergyman's life is, in general, even and unvaried, consisting of a faithful and regular discharge of his peculiar duties. Such, for some years, was the fate of William Douglas. He acquired the confidence and affections of his humble flock--the esteem of his brethren--the countenance of the neighbouring gentry--and even the patronage of the great man, at whose table he was a frequent and welcomed guest. Mrs. Douglas had presented him with two sons: and his parents, advanced in years, were gathered to their fathers. This bereavement was not unlooked for; but the first trial of life which wrung his heart to the core, was a fatal illness which, in a few days, snatched the object of his most tender affection from him.