My Dear Sir William,

I intended to have been at Altyre last week, and for the very purpose you ask me, to endeavor to put an end to the deplorable and disgraceful contentions existing and likely to exist in the Manse of Dallas, but my hopes of being of any service are very slender. These contentions are now approaching to a crisis. Tulloch, instead of consulting me as usual has had recourse to law agents at Elgin who has [sic] filled his empty head with notions of his Jus Mariti. Ever since Mr. McKay and Mr. Aitken dismissed his chaste and godly maid, but who Mrs. T asserts was neither chaste nor godly—Mrs. T has been bent on a separation and Mr. McKay's last visit has driven him to desperation—but for Mr. Grant's letter, an inhibition would have been taken out against Mrs. T before this time. That letter lowered his courage—he feared his lawyer could be of little service to him in the event of a Parochial Visitation—and down he came to me. I at once perceived the friendly intentions of these [??] gentlemen and offered to stand between him and the Presbytery, if he dropped the idea of an inhibition which his lawyer told him was a most ungracious measure and might be accomplished without having recourse to public notoriety.

I had no great difficulty in persuading T that he must get himself clear of his Ecclesiasticate before he entered upon a civil process. The dread of a Visitation alarmed him, and I endeavoured to paint the possible consequences in the most glaring colours. It will produce a temporary calm and when a new hearing [??] begins it must again be suspended over his head. It has had one good effect, it put a damper on the inhibition which I no more could have done without it, than put a stop on the [??] or reason.

But my Dear Sir William, when and how is this disgraceful conduct on the part of Mr. and Mrs. T to terminate? There is no hope of a permanent reconciliation. They have mutually inflicted such desperate wounds on each other other's honor, character and happiness that neither can forget nor forgive. Nothing but wrangling and contention may be looked for.