SCOTLAND.
The Glasgow Saturday Post states that Mr. Houston junior, of John- atone Castle, the late Member for Renfrewshire, dropped down dead a few days ago, while shooting on the moors in Aberdeenshire.
The papers have just published a letter, written in June last, by Mr. Fox Mauls to Lord Morpeth, urging the latter to use his influence in altering the Duke of Sutherland's determination to refuse sites on his lands for Free Presbyterian Churches. Why it is published now does not appear. Mr. Maule says— "I cannot tell you with what alarm I view this system of refusal of sites to so large a seceding population, if generally adopted by the aristocracy and landowners. You know as well as I do, that already the separation between the higher and lower classes has proceeded to an unsafe extent; and our object should be conciliation, and not farther irritation. Rely on it that it will be felt, whatever plausible arguments may be given for it, as a system of persecu- tion, which, all the experience of history tells us, will strengthen instead of putting down the object against which it is directed."
At the autumn sitting of the Justiciary Court in Stirling, on the 13th, Allan Mair was accused of the murder of Mary Fletcher or Mair, his reputed wife. The interest of the case lies in the age of the parties; Nair being eighty-four years of age, and the woman a year older. It was stated, that he kept her short of food, although he did not want for it himself; and he had been heard to abase her, " wishing she was in hell and her soul burning." On the night of the 14th May last, a neigh- bour heard him striking Mary, as if with a hammer, and saying that he would "make her put in the sneck of the bed" : it was a box-bed [probably let into a recess in the wall, like a cupboard, and closed with a door ; of which the " sneck " would be the hasp.] The old woman was heard to say, "Let me lie and die in peace, and don't strike me any more." Next day he went to the Manse, as he said, " to tell the minister to make a snuffbox of Mary." The old woman was dis- covered crouched up at the foot of the bed, covered with bruises and with blood ; and she died of her wounds. Mair was found guilty, and sentenced by Lord MOUOreiff to be hanged on the 4th October.
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