CHAPTER X.

WAS now learning to work as a shoemaker's apprentice; but otherwise sorely cramped in the means of following the bent of my natural tastes; and I made less progress in acquirements of general knowledge in these two years than in any two months previously. Not a germ further in school education, and without either example or enticing books, or other excitement to read; so except what was acquired in use of hand in shoemaking, these two years were a blank in as much as mind was concerned.

Tommy Fala was the only being who showed any sympathy with what he perceived as my tastes, and he insisted that if I had lived in Newcastle-on-Tyne to have got proper instruction in certain things-singing, for instance-I might have made my bread by it; and in the lighter stitching and lining parts of our business I used to plague him with comparisons of work, when he would blame his spectacles and eulogize my sharp, young sight. I soon became altogether in his view, as with his provincial burr he expressed it, "a curious laddie." Tommy had read some poetry, and spoke frequently of Pope, and Thomson's "Seasons," which I kept entreating him to explain to me, and to repeat such passages as had clung to his memory. Such were but short

sentences, the meaning of which I thought I perceived "as through a glass darkly." These two years slid by, when my father determined to leave Longnewton, where, with the general poverty of the falling village, he found it next to impossible to make a scanty subsistence, even without lessening his few pounds of debt-indeed, they were rather increasing. So as Mr. Tulloh, having bought the estate of Elliestoun, about a mile and a half north of us, some few years previously, was there rearing a fine young family, and improving the place, and as my father had been employed by them, he built for him a cothouse beside the blacksmith's shop and the joiner's at the end of his avenue-the Loanend, as it is called. To this we removed at Whitsunday, 1798. This remove, so short, left my father still contiguous to the best of his old customers, besides throwing us into the chance of some new ones—at least, so we thought. We entered this new cottage of bare outer walls, roofed with red tiles, like the rest then adjoining it, and fell to work, dividing it into apartments by making partitions of home fir spokes, plastered up with claut and clay (straw dubbed with mortar of clay hung over the spokes and sleeked down with the hand), which makes a cosy wall of partition. In the same way we made a kitchen chimney, with its hallan (or sheltering angle), and the shop and another small apartment were thus also neatly divided, covering the joists over-head with small, round fir trees overlaid with green sod.

I here felt most delighted, having fallen in amongst young woods, and birds, and burns of clear water all around, and the green plantations so pleasant

to wander in, whenever I went out of doors. No cushat cooing in clump of shade felt more happy than I did rambling through these thickets, seeking pleasure in an ever-green shape of-I could not tell what. I fixed on forming my nest like the rest of the birds, a seat in a large spruce fir which on the sunny side of the north plantation overlooked our dwelling. This was soon accomplished, by turning up the tops of the under branches and tying down to them those above all around, and lining over with fog (green moss); but, like most things else, here the pleasure lay more in the idea than in the real enjoyment of the aerial bower. It being understood by all concerned, as well as by myself, that I must now settle to work in the house really for bread, except on mornings or evenings occasionally, or for a Sabbath afternoon seclusion for a lesson, I seldom could visit my woodland nest, and indeed I found I was too restless to sit in it unemployed when I had a liberty of strolling. In the novelty of this wood-wandering I felt a boundless pleasure for the first two summer months, always, however, keeping a sharp eye about me for fear of meeting with the laird, for he was represented by the people around as very terrible to be offended; and though I was conscious I would do no real harm in his plantations, yet I reasoned that he was not obliged to understand so. I soon found, however, that he had discovered my summer-seat in the tree, for he had been inquiring about it at the forester, as a neighbour boy-a little chap I had once or twice invited to sit with me in it-informed me. I felt somewhat in Robinson Crusoe's situation, when he

thought of defacing his grove and other improvements to elude the attention of the savages, and then it was reiterated in my hearing that "the laird was not to creel eggs with." But no reprimand followed, though I had made up my mind not to deny it. My next project was to work out and enclose a small plot of waste front ground between our kitchen window and the road, which cost a labour something like said Robinson Crusoe's cave-house in the rock, as it was entirely stones, broken tiles, and rubbish of a former house, which I quarried out to about eighteen inches depth, and carried all away in a bucket to a distance, then carried in good earth from behind the house to fill up the space-it might take several hundreds of bucketsful-next laid all out in what I supposed a true garden style in miniature, with its box-edged gravel walks of a foot-breadth, &c. On the main plot I planted early cabbages in the fall, which were so soon ready in the succeeding spring that I dug and planted again and again, cutting three successive crops from the same ground that season. About the commencement of this operation the laird surprised me sweating in it, and it made me very happy to find that he highly approved of my plan and work, and projected some improvement of the fence, allowing me to cut broom, briars, &c., to weave the paling, which, making it thus as thick as a board, excluded all trespass from without, even that of the neighbours' poultry. It charmed me to hear the laird talk quite plain and pleased, and as confidentially as my own father, and this the more so from the terrible character some of the boys around had given of him. And if gentlemen could conceive

(what they seem never to be taught at their colleges) that there are many honest and ingenuous, though sometimes erring, hearts amongst the children of the poor, and would treat them with open kindness rather than with those thief-making terrors of prosecution, sign-boarded in threatenings at every turning, they would find that their harvest of regard, respect, and love from boy and man together would be worth the reaping, and this generally, except in a very few scoundrelly instances. I afterwards learned that my cabbage had been an object of attention, the laird having rallied his gardener about the shoemaker's laddie beating him till the man peevishly lost temper.

On a summer day, which I had selected after a heavy fall of rain for a solitary trouting excursion, I sallied out, but just met the laird in the avenue. "Where are you going?" says he. "To Ayle water, sir, to fish." "Where is your fishing-rod?" "Oh, sir, I was thinking of cutting a rowan-tree wand in the plantin'." "How dare you think of doing so, and to tell me to my face?" "Oh, sir, I would not cut a young tree, but these bushes of stock-shots, growing out from the tree roots, should be pruned away at any rate." Well, go, cut what ye like, but lose no time, and recollect to bring me in your trouts, or I'll blow you up." So off I flew, thinking, if you like trouts I'll get an extension of commission from my father also. It blew at the water an almost defeating gale of wind, but I got into a sheltered spot, and succeeded in bringing into Elliestoun House just fifteen, which might stand half-pounds at average. I now took great courage, determining never again to skulk from the laird, or from any person, even should