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a man, I would just treat him in the very same way, if he daur’d to set his nose against any thing that I wanted.” I declare to ye when I heard this frae my ain flesh and bluid, I was perfectly dumfoundered. The bairn I had brought up on my knee———that used, when a wee thing, to come and sit beside me at the loom, and who was in the custom of wheeling my pirns wi’ her ain hand——— odds, man, it was desperate. I coudna say anither word, but I fand a big tear come hap hap-ping ower my runkled cheeks, the first that had wet them sin’ I was a bit laddie running about before the schule door. What was her mither’s abusiveness to this? A man may thole muckle frae his wife, but O, the harsh words of the undutifu’ bairn gang like arrows to his heart, and he weeps tears of real bitterness. I wasna angry at the lassie——— I was ower grieved to be angered ; and for the first time I found that my former sufferings wore only as a single thread to a haill hauk of yarn compared to them I suffered at this moment.
A’thegither the thing was mair than I could staun, so, rising up, I betaks mysell to my but-an-ben neighbour, Andrew Brand. Andrew was an uncommon sagacious chiel, and, like mysell, a weaver to his trade. He was beuk-learned, and had read a hantel on different subjects, so that he was naturally looked up to by the folks round about, on account of his great lear. When onything gaed wrang about the Leeehlee street, where we lived, we were a’ glad to consult him; and his advice was reckoned no greatly behint that of Mr Meek, the minister. He was a great counter or ’rithmetishian, as he ca’d it; and it was thocht by mony guid judges that he could handle a pen as weel as Mr Dick, the writing-master, himsell. So,
