mother had few means beyond the labour of her hands for their
support. She had kept him at the parish school until he was fifteen, and
he had learned all that his master knew; and in three years more, by
rising early and sitting late at her daily toils, and the savings of his
field labour and occasional teaching, she was enabled to make
preparation for sending him to Edinburgh. Never did her wheel spin so
blithely since her husband was taken from her side, as when she put the
first lint upon the rock for his college sarks. Proudly did she show to
her neighbours her double spinel yarn--observing, "It's nae finer than
he deserves, poor fallow, for he'll pay me back some day." The web was
bleached and the shirts made by her own hands; and the day of his
departure arrived. It was a day of joy mingled with anguish. He attended
the classes regularly and faithfully; and truly as St. Giles's marked
the hour, the long, lean figure of Thomas Jeffrey, in a suit of shabby
black, and half a dozen volumes under his arm, was seen issuing from his
garret in the West Bow, darting down the frail stair with the velocity
of a shadow, measuring the Lawnmarket and High Street with gigantic
strides, gliding like a ghost up the South Bridge, and sailing through
the Gothic archway of the College, till the punctual student was lost in
its inner chambers. Years rolled by, and at length the great, the awful
day arrived--

"Big with the fate of Thomas and his mother."

He was to preach his trial sermon; and where? In his own parish--in his
native village! It was summer, but his mother rose by daybreak. Her son,
however, was at his studies before her; and when she entered his bedroom
with a swimming heart and swimming eyes, Thomas was stalking across the
floor, swinging his arms, stamping his feet, and shouting his sermon to
the trembling curtains of a four-post bed, which she had purchased in
honour of him alone. "Oh, my bairn! my matchless bairn!" cried she,
"what a day o' joy is this for your poor mother! But oh, hinny, hae ye
it weel aff? I hope there's nae fears o' ye stickin' or using notes!"
"Dinna fret, mother--dinna fret," replied the young divine; "stickin'
and notes are out o' the question. I hae every word o' it as clink as
the A B C." The appointed hour arrived. She was first at the kirk. Her
heart felt too big for her bosom. She could not sit--she walked again to
the air--she trembled back--she gazed restless on the pulpit. The parish