used to sit
looking at her in the kirk, and felt a droll confusion when our eyes
met. It dirled through my heart like a dart. Fain would I have spoken to
her, but aye my courage failed me, though whiles she gave me a smile
when she passed. She used to go to the well every night with her two
stoups to draw water, so I thought of watching to give her two apples
which I had carried in my pocket for more than a week for that purpose.
How she started when I stappit them into her hand, and brushed by
without speaking!

Jamie Coom, the blacksmith, who I aye jealoused was my rival, came up
and asked Jess, with a loud guffaw, "Where is the tailor?" When I heard
that, I took to my heels till I found myself on the little stool by the
fireside with the hamely sound of my mother's wheel bum-bumming in my
lug, like a gentle lullaby.

The days of the years of my 'prenticeship having glided cannily over, I
girt myself round about with a proud determination of at once cutting my
mother's apron-string. So I set out for Edinburgh in search of a
journeyman's place, which I got the very first day in the Grassmarket.
My lodging was up six pairs of stairs, in a room which I rented for
half-a-crown a week, coals included; but my heart was sea-sick of
Edinburgh folk and town manners, for which I had no stomach. I could
form no friendly acquaintanceship with a living soul. Syne I abode by
myself, like St. John in the Isle of Patmos, on spare allowance, making
a sheep-head serve me for three days' kitchen.

Everything around me seemed to smell of sin and pollution, and often did
I commune with my own heart, that I would rather be a sober, poor,
honest man in the country, able to clear my day and way by the help of
Providence, than the provost himself, my lord though he be, or even the
mayor of London, with his velvet gown trailing for yards in the glaur
behind him, or riding about the streets in a coach made of clear crystal
and wheels of beaten gold.

But when my heart was sickening unto death, I fell in with the greatest
blessing of my life, Nanse Cromie, a bit wench of a lassie frae the
Lauder direction, who had come to be a servant in the flat below our
workshop, and whom I often met on the stairs.

If ever a man loved, and loved like mad, it was me; and I take no shame
in the confession. Let them laugh who like; honest folk, I pity them;
such know not the pleasures of virtuous affection. Matters were by and
bye settled full tosh betwee