e parish it did land my brothers. My sister, too, was a
poor simple thing, that married a man who had a wife living when he married
her; and, after he had got every shilling that she had into his possession,
he decamped and left her.

"But it is not the history of my brothers and sisters that I would tell you
about, but my own. With the four hundred pounds which my faither left me, I
began business as a linen manufacturer--that is, as a maister weaver, on
what might be called a respectable scale. The year after I had commenced
business upon my own account, and before I was two and twenty, I was taking
a walk one Sunday afternoon on the Hawick road, along by Sorbie, and there
I met the bonniest lassie, I think, that I had ever seen. I was so struck
wi' her appearance, that I actually turned round and followed her. She was
dressed in a duffel coat or pelisse, which I think country folk call a
_Joseph_; but I followed her at a distance, through fields and owre stiles,
till I saw her enter a sma' farm-house. There were some bits o' bairns,
apparently hinds' bairns, sitting round a sort o' duck-dub near the
stackyard.

"'Wha lives there, dearies?' says I to them, pointing wi' my finger to the
farm-house.

"'Ned Thomson,' says they.

"'And wha was that bonny lassie,' asked I, 'that gaed in just the now?'

"'He! he! he!' the bairns laughed, and gaed me nae answer. So I put my
question to them again, and ane o' the auldest o' them, a lassie about
thirteen, said--'It was the maister's daughter, sir, the laird's bonny
Jenny--if ye like, I'll gang in and tell her that a gentleman wishes to
speak to her.'

"I certainly was very proud o' the bairn taking me to be a gentleman; but I
couldna think o' meeting Miss Thompson, even if she should come out to see
me, wi' such an introduction, for I was sure I would make a fool o' mysel';
and I said to the bit lassie--'No I thank ye, hinny; I'm obliged to ye'"
and a' her little companions 'he! he! he'd!' and laughed the louder at my
expense; which, had I not been a simple man, I never would have placed it
in their power to do.

"So I went away, thinking on her face as if I had been looking at it in a
glass a' the time; and to make a long story short, within three months,
Miss Jenny Thompson and me became particularly weel acquaint. But my
mother, who had none o' the simpleness that came by my faither's side o'
the house, was then living; and when Jenny and I were on the eve o' being