atural science; but my master, who had
no lessons to learn, wearied sadly of doing nothing; and at length, very
unwillingly--for he had enacted the part of the employer, though on a
small scale, for a full quarter of a century--he set himself to procure
work as a journeyman. He had another apprentice at the time; and he,
availing himself of the opportunity which the old man's inability of
employing him furnished, quitted his service, and commenced work on his
own behalf--a step to which, though the position of a journeyman's
apprentice seemed rather an anomalous one, I could not see my way. And
so, as work turned up for both master and apprentice at a place about
twenty miles distant from Cromarty, I set out with him, to make trial,
for the first time, of the sort of life that is spent in bothies and
barracks. Our work was to consist, I was informed, of building and
hewing at an extensive farm-steading on the banks of the river Conon,
which one of the wealthier proprietors of the district was getting built
for himself, not on contract, but by the old mode of employing
operatives on day's wages; and my master was to be permitted to rate as
a full journeyman, though now considerably in his decline as a workman,
on condition that the services of his apprentice should be rated so much
lower than their actual value as to render master and man regarded as
one lot--a fair bargain to the employer, and somewhat more. The
arrangement was not quite a flattering one for me; but I acquiesced in
it without remark, and set out with my master for Conon-side.

The evening sun was gleaming delightfully as we neared the scene of our
labours, on the broad reaches of the Conon, and lighting up the fine
woods and noble hills beyond. It would, I knew, be happiness to toil for
some ten hours or so per day in so sweet a district, and then to find
the evening all my own; but on reaching the work, we were told that we
would require to set out in the morning for a place about four miles
further to the west, where there were a few workmen engaged in building
a jointure-house for the lady of a Ross-shire proprietor lately dead,
and which lay off the river in a rather unpromising direction. And so, a
little after sun-rise, we had to take the road with our tools slung
across our backs, and before six o'clock we reached the rising
jointure-house, and set to work. The country around was somewhat bare
and dreary--a scene of bogs and moors, overlooked by a