dames
of the village; and I learned a thing or two in his school.

It was not until after several weeks of the working season had passed,
that my master's great repugnance to doing nothing overcame his almost
equally great repugnance again to seek work as a journeyman. At length,
however, a life of inactivity became wholly intolerable to him; and,
applying to his former employer, he was engaged on the previous
terms--full wages for himself, and a very small allowance for his
apprentice, who was now, however, recognised as the readier and more
skilful stone-cutter of the two. In cutting mouldings of the more
difficult kinds, I had sometimes to take the old man under charge, and
give him lessons in the art, from which, however, he had become rather
too rigid in both mind and body greatly to profit. We both returned to
Conon-side, where there was a tall dome of hewn work to be erected over
the main archway of the steading at which we had been engaged during the
previous year; and, as few of the workmen had yet assembled on the
spot, we succeeded in establishing ourselves as inmates of the barrack,
leaving the hay-loft, with its inferior accommodation, to the later
comers. We constructed for ourselves a bed-frame of rough slabs, and
filled it with hay; placed our chests in front of it; and, as the rats
mustered by thousands in the place, suspended our sack of oatmeal by a
rope, from one of the naked rafters, at rather more than a man's height
over the floor. And, having both pot and pitcher, our household economy
was complete. Though resolved not to forego my evening walks, I had
determined to conform also to every practice of the barrack; and as the
workmen, drafted from various parts of the country, gradually increased
around us, and the place became crowded, I soon found myself engaged in
the rolicking barrack-life of the north-country mason. The rats were
somewhat troublesome. A comrade who slept in the bed immediately beside
ours had one of his ears bitten through one night as he lay asleep, and
remarked, that he supposed it would be his weasand they would attack
next time; and, on rising one morning, I found that the four brightly
plated jack-buttons to which my braces had been fastened had been fairly
cut from off my trousers, and carried away, to form, I doubt not, a
portion of some miser-hoard in the wall. But even the rats themselves
became a source of amusement to us, and imparted to our rude domicile,
in some li