times just a little too long; and old William,
who, I fear, did not greatly profit by them, used not unfrequently to
fall asleep on his knees. But though he sometimes stole to his bed when
John chanced to be a little later in taking the book than usual, and got
into a profound slumber ere the prayer began, he deferred to the
majority, and gave us no active opposition. He was not a vicious man:
his intellect had slept through life, and he had as little religion as
an old horse or dog; but he was quiet and honest, and, to the measure of
his failing ability, a faithful worker in his humble employments. His
religious training, like that of his brother villagers, seemed to have
been sadly neglected. Had he gone to the parish church on Sunday, he
would have heard a respectable moral essay read from the pulpit, and
would, of course, have slept under it; but William, like most of his
neighbours, preferred sleeping out the day at home, and never did go to
the church; and as certainly as he went not to the teacher of religion,
the teacher of religion never came to him. During the ten months which I
spent in the neighbourhood of Niddry Mill, I saw neither minister nor
missionary. But if the village furnished no advantageous ground on which
to fight the battle of religious Establishments--seeing that the
Establishment was of no manner of use there--it furnished ground quite
as unsuitable for the class of Voluntaries who hold that the supply of
religious instruction should, as in the case of all other commodities,
be regulated by the demand. Demand and supply were admirably well
balanced in the village of Niddry: there was no religious instruction,
and no wish or desire for it.

The masons at Niddry House were paid fortnightly, on a Saturday night.
Wages were high--we received two pounds eight shillings for our two
weeks' work; but scarce half-a-dozen in the squad could claim at
settlement the full tale, as the Monday and Tuesday after pay-night were
usually blank days, devoted by two-thirds of the whole to drinking and
debauchery. Not often have wages been more sadly mis-spent than by my
poor work-fellows at Niddry, during this period of abundant and
largely-remunerated employment. On receiving their money, they set
straightway off to Edinburgh, in parties of threes and fours; and until
the evening of the following Monday or Tuesday I saw no more of them.
They would then come dropping in, pale, dirty,
disconsolate-looking--almost a