the horse
casting its shoe, to make a few apropos moral observations, in the manner
of the Rev. Mr Wiggie, on the uncertainties which it is every man's lot
to encounter in the weariful pilgrimage of human life. "There is many a
slip 'tween the cup and the lip," said Peter.

"And, indeed, Mr Farrel, ye never spoke a truer word," said I. "We are
here to-day--yonder to-morrow; this moment we are shining like the mid-
day sun, and on the next, pugh! we go out like the snuff of a candle.
'Man's life,' as Job observes, 'is like a weaver's shuttle.'"

"But, Maister Wauch," quo' Peter, who was a hearer of the Parish Church,
"you dissenting bodies aye take the black side of things; never
considering that the doubtful shadows of affairs sometimes brighten up
into the cloudless daylight. For instance, now, there was an old fellow-
apprentice of my father's, who, like myself, was a baker, his name was
Charlie Cheeper; and, both his father and mother dying when he was yet
hardly in trowsers, he would have been left without a hame in the world,
had not an old widow woman, who had long lived next door to them, and
whose only breadwinner was her spinning-wheel, taken the wee wretchie in
to share her morsel. For several years, as might naturally have been
expected, the callant was a perfect deadweight on the concern, and
perhaps, in her hours of greater distress, the widow regretted the
heedlessness of her Christian charity; but Charlie had a winning way with
him, and she could not find it in her heart to turn him to the door. By
the time he was seven--and a ragged coute he was as ever stepped without
shoes--he could fend for himself, by running messages--holding horses at
shop doors--winning bools and selling them--and so on; so that, when he
had collected half-a-crown in a penny pig, the widow sent him to the
school, where he got on like a hatter, and in a little while, could both
read and write. When he was ten, he was bound apprentice to Saunders
Snaps in the Back-row, whose grandson has yet, as you know, the sign of
the Wheat Sheaf; and for five years he behaved himself like his betters.

"Well, sir, when his time was out, Charlie had an ambition to see the
world; and, by working for a month or two as a journeyman in the
Candlemaker-row at Edinburgh, he raked as much together as took him up to
London in the steerage of a Leith smack. For several years nothing was
heard of him, except an occasional present of a shawl, or so