ugton I could scarcely muster common sense to answer a person
who wished us a good-day; and Nanse, as we daundered on arm-in-arm, never
once took her napkin from her een. Oh, but it was a weary business!

Being in this sober frame of mind, allow me to wind up this chapter--the
last catastrophe of my eventful life that I mean at present to make
public--with a few serious reflections; as it fears me, that, in much of
what I have set down, ill-natured people may see a good deal scarcely
consistent with my character for douceness and circumspection; but if
many wonderfuls have befallen to my share, it would be well to remember
that a man's lot is not of his own making.

Musing within myself on the chances and changes of time, the
uncertainties of life, the frail thread by which we are tacked to this
world, and how the place that now knows us shall soon know us no more, I
could not help, for two or three days previous to my quitting my dear old
house and shop, taking my stick into my hand, and wandering about all my
old haunts and houffs--and need I mention that among these were the road
down to the Duke's south gate with the deers on it, the waterside by
Woodburn, the Cow-brigg, up the back street, through the flesh-market,
and over to the auld kirk in among the headstones? For three walks, on
three different days, I set out in different directions; yet, strange to
say! I aye landed in the kirkyard:--and where is the man of woman born
proud enough to brag, that it shall not be his fate to land there at
last?

Headstones and headstones around me! some newly put up, and others mossy
and grey; it was a humbling yet an edifying sight, preaching, as forcibly
as ever Maister Wiggie did in his best days, of the vanity and the
passingness of all human enjoyments. Mouldered to dust beneath the turfs
lay the blithe laddies with whom I have a hundred times played merry
games on moonlight nights; some were soon cut off; others grew up to
their full estate; and there stood I, a greyhaired man, among the weeds
and nettles, mourning over times never to return!

The reader will no doubt be anxious to hear a few words regarding my son
Benjie, who has turned out just as his friends and the world expected.
After his time with Ebenezer Packwood in Dalkeith, he served for four
years in Edinburgh, where he cut a distinguished figure, having shaved
and shorn lots of the nobility and gentry; among whom was a French
Duchess, and many other fo