406 JOHN DUNCAN, WEAVER AND BOTANIST. 



That badge was the consummation of his shame, as it felt 

 to him, and seemed to stamp him with the brand of Cain, 

 which all men might read. Yet every month for years, the 

 old man carried it to the parochial office, to receive his 

 pittance, until the present inspector, Mr. James Reid, now 

 one of his trustees, a man full of the milk of human kind- 

 ness, used to bring it up to Droughsburn, in order to save 

 John's feelings. In May, 1879, through Mr. Reid's good 

 offices, on account of his increasing weakness and inability 

 to work, he was boarded with Mrs. Allanach at four and 

 sixpence a week ; and his old shop, in deference to his 

 feelings, was retained at the old rent, after the question 

 asked by the chairman alas for local fame ! " Is Duncan 

 a deserving pauper ? " had been at once " answered by a 

 dozen in the affirmative." Thus did this keenly sensitive, 

 aged man eat a beggar's bread for six years in silence, till 

 relieved in his last year by the kindly gifts of admirers ; 

 never telling the painful fact to a single one of his friends, 

 whom he still used to visit as in his old days of high- 

 hearted independence. To me, he did not breathe a 

 whisper of it. 



In the year of my visit to him, 1877, John's vitality, 

 remarkable and vigorous as it had been, began obviously 

 to fail and no wonder, for he had entered his eighty-fourth 

 year in December. 



When he called on James Black that summer, he had 

 begun to look, as James expressed it in a letter to Charles,. 

 " old in earnest." His skin " felt clammy with exhaustion," 

 and his power of walking was so much lessened that he 

 had to stay a night on the way to town. When James 



