148 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



suggest to mechanics wishing to subject a comrade to 

 humiliation. It is often necessary for a stone-cutter, in 

 order to have the block which he hews placed conveni- 

 ently for the chisel and mallet, to be assisted by his 

 fellow-workmen. This customary civility was refused to 

 Miller, whose pride prevented him from begging a favour, 

 or complaining of its being tacitly refused. The ablest, 

 and, except himself and the religious workmen, the best 

 in the squad, was a young man whom he calls ' Cha.' 

 He was the ' recognized hero ' of the band, and his heart 

 seems to have smote him on account of the base combin- 

 ation against a stranger. He put an end to it by 

 stepping out one day to assist Miller, when he was being 

 left to roll up to his block-bench a stone of the size which 

 two or three commonly united to place. 



Even Cha, however, was not merely a blackguard, 

 but, in all that relates to moral sanity and self-respect- 

 ing manhood, a fool. Like the majority of his fellows, 

 he celebrated the fortnightly payment of wages by two 

 or three days of drunkenness and debauchery. He was 

 leader in the following feat, the account of which I ex- 

 tract from the letter to Baird, as one or two of its traits 

 are omitted from the autobiography. ' On a Saturday 

 evening three of the Niddrie workmen, after having re- 

 ceived a fortnight's wages, which in all amounted to more 

 than six pounds, went to Edinburgh, and there spent 

 the night in a house of bad fame. Next morning they 

 hired a coach and, accompanied by three women of the 

 town, set out for Roslin on a jaunt of pleasure. They 

 came back to Edinburgh in the evening, passed the night 

 as they had done the preceding one, and returned to 

 Niddrie on Monday without a single shilling.' Such was 

 Cha, and to his taking the lead in expeditions of this 

 kind he appears to have in large measure owed his re- 



