396 LOSES HIS BUSINESS. CHAP. xxm. 



so very long, that I am nothing save when I am working 

 regularly ... I was within a hairsbreadth of being off 

 yesterday by steamer for Leith. Idleness will never do. 

 If a man like me, after thirty-five years' hard work, is 

 compelled to work as a day-labourer, I will try if possible 

 first to get out to Brisbane or New Zealand. . . . My 

 sister Jane was a good friend to me. But the world 

 runs round ; and I was a fool for not being off in time 

 from this starvation hole. Lord help us !" 



But Dick was still the best biscuit-maker in Thurso. 

 Surely he could sell his biscuits ! No; competition again 

 beset him. Campbell planted touters at the end of 

 Wilson's Lane, and pressed the Highlanders, when on 

 their way home from "Wick to the Western Islands, to 

 take their biscuits from the general competitor. " On 

 Saturday," he says, "the Highlandmen came up from 

 Wick to go by a steamer from Scrabster ; and they con- 

 tinue to come all day, all yesterday (Sabbath), and kept 

 coming until one or two this morning. I used to sell 

 them on such occasions some thirty or forty stones of 

 biscuit. This time I did not sell them more than 

 twenty stones. So I'll take a run up to the hills, to 

 complete my number of county ferns." 



In fact, Dick could scarcely earn the wages of a day- 

 labourer by working at his trade. The men who worked 

 at flag-cutting by the river-side made from half-a-crown 

 to three shillings a day. But Campbell had lessened 

 Dick's earnings by ten and sixpence a week ; and that, 

 said he, " is a very great deal to take from a poor man 

 like me. However, I must try and starve it out, hoping 

 July for a rcduot^n in the price cf f.cur. 



