40 FAMOUS SCOTS 



from his last place, could find work, but should be held 

 as a thief and punished as such, while a later ordinance 

 was that, as they ' lay from their work at Pasche, Yule 

 and Whitsunday, to the great offence of God and pre- 

 judice of their masters? they should work every day 

 in the week except at Christmas ! Clearly there was no 

 Eight Hours Bill in Old Scotland. 



His lodging was a humble one-roomed cottage in 

 Niddry, owned by an old farm-servant and his wife. 

 The husband, when too old for work, had been dis- 

 charged by his master, whose munificence had gone 

 the length of allowing residence in the dilapidated 

 building, on the understanding that he was not to be 

 held liable for repairs. The thatch was repaired by 

 mud and turf gathered from the roadside, and in this 

 crazy tenement the old man and his wife, both of whom 

 had passed through the world without picking up hardly 

 a single idea, were exposed to the biting east winds of 

 the district. A congenial fellow-lodger was fortunately 

 found in the person of another workman, one of the 

 old Seceders, deep in the theology of Boston and 

 Rutherfurd, and such works as had formed the reading 

 of his uncles in Cromarty, for at this time the sense of 

 religion, at least among the humbler classes, was well- 

 nigh confined to the ranks of dissent. Many of the 

 inhabitants of the place were or had been nominal 

 parishioners of ' Jupiter ' Carlyle of Inveresk. But the 

 doctor had not been one to do much for the social or 

 religious advance of his people. Jupiter, or 'Old 



