The better marksman I grew the less I liked the common make of guns, and I cast about to work an improvement.  I was especially fond of the short gun or pistol, not the bell-mouthed thing which shot a handful of slugs, and was as little precise in its aim as a hailstorm, but the light foreign pistol which, shot as true as a musket.  Weir had learned his trade in Italy, and was a neat craftsman, so I employed him to make me a pistol after my own pattern.  The butt was of light, tough wood, and brass-bound, for I did not care to waste money on ornament.  The barrel was shorter than the usual, and of the best Spanish metal, and the pan and the lock were set after my own device.  Nor was that all, for I became an epicure in the matter of bullets, and made my own with the care of a goldsmith.  I would weigh out the powder charges as nicely as an apothecary weighs his drugs, for I had discovered that with the pistol the weight of bullet and charge meant much for good marksmanship.  From Weir I got the notion of putting up ball and powder in cartouches, and I devised a method of priming much quicker and surer than the ordinary.  In one way and another I believe I acquired more skill in the business than anybody then living in Scotland.  I cherished my toy like a lover; I christened it “Elspeth “; it lay by my bed at night, and lived by day in a box of sweet-scented foreign wood given me by one of my uncle’s skippers.  I doubt I thought more of it than of my duty to my Maker.

All the time I was very busy at Uncle Andrew’s counting-house in the Candleriggs, and down by the river-side among the sailors.  It was the day when Glasgow was rising from a cluster of streets round the High Kirk and College to be the chief merchants’ resort in Scotland.  Standing near the Western Seas, she turned her eyes naturally to the Americas, and a great trade was beginning in tobacco and raw silk from Virginia, rich woods and dye stuffs from the Main, and rice and fruits from the Summer Islands.  The river was too shallow for ships of heavy burthen, so it was the custom to unload in the neighbourhood of Greenock and bring the goods upstream in barges to the quay at the Broomielaw.  There my uncle, in company with other merchants, had his warehouse, but his counting-house was up in the town, near by the College, and I spent my time equally between the two places.  I became furiously interested in the work, for it has ever been my happy fortune to be intent on whatever I might be doing at the moment.  I think I served my uncle well, for I had much of the merchant’s aptitude, and the eye to discern far-away profits.  He liked my boldness, for I was impatient of the rule-of-thumb ways of some of our fellow-traders.  “We are dealing with new lands,” I would say, “and there is need of new plans.  It pays to think in trading as much as in statecraft,” There were plenty that looked askance at us, and cursed us as troublers of the peace, and there were some who prophesied speedy ruin.  But we discomforted our neighbours by prospering mightily, so that there was talk of Uncle Andrew for the Provost’s chair at the next vacancy.