daughter; but my father was the simple man, who is the beggar’s brother, and he was caution or security (as they call it here) for a brother of his own, for two hundred pounds, and lost it, and then we went all down hill together.  Mother was always very furious at him for his being such a fool, and even on his death-bed she never forgave him for bringing her down so low.  She was very greedy of money, was mother, and never forgot any ill she had had done her.  We was living in the country very poor, for I could not bear to go to service among folk that knew about us, when I fell in with a young man as I liked better than most; but as he was as poor as a rat, and only a working joiner, mother would have nothing to say to him, and she made up her mind to take me to Edinburgh, where she lived with a cousin, and I was to go to service.  I had wanted to go before, but it was all mother’s pride as kept me at home; I wanted to be well dressed, as all girls do, and I liked to be seen and to be talked to.  I had grown up handsome enough.  You have seen Mrs. Phillips—­she is the very moral of what I was, and I didn’t like to be always wearing old things.  And mother, she wanted Jamie Stevenson driven out of my head, so she made no objections to my going to a house where they took lodgers, mostly young men, in for the college.  The work was hard, and the wages no great matter; but the chance was worth twice as much as the wages, for the lads was free—­handed, particular if you would stand any daffing, as we called it then.  Harry Hogarth was there the second winter I was in Edinburgh, and, though he was not like to have Cross Hall then, for he had two brothers older than him, he was just as free of his money as if he was a young laird.  He had been in Paris before that, but his father had grumbled at his spending so much there, and said he must hold with Edinburgh for the future; and Harry was maybe trying to show the old man that as much might go in Auld Reekie as in France.  He was said to be the cleverest of the family, and the old man was fond of him, and proud of him too, but he was very hard to part with the gear.  Harry was my favourite of all the lads in the house, for he had most fun about him, and was the softest-hearted too.  The old laird changed his mind in the middle of the winter.  I mind well his coming to our place one day, and he gave me a very sour look when I opened the door, as if my cap and my clothes was too good for my station, and my looks, too, maybe; but he said that Harry had better go to Paris, as his heart was set on it; and he gave Harry a sum of money that made him think his father was not long for this world, though he looked all right.  So he behoved to have a splore, as they called it:  he entertained all his friends at a hotel to a supper, where they had a night of it, drinking, and singing, and laughing, to bid him farewell.  When he came back it was grey daylight, and I was up to my work; and when he went past me, he saw me crying, as he thought, for