the empty room, the postman brought him a letter.  It was from his master at Banff.  “Return immediately,” it said, “or you will be discharged.”  What on earth could he do?  He couldn’t remove his collection; he couldn’t pay his debt.  A few more days passed, and he saw no way out of it.  At last, in blank despair, he offered the whole collection for sale.  A gentleman proposed to pay him the paltry sum of 20 pounds 10s. for the entire lot, the slow accumulations of ten long years.  It was a miserable and totally inadequate price, but Edward could get no more.  In the depths of his misery, he accepted it.  The gentleman took the collection home, gave it to his boy, and finally allowed it all, for want of care and attention, to go to rack and ruin.  And so that was the end of ten years of poor Thomas Edward’s unremitting original work in natural history.  A sadder tale of unrequited labour in the cause of science has seldom been written.

How he ever recovered from such a downfall to all his hopes and expectations is extraordinary.  But the man had a wonderful power of bearing up against adverse circumstances; and when, after six weeks’ absence, he returned to Banff, ruined and dispirited, he set to work once more, as best he might, at the old, old trade of shoemaking.  He was obliged to leave his wife and children in Aberdeen, and to tramp himself on foot to Banff, so that he might earn the necessary money to bring them back; for the cash he had got for the collection had all gone in paying expenses.  It is almost too sad to relate; and no wonder poor Edward felt crushed indeed when he got back once more to his lonely shoemaker’s bench and fireless fireside.  He was very lonely until his wife and children came.  But when the carrier generously brought them back free (with that kindliness which the poor so often show to the poor), and the home was occupied once more, and the fire lighted, he felt as if life might still be worth living, at least for his wife and children.  So he went back to his trade as heartily as he might, and worked at it well and successfully.  For it is to be noted, that though Thomas Edward was so assiduous a naturalist and collector, he was the best hand, too, at making first-class shoes in all Banff.  The good workman is generally the best man at whatever he undertakes.  Certainly the best man is almost always a good workman at his own trade.

But of course he made no more natural history collections?  Not a bit of it.  Once a naturalist, always a naturalist.  Edward set to work once more, nothing daunted, and by next spring he was out everywhere with his gun, exactly as before, replacing the sold collection as fast as ever his hand was able.