nessed in large towns was quite unknown in the valley, there was poverty; but it was honest as well as hopeful, and no one felt ashamed of it. The farmers of the dale were very primitive' in their manners and habits, and being a warm-hearted, though by no means a demonstrative race, they were kind to the widow and her fatherless boy. They took him by turns to live with them at their houses, and gave his mother occasional employment. In spring-time she milked the ewes, in summer she made hay, and in harvest she went a-shearing; so that she not only contrived to live, but to be cheerful. The house to which the widow and her son removed, at the Whitsuntide following the death of her husband, was at a place called The Crooks, about midway between

COTTAGE AT THE CROOKS. [By Percival Skelton]

Glendinning and Westerkirk. It was a thatched cothouse, with two ends; in one of which lived Janet Telford (though more commonly known by her own name of Janet Jackson) and her son Tom, and in the other her neighbour Elliot; one door being common to both.

Young Telford grew up a healthy boy, and he was so full of fun and humour that he became known in the

1 It may be mentioned as a curious fact that about the time of Telford's birth there were only two tea-kettles in the whole parish of Westerkirk,

one of which was in the house of Sir James Johnstone of Wester Hall, and the other in that of Mr. Malcolm of the Burnfoot.

When he live with a

valley by the name of "Laughing Tam." was old enough to herd sheep he went to relative, a shepherd like his father, and he spent most of his time with him in summer on the hill-side amidst the silence of nature. In winter he lived with one or other of the neighbouring farmers. He herded their cows or ran errands, receiving for recompense his meat, a pair of stockings, and five shillings a year for clogs. These were his first wages, and as he grew older they were gradually increased.

But Tom must now be put to school, and, happily, small though the parish of Westerkirk was, it possessed the advantage of that admirable institution the parish school. To the orphan boy the merely elementary teaching there provided was an immense boon. Το master this was the first step of the ladder he was afterwards to mount; his own industry, energy, and ability must do the rest. To school accordingly he went, still working a-field or herding cattle during the summer months. Perhaps his own penny fee" helped to pay the teacher's hire; but it is supposed that his uncle Jackson defrayed the principal part of the expense of his instruction. It was not much that he learnt; but in acquiring the arts of reading, writing, and figures, he learnt the beginnings of a great deal.

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Apart from the question of learning, there was another manifest advantage to the poor boy in mixing freely at the parish school with the sons of the neighbouring farmers and proprietors. Such intercourse has an influence upon a youth's temper, manners, and tastes, which is quite as important in the education of character as the lessons of the master himself; and Telford often, in after-life, referred with pleasure to the benefits which he thus derived from his early school friendships. Amongst those to whom he was accustomed to look back with most pride, were the two elder brothers of the Malcolm family, both of whom rose to high rank in the service of their country; William Telford, a youth of

great promise, a naval surgeon, who died young; and the brothers William and Andrew Little, the former of whom settled down as a farmer in Eskdale, and the latter, a surgeon, lost his eyesight when on service on the

coast of Africa. Andrew Little afterwards established himself as a teacher at Langholm, where he educated, amongst others, General Sir Charles Pasley, Dr. Irving, the Custodier of the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, and others known to fame beyond the bounds of their native valley. Well might Telford say, when an old man, full of years and honours, on sitting down to write his autobiography, "I still recollect with pride and pleasure my native parish of Westerkirk, on the banks of the Esk, where I was born."

CHAPTER II.

LANGHOLM-TELFORD LEARNS THE TRADE OF A STONEMASON.

THE time arrived when young Telford must be put to some regular calling. Was he to be a shepherd like his father and his uncle, or was he to be a farm-labourer, or put apprentice to a trade? There was not much choice; but at length it was determined to bind him to a stonemason. In Eskdale that trade was for the most part confined to the building of drystone walls, and there was very little more art employed in it than an ordinarily neat-handed labourer could manage. It was eventually determined to send the youth-and he was now a strong lad of about fifteen-to a mason at Lochmaben, a small town across the hills to the eastward, where a little more. building and of a better sort-such as farm-houses, barns, and road-bridges-was carried on, than in his own immediate neighbourhood. There he remained only a few months; for his master using him badly, the highspirited youth would not brook it, and ran away, taking refuge with his mother at The Crooks, very much to her dismay.

What was now to be done with Tam? He was willing to do anything or go anywhere rather than back to his Lochmaben master. In this emergency his cousin Thomas Jackson, the factor or land-steward at Wester Hall, offered to do what he could to induce Andrew Thomson, a small mason at Langholm, to take Telford for the remainder of his apprenticeship; and to him he went accordingly. The business carried on by his new master was of a very humble sort. Telford, in his autobiography,

states that most of the farmers' houses in the district then consisted of "one storey of mud walls, or rubble stones bedded in clay, and thatched with straw, rushes, or heather; the floors being of earth, and the fire in the middle, having a plastered creel chimney for the escape of the smoke; and, instead of windows, small openings in the thick mud walls admitted a scanty light." The farm-buildings were of a similarly wretched description.

The principal owner of the landed property in the neighbourhood was the Duke of Buccleugh; and shortly after the young Duke Henry succeeded to the title and estates in 1767, he introduced considerable improvements in the farmers' houses and farm-steadings, and the dwellings of the peasantry, as well as of the roads through Eskdale. In this way a demand sprang up for masons' labour, and Telford's master had no want of regular employment for his hands. Telford had the benefit of this increase in the building operations of the neighbourhood; not only in raising rough walls and farm enclosures, but in erecting bridges across rivers wherever regular roads for wheel carriages were substituted for the horse-tracks formerly in use.

During the greater part of his apprenticeship Telford lived in the little town of Langholm, taking frequent opportunities of visiting his mother at The Crooks on Saturday evenings, and accompanying her to the parishchurch of Westerkirk on Sundays. Langholm was then a very poor town, being no better in that respect than the district that surrounded it. It consisted chiefly of mud hovels, covered with thatch-the principal building in it being the Tolbooth, a stone and lime structure, the upper part of which was used as a justice-hall and the lower part as a gaol. There were, however, a few good houses in the little town occupied by people of the better class, and in one of these lived an