"Would to heaven," exclaimed his companion, interrupting him, "that I had been bred a tailor! I'm mistaken if any such prejudice would have sent me across the Atlantic."
"We can be a' wise enough on our neebor's weaknesses, Innes," said Sandy; "but to the story.
"I come frae a seaport town in the north o' Scotland, no twenty miles frae Inverness, your ain bonny half-Hieland, half-Lowland home. My father, who had married late in life, was an old grey-headed man from the time I first remember him. He had a sma' family; and, in his anxiety to see us a' doing for oursels, I was apprenticed to a tailor in my tenth year. Weel do I mind wi' what a disconsolate feeling I left the twa cows I used to herd on a bonny brae-side speckled wi' gowans and buttercups, to be crumpled down on the corner o' a board hardly bigger than an apron, amang shreds and patches o' a' the colours o' the rainbow, wi' an outlook through a dusty window on the side wa's o' an auld warehouse. And then my comrades were such queer fallows, fu o' a droll, little, wee sort o' conceit, that could ride on the neck o' a new button, and a warld o' fashious bits o' tricks, naething sae guid as the tricks o' a jackanapes, but every grain as wicked; and aften hae they played them aff on the puir simple laddie. There are nane o' our craftsfolks, Innes, but hae some peculiarity to mark them that grows up oot o' their profession; and there's nae class mair marked than the class I belong to."
"I have read Lamb on the Melancholy of Tailors," said Innes, "and remember laughing heartily at the quaint humour of some of his remarks; but I never wasted a thought on the subject after laying him down."
"Ah, Lamb, wi' a' his bonny, bairn-like humour and simplicity," said Sandy, "is but a Cockney feelosopher after a', and kent naething o' the matter. Melancholy o' tailors, forsooth! Why, man, a Hieland tailor is aye the heartiest cock, and has aye the maist auld stories i' the parish. But I maun gie you the feelosophy o' the thing at some ither time.—I got on but ill wi' my companions," continued Sandy; "and the royitous laddies outside used to jibe me wi' no being a man sax years afore I ceased being a boy. Is it no hard that tailors should lose the reputation o' manhood through a stupid misconception o' the sense o' an auld-warld author? He tells us the tailor canna mak a man, just in the spirit that Burns tells us a king canna mak an honest man. And, instead o' the pith o' the remark being brought to bear on the beau and the coxcomb, wha never separate the human creature frae his dress, it's brought, oot o' sheer misapprehension, to bear against the puir artisan."
"I see, Sandy," said Innes, with a smile, "you are still influenced by l'esprit de corps. If you once get back to Scotland, you will take to your old trade, and die a master tailor."
"I wish to goodness I were there to try!" replied Sandy. "But the story lags wofully. I got on as I best could—longing sadly, i' the lang bonny days o' simmer, to be oot amang the rocks o' the Sutors, or on the sea, and in winter, thinking o' the Bay o' Udoll, wi' its wild ducks and its swans, and o' the gran fun I could hae amang them wi' my auld pistol—whan my master employed an auld ae-legged sodger to work wi' him as a journeyman. He was a real fine fellow, save that he liked the drap drink a wee owre weel, maybe; and he had wandered owre half the warld. He had been in Egypt wi' Abercromby, and at Corunna wi' Moore, and o'er a' Spain and at Waterloo wi' Wellington, and in mony a land and in mony a fight besides; and noo he had come hame wi' a snug pension, and a budget o' first-rate fine stories, that made the ears tingle and the heart beat higher, to live and die amang his freends. Oh, the delight I hae taen in that man's company! Why, Innes, at pension time, though I never cared muckle for drink for its ain sake, I hae listened to his stories i' the public-house till I hae felt my head spinnin round like a tap, and my feet hae barely saired to carry me hame. I hae charged Bonaparte's Invincibles wi' him, fifty and fifty times, and helped him to carry aff Moore frae beside the thorn bush where he fell, and scaled wi' him the breach at St Sebastian; and, in short, sae filled was I wi' the spirit o' the sodger, that, had the wars no been owre, I would hae broken my indentures, and gane awa to break heads and see foreign countries. As it was, however, I learned to like my employment ten times waur nor ever, and to break a head, noo and then, amang the town prentices. Spite o' my close, in-door employment, I had grown stalwart and strong; and I mind, on ae occasion, beating twa young fallows who had twitted me on being but a ninth. Weel, the term o' my apprenticeship cam till an end at last; and, flingin awa my thimble wi' a jerk, and sendin my needle after it like an arrow, I determined on seeing the warld. My crony, the auld veteran, advised me to enter the army. I was formed baith in mind and body, he said, for a sodger; and if I took but care—a thing he never could do himsel—I micht dee a serjeant. But whatever love I micht hae for a guid fecht, I had nane for the parade, and my thorough dread and detestation o' the halberds o'er-mastered ony little ambition I micht hae indulged in when I dreamed o' a battle. I thocht o' a voyage to Greenland—o' gangin a-sodgerin wi' Lord Byron to Greece—o' emigratin to New South Wales or the Cape—o' turnin a farmer in the backwoods—o' indenturin for a Jamaica over-seer—o' goin oot to Mexica for a miner—ay, and o' fifty ither plans besides—whan an adverteesement o' the Hudson's Bay Company caught my notice, and determined me at once. I needna tell ye what the directors promised to active young men: a paradise o' a country to live in—the fun o' huntin and fishin frae Monday to Saturday nicht for our only wark—and pocketfus o' money for our pay. I blessed my stars, and closed wi' the agent at once. And now, here I am, Innes, in the seventh year o' my service, no that meikle disposed to contemn my auld profession, and mair nor half tired o' huntin, fishin, and seein the warld. But just twa months mair, my boy, and I am free. And now, may I no expect your story in turn?"
The wind, which had been rising since nightfall, now began to howl around the log-house and through the neighbouring woods, like the roar of the sea in a storm. There was an incessant creaking among the beams of the roof, and the very floor at times seemed to rise and fall under the foot, like the deck of a vessel which, after having lain stranded on the beach, has just begun to float. The storm, which had been so long impending, burst out in all its fury, and for some time the two fur-gatherers, impressed by a feeling of natural awe, sat listening to it in silence. The sounds rose and fell by intervals; at times sinking into a deep, sullen roar, when all was comparatively still around; at times swelling into thunder. In a pause of the blast, Sandy rose and flung open the door. Day had sunk more than two hours before, and there was no moon, but there was a strong flare of greenish-coloured light on the snow, that served to discover the extreme dreariness of the scene; and through a bore in the far north, resembling, as Sandy said, the opening of a dark lantern, he could see that, beyond the cloud, the heavens were all a-flame with the aurora borealis. Earth and sky seemed mingled; the snow, loose and fluctuating, and tossing its immense wreaths to the hurricane, resembled the sea in a storm when the waves run highest; the ice, though so deeply covered before, lay in some places dark and bare, while in others, beneath the precipices, the drift had accumulated over it to the depth of many fathoms. Again the blast came roaring onwards with the fury of a tornado, and Sandy shut and bolted the door.
"Ane o' the maist frightfu nichts, Innes," he said, "I ever saw in America. It will be weel if we're no baith buried a hunder feet deep afore mornin, wi' the log-house for our coffin. The like happened, about twenty years syne, at Badger Hollow, where twa puir chields were covered up till their skulls had grown white aneath their bannets. But though alane, and in the desert, we're no oot o' the reach o' Providence yet."
"Ah no, my poor friend!" said Innes; "I do not feel, in these days, that life is highly desirable; but nature shrinks from dissolution, and I am still fain to live on. A poet, Sandy, would view our situation at present with something like complacency; but I am afraid he would deem your story, amusing as it is, little in keeping with the scene around us, and a night so terrible as this. I can scarcely ask a tailor if he remembers the little bit in 'Thalaba,' where the cave of the Lapland sorceress is described? The long night of half-a-year has closed, and wastes of eternal snow are stretching around; while in the midst, beside her feeble light, that seems lost in the gloom of the cavern, the sorceress is seated, ever drawing out and out from the revolving distaff the golden thread of destiny."