Oor ain folk times

ALEXANDER, THE DRAPER 255
sum, and was about to return home with it. Poor
Brown, there is every reason to believe, must have
' fallen among thieves,' and met a fate all too common
in those lawless times. At any rate, he was never after-
wards heard of, and my brother's hardly-earned hoard'
disappeared with him. Next David took to various
pursuits, from contracting to butchering ; worked at
his trade in Sydney in the fifties ; went to China, where
he did gallant service as a volunteer at the taking of
the Winter Palace at Pekin ; finally, he settled down
in Montrose with an honest partner, where he carried
on the business of a coachbuilder ; married, reared a
family of boys and girls who are all now doing well in
the world, and some years ago died, honoured, beloved,
and esteemed for his genuine Christian character by all
who knew him.
The next in rotation was Alexander, a loyal, loving
soul, possessed of more than ordinary perseverance and
force of character ; and his story, too, would be worth
the telling, had I time and space at my disposal.
At the early age of thirteen he was taken from the
village school and sent up to Edinburgh, to the drudgery
and long hours of a fashionable drapery establishment,
to learn the mysteries of ' the soft-goods ' trade. The
poor boy had to be at the shop long before eight on
the cold, dark, winter mornings to sweep out the pre-
mises, dust the counters, and do the usual 'hard graft,'
which, however necessary and honourable, must yet
have been, before the era of eight-hours movements,
trades- unions, and all the social ameliorations of the
present day, almost too much for the tender frame of a
boy of thirteen. It was rarely indeed that he saw the