He pitched his tent with the village tailor in a little house at Fornside, close by the Moss.

The tailor himself, Simeon Stagg, was kept pitiably poor in that country, when one sack coat of homespun cloth lasted a shepherd half a lifetime.

He would have lived a solitary as well as a miserable life but for his daughter Rotha, a girl of nineteen, who kept his little home together and shared his poverty when she might have enjoyed the comforts of easier homes elsewhere.
"Your father is nothing but an ache and a stound to you, lass," Sim would say in a whimper.

"It'll be well for you, Rotha, when you give me my last top-sark and take me to the kirkyard yonder," the little man would snuffle audibly.
"Hush, father," the girl would say, putting the palm of her hand playfully over his mouth, "you'll be sonsie-looking yet." Sim was heavily in debt, and this preyed on his mind.

He had always been a grewsome body, sustaining none of the traditions of his craft for perky gossip.