As far back as I can go in the history of my family, and that's a pretty long way, we were always at our wit's end to live.

From the days of the founder of our house, a glorious old chieftain who used to pillage his neighbour chieftain in the usual style of those glorious old times, we never had more than just enough for the bare necessities of life.

My father, as I told you, was a shepherd--a strong, fine-looking man over six feet in height, and as broad-chested as a Hercules--he herded sheep on the mountains for a Glasgow dealer, as low-down a rascal as ever lived, a man who, so far as race and lineage went, wasn't fit to scrape mud off my father's boots.

But we often see gentlemen of birth obliged to work for knaves of cash.

That was the way it was with my father.