He and his brother were at the High School for a single session, that is, for the winter session of 1813-14, although with the licence of a maker of fiction he claimed, in _Lavengro_, to have been there for two years.

But it is not in this brief period of schooling of a boy of ten that we find the strongest influence that Edinburgh gave to Borrow.

Rather may we seek it in the acquaintanceship with the once too notorious David Haggart.

Seven years later than this all the peoples of the three kingdoms were discussing David Haggart, the Scots Jack Sheppard, the clever young prison-breaker, who was hanged at Edinburgh in 1821 for killing his jailer in Dumfries prison.

How much David Haggart filled the imagination of every one who could read in the early years of last century is demonstrated by a reference to the Library Catalogue of the British Museum, where we find pamphlet after pamphlet, broadsheet after broadsheet, treating of the adventures, trial, and execution of this youthful jailbird.