When he was ten, he was bound apprentice to Saunders Snaps in the Back-row, whose grandson has yet, as you know, the sign of the Wheat Sheaf; and for five years he behaved himself like his betters.
"Well, sir, when his time was out, Charlie had an ambition to see the world; and, by working for a month or two as a journeyman in the Candlemaker-row at Edinburgh, he raked as much together as took him up to London in the steerage of a Leith smack.

For several years nothing was heard of him, except an occasional present of a shawl, or so on, to the widow, who had been so kind to him in his helpless years; and at length a farewell present of some little money came to her, with his blessing for past favours, saying that he was off for good and all to America.
"In the course of time, Widow Amos became frail and sand-blind.

She was unable to work for herself, and the charity she had shown to others no one seemed disposed to extend to her.

Her only child, Jeanie Amos, was obliged to leave her service, and come home to the house of poverty, to guard her mother's grey hairs from accident, and to divide with her the little she could make at the trade of mangling; for, with the money that Charlie Cheeper had sent, before leaving the country, the old woman had bought a calender, and let it out to the neighbours at so much an hour; honest poverty having many shifts.
"Matters had gone on in this way for two or three fitful years; and Jeanie, who, when she had come home from service, was a buxom and blooming lass, although yet but a wee advanced in her thirties, began to show, like all earthly things, that she was wearing past her best.

Some said that she had lost hopes of Charlie's return; and others, that, come hame when he liked, he would never look over his left shoulder after her.
"Well, sir, as fact as death, I mind mysell, when a laddie, of the rumpus the thing made in the town.