Even geological rambles and communings with the Muse afforded but scant alleviation of the hardships endured. During rainy weather the food would often be oatmeal eaten raw, at times with no salt save from a passing Highland smuggler, or consist of hastily prepared gruel or _brochan_. In time he learned to be a fair plain cook and baker, so as at least to satisfy the demands of the failing teeth of his old master. Accordingly, he was not sorry when the three years of his apprenticeship closed, and as a skilled labourer he could retire about the Martinmas of 1822 to Cromarty, where his first piece of work was a cottage built with his own hands for his aunt. In 1823 he was with a working party at Gairloch, and was there for the last time to experience the discomforts in the life of the working mason when employed by a niggard Highland laird. Forced from the barn in which they were at first domiciled into a cow-house to make room for the hay, they found themselves called upon to convert the materials of this hovel into the new building upon which they were engaged. This they effected by demolishing the entrance gradually, and hanging mats over it, leaving themselves ultimately to the cold October wind which not even Miller's experiences as a boy of the caves in the Sutors of Cromarty could render tolerable. But he had begun to see that the sphere of constant employment was narrow and narrowing in his native place, and, as the building mania in the South at the time seemed to afford a better opening for a steady workman, to Edinburgh accordingly he resolved to betake himself.