But his weak health affected his spirits, and prostrated the energies of a mind originally rather delicate than strong. CHAPTER IX. "Others apart sat on a hill retired, In thoughts more elevate; and reasoned high Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate-- Fixed fate, freewill, foreknowledge absolute; And found no end, in wandering mazes lost."--MILTON. Spring came on, and brought with it its round of labour--quarrying, building, and stone-cutting; but labour had now no terrors for me: I wrought hard during the hours allotted to toil, and was content; and read, wrote, or walked, during the hours that were properly my own, and was happy. Early in May, however, we had finished all the work for which my master had previously contracted; and as trade was unusually dull at the time, he could procure no further contracts, and the squad was thrown out of employment. I rushed to the woods and rocks, and got on with my lessons in geology and natural science; but my master, who had no lessons to learn, wearied sadly of doing nothing; and at length, very unwillingly--for he had enacted the part of the employer, though on a small scale, for a full quarter of a century--he set himself to procure work as a journeyman. He had another apprentice at the time; and he, availing himself of the opportunity which the old man's inability of employing him furnished, quitted his service, and commenced work on his own behalf--a step to which, though the position of a journeyman's apprentice seemed rather an anomalous one, I could not see my way. And so, as work turned up for both master and apprentice at a place about twenty miles distant from Cromarty, I set out with him, to make trial, for the first time, of the sort of life that is spent in bothies and barracks. Our work was to consist, I was informed, of building and hewing at an extensive farm-steading on the banks of the river Conon, which one of the wealthier proprietors of the district was getting built for himself, not on contract, but by the old mode of employing operatives on day's wages; and my master was to be permitted to rate as a full journeyman, though now considerably in his decline as a workman, on condition that the services of his apprentice should be rated so much lower than their actual value as to render master and man regarded as one lot--a fair bargain to the employer, and somewhat more. The arrangement was not quite a flattering one for me; but I acquiesced in it without remark, and set out with my master for Conon-side.