Old Uncle Ben, whose sea tales were one of Nancy's chiefest joys, and whose wooden leg was her greatest perplexity, I felt deserved some recognition of his service, and, to shorten the telling, in less than a month these houses were occupied as Nancy had desired they should be--Father Michel being given the large one, with Nancy's dwarfed boy, Dame Dickenson the next, and Uncle Ben becoming the proud occupant of a third. It seemed a sort of child's play to me at first, and Mrs. Opie's statement that I built these houses at this period for the work on the Burnside, is entirely without foundation. Some credit has been bestowed upon me as well for the working out of a labor problem here, but it is honor undeserved, for the thing began in the entirely unintentional manner which I have set down, and the working out of it came at a later date through Nancy's thinking and the zeal and goodness of Father Michel.[2] [2] It was about this period that the "Lace School" was regularly begun, which occurred by no plan of mine, but in the following way: Sandy had had two young women from the north for house service at Arran, and finding them unused to labor, proposed that Dame Dickenson should teach them the Irish lace making which she had learned in her own country. And in a short time there were nine or ten young girls of the neighborhood under regular instruction in this industry. CHAPTER VI NANCY BEGINS HER STUDY OF THE LAW There has been some delay in bringing Hugh Pitcairn into my story, and, as I read that which I have written, I seem to have set him down in a scant and dry manner little calculated to do justice to his many virtues. These virtues, however, were of the kind which made him a fine citizen rather than a jolly companion over a bowl of brose. He was a tall man, heavily built, with a large face, thick bristly hair, and blue eyes set extraordinarily far apart. The bridge of his nose being noticeably low, this peculiarity gave the upper part of his face the appearance of being very sparsely settled. It was Robert Burns, I remember, who made this descriptive observe concerning him. A lowland body, but kin to the Pitcairns of the north, he had come to the High School dependent for his education upon the generosity of a rich uncle, and from the time he entered was easily first in all of his classes. Of an unbending rectitude, unmerciful in his judgments, analytical, penetrating, and accumulative, he was at an early age destined for two things--success and unpopularity. He left the High School with us, to enter upon the study of the law with Maxwell, of Dalgleish, and rising rapidly in his profession was at the age of thirty-three recognized as the soundest, most learned, and bitterest tongued lawyer in Auld Reekie.