"I had not seen the colours on the creek nor the brown ribbon on the green velvet, as I sat by the window. Instead I saw the streets of old Edinburgh, the shadows heavy in the Greyfriars' churchyard, the familiar scenes along High Street of an evening, when the students were out laughing and joking, strolling along, each with hand on the other's shoulder, and I among them. For I was as care-free as any one of them all. The good mother had not let me see that she was making any sacrifice in giving me those years at the University, and I was confident of the future. "I have told you of those days, but not that my mates knew me as David Cameron,--David Allison Cameron, to be exact, Allison being my mother's name. 'Why should you change it?' I can hear you ask, apprehension in your voice. That is the part of my life in which you are now to share. Nor do I clearly know why you have not been permitted to do so before. It was no guilt of mine that caused me to change my name, except, possibly, that I was influenced by pride. My father's brother was a merchant in Glasgow, who urged that I become his apprentice. Mother was all for having me educated. I think the dear soul hoped to hear me expound in the kirk, as possibly she might but for the cold that came upon her and, before I realized what it meant, the good doctor was telling me it would be her last illness. "Ah! the mists hung heavy over the lowlands the morning I turned my face toward London, where I was determined to seek fame and fortune. I might have gone to my uncle in Glasgow, but no, mother had wished otherwise and I was as proud as I was inexperienced. "I will not pain you with a recital of the struggles I endured until, as I thought, Fortune came to my relief and Lord Ralston engaged me as the tutor of his son, Dick. And, when I saw the lad, my happiness was complete. He was a handsome fellow, generous to a fault, and his pleasant smile and hearty greeting won me at the first. The stipend, to one impoverished as I was, seemed munificent, but I soon found that Handsome Dick, as he was called, made sure the spending of it should not trouble me. He could borrow a pound or two as if doing one a favour, and I knew it was with the firm intention that I should have it back. This, however, he found so inconvenient I rarely had enough to help him out of scrapes when his own funds were wasted. Admonitions to him were like the falling rain on the back of the duck. He early acquired a passion for gambling. His father knew it, but hoped that time would work his cure. He, himself, I learned, had been somewhat of a profligate.