When Peter had been in the mill for nearly a year, the manager asked him if he would like to learn a trade instead of to be a tenter. Peter was willing, and was taken into the mechanics’ shop attached to the mill, there to learn to make and fit up machinery. He grew stout and sturdy, and gave great satisfaction, as he never seemed happier than when tearing in at his work. He never dared to write home, and was mourned as one dead. In six years Peter became a full-fledged journeyman. He was now a tall, strapping fellow, with a good face, and a clear, laughing eye, and was qualified to go anywhere and command a high wage as a first-class engine-fitter. He had been diligent and steady, and had studied drawing and designing to help him in his trade, and altogether was quite a different character from what he had promised as a small and terrible burglar. He had even saved a little money, and it was the thought of that money lying idle, and the heaps more which he was now able to earn, which sent his thoughts homewards and his heart throbbing for dear Auld Reekie. When he had been a few weeks journeyman, and engaged in the same mill at a capital wage, the Fair holidays came on, and Peter’s eye caught a bill announcing a “Trip to Edinburgh.” Edinburgh! The very sight of the word thrilled him through. He got a ticket and went through next day. He made his way first to Hill Place. His parents had not lived there for years. No one knew them, or had heard of them, and he began to faintly wonder if they could have been all starved to death at that fearful time when he was locked up in prison as a burglar. Then he thought of the bakers’ house of call, and went thither and got a great lift to his heart. His father was alive and doing well as foreman to Borland the baker, who had now two shops, and was flourishing also. Peter went to the principal shop, and found Mr Borland behind the counter. As he entered the shop a floury-faced man, in his shirt sleeves, was leaving for the regions below, and the young engine-fitter stared into the face with a palpitating heart. “That’s my faither! that’s my faither!” he thought, with a great lump rising in his throat; but he could no more have spoken than he could have flown in the air. Borland stared at him curiously, and thought from his incoherent words and strange manner that the stranger was drunk. At length he understood that the young man wished to be directed to the home of Mossman, the foreman, and, as he refused to see the foreman, he got the address and departed. Mossman came up from the bakehouse a few minutes later, and was apprised of the circumstance, but thought nothing of it till he was half-way down the stair again. Then something familiar in the face he had seen for a moment in the shop had flashed upon his memory, and he dashed up to the shop, whiter than the flour on his face, and faintly staggered towards his friend and master, Borland, with the words—