"Many a time," said Nicholas Middlemiss, as he turned round the skirts and the sleeve of his threadbare coat to examine them, "many a time have I heard my mother say to my faither--'Roger, Roger (for that was my faither's name,) _the simple man is the beggar's brother_.' But, notwithstanding my mother's admonitions, my faither certainly was a very simple man. He allowed people to take him in, even while they were laughing in his face at his simplicity. I dinna think that ever there was a week but that somebody or other owrereached him, in some transaction or other; for every knave, kennin' him to be a simpleton, (a nosey-wax, as my mother said,) always laid their snares to entrap Roger Middlemiss--and his family were the sufferers. He had been a manufacturer in Langholm for many a long year, and at his death he left four brothers, a sister and mysel', four hundred pounds each. Be it remembered, however, that his faither before him left him near to three thousand, and that was an uncommon fortune in those days, a fortune I may say that my faither might have made his bairns dukes by. Had he no been a simple man, his family might have said that they wouldna ca' the Duke o' Buccleuch their cousin. But he was simple--simplicity's sel'--(as my mother told him weel about it)--and he didna leave his bairns sae meikle to divide among them, as he had inherited from their grandfaither. Yet, if, notwithstanding his opportunities to make a fortune, he did not even leave us even what he had got, he at least left us his simpleness unimpaired. My brothers were honest men--owre honest, I am sorry to say, for the every-day transactions of this world--but they always followed the _obliging_ path, and kept their face in a direction, which, if they had had foresight enough to see it, was sure to land them _in_, or _on_,(just as ye like to take the expression,) their _native parish_. Now, this is a longing after the place o' one's birth for which I have no ambition; but on the parish it did land my brothers. My sister, too, was a poor simple thing, that married a man who had a wife living when he married her; and, after he had got every shilling that she had into his possession, he decamped and left her.