The mother saw, when it was too late, what her misguided affection had produced, and how to her fond love in childhood the man made the base return of threatening language and the utmost disregard; for he proved too hard for both father and mother at last. The father having a good business, wanted John to learn his trade of a tailor, both because it was easiest and cheapest for the old man, and a sure source of good living for the son, whether he began business for himself or waited to succeed the father after his death; but as he grew up his evil habits increased, and at last when checked by his father in his mad career, he almost put the good old man to death by maltreatment. At last, provoked beyond all endurance, the father resolved to rid himself of him by sending him out of the country, and managed to get him engaged to serve in the army under the command of Brigadier Newton. While in Flanders, he saw, in passing along with one of his brother soldiers, a hen at a little distance covering her chickens under her wings, and out of pure wanton and malicious mischief he fired his musket and shot the hen. The poor woman to whom it belonged, startled by the shot, went out and saw her hen dead; and following the young soldier, asked him to pay the price of the hen and chickens, for both were lost to her, and they formed a great part of her means of subsistence; but the unfeeling youth would not give her a farthing--threatening if she annoyed him he would send her after her hen; upon which the injured old woman predicted, "that as many people would one day gaze in wonder on his lifeless body as that hen had feathers on hers." Young Porteous afterwards left the army and returned to London, where he wrought for some time as a journeyman tailor; but his evil habits brought him to poverty, and he was found in rags by a friend of his father's, who wrote to the old man to remit L10 to clothe him and defray his travelling charges to Edinburgh, which, moved by the compassion of a father, he did, and when John appeared, the kind-hearted old man received him with tears of joy, and embraced him with all the warmth of paternal affection. Vainly hoping that his son was a reformed man, he gave up his business to him, and agreed that he should only have a room in the house and his maintenance and clothes. Young Porteous, thus possessed of the house and trade of his father, and of all his other goods and effects, began by degrees to neglect and maltreat the old man, first, by refusing him a fire in his room in the middle of winter, and even grudging him the benefit of the fire in the kitchen. In addition to this, he disallowed him a sufficiency of victuals, so that he was in danger of being starved to death with cold and hunger. In this unhappy condition he applied for admission into the Trinity Hospital.