after trying to manage with him for a few months, Tam gave it up,
took the law into his own hands, and ran away. Probably the
provocation was severe, for in after-life Telford always showed
himself duly respectful to constituted authority; and we know that
petty self-made master-workmen are often apt to be excessively
severe to their own hired helpers, and especially to helpless lads
or young apprentices. At any rate, Tam wouldn't go back; and in
the end, a well-to-do cousin, who had risen to the proud position
of steward at the great hall of the parish, succeeded in getting
another mason at Langholm, the little capital of Eskdale, to take
over the runaway for the remainder of the term of his indentures.

At Langholm, a Scotch country town of the quietest and sleepiest
description, Tam Telford passed the next eight years of his
uneventful early life, first as an apprentice, and afterwards as a
journeyman mason of the humblest type. He had a good mother, and
he was a good son. On Saturday nights he generally managed to walk
over to the cottage at Westerkirk, and accompany the poor widow to
the Sunday services at the parish kirk. As long as she lived,
indeed, he never forgot her; and one of the first tasks he set
himself when he was out of his indentures was to cut a neat
headstone with a simple but beautiful inscription for the grave of
that shepherd father whom he had practically never seen. At
Langholm, an old maiden lady, Miss Pasley, interested herself
kindly in Janet Telford's rising boy. She lent him what of all
things the eager lad most needed--books; and the young mason
applied himself to them in all his spare moments with the vigorous
ardour and perseverance of healthy youth. The books he read were
not merely those which bore directly or indirectly upon his own
craft: if they had been, Tam Telford might have remained nothing