no doubt, but for his employer's very drunken and careless ways. When
Begg came home from the public-house, much the worse for whisky, he
would first beat Tam, and then proceed upstairs to beat his wife. For
three years young Edward lived under this intolerable tyranny, till he
could stand it no longer. At last, Begg beat and ill-treated him so
terribly that Tam refused outright to complete his apprenticeship. Begg
was afraid to compel him to do so--doubtless fearing to expose his ill-
usage of the lad. So Tam went to a new master, a kindly man, with whom
he worked in future far more happily.

The boy now began to make himself a little botanical garden in the back
yard of his mother's house--a piece of waste ground covered with
rubbish, such as one often sees behind the poorer class of cottages in
towns. Tam determined to alter all that, so he piled up all the stones
into a small rockery, dug up the plot, manured it, and filled it with
wild and garden flowers. The wild flowers, of course, he found in the
woods and hedgerows around him; but the cultivated kinds he got in a
very ingenious fashion, by visiting all the rubbish heaps of the
neighbourhood, on which garden refuse was usually piled. A good many
roots and plants can generally be found in such places, and by digging
them up, Tam was soon able to make himself a number of bright and lively
beds. Such self-help in natural history always lay very much in Edward's
way.

At the same time, young Edward was now beginning to feel the desire for
knowing something more about the beasts and birds of which he was so
fond. He used to go in all his spare moments among the shops in the
town, to look at the pictures in the windows, especially the pictures of
animals; and though his earnings were still small, he bought a book
whenever he was able to afford one. In those days cheap papers for the