id="page30"/>of their ancestors with Borrow and his great book.  Ambrose Smith was buried in Dunbar cemetery, the Christian service being read over his grave, and his friends erected a stone to him which bears the following inscription:—

In Memory of
Ambrose Smith, who died 22nd
October 1878, aged 74 years.

Also

Thomas, his son,
who died 28th May 1879, aged 48 years.

Three years separated the sojourn of the Borrow family at Norman Cross from their sojourn in Edinburgh—three years of continuous wandering.  The West Norfolk Militia were watching the French prisoners at Norman Cross for fifteen months.  After that we have glimpses of them at Colchester, at East Dereham again, at Harwich, at Leicester, at Huddersfield, concerning which place Borrow incidentally in Wild Wales writes of having been at school, in Sheffield, in Berwick-on-Tweed, and finally the family are in Edinburgh, where they arrive on 6th April, 1813.  We have already referred to Borrow’s presence at the High School of Edinburgh, the school sanctified by association with Walter Scott and so many of his illustrious fellow-countrymen.  He and his brother were at the High School for a single session, that is, for the winter session of 1813–14, although with the licence of a maker of fiction he claimed, in Lavengro, to have been there for two years.  But it is not in this brief period of schooling of a boy of ten that we find the strongest influence that Edinburgh gave to Borrow.  Rather may we seek it in the acquaintanceship with the once too notorious David Haggart.  Seven years later than this all the peoples of the three kingdoms were discussing David Haggart, the Scots Jack Sheppard, the clever young prison-breaker, who was hanged at Edinburgh in 1821 for killing his gaoler in Dumfries prison.  How much David Haggart filled the imagination of every one who could read in the early years of last century is demonstrated by a reference to the Library Catalogue of the British Museum, where we find pamphlet after pamphlet, broadsheet after broadsheet, treating of the adventures, trial, and execution of this youthful gaolbird.  But by far the most valuable publication with regard to Haggart is one that Borrow must have read in his youth.  This was a life of Haggart written by himself, a little book that had a wide circulation.  From this little biography we learn that Haggart was born in Golden Acre, near Canon-Mills, in the county of Edinburgh in 1801, his father, John Haggart, being a gamekeeper, and in later years a dog-trainer.  The boy was at school under Mr. Robin Gibson at Canon-Mills for two years.  He left school at ten years of age, and from that time until his execution seems to have had a continuous career of thieving.  He tells us that before he was eleven years old he had stolen a bantam cock from a woman belonging to the New Town of Edinburgh.  He went with another boy to Currie, six miles from Edinburgh, and there stole a pony, but this was afterwards returned.  When but twelve years of age he attended Leith races, and it was here that he enlisted in the Norfolk Militia, then stationed in Edinburgh Castle.  This may very well have brought him into contact with Borrow in the way described in Lavengro.  He was only, however, in the regiment for a year, for when it was sent back to England the Colonel in command of it obtained young Haggart’s discharge.  These dates coincide with Borrow’s presence in Edinburgh.  Haggart’s history for the next five or six years was in truth merely that of a wandering pickpocket, sometimes in Scotland, sometimes in England, and finally he became a notorious burglar.  Incidentally he refers to a girl with whom he was in love.  Her name was Mary Hill.  She belonged to Ecclefechan, which Haggart more than once visited.  He must therefore have known Carlyle, who had not then left his native village.  In 1820 we find him in Edinburgh, carrying on the same sort of depredations both there and at Leith—now he steals a silk plaid, now a greatcoat, and now a silver teapot.  These thefts, of course, landed him in gaol, out of which he breaks rather dramatically, fleeing with a companion to Kelso.  He had, indeed, more than one experience of gaol.  Finally, we find him in the prison of Dumfries destined to stand his trial for “one act of house-breaking, eleven cases of theft, and one of prison-breaking.”  While in prison at Dumfries he planned another escape, and in the attempt to hit a gaoler named Morrin on the head with a stone he unexpectedly killed him.  His escape from Dumfries gaol after this murder, and his later wanderings, are the most dramatic part of his book.  He fled through Carlisle to Newcastle, and then thought that he would be safer if he returned to Scotland, where he found the rewards that were offered for his arrest faced him wherever he went.  He turned up again in Edinburgh, where he seems to have gone about freely, although reading everywhere the notices that a reward of seventy guineas was offered for his apprehension.  Then he fled to Ireland, where he thought that his safety was assured.  At Dromore he was arrested and brought before the magistrate, but he spoke with an Irish brogue, and declared that his name was John M‘Colgan, and that he came from Armagh.  He escaped from Dromore gaol by jumping through a window, and actually went so far as to pay three pound ten shillings for his passage to America, but he was afraid of the sea, and changed his mind, and lost his passage money at the last moment.  After this he made a tour right through Ireland, in spite of the fact that the Dublin Hue and Cry had a description of his person which he read more than once.  His assurance was such that in Tullamore he made a pig-driver apologise before the magistrate for charging him with theft, although he had been living on nothing else all the time he was in Ireland.  Finally, he was captured, being recognised by a policeman from Edinburgh.  He was brought from Ireland to Dumfries, landed in Calton gaol, Edinburgh, and was tried and executed.