During the working season, the settlers appeared singularly alike in character. I could observe nothing in those upon the road to whom I acted as boss, by which one man could be distinguished from another, save a little more alacrity and good-humour in some than in others; but as the season advanced, peculiarities became more evident, and several who had attracted no attention while employed, proved in their leisure quite a different sort of people to what I had set them down for. One man in particular, whom I thought a well-disposed, industrious creature, grew a perfect pest. It is not in the power of tongue or pen to describe the trouble that man, John Waft, gave me: not that there was any evil inclination about him, for, to speak the plain truth, he was an honest, well-meaning bodie; but he neither could see nor do any thing whatever, without breaking in upon my time to summer and winter about it.

He was a queer, odd-looking, west-country Scotchman, past the middle of life, a little—I should say, declined into the vale of years. In his general appearance, as to dress, he was somewhat more respectable than the condition of his means, poor man, altogether justified; but it was a token of the consideration in which he had been held among his neighbours at home, and evinced a desire to be well thought of by his new acquaintance.

It could not be said he was a very sensible man; indeed, the cause of my taking notice of him here was his want of sense: he proved such a thorn in my side! But he had a way of looking up from beneath his brows, and the brim of his hat, and came so whisperingly about his purposes, that, until he was found out by experience, most people imagined he possessed a creditable depth of judgment: they often, however, afterwards wondered what had become of it.