We were joined in about a fortnight by the other workmen from the Low country, and I resigned my temporary charge (save that I still retained the time-book in my master's behalf) into the hands of an ancient mason, remarkable over the north of Scotland for his skill as an operative, and who, though he was now turned of sixty, was still able to build and hew considerably more than the youngest and most active man in the squad. He was at this time the only survivor of three brothers, all masons, and all not merely first-class workmen, but of a class to which, at least to the north of the Grampians, only they themselves belonged, and very considerably in advance of the first. And on the removal of the second of the three brothers to the south of Scotland, it was found that, amid the stone-cutters of Glasgow, David Fraser held relatively the same place that he had done among those of the north. I have been told by Mr. Kenneth Matheson--a gentleman well known as a master-builder in the west of Scotland--that in erecting some hanging stairs of polished stone, ornamented in front and at the outer edge by the common fillet and torus, his ordinary workmen used to complete for him their one step a-piece per day, and David Fraser his _three_ steps, finished equally well. It is easily conceivable how, in the higher walks of art, one man should excel a thousand--nay, how he should have neither competitor when living, nor successor when dead. The English gentleman who, after the death of Canova, asked a surviving brother of the sculptor whether he purposed carrying on Canova's _business_, found that he had achieved in the query an unintentional joke. But in the commoner avocations there appear no such differences between man and man; and it may seem strange how, in ordinary stone-cutting, one man could thus perform the work of three. My acquaintance with old John Fraser showed me how very much the ability depended on a natural faculty. John's strength had never been above the average of that of Scotchmen, and it was now considerably reduced; nor did his mallet deal more or heavier blows than that of the common workman. He had, however, an extraordinary power of conceiving of the finished piece of work, as lying within the rude stone from which it was his business to disinter it; and while ordinary stone-cutters had to repeat and re-repeat their lines and draughts, and had in this way virtually to give to their work several surfaces in detail ere they reached the true one, old John cut upon the true figure at once, and made one surface serve for all. In building, too, he exercised a similar power: he hammer-dressed his stones with fewer strokes than other workmen, and in fitting the interspaces between stones already laid, always picked from out of the heap at his feet the stone that exactly fitted the place; while other operatives busied themselves in picking up stones that were too small or too large; or, if they set themselves to reduce the too large ones, reduced them too little or too much, and had to fit and fit again. Whether building or hewing, John never seemed in a hurry. He has been seen, when far advanced in life, working very leisurely, as became his years, on the one side of a wall, and two stout young fellows building against him on the other side--toiling, apparently, twice harder than he, but the old man always contriving to keep a little a-head of them both.