Lying on the pavement, sheltered only by a blanket of newspapers, Sam Martin was preparing for another miserable, cold, disturbed night, writes Victoria Raimes.

Most of those walking past would have barely noticed him, but Sam got lucky that chilly October night. A priest stopped and took him in for the night.

Sam repaid him by stealing his wife’s credit card. She was suffering from terminal cancer.

"I feel the worst about that one," he says now, quietly. "I still want to find him and write him a letter to apologise. I was so out of it on drugs, I didn’t know what I was doing. I needed money so I got desperate and drained the card of £600. I felt dead afterwards."

It was just the latest in a string of crimes dating back to Sam’s childhood, but this theft was, he says, a turning point. Shortly afterwards, he knocked on the door of the Salvation Army hostel on the Pleasance. He’s been on the straight and narrow since. The hostel offers him a form of salvation, as it has the homeless and outcast in the city for 100 years.

• Full story at the Edinburgh Evening News.

• Filed under Edinburgh + East, Salvation Army, Scottish Christian News Monitor, Social Action.