It was years after that first tour.  I was singing in Glasgow one week, and the hall was crowded at every performance—­though the management had raised the prices, for which I was sorry.  I heard two women speaking.  Said one: 

“Ha’ ye heard Harry sing the week?”

The other answered: 

“That I ha’ not!”

“And will ye no’?”

“I will no’!  I heard him lang ago, when he was better than he is the noo, for twapence!  Why should I be payin’ twa shillin’ the noo?”

And, do you ken, I’m no sure she was’na richt!  But do not be tellin’ I said so!

That first tour had to end.  Fourteen weeks seemed a long time then, though, the last few days rushed by terribly fast.  I was nervous when the end came.  I wondered if I would ever get another engagement.  It seemed a venturesome thing I had done.  Who was I, Harry Lauder, the untrained miner, to expect folk to pay their gude siller to hear me sing?

There was an offer for an engagement waiting for me when I got home.  I had saved twelve pounds of my earnings, and it was proud I was as I put the money in my wife’s lap.  As for her, she behaved as if she thought her husband had come hame a millionaire.  The new engagement was for only one night, but the fee was a guinea and a half—­twice what I’d made for a week’s work in the pit, and nearly what I’d earned in a week on tour.

But then came bad days.  I was no well posted on how to go aboot getting engagements.  I could only read all the advertisements, and answer everyone that looked as if it might come to anything.  And then I’d sit and wait for the postie to come, but the letters he brought were not for me.  It looked as though I had had all my luck.

But I still had my twelve pounds, and I would not use them while I was earning no more.  So I decided to go back to the pit while I waited.  It was as easy—­aye, it was easier!—­to work while I waited, since wait I must.  I hauled down my old greasy working clothes, and went off to the pithead.  They were glad enough to take me on—­gladder, I’m thinkin’, than I was to be taken.  But it was sair hard to hear the other miners laughing at me.

“There he gaes—­the stickit comic,” I heard one man say, as I passed.  And another, who had never liked me, was at pains to let me hear his opinion, which was that I had “had the conceit knocked oot o’ me, and was glad tae tak’ up the pick again.”

But he was wrong, If it was conceit I had felt, I was as full of it as ever—­fuller, indeed.  I had twelve pounds to slow for what it had brought me, which was more than any of those who sneered at me could say for themselves.  And I was surer than ever that I had it in me to make my mark as a singer of comic songs.  I had listened to other singers now, and I was certain that I had a new way of delivering a song.  My audiences had made me feel that I was going about the task of pleasing them in the right way.  All I wanted was the chance to prove what was so plain to me to others, and I knew then, what I have found so often, since then, to be true, that the chance always comes to the man who is sure he can make use of it.