“Dinna gang so fast, Mac,” I cried.  “That counts a shot.  It’s my turn the noo.”

And so I piled up a great double handfu’ o’ sand.  It seemed to me that the higher I put the wee ba’ to begin with the further I could send it when I hit it.  But I was wrong, for my attempt was worse than Mac’s.  I broke my club, and drove all the sand in his een, and the wee ba’ moved no more than a foot!

“That’s a shot, too!” cried Mac.

“Aye,” I said, a bit ruefully.  “I—­I sort o’ missed my swing, too, Mac.”

We did a wee bit better after that, but I’m no thinkin’ either Mac or I will ever play against the champion in the final round at Troon or St. Andrews.

CHAPTER VI

I maun e’en wander again from what I’ve been tellin’ ye.  Not that in this book there’s any great plan; it’s just as if we were speerin’ together.  But one thing puts me in mind o’ another.  And it so happened that that gay morn at Montrose when Mac and I tried our hands at the gowf brought me in touch with another and very different experience.

Ye’ll mind I’ve talked a bit already of them that work and those they work for.  I’ve been a laboring man myself; in those days I was close enough to the pit to mind only too well what it was like to be dependent on another man for all I earned and ate and drank.  And I’d been oot on strike, too.  There was some bit trouble over wages.  In the beginning it was no great matter; five minutes of good give and tak’ in talk wad ha’ settled it, had masters and men got together as folk should do.  But the masters wouldna listen, and the men were sair angry, and so there was the strike.

It was easy enough for me.  I’d money in the savings bank.  My brothers were a’ at work in other pits where there was no strike called.  I was able to see it through, and I cheered with a good will when the District Agents of the miners made speeches and urged us to stay oot till the masters gave in.  But I could see, even then, that, there were men who did no feel sae easy in their minds over the strike.  Jamie Lowden was one o’ them.  Jamie and I were good friends, though not sae close as some.

I could see that Jamie was taking the strike much more to heart than I. He’d come oot wi’ the rest of us at the first, and he went to all the mass meetings, though I didna hear him, ever mak’ a speech, as most of us did, one time or another.  And so, one day, when I fell into step beside him, on the way hame frae a meetin’, I made to see what he was thinking.

“Dinna look sae glum, Jamie, man,” I said.  “The strike won’t last for aye.  We’ve the richt on our side, and when we’ve that we’re bound to win in the end.”

“Aye, we may win!” he said, bitterly.  “And what then, Harry?  Strikes are for them that can afford them, Harry—­they’re no for workingman wi’ a wife that’s sick on his hands and a wean that’s dyin’ for lack o’ the proper food.  Gie’en my wife and my bairn should dee, what good would it be to me to ha’ won this strike?”