Do ye ken why I hae set doon this tale for you to read?  Is it no plain?  The way we do—­all of us!  We think we may live our ain lives, and that what we do affects no one but ourselves?  Was ever a falswer lee than that?  Here was this strike, that was so quickly called because a few men quarreled among themselves.  And yet it was only by a miracle that it did not bring death to Annie and her bairn and ruin to Jamie Lowden’s whole life—­a decent laddie that asked nowt but to work for his wife and his wean and be a good and useful citizen.

Canna men think twice before they bring such grief and trouble into the world?  Canna they learn to get together and talk things over before the trouble, instead of afterward?  Must we act amang ourselves as the Hun acted in the wide world?  I’m thinking we need not, and shall not, much longer.

CHAPTER VII

The folks we met were awfu’ good to Mackenzie Murdoch and me while we were on tour in yon old days.  I’ve always liked to sit me doon, after a show, and talk to some of those in the audience, and then it was even easier than it is the noo.  I mind the things we did!  There was the time when we must be fishermen!

It was at Castle Douglas, in the Galloway district, that the landlord of our hotel asked us if we were fishermen.  He said we should be, since, if we were, there was a loch nearby where the sport was grand.

“Eh, Mac?” I asked him.  “Are ye as good a fisherman as ye are a gowfer?”

“Scarcely so good, Harry,” he said, smiling.

“Aweel, ne’er mind that,” I said.  “We’ll catch fish enough for our supper, for I’m a don with a rod, as you’ll see.”

Noo, I believed that I was strictly veracious when I said that, even though I think I had never held a rod in my hand.  But I had seen many a man fishing, and it had always seemed to me the easiest thing in the world a man could do.  So forth we fared together, and found the boat the landlord had promised us, and the tackle, and the bait.  I’ll no say whether we took ought else—­’tis none of your affair, you’ll ken!  Nor am I making confession to the wife, syne she reads all I write, whether abody else does so or nicht.

The loch was verra beautiful.  So were the fish, I’m never doubting, but for that yell hae to do e’en as did Mac and I—­tak’ the landlord’s word for ’t.  For ne’er a one did we see, nor did we get a bite, all that day.  But it was comfortable in the air, on the bonny blue water of the loch, and we were no sair grieved that the fish should play us false.

Mac sat there, dreamily.

“I mind a time when I was fishing, once,” he said, and named a spot he knew I’d never seen.  “Ah, man, Harry, but it was the grand day’s sport we had that day!  There was an old, great trout that every fisherman in those parts had been after for twa summers.  Many had hooked him, but he’d got clean awa’.  I had no thocht of seeing him, even.  But by and by I felt a great pull on my line—­and, sure enow, it was he, the big fellow!”