“Puir Lizzie!  She loves him still, for all he’s done to her and to us.  She says he’ll come back yet, rich and well, and tak’ her out o’ service, and bring up the bairns like the sons and dochters of gentlefolk.  And we—­weel, we say nowt to shake her.  She maybe happier thinking so, and it’s a sair hard time she’s had, puir lass.  D’ye mind the wee lassie that was sae still till she began to know ye—­the weest one of them a’?  Aye?  Weel, she was born six months after her faither went awa’, and I think she’s our favorite among them a’.”

“And ye ha’ the care and the feedin’ and the clothin’ o’ all that brood?” I said.  “Is it no cruel hard’?”

“Hard enow,” said the auld man, breaking his silence.  “But we’d no be wi’oot them.  They brichten up the hoose it’d be dull’ and drear wi’oot them.  I’m hoping that daft lad never comes back, for all o’ Lizzie’s thinking on him!”

And I share his hope.  Chance!  Had ever man a greater chance than that sailor lad?  He had gone wrong as a boy.  Those old folk, because their daughter loved him, gave him the greatest chance a man can have—­the chance to retrieve a bad start, to make up for a false step.  How many men have that?  How many men are there, handicapped as, no doubt, he was, who find those to put faith in them?  If a man may not take advantage of sicca chance as that he needs no better chance again than a rope around his neck with a stone tied to it and a drop into the Firth o’ Forth!

I’ve a reminder to this day of that wee hoose at Gatehouse-of-Fleet.  There was an old fashioned wag-at-the-wa’ in the bedroom where I slept.  It had a very curiously shaped little china face, and it took my fancy greatly.  Sae, next morning, I offered the old couple a good, stiff price for it mair than it was worth, maybe, but not mair than it was worth to me.  They thought I was bidding far too much, and wanted to tak’ half, but I would ha’ my ain way, for sae I was sure neither of was being cheated.  I carried it away wi’ me, and the little clock wags awa’ in my bedroom to this very day.

There’s a bit story I micht as weel tell ye mesel’, for yell hear it frae Mac in any case, if ever ye chance to come upon him.  It’s the tale o’ Kirsty Lamont and her rent box.  I played eavesdropper, or I wouldna know it to pass it on to ye, but it’s tae gude tae lose, for a’ that.  I’ll be saying, first, that I dinna know Kirsty Lamont, though I mak’ sae free wi’ her name, gude soul!

It was in Kirremuir, and there’d been a braw concert the nicht before.  I was on my way to the post office, thinking there’d be maybe a bit letter from the wife—­she wrote to me, sometimes, then, when I was frae hame, oor courtin’ days not being so far behind us as they are noo. (Ah, she travels wi’ me always the noo, ye ken, sae she has nae need to write to me!) Suddenly I heard my own name as I passed a bunch o’ women gossiping.

“What thocht ye o’ Harry Lauder?” one of them asked another.