Ye’ll e’en forgie me if I wander so, sometimes, in this book?  Ye’ll ken how it is when you’ll be talkin’ with a friend?  Ye’ll begin about the bit land or the cow one of you means to sell to the other.  Ye’ll ha’ promised the wife, maybe, when ye slipped oot, that ye’d come richt back, so soon as ye had finished wi’ Sandy.  And then, after ye’d sat ye doon together in a corner of the bar, why one bit word would lead to another, and ye’d be wanderin’ from the subject afore ye knew it?  It’s so wi’ me.  I’m no writin’ a book so much as I’m sittin’ doon wi’ ye all for a chat, as I micht do gi’en you came into my dressing room some nicht when I was singin’ in your toon.

It’s a far cry that last bit o’ wandering meant—­from Hamilton in my ain Scotland to Butte in the Rocky Mountains of America!  And yet, for what I’m thinkin’ it’s no so far a cry.  There were men I knew in Hamilton who’d have found themselves richt at hame among the agitators in Butte.  I’m minded to be tellin’ ye a tale of one such lad.

CHAPTER II

The lad I’ve in mind I’ll call Andy McTavish, which’ll no be his richt name, ye’ll ken.  He could ha’ been the best miner in the pit.  He could ha’ been the best liked lad in a’ those parts.  But he was not.  Nothin’ was ever good enough for Andy.  I’m tellin’ ye, had he found a golden sovereign along the road, whiles he went to his work, he’d have come to us at the pit moanin’ and complainin’ because it was not a five pound note he’d turned up with his toe!

Never was Andy satisfied.  Gi’en there were thirty shillin’ for him to draw at the pit head, come Saturday night, he’d growl that for the hard work he’d done he should ha’ had thirty-five.  Mind ye, I’m not sayin’ he was wrong, only he was no worse off than the rest, and better than some, and he was always feeling that it was he who was badly used, just he, not everyone.  He’d curse the gaffer if the vein of coal he had to work on wasn’t to his liking; he knew nothing of the secret of happiness, which is to take what comes and always remember that for every bit of bad there’s nearly always a bit o’ good waitin’ around the corner.

Yet, with it all, there wasn’t a keener, brighter lad than Andy in all Lanarkshire.  He had always a good story to crack.  He was handy with his fists; he could play well at football or any other game he tried.  He wasn’t educated; had he been, we all used to think, he micht ha’ made a name for himself.  I didn’t see, in those days, that we were all wrong.  If Andy’d been a good miner, if he’d started by doing well, at least, as well as he could, the thing he had the chance to do, then we’d have been right to think that all he needed to be famous and successful was to have the chance.

But, as it was, Andy was always too busy greetin’ over his bad luck.  It was bad luck that he had to work below ground, when he loved the sunshine.  It was bad luck that the wee toon was sae dull for a man of his spirit.  Andy seemed to think that some one should come around and make him happy and comfortable and rich—­not that the only soul alive to whom he had a right to look for such blessings was himself.