I’ll no say we weren’t liking Andy all richt.  But, ye ken, he was that sort of man we’d always say, when we were talking of him:  “Oh, aye—­ there’s Andy.  A braw laddie—­but what he micht be!”

Andy thought he was better than the rest of us.  There was that, for ane thing.  He’d no be doing the things the rest of us were glad enough to do.  It was naught to him to walk along the Quarry Road wi’ a lassie, and buss her in a dark spot, maybe.  And just because he’d no een for them, the wee lassies were ready to come, would he but lift his finger!  Is it no always the way?  There’d be a dozen decent, hard working miners who could no get a lassie to look their way, try as they micht—­men who wanted nothing better than to settle doon in a wee hoose somewhere, and stay at home with the wife, and, a bit later, with the bairns.

Ye’d never be seein’ Andy on a Saturday afternoon along the ropes, watchin’ a football game.  Or, if ye did, there’d be a sneer curling his lips.  He was a braw looking lad, was Andy, but that sneer came too easily.

“Where did they learn the game” he’d say, turning up his nose.  “If they’d gie me a crack I’d show them——­”

And, sure enough, if anyone got up a game, Andy’d be the first to take off his coat.  And he was a good player, but no sae good as he thought himself.  ‘Twas so wi’ all the man did; he was handy enough, but there were aye others better.  But he was all for having a hand in whatever was going on himself; he’d no the patience to watch others and learn, maybe, from the way they did.

Andy was a solitary man; he’d no wife nor bairn, and he lived by his lane, save for a dog and a bantam cock.  Them he loved dearly and nought was too good for them.  The dog, I’m thinkin’, he had odd uses for; Andy was no above seekin’ a hare now and then that was no his by rights.  And he’d be out before dawn, sometimes, with old Dick, who could help him with his poaching.  ’Twas so he lost Dick at last; a farmer caught the pair of them in a field of his, and the farmer’s dog took Dick by the throat and killed him.

Andy was fair disconsolate; he was so sad the farmer, even, was sorry for him, and would no have him arrested, as he micht well have done, since he’d caught man and dog red handed, as the saying is.  He buried the dog come the next evening, and was no fit to speak to for days.  And then, richt on top of that, he lost his bird; it was killed in a main wi’ another bantam, and Andy lost his champion bantam, and forty shillin’ beside, That settled him.  Wi’ his two friends gone frae him, he had no more use for the pit and the countryside.  He disappeared, and the next we heard was that he’d gone for a soldier.  Those were the days, long, long gone, before the great war.  We heard Andy’s regiment was ordered to India, and then we heard no more of him.