But Andy learned his lesson at last.  He fell in love once more; this time with a decent, bonnie lass who’d have no dealings wi’ him until he proved to her that she could trust him.  He went to work again for a contractor, and saved his siller.  If he thought he should ha’ more, he said nothing, only waited.  It was no so long before he saved enough to buy a partnership wi’ his gaffer.

“I’m happy the noo, Harry,” he said.  “I’ve found out that what I make depends on me, not on anyone else.  The wife’s there waiting for me when I gang hame at nicht.  There’s the ane bairn, and another coming, God bless him.”

Weel, Andy’d learned nothing he hadn’t been told a million times by his parents and his friends.  But he was one of those who maun learn for themselves to mak siccar.  Can ye no see how like he was to some of them that’s makin’ a great name for themselves the noo, goin’ up and doon the land tellin’ us what we should do?  I’m no the one to say that it should be every man for himself; far from it.  We’ve all to think of others beside ourselves.  But when it comes to winning or losing in this battle of life we’ve all got to learn the same lesson that cost poor Andy so dear.  We maun stand on our ain feet.  Neither God nor man can help us until we’ve begun to help ourselves.

CHAPTER III

In the beginnin’ I was no a miner, ye ken, in the pit at Hamilton.  I went doon first as a miner’s helper, but that was for but the one week.  And at its end my gaffer just went away.  He was to pay me ten shillings, but never a three-penny bit of all that siller did I see!  It was cruel hard, and it hurt me sore, to think I’d worked sae long and so hard and got nothing for it, but there was no use greetin’.  And on Monday I went doon into the pit again, but this time as a trapper.

In a mine, ye ken, there are great air-tight gates.  Without them there’d be more fires and explosions than there are.  And by each one there’s a trapper, who’s to open and close them as the pony drivers with their lurches that carry the mined coal to the hoists go in and out.  Easy work, ye’ll say.  Aye—­if a trapper did only what he was paid for doing.  He’s not supposed to do ought else than open and close gates, and his orders are that he must never leave them.  But trappers are boys, as a rule, and the pony drivers strong men, and they manage to make the trappers do a deal of their work as well as their ain.  They can manage well enough, for they’re no slow to gie a kick or a cuff if the trapper bids them attend to their own affairs and leave him be.

I learned that soon enough.  And many was the blow I got; many the time a driver warmed me with his belt, when I was warm enough already.  But, for a’ that, we had good times in the pit.  I got to know the men I worked with, and to like them fine.  You do that at work, and especially underground, I’m thinking.  There, you ken, there’s always some danger, and men who may dee together any day are like to be friendly while they have the chance.