At one of these gatherings Robert related his experience with “auld Hairyfithill.”  Robert had been round with the van that day, and calling at Wilson’s, or Hairyfithill Farm, to ask if they had any cabbage to give, he heard the old man calling to the servant lass:  “Mag!  Mag!  Where are ye?  Rin an’ bring in the hens’ meat; there’s thae colliers coming.”

Nothing daunted, Robert had gone into the kitchen to ask if they had anything to give the strikers.

“Get awa’ back to yer work, ye lazy loons, ye!” was the reply from old Mr. Wilson.  “Gie ye something for your soup kitchen!  Na, na!  Ye can gang an’ work, an’ pay for your meat.  Gang awa’ oot owre, and leave the town, an’ dinna come back again.”  And so they had drawn blank at Hairyfithill.

“It wad serve him richt, if every tattie in his fields was ta’en awa’,” said Matthew Maitland, after the story had been told and laughed over.

“It wad that,” agreed a score of voices; but nothing was done nor anything further said, so the dancing proceeded.

About two o’clock in the morning while the dancing was still going on and a fire had been kindled at the corner in which some of the strikers were roasting potatoes and onions a great commotion was suddenly caused, when Dickie Tamson and two other boys drove in among them old Hairyfithill’s sow which he was fattening for the market.  Some proposed that the pig be killed at once.

“Oh no, dinna kill it,” said Matthew Maitland, with real alarm in his voice.  “Ye’d get into a row for that.  Ye’d better tak’ it back, or there may be fun.”

“Kill the damn’d thing,” said Tam Donaldson callously, “an’ it’ll maybe a lesson to the auld sot.  Him an’ his hens’ meat!  I’d let him ken that it’s no’ hens’ meat the collier eats—­at least no’ so lang as he can get pork.”

“That’s jist what I think, too, Tam,” put in another voice.  “I’d mak’ sure work that the collier ate pork for yince.  Come on, boys, an’ mum’s the word,” and he proceeded to drive the pig further along the village, followed by a few enthusiastic backers.  They drove it into Granny Fleming’s hen-house in the middle of the square, put out the hens, who protested loudly against this rude and incomprehensible interruption of their slumbers, and then they proceeded to slaughter the pig.

It was a horrible orgy, and the pig made a valiant protest, but encountered by hammers and picks, knives and such-like weapons, the poor animal was soon vanquished, and the men proceeded to cut up its carcass.  It was a long and trying ordeal for men who had no experience of the work; yet they made up in enthusiasm what they lacked in science, and by five o’clock the pig was cut up and distributed through a score of homes.  Every trace of the slaughter was removed, and the refuse buried in the village midden, and pork was the principal article on the breakfast table that morning in Lowwood.

“I hear that auld Hairyfithill has offered five pound reward for information about his pig,” said Tam Donaldson a few mornings later.