A saucer full of tea and a plate which had once contained ham and eggs were on the table.  He nodded towards them and asked me if I had fed.

’Ye’ll no eat onything?  Well, some would offer ye a dram, but this house is staunch teetotal.  I door ye’ll have to try the nearest public if ye’re thirsty.’

I disclaimed any bodily wants, and produced my pipe, at which he started to fill an old clay.  ‘Mr Brand’s your name?’ he asked in his gusty voice.  ‘I was expectin’ ye, but Dod! man ye’re late!’

He extricated from his trousers pocket an ancient silver watch, and regarded it with disfavour.  ’The dashed thing has stoppit.  What do ye make the time, Mr Brand?’

He proceeded to prise open the lid of his watch with the knife he had used to cut his tobacco, and, as he examined the works, he turned the back of the case towards me.  On the inside I saw pasted Mary Lamington’s purple-and-white wafer.

I held my watch so that he could see the same token.  His keen eyes, raised for a second, noted it, and he shut his own with a snap and returned it to his pocket.  His manner lost its wariness and became almost genial.

‘Ye’ve come up to see Glasgow, Mr Brand?  Well, it’s a steerin’ bit, and there’s honest folk bides in it, and some not so honest.  They tell me ye’re from South Africa.  That’s a long gait away, but I ken something aboot South Africa, for I had a cousin’s son oot there for his lungs.  He was in a shop in Main Street, Bloomfountain.  They called him Peter Dobson.  Ye would maybe mind of him.’

Then he discoursed of the Clyde.  He was an incomer, he told me, from the Borders, his native place being the town of Galashiels, or, as he called it, ‘Gawly’.  ’I began as a powerloom tuner in Stavert’s mill.  Then my father dee’d and I took up his trade of jiner.  But it’s no world nowadays for the sma’ independent business, so I cam to the Clyde and learned a shipwright’s job.  I may say I’ve become a leader in the trade, for though I’m no an official of the Union, and not likely to be, there’s no man’s word carries more weight than mine.  And the Goavernment kens that, for they’ve sent me on commissions up and down the land to look at wuds and report on the nature of the timber.  Bribery, they think it is, but Andrew Amos is not to be bribit.  He’ll have his say about any Goavernment on earth, and tell them to their face what he thinks of them.  Ay, and he’ll fight the case of the workingman against his oppressor, should it be the Goavernment or the fatted calves they ca’ Labour Members.  Ye’ll have heard tell o’ the shop stewards, Mr Brand?’

I admitted I had, for I had been well coached by Blenkiron in the current history of industrial disputes.