The widow-woman from next door, who acted as house-keeper, cook, and general factotum to the establishment, brought me shaving water next morning, but I had to go without a bath.  When I entered the kitchen I found no one there, but while I consumed the inevitable ham and egg, Amos arrived back for breakfast.  He brought with him the morning’s paper.

‘The Herald says there’s been a big battle at Eepers,’ he announced.

I tore open the sheet and read of the great attack of 31 July which was spoiled by the weather.  ‘My God!’ I cried.  ’They’ve got St Julien and that dirty Frezenberg ridge . . . and Hooge . . . and Sanctuary Wood.  I know every inch of the damned place. . . .’

‘Mr Brand,’ said a warning voice, ’that’ll never do.  If our friends last night heard ye talk like that ye might as well tak the train back to London . . .  They’re speakin’ about ye in the yards this morning. ye’ll get a good turnout at your meeting the night, but they’re Sayin’ that the polis will interfere.  That mightna be a bad thing, but I trust ye to show discretion, for ye’ll not be muckle use to onybody if they jyle ye in Duke Street.  I hear Gresson will be there with a fraternal message from his lunatics in America . . .  I’ve arranged that ye go down to Tam Norie this afternoon and give him a hand with his bit paper.  Tam will tell ye the whole clash o’ the West country, and I look to ye to keep him off the drink.  He’s aye arguin’ that writin’ and drinkin’ gang thegither, and quotin’ Robert Burns, but the creature has a wife and five bairns dependin’ on him.’

I spent a fantastic day.  For two hours I sat in Norie’s dirty den, while he smoked and orated, and, when he remembered his business, took down in shorthand my impressions of the Labour situation in South Africa for his rag.  They were fine breezy impressions, based on the most whole-hearted ignorance, and if they ever reached the Rand I wonder what my friends there made of Cornelius Brand, their author.  I stood him dinner in an indifferent eating-house in a street off the Broomielaw, and thereafter had a drink with him in a public-house, and was introduced to some of his less reputable friends.

About tea-time I went back to Amos’s lodgings, and spent an hour or so writing a long letter to Mr Ivery.  I described to him everybody I had met, I gave highly coloured views of the explosive material on the Clyde, and I deplored the lack of clearheadedness in the progressive forces.  I drew an elaborate picture of Amos, and deduced from it that the Radicals were likely to be a bar to true progress.  ’They have switched their old militancy,’ I wrote, ’on to another track, for with them it is a matter of conscience to be always militant.’  I finished up with some very crude remarks on economics culled from the table-talk of the egregious Tombs.  It was the kind of letter which I hoped would establish my character in his mind as an industrious innocent.