is limitless vocabulary upon that faithless part.
He also said many things about the workman who had fitted it.

"Angus Jones! O Angus Jones!" said Tam, shaking his head.

Tam never spoke of anybody impersonally. They were christened instantly
and became such individual realities that you could almost swear that
you knew them, for Tam would carefully equip them with features and
color, height and build, and frequently invented for the most unpopular
of his imaginary people relatives of offensive reputations.

"Angus, ma wee lad," he murmured as his nimble fingers grew busy, "ye've
been drinkin' again! Nay, don't deny it! A' see ye comin' out of
Hennessy's the forenoon. An' ye've a wife an' six children, the shame on
ye to treat a puir woman so! Another blunder like this an' ye'll lose
yeer job."

A further fault was discovered in a stiff feed-block, and here Tam grew
bitter and personal.

"Will ye do this, Hector Brodie McKay? Man, can ye meet the innocent
gaze o' the passin' soldiery an' no' feel a mairderer? An' wi' a face
like that, ravaged an' seaun fra' vicious livin'--for shame, ye
scrimshankin', lazy guid-for-nawthing!"

He worked far into the night, for he was tireless, and appeared on
parade the next morning fresh and bright of eye.

"Tam, when you're feeling better I'd like you to dodge over the German
lines. Behind Lille there's a new Hun Corps Headquarters, and there's
something unusual on."

Tam went out that afternoon in the clear cold sky and found that there
was indeed something doing.

Lille was guarded as he had never remembered its being guarded before,
by three belts of fighting machines. His first attempt to break through
brought a veritable swarm of hornets about his ears. The air
reverberated with Archie fire of a peculiar and unusual intensity long
before he came within striking distance of the first zone.

Tam saw the angry rush of the guardian machines and turned his little
Nieuport homeward.

"A'richt! A'richt! What's frichtenin' ye?" he demanded indignantly, as
they streaked behind his tail. "A'm no' anxious to put ma nose where
it's no' wanted!"

He shook off his pursuers and turned on a wide circle, crossed the
enemy's line on the Vimy Ridge and came back across the black
coal-fields near Billy-Montigny. But his attempt to run the gauntlet and
to cross Lille from the eastward met with no better success, and he
escaped via Menin and the Ypres salient.

"Ma luck's oot," he re