the
men were sound, and they did grand work. And they found their reward,
too--as men always do when they do their work well and think of what
it means.

There were others in Butte, too, who were thinking only of themselves.
Some of them hung one of the agitators, whiles before I was there.
They had not thought, any more than had the foolish men among the
workers, how each of us is dependent upon others, of the debts that
every day brings us, that we owe to all humanity.

Ye'll e'en forgie me if I wander so, sometimes, in this book? Ye'll
ken how it is when you'll be talkin' with a friend? Ye'll begin about
the bit land or the cow one of you means to sell to the other. Ye'll
ha' promised the wife, maybe, when ye slipped oot, that ye'd come
richt back, so soon as ye had finished wi' Sandy. And then, after ye'd
sat ye doon together in a corner of the bar, why one bit word would
lead to another, and ye'd be wanderin' from the subject afore ye knew
it? It's so wi' me. I'm no writin' a book so much as I'm sittin' doon
wi' ye all for a chat, as I micht do gi'en you came into my dressing
room some nicht when I was singin' in your toon.

It's a far cry that last bit o' wandering meant--from Hamilton in my
ain Scotland to Butte in the Rocky Mountains of America! And yet, for
what I'm thinkin' it's no so far a cry. There were men I knew in
Hamilton who'd have found themselves richt at hame among the agitators
in Butte. I'm minded to be tellin' ye a tale of one such lad.

CHAPTER II

The lad I've in mind I'll call Andy McTavish, which'll no be his richt
name, ye'll ken. He could ha' been the best miner in the pit. He could
ha' been the best liked lad in a' those parts. But he was not. Nothin'
was ever good enough for Andy. I'm tellin' ye, had he found a golden
sovereign along the road, whiles he went to his work, he'd have come
to us at the pit moanin' and complainin' because it was not a five
pound note he'd turned up with his toe!

Never was Andy satisfied. Gi'en there were thirty shillin' for him to
draw at the pit head, come Saturday night, he'd growl that for the
hard work he'd done he should ha' had thirty-five. Mind ye, I'm not
sayin' he was wrong, only he was no worse off than the rest, and
better than some, and he was always feeling that it was he who was
badly used, just he, not everyone. He'd curse the gaffer if the vein
of coal he had to work on wasn't to his liking; he knew nothing of the
secret of happ