for a
contractor, and saved his siller. If he thought he should ha' more, he
said nothing, only waited. It was no so long before he saved enough to
buy a partnership wi' his gaffer.

"I'm happy the noo, Harry," he said. "I've found out that what I make
depends on me, not on anyone else. The wife's there waiting for me
when I gang hame at nicht. There's the ane bairn, and another coming,
God bless him."

Weel, Andy'd learned nothing he hadn't been told a million times by
his parents and his friends. But he was one of those who maun learn
for themselves to mak siccar. Can ye no see how like he was to some of
them that's makin' a great name for themselves the noo, goin' up and
doon the land tellin' us what we should do? I'm no the one to say that
it should be every man for himself; far from it. We've all to think of
others beside ourselves. But when it comes to winning or losing in
this battle of life we've all got to learn the same lesson that cost
poor Andy so dear. We maun stand on our ain feet. Neither God nor man
can help us until we've begun to help ourselves.

CHAPTER III

In the beginnin' I was no a miner, ye ken, in the pit at Hamilton. I
went doon first as a miner's helper, but that was for but the one
week. And at its end my gaffer just went away. He was to pay me ten
shillings, but never a three-penny bit of all that siller did I see!
It was cruel hard, and it hurt me sore, to think I'd worked sae long
and so hard and got nothing for it, but there was no use greetin'. And
on Monday I went doon into the pit again, but this time as a trapper.

In a mine, ye ken, there are great air-tight gates. Without them
there'd be more fires and explosions than there are. And by each one
there's a trapper, who's to open and close them as the pony drivers
with their lurches that carry the mined coal to the hoists go in and
out. Easy work, ye'll say. Aye--if a trapper did only what he was paid
for doing. He's not supposed to do ought else than open and close
gates, and his orders are that he must never leave them. But trappers
are boys, as a rule, and the pony drivers strong men, and they manage
to make the trappers do a deal of their work as well as their ain.
They can manage well enough, for they're no slow to gie a kick or a
cuff if the trapper bids them attend to their own affairs and leave
him be.

I learned that soon enough. And many was the blow I got; many the time
a driver warmed me with his belt, when I