wrong way, man," he said. "I
sort o' missed my swing that time. There's the ba'----"

He pointed, and sure enough, I saw the puir wee ba', over to right,
not half a dozen yards from the tee, and lookin' as if it had been cut
in twa. He made to lift it and put it back on the tee, but, e'en an' I
had never played the game I knew a bit aboot the rules.

"Dinna gang so fast, Mac," I cried. "That counts a shot. It's my turn
the noo."

And so I piled up a great double handfu' o' sand. It seemed to me that
the higher I put the wee ba' to begin with the further I could send it
when I hit it. But I was wrong, for my attempt was worse than Mac's. I
broke my club, and drove all the sand in his een, and the wee ba'
moved no more than a foot!

"That's a shot, too!" cried Mac.

"Aye," I said, a bit ruefully. "I--I sort o' missed my swing, too,
Mac."

We did a wee bit better after that, but I'm no thinkin' either Mac or
I will ever play against the champion in the final round at Troon or
St. Andrews.

CHAPTER VI

I maun e'en wander again from what I've been tellin' ye. Not that in
this book there's any great plan; it's just as if we were speerin'
together. But one thing puts me in mind o' another. And it so happened
that that gay morn at Montrose when Mac and I tried our hands at the
gowf brought me in touch with another and very different experience.

Ye'll mind I've talked a bit already of them that work and those they
work for. I've been a laboring man myself; in those days I was close
enough to the pit to mind only too well what it was like to be
dependent on another man for all I earned and ate and drank. And I'd
been oot on strike, too. There was some bit trouble over wages. In the
beginning it was no great matter; five minutes of good give and tak'
in talk wad ha' settled it, had masters and men got together as folk
should do. But the masters wouldna listen, and the men were sair
angry, and so there was the strike.

It was easy enough for me. I'd money in the savings bank. My brothers
were a' at work in other pits where there was no strike called. I was
able to see it through, and I cheered with a good will when the
District Agents of the miners made speeches and urged us to stay oot
till the masters gave in. But I could see, even then, that, there were
men who did no feel sae easy in their minds over the strike. Jamie
Lowden was one o' them. Jamie and I were good friends, though not sae
close as some.

I