been cast only in pleasant places who is talking
with ye. I've as little patience as any man with those fat, sleek folk
who fold their hands and roll their een and speak without knowledge of
grief and pain when those who have known both rebel. But I know that
God brings help and I know this much more--that he will not bring it
to the man who has not begun to try to help himself, and never fails
to bring it to the man who has.

Weel, as I've told ye, it was for twa shillin' a week that I first
worked. I was a strappin' lout of a boy then, fit to work harder than
I did, and earn more, and ever and again I'd tell them at some new
mill I was past fourteen, and they'd put me to work at full time. But
I could no hide myself awa' from the inspector when he came around,
and each time he'd send me back to school and to half time.

It was hard work, and hard living in yon days. But it was a grand time
I had. I mind the sea, and the friends I had. And it was there, in
Arboath, when I was no more than a laddie, I first sang before an
audience. A travelling concert company had come to Oddfellows' Hall,
and to help to draw the crowd there was a song competition for
amateurs, with a watch for a prize. I won the prize, and I was as
conceited as you please, with all the other mill boys envying me, and
seein', at last, some use in the way I was always singing. A bit later
there was another contest, and I won that, too, with a six-bladed
knife for a prize. But I did not keep the knife, for, for all my
mither could do to stop me, I'd begun even in those days to be a great
pipe smoker, and I sold the knife for threepence, which bought me an
ounce of thick black--a tobacco I still like, though I can afford a
better now, could I but find it.

It was but twa years we stayed at Arboath. From there we went to
Hamilton, on the west coast, since my uncle told of the plenty work
there was to be found there at the coal mines. I went on at the
pitheads, and, after a week or so, a miner gave me a chance to go
below with him. He was to pay me ten shillings for a week's work as
his helper, and it was proud I was the morn when I went doon into the
blackness for the first time.

But I was no so old, ye'll be mindin', and I won't say I was not
fearsome, too. It's a queer feelin' ye have when ye first go doon into
a pit. The sun's gone, and the light, and it seems like the air's gone
from your lungs with them. I carried a gauze lamp, but the bit flicker