e siller to buy for her in that hamper. Beef tea, and fruit,
and jellies--rare gude things! Jamie, his een full o' tears, had aye
his suspicions of the doctor. But when he asked him, the doctor was
said angry.

"Hamper? What hamper?" he asked gruffly. That was when he was making a
professional call. "Ye're a sentimental fule, Jamie Lowden, and I'd
hae no hand in helpin' ye! But if so be there was some beef extract in
the hamper, 'tis so I'd hae ye mak' it--as I'm tellin' ye, mind, not
as it says on the jar!"

He said nowt of what had come aboot the day before. But, just as he
was aboot to go, he turned to Jamie.

"Oh, aye, Jamie, man, yell no haw been to the toon the day?" he asked.
"I heard, as I was comin' up, that the strike was over and all the men
were to go back to work the morn. Ye'll no be sorry to be earnin'
money again, I'm thinkin'."

Jamie dropped to his knees again, beside his wife and bairn, when the
doctor had left them alone. And this time it was to thank God, not to
pray for favors, that he knelt.

Do ye ken why I hae set doon this tale for you to read? Is it no
plain? The way we do--all of us! We think we may live our ain lives,
and that what we do affects no one but ourselves? Was ever a falswer
lee than that? Here was this strike, that was so quickly called
because a few men quarreled among themselves. And yet it was only by a
miracle that it did not bring death to Annie and her bairn and ruin to
Jamie Lowden's whole life--a decent laddie that asked nowt but to work
for his wife and his wean and be a good and useful citizen.

Canna men think twice before they bring such grief and trouble into
the world? Canna they learn to get together and talk things over
before the trouble, instead of afterward? Must we act amang ourselves
as the Hun acted in the wide world? I'm thinking we need not, and
shall not, much longer.

CHAPTER VII

The folks we met were awfu' good to Mackenzie Murdoch and me while we
were on tour in yon old days. I've always liked to sit me doon, after
a show, and talk to some of those in the audience, and then it was
even easier than it is the noo. I mind the things we did! There was
the time when we must be fishermen!

It was at Castle Douglas, in the Galloway district, that the landlord
of our hotel asked us if we were fishermen. He said we should be,
since, if we were, there was a loch nearby where the sport was grand.

"Eh, Mac?" I asked him. "Are ye as good a fish