fing and jesting with Tam Donaldson, the newly-married one.

"Ye'll be gaun to do something decent the day, Tam, when we take ye
hame?" said Jamie Allan. "I hear ye ha'e two bottles ready for the
occasion."

"Ay, but I'm damned shair there's no a lick gaun unless ye take me
hame," answered Donaldson. "If I ha'e to be creeled, I'll be creeled
right, an' every one o' ye'll gang hame wi' me afore ye get a taste."

"Oh, but we'll see to that, chaps," said old Lauder. "Here's a hutch,
get him in an' aff wi' him."

The victim pretended to resist, and stoutly maintained that they should
not creel him. He was seized by half a dozen pairs of arms, and with
much expenditure of energy and breath, deposited in the hutch. Some
considerate person had put some straw and old bags in the "carriage" to
make it more comfortable, and a few of the wags had chalked
inscriptions, the reverse of complimentary, all over it.

"There, noo', boys," said old Lauder, who had been busy hanging lighted
pit lamps round Tam's cap, "gi'e him a guid run to the bottom, and see
that he gets a guid bump in the lye."

The men ran the hutch to the "bottom" straight against the full tubs
ready to be sent to the surface.

"Come on, Sourocks, let us up," called Allan to the old man who acted as
"bottomer."

"Hell to the up will ye get!" replied the old fellow, "I'm gaun to put
on these hutches first."

"No, ye'll no', an' if ye do, you'll gang into the 'sump,' an' we'll
chap the bell oorsels"--the sump being the lodgment into which the water
gathered before pumping operations could start.

"Sourocks" thought discretion the better part of valor in this case, and
swearing quietly to himself, he signaled to the engineman at the top to
draw them up.

"He's no gaun to walk hame," said Allan, as they all gathered again on
the pit head. "We'll take the hutch hame wi' Tam in it. Put a rope on
it, and we'll draw the damned thing through the moor, an' maybe Tam'll
mind the day he was creeled as lang as he lives."

This proposal was jumped at, especially by the younger men, to whom an
idle day did not mean so much worry on pay-day as to their married
elders.

Andrew Marshall had waited at the end of the village, knowing that the
creeling was to take place, and that he would get the men on their way
from the pit. Presently old Lauder, who had taken a short cut across the
moor, came up, and Andrew accosted him.

"Will ye wait here, Jamie, so that I can try a