Chapter X: Part 10

But Cleg saw in the corner the old flour sack in which the surfaceman had imported his last winter's flour. The bag had long been empty.

"Is this ony use?" said Cleg. "I could put this on!"

"Use," cried the poet, "what use can an auld flour sack be when a man's claes are wat?"

"Aweel," said Cleg, "ye'll see, gin ye wait. Railway folk dinna ken a' thing, though they think they do!"

So with that he cut a couple of holes at the corners, and made a still larger hole in the middle of the sack bottom. Then he disrobed himself with the utmost gravity, drew the empty sack over his head, and put his arms through the holes in the corners.

"It only needs a sma' alteration at the oxters to fit like your very skin," he said. Then he took up Auld Chairlie's table-knife and made a couple of slits beneath the arms, "and there ye hae a comfortable suit o' claes."

The poet burst into a great laugh and smote his thigh. "I never saw the match o' the loon!" he cried, joyously.

"They are nocht gaudy," Cleg went on, as he seated himself at the corner of the table, having first spread his wet garments carefully before the stove, "but it is a fine an' airy suit for summer wear. The surtowt comes below the knee, so it's in the fashion. Lang-skirted coats are a' the go on Princes Street the noo. A' the lawyers wear them."

At this point Cleg rose and gave an imitation of the walk and conversation of a gentleman of the long robe, as seen from the standpoint of the Sooth Back.

Once he had looked into Parliament House itself, and managed to walk twice round before "getting chucked," as he remarked. So he knew all about it.

He took an oily piece of cotton waste with which Poet Jock cleaned his lamps. He secured it about his head, so that it hung down his back for a wig. He put a penny in his eye, instead of the orthodox legal eyeglass. Then he set his hands in the small of his back, and began to parade up and down the centre of the old railway carriage in a very dignified manner, with the old sack waving behind him after the fashion of a gown.

He pretended to look down with a lofty contempt upon Poet Jock and Auld Chairlie, as they watched him open-mouthed.

"Who the devil are those fellows?" he said; "lot of asses about. Everybody is an ass. Who's sitting to-day? Ha! old Bully-boy—bally ass he is! Who's speaking? Young Covercase—another bleating ass! Say, old chappie, come and let's have a drink, and get out of the way of the asses."

It is to be feared that Cleg would next have gone on to imitate the clergy of his native city. But he was hampered by the fact that his opportunities for observation had been limited to the street. He had never been within a church door in his life. And that not so much because he would have stood a good chance of being turned out as a mischief-maker, but from natural aversion to an hour's confinement.

Then Cleg wrapped his old sack about him very tightly, and assumed a fixed smile of great suavity. He approached the poet, who was stretching his long limbs in the upper bunk which occupied one side of the hut.

"Ah," said Cleg, slowly wagging his head from side to side, "and how do we find ourselves to-day? Better? Let me feel your pulse—Ah, just as I expected. Tongue—furry? Have you taken the medicine? What you need is strengthening food, and the treatment as before. See that you get it—blue mange, grouse pie, and the best champagne! And continue the treatment! _Good_-morning!"

Cleg wrapped his sack closer about him as he finished, to represent the slim surtout of the healing faculty, and, setting an old tea "cannie" of tin upon his head to represent a tall hat, he bowed himself out with his best Canongate imitation of a suitable and effective bedside manner.

There was no end to Cleg's entertainment when he felt that he had an appreciative audience. And as the comedy consisted not so much in what he said as in the perfect solemnity of his countenance, the charm of his bare arms meandering through the holes in the corners of the sack, and the bare legs stalking compass-like through its open mouth, Poet Jock laughed till he had to lie down on the floor in the corner. Even Auld Chairlie was compelled perforce to smile, though he often declared his belief that it was all vanity, and that Cleg was certainly a child of the devil.

Chairlie was specially confirmed in this opinion by Cleg's next characterisation.

"Did ye ever see the Track Woman?" said Cleg, dropping for a moment into his own manner. "I canna' bide her ava. There's them that we like to see comin' into our hooses—folk like Miss Celie, that is veesitor in oor district, or Big Smith, the Pleasance Missionary, even though he whiles gies us a lick wi' his knobby stick for cloddin' cats. But the Track Woman I canna bide. This is her!"

And he gathered up his sack very high in front of him, to express the damage which it would receive by contact with the dirt of Poet Jock's abode. Then he threw back his head and stuck out his chin, to convey an impression of extreme condescension.

"Good day, poor people," he said, "I have called to leave you a little tract. I don't know how you can live in such a place. Why don't you move away? And the stair is so dirty and sticky! It is really not fit for a lady to come up. What's this? What's this"—(smelling)—"chops! Chops are far too expensive and wasteful for people in your position. A little liver, now, or beef-bone——. What did you say? 'Get out of this!' Surely I did not hear you right! Do you know that I came here to do you good, and to leave you a little tract? Now, I pray you, do not let your angry passions rise. I will, however, do my duty, and leave a little tract. Read it carefully; I hope it will do you good. It is fitted to teach you how to be grateful for the interest that is taken in you by your betters!"

As soon as Cleg had finished, he lifted the skirts of his old sack still higher, tilted his nose yet more in the air, and sailed out, sniffing meanwhile from right to left and back again with extreme disfavour.

But as soon as he had reached the door his manner suffered a sea-change. He bounded in with a somersault, leaped to his feet, and pretended to look out of the door after the departing "Track Woman."

"O ye besom!" he cried, "comin' here nosing and advising—as stuffed wi' stinkin' pride as a butcher's shop wi' bluebottles in the last week o' July! Dook her in the dub! Fling dead cats at her, and clod her wi' cabbages and glaur! Pour dish-washin's on her. Ah, the pridefu' besom!"

And with this dramatic conclusion Cleg sank apparently exhausted into a chair with the skirts of the sack sticking out in an elegant frill in front of him, and fanned himself gracefully with an iron shovel taken from the stove top, exactly as he had seen the young lady performers at the penny theatres do as they waited in the wings for their "turn."

Great was the applause from Poet Jock, who lay in a state of collapse on the floor.

"Boys O!" he exclaimed feebly, "but ye are a lad!"

Auld Chairlie only shook his head, and repeated, "I misdoot that ye are a verra child o' the deevil!"

ADVENTURE XLVII.

THE SLEEP OF JAMES CANNON, SIGNALMAN.

On the morrow Cleg was up betimes. But not so early as Poet Jock and Auld Chairlie. His own clothes were pretty dry, but Cleg had been so pleased with the freedom and airiness of his "sack suit," as he called it, that, as it was a warm morning and a lonely place, he decided to wear it all day.

Cleg went out, and, starting from the side of the line, he ran light-foot to the top of a little hill, from whence he could look over a vast moorish wilderness—league upon league of purple heather, through which the railway had been cut and levelled with infinite but unremunerative art.

From horizon to horizon not a living thing could Cleg see except the moorbirds and the sheep. But over the woods to the east he could catch one glimpse of Loch Spellanderie, basking blue in the sunlight. He could not, however, see the farmhouse. But he rubbed his hands with satisfaction as he thought of swimming away from them all into the darkness the night before.

"I showed her wha was the man, I'm thinkin'!" he said. And there upon the heather-blooms Cleg Kelly flapped his thin arms against his sack and crowed like a chanticleer. Then in a few moments there came back from over the moor and loch a phantom cock-crow reduced to the airiest diminuendo. It was the tyrant of the Loch Spellanderie dung-hill which spoke back to him.

"I'm richt glad I'm no there," said Cleg, heartily.

Nevertheless he went down the hill again a little sadly, as though he were not quite sure, when he came to think about it, whether he was glad or not.

But on the whole it was perhaps as well that he was where he was, at least in his present costume.

When Cleg got back to the hut, he looked about for something to do till his friends returned. His active frame did not stand idleness well. He grew distracted with the silence and the wide spaces of air and sunshine about him. He longed to hear the thunderous rattle of the coal-carts coming out of the station of St. Leonards. He missed the long wolf's howl of the seasoned South Side coalman. In the morning, indeed, the whaups had done something to cheer him, wailing and crying to the peewits. But as the forenoon advanced even they went off to the shore-side pools, or dropped into the tufts of heather and were mute.

Cleg grew more and more tired of the silence. It deafened him, so that several times he had to go outside and yell at the top of his voice simply, as it were, to relieve nature.

It happened that on the second occasion, as soon as he had finished yelling—that is, exhausted an entire vocabulary of hideous sounds—a train to Port Andrew broke the monotony. It did not actually stop, because it was a passenger train and had already "watered up" at Netherby. But Cleg was as pleased as if it had brought him a box of apples. He climbed up and sat cross-legged on the top of the hut in his sack, for all the world like an Indian idol; and the engine-driver was so astonished that he forgot to put the brake on till he was thundering headlong half way down the incline on the western side of the Summit cabin.

But the stoker, a young man incapable of astonishment (as many of the very young are), picked up a lump of coal from the tender and threw it at Cleg with excellent aim. However, as the train was going slowly uphill at the time, Cleg caught it and set the piece of coal between his teeth. His aspect on this occasion was such as would fully have warranted Auld Chairlie in setting him down not as a child of the devil, but as the father of all the children of the devil.

The train passed, and Cleg was again in want of something to do. He could not sit there in the sun, and be slowly roasted with a piece of coal between his teeth, all for the benefit of the whaups. He thought with regret how he should like to sit, just as he was, on some towering pinnacle of the Scott monument where the police could not get him, and make faces at all the envious keelies in Edinburgh. To do this through all eternity would have afforded him much more pleasure than any realisation of more contentional presentations of the joys of heaven.

He descended and looked about him.

At the end of the little cabin he found a pitcher of tar, but no brush. He searched further, however, till he found it thrown carelessly away among the heather. Whereupon Cleg forthwith appointed himself house-painter-in-ordinary to the Port Andrew Railway Company, and attacked the Summit cabin. He laid the tar on thick and good, so that when the sun beat upon his handiwork it had the effect of raising a smell which made Cleg's heart beat with the joy of reminiscence. It reminded him of a thousand things—of the brickyard on blistering afternoons, and also (when the perfume came most undiluted to his nose) of that district of Fountainbridge which has the privilege of standing upon the banks of the Forth and Clyde canal, and of containing several highly respectable and well-connected glue factories. Cleg had once gone there to "lag for a boy" who had offended his dignity by "trapping" him at school in the spelling of the word "coffin."

Cleg had spelled it, simply and severely, "kofn."

The boy from Fountainbridge, however, had spelled it correctly. Not only so, but he had been elated about the matter—very foolishly and rashly so, indeed.

"For," said Cleg, "it's easy for him. His faither is a joiner, and makes coffins to his trade. Besides, he had a half-brither that died last week. He micht easy be able to spell 'coffin'!"

To prevent the pride which so surely comes before a fall, Cleg waited for the "coffin" boy and administered the fall in person—indeed, several of them, and mostly in puddles.

He was therefore agreeably reminded of his visit to Fountainbridge whenever he stirred up the pitch from the bottom and the smell rose to his nostrils particularly solid and emulous. He shut his eyes and coughed. He dreamed that he was back and happily employed in "downing" the orthographist of Fountainbridge upon the flowery banks of the Union Canal.

It was after ten o'clock in the evening before Poet Jock came in sight. He had been on a heavy job with a break-down gang on the Muckle Fleet incline. All day long he had been rhyming verses to the rasp of pick and the scrape of shovel. Sometimes so busy was he that he had barely time to take his mate's warning and leap to the side before the engine came leaping round the curve scarcely thirty lengths of rail away. But Poet Jock was entirely happy. Probably he might have travelled far and never known greater exhilaration than now, when he heard the engine surge along the irons, while he tingled with the thought that it was his strong arms which kept the track by which man was joined to man and city linked to city.

A fine, free, broad-browed, open-eyed man was Poet Jock. And his hand was as heavy as his heart was tender. As, indeed, many a rascal had found to his cost. Those who know railwaymen best, are surest that there does not exist in the world so fine a set of workers as the men whose care is the rails and the road, the engines and the guard vans, the platforms, goods sheds, and offices of our common railways.

A railway never sleeps. A thousand watchful eyes are at this moment glancing through the bull's-eyes of the driver's cab. A thousand strong hands are on the driving lever. Aloft, in wind-beaten, rain-battered signal boxes, stand the solitary men who, with every faculty on the alert, keep ten thousand from instant destruction. How tense their muscles, how clear their brains must be as they pull the signal and open the points! That brown hand gripping lever number seventeen, instead of number eighteen within six inches of it, is all that preserves three hundred people from instant and terrible death. That pound or two of pressure on the signal chain which sent abroad the red flash of danger, stopped the express in which sat our wives and children, and kept it from dashing at full speed into that over-shunted truck which a minute ago toppled over and lay squarely across the racer's path.

And the surfacemen, of whom are Auld Chairlie and Poet Jock? Have you thought of how, night and day, they patrol every rod of iron path—how with clink of hammer and swing of arm they test every length of rail—how they dash the rain out of their eyes that they may discern whether the sidelong pressure of the swift express, or the lumbering thunder of the overladen goods, have not bent outwards the steel rail, forced it from its "chair," or caused the end of the length to spring upward like a fixed bayonet after the weight has passed over it?

A few men standing by the line side as the train speeds by. What of them? Heroes? They look by no means like it. Lazy fellows, rather, leaning on their picks and shovels when they should be working. Or a solitary man far up among the hills, idly clinking the metals with his hammer as he saunters along through the stillness.

These are the surfacemen—and that is all most know of them. But wait. When the night is blackest, the storm grimmest, there is a bridge out yonder which has been weakened—a culvert strained where a stream from the hillside has undermined the track. The trains are passing every quarter of an hour in each direction. Nevertheless, a length of rail must be lifted and laid during that time. A watch must be kept. The destructiveness of nature must be fought in the face of wetness and weariness. And, in spite of all, the train may come too quick round the curve. Then there follows the usual paragraph in the corner of the local paper if the accident has happened in the country, a bare announcement of the coroner's inquest if it be in the town.

A porter is crushed between the platform and the moving carriages; a goods guard killed at the night shunt in the yard. Careless fellow! Serves him right for his recklessness. Did he not know the risk when he engaged? Of course he did—none better. But then he got twenty-two shillings a week to feed wife and bairns with for taking that risk. And if he did not take it, are there not plenty who would be glad of the chance of his empty berth?

And what then? Why, just this: there is one added to the thousands killed upon the railways of our lands—one stroke, a little figure 1 made at the foot of the unfinished column, a grave, a family in black, a widow with six children moved out of the company's house on which grow the roses which he planted about the door that first year, when all the world was young and a pound a week spelled Paradise. The six children have gone into a single room and she takes in washing, and is hoping by and by to get the cleaning of a board school, if she be very fortunate.

To blame? Who said that any one was to blame? Of course not. Are we not all shareholders in the railways, and do we not grumble vastly when our half-yearly dividend is low? So lengthen the hours of these over-paid, lazy fellows in corduroys—lengthen that column over which the Board of Trade's clerk lingers a moment ere he adds a unit. O well, what matter? 'Tis only statistics filed for reference in a Government office.

But while Cleg waited for Poet Jock something else was happening at Netherby.

It was a bitter night there, with a westerly wind sweeping up torrents of slanting rain through the pitchy dark. Netherby Junction was asleep, but it was the sleep which draws near the resurrection. The station-master was enjoying his short after-supper nap in the armchair by the fire. For the down boat-train from Port Andrew and the Duncan Urquhart's goods train would pass each other at Netherby Junction at 10.5 P. M.

The signal box up yonder in the breast of the storm was almost carried away. So tall it rose that the whole fabric bent and shivered in each fierce gust which came hurtling in from the Atlantic. James Cannon, the signalman of Netherby West, was not asleep. His mate was ill, but not ill enough to be quite off duty. James Cannon had applied for a substitute, but headquarters were overtaxed for spare men and had not responded. Netherby was considered a light station to work, and the duty would no doubt be done somehow.

James Cannon had been on duty since six in the morning—sixteen hours already at the levers. Then he had also been up nearly all the night before with a weakly and fretful child. But the company's regulations could not be expected to provide for that.

James Cannon, however, was not asleep. He had his eyes fixed on the distant signal on the high bank, as he caught the gleam of it wavering through the storm. That was the way the boat express would have to come in a few minutes more. The electric needle quivered and clicked behind him. The signalman thought of the light upon the Little Ross, which he used to see from the green Borgue shore when he was a boy. He had always looked out at it every night before he went to sleep. The distant signal on the high bank seemed now to flash and turn like a lighthouse. Was that the Little Ross he was looking at? Surely he could hear the chafing of the Solway tides. Was that not his mother bidding him lie down and sleep? James Cannon saw the distant signal no more. The lights of other days beckoned him, and he attended to their signal.

Below in the left luggage office stood Muckle Alick. He was taking his mate's place at that night's express. He had asked away in order to visit his sweetheart, Alick knew. Though certainly his mate had not mentioned it in his application to the station-master. Many a time had he done the same for the sake of Mirren Terregles.

Muckle Alick was arranging the parcels—which were to go, and which to be delivered on the morrow. He laid them neatly on long high benches at opposite sides of the room, with the larger ones below on the floor. There was no work of Muckle Alick's doing which was not perfectly done, and as featly and daintily as a girl twitches her crochet needles among the cotton.

So engrossed was Alick in this work that it was five minutes past ten before he looked up at the clock—a cheap one which he had bought from a Jew pedlar, and fixed upon the wall himself—"to see the time to go home by," his mates said. The clock told him it was time to go home already.

He started up and rushed out. The London express was due from the Irish Boat! It passed Netherby without stopping, running on to the other line for thirty miles, which from the Junction was a single one. Duncan Urquhart's heavily-laden goods ought already to have passed. It was James Cannon's duty to keep back the express till he could turn the goods on to a siding, so that the rails might be kept clear for the passage of the express five minutes later.

Muckle Alick started up in instant affright. He had not heard Duncan Urquhart's heavy train go rumbling by.

ADVENTURE XLVIII.

MUCKLE ALICK SEES THE DISTANT SIGNAL STAND AT CLEAR.

Alick rushed out without waiting to put on his cap. He glanced up at the signal box. It seemed dim and dusky. "James Cannon has let his lamp go low!" muttered Alick to himself.

At that moment he heard first one warning whistle, and then two. He was not quite sure about the last, for the wind was shrieking its loudest, and it was not easy to be certain about anything.

He looked up and down the line, shading his eyes from the rain with his hand.

Great God of heaven! The goods train was not yet off the single line. Both signals were standing at clear, and the points were not shifted. The Boat express was thundering down the hill from Port Andrew at the rate of sixty miles an hour, and would be through the Junction in a minute. And there upon the single metals right ahead would be Duncan Urquhart with his heavy goods train.

Muckle Alick snatched up a huge bar of metal, which was used in forcing round the cranks when they reversed the engines on the turn-table by the engine house, the same which little Hugh had almost spent his life in trying to observe more nearly.

With this ponderous tool in his hand Muckle Alick rushed along to the facing points, whence Duncan Urquhart's goods train might possibly be guided upon the proper metals ere the express rushed past. As he ran he saw Duncan's headlights coming, and the thunder of the express was also in his ears. He shouted with all his power, but the wind whirled away Muckle Alick's cries as though they had been baby Gavin's.

On came the goods train, laden with heavy merchandise and coals, beating up slowly against the westerly wind. At that moment the rending screech of the express pierced to his heart. Another moment and it must dash into the train driven by Duncan Urquhart.

Muckle Alick found the points open. Throwing his great crowbar forward he inserted it beneath the length of rail, and with the strength of Samson, he moved the whole section over to the other side. He could not lock the points, of course, as the signal-man could have done. But Alick held them tight with his lever, while the heavy goods train bumped along, passing over the improperly joined points with a terrible jolting which almost dislocated his arms. But still Muckle Alick held on. For he knew that the lives of a hundred men and women depended upon the sureness of his hand.

The goods train was a long one and it jolted slowly past. It was not till he saw the hind light of the guard's van passing him with a swing, that Muckle Alick's heart gave a joyful leap. But just as the last van went past, with a roar and a rush of fire-lighted smoke the express leaped by. A moment before the released points had flown back to their place. The way was clear. But something, it is thought the iron framework of the catcher on the postal car, caught Muckle Alick and jerked him thirty yards from where he had been standing. Without so much as a quiver, the express flew out again into the dark, her whistle screaming a death-knell and the back tempest hurtling behind her.

No one had seen Muckle Alick. None knew of his deed of heroism, save only Duncan Urquhart, who, unconscious of danger, had cried cheerfully as he passed, "What are ye hanging on to a post there for, Alick?"

It was fully a quarter of an hour later that Urquhart went to look for Muckle Alick. He thought he would walk the first part of his way home with him. It was always wholesome and always cheery to walk with Muckle Alick, even when he was going home from a long spell of overtime.

At that moment the station master woke up with a start. _It was twenty minutes past ten. The Express——!_

He rushed out. The signal box was quite dark. Duncan Urquhart was coming up the platform alone with his coat over his arm. He called out to the station master:

"Is your signal-man deid, or only sleepin'?"

A few moments after James Cannon awoke from a pleasant dream of the Ross Lighthouse.

"Get up, man!" cried the station master, standing over him with a lantern, "God kens how many lives ye hae lost through your ill deeds!"

Dazed and bewildered, James Cannon arose to the damning fact that the boat train was past, and he knew well that he had never altered the signals or set the points.

Five minutes later Duncan Urquhart found Muckle Alick. He was lying half on and half over the embankment of the cattle shipping bank, where the express had tossed him like a feather.

"Oh, what's wrang, what's wrang, Alick?" cried Duncan Urquhart in terror.

"It's a' richt, Duncan," said Muckle Alick, slowly but very distinctly. "I gripped the points and held them till ye won by!"

"Can ye bide a minute, Alick?" said Duncan tenderly.

"Ow, aye," said the wounded man, "dinna fash yoursel'. There's nae hurry—Mirren wasna' expectin' me!"

Faster far than his own train had passed the points, Duncan Urquhart sped back to the station.

"Alick's lying killed doon on the cattle bank!" he cried. "Help us wi' that board!"

And, rushing into the empty waiting-room, he laid hold of a newly-erected partition which had recently been set up to keep the draughts from the passengers.

It resisted his strength, but with the station master to help him, and a "One, Two, Three," it yielded, and the men tore down the platform with it.

With the help of poor, dazed James Cannon and another, they laid the giant tenderly upon it. But they had to wait for other two, hastily summoned from the nearest railway houses, before they dared try to lift Muckle Alick.

"Does it hurt, Alick?" asked Duncan of Inverness, gently, like a Highland man.

"It's no that sair," said Alick, as quietly, "but juist try no to be ower lang wi' me!"

They carried him to the left-luggage office, into which, a few weeks before, he had taken the children whom, at the peril of his life, he had saved from death. They were going to lay down the partition with its load upon the table on which he had been arranging the parcels half an hour before.

"Pit me on the bench," said Alick, calmly, "dinna meddle the parcels. They are a' ready to gang oot wi' the first delivery the morn."

So, even as he bade them, on the bench they laid Alick down. What like he was I know, but I am not going to tell. His wife, Mirren, might chance to read it.

There were tears running down Duncan Urquhart's face. The station master had already run for a doctor.

"Dinna greet, Duncan," said Alick. "The boat train won by a' richt, and I manned to haud the points for ye."

But Duncan Urquhart could answer him no word. In the corner sat James Cannon with his head on his hands, rocking himself to and fro in speechless agony of soul.

"Oh, I wuss it had been me," he wailed. "I wuss it had been me!"

"Hoot na, James," said Alick. "It's better as it is—ye hae a young family."

Then, as if he had been thinking it over—

"Duncan," he said, "Duncan, promise me this—ye'll no let Mirren see me. Mind ye, Mirren is no to see me. I dinna want her to think o' me like this.

"She was aye sae taen up aboot me, ye see," he added apologetically, after a little pause.

The doctor came. He bent over Alick. He moved him tenderly, this way and that. Then he ordered all out of the left-luggage office, except Duncan Urquhart and the station master's wife, a quiet motherly woman.

Then, while the doctor did his duty, Alick sank into a kind of stupor. Presently he woke from it with a little start.

"Doctor, is this you?" he said; "this is terrible kind o' ye. But it's a cauld nicht for you to be oot o' your bed so late—and you wi' a hoast!"

"Wheesht, Alick!" said the doctor. And said no more for a little. For, like every one else, he loved the soft-hearted giant.

Then Alick beckoned the station master to him from the door of the left-luggage office, where he stood nervously clasping and unclasping his hands. The station master came and bent his head.

"The boat train," whispered Muckle Alick, "ye'll hae to enter her in the shedule five meenites late. But ye can say that she passed Netherby wi' the signals standing at clear."

He was silent a moment. Then he looked up again.

"Mind ye, there's to be nocht said aboot it in the papers. You'll see to that, will ye no? It's my wish. An' if the company likes to do aught, it'll aye be a help to Mirren."

There was a sound of sobbing at the door, and the station master shoved the youngest porter out on the platform with his foot.

"Has—ony—body gaen to tell Mirren?" asked Alick in a little.

The doctor nodded. He had, in fact, sent his own coachman to Sandyknowes with a gig.

"Puir Mirren," said Alick again, "I'm some dootsome that she'll tak' this hard. She was na looking for it, like."

He looked about apologetically again.

"She was that sair set on me, ye see—maybe wi' us haein' nae bairns, ye ken."

He was silent a little while, and then he said, more brightly, "There's three comed noo, though. Maybe they'll be a blessin' to her. The Lord sent them to her, I'm thinkin'. He wad ken o' this aforehand, nae doot!"

Suddenly he held up his hand, and there was a light shining like a lamp in his eyes.

"Hearken! that's the whistle!" he cried. "Are the signals clear?"

There was no train in the station nor near it.

Muckle Alick went on. He lifted his head and looked through the open door as one looks ahead under his hand when the sun is strong.

"I can see the distant signal. It is standing at clear!" he said, and sank back.

And thus the soul of Muckle Alick passed out of the station—with the distant signal standing at clear.

They brought the little wife in to him a quarter of an hour after. Already her face seemed to have shrunk to half its size and was paler than Alick's own. The doctor had him wrapped delicately and reverently in the station master's wife's fairest linen. The face was untouched and beautiful, and as composed as it was on Sacrament Sabbaths when he carried in the elements at the head of the session, as it is the custom for the elders to do in the Cameronian Kirk.

His wife went up to him quietly and laid her hand on his broad white brow. "My man—my ain man!" she said. And she bent down and touched it, not with her lips but with her cheek.

She looked up at the station master's wife.

"He aye liked me to do that!" she said, smiling a little, as it were, bashfully.

And in all the room, where now stood ministers and doctors, men and women that loved him well, hers were the only dry eyes that dark midnight.

"I wad like to get him hame the nicht, if it's nae great trouble till ye," she said; "I think I wad be mair composed gin I had him hame to me the nicht!"

So they took her dead home to her to quiet Sandyknowes. They carried him through between the beds of dusky flowers and laid him in his own chamber. Then they left her alone. For so she desired it. The wandering children, Hugh and Gavin, were asleep in the next room. So Mirren watched her man all that night, and never took her eyes off the broad noble brow, save once when little Gavin woke and cried. Then she rose calmly and prepared him a bottle of milk, mixing it with especial care. As she did so she raised her eyes and looked out into the dark. And there on the brae face was the light of the distant signal shining like a star in the midst of the brightening sky of morn.

ADVENTURE XLIX.

CLEG COLLECTS TICKETS.

Cleg Kelly had long finished the tarring of the hut at the Summit. Poet Jock had not come home, though it was after ten at night. Auld Chairlie wandered to and fro in front of the house and out on the muir at the back, waiting upon him and complaining that the supper would be spoiled. Cleg busied himself with "reddin' up" till it grew too dark to see. That is, he carried all the old mouldy boots to a moss-hole and sank them out of sight. Then he arranged all the useful articles each upon its own shelf round the walls, and the bunks were never so well made before nor the stove so bright.

But not that night, nor yet for three nights did Poet Jock return. It was seven o'clock on the evening of the third day when he arrived. He came walking up the Big Cutting with his head sunk on his breast, and he did not even look up when Cleg called to him. He came in slowly, and instead either of explaining, inquiring heartily for supper, or sniffing as usual at the fragrant steam of the frying pan, he threw himself down on the wooden shelf which constituted his bed.

"What has happened to ye, Poet Jock? Where hae ye been? Ye'll be reported, as sure as daith," said Auld Chairlie, after silent contemplation of this marvel for full five minutes. "Hae ye been fu', or has she gi'en you up?"

The last was a question prompted by the fleeting nature of Poet Jock's loves, and the ever recurring crisis through which his muse had to pass before he could settle upon a worthy successor to the late faithless fair.

But Poet Jock lay still and made no answer.

"Are ye no for ony supper?" said Cleg, practically, who was now as familiar and free of the little cabin of the Summit as if he had been the poet's twin brother—a little more so, in fact, for Jock was not on speaking terms with his brother. To tell the truth, his brother and he had had a fight on Monday fortnight at the level crossing—the subject of contention being the minister's sermon the Sabbath before. The theology of Poet Jock prevailed. His logic was most convincing. He "downed" his brother three times. But though his brother owned that he had had enough of theology, he had not since visited at the hut on the Summit. But for all that they continued to sit side by side on Sabbaths in the kirk, and to look on the family psalm-book, taking it as usual in turns to find the places and shutting the book unanimously when a paraphrase was given out.

It was now the fourth day of Cleg's sojourn at the hut. Every day he had gone up to the top of the craigs that looked towards Loch Spellanderie. And each day his resolve never to go near the place again because of the faithlessness of woman, sensibly weakened.

But he had something else to think about now. For since he came into the domains of the kindly surfacemen, Cleg had seen nothing so mysterious as the obstinate refusal of the Poet to take any supper.

Auld Chairlie tried again.

"Look you here," he said, "either you tell's what is the maitter wi' ye, or I'll send doon wi' the late passenger for the doctor to come up the first thing the morn's mornin'!"

Poor Jock groaned, but said nothing for some minutes.

"Chaps," he said at last, "I may as weel tell ye. Muckle Alick at Netherby was killed hauding the points to let by the boat train. And his wee bit wife's a widow the nicht! I hae been at Netherby lettin' a man off to fill his place."

Auld Chairlie dropped the tin platter which was in his hand.

"O Lord," he said, "could ye no hae ta'en ony o' the lave o' us? It wadna hae made so verra muckle differ—But Alick——"

He stood still contemplating the gap that there was in the world.

"That's what they hae been crying at me off the engine the last twa days, but I'm gettin' that deaf I couldna hear!"

But Cleg was prompt in action as ever.

"Guidnicht, lads," he said, "I'm gaun doon to Netherby to see gin I can be ony use."

Poet Jock started up from his bunk, instinctively guarding his head from the roof even in the midst of his distress of mind.

"What hae ye to do wi' it?" he cried, his voice sounding angry, though he was not angry.

"The twa bairns I telled ye aboot are in Muckle Alick's hoose. He saved their lives, and I'm gaun doon the noo to see what I can do for them."

"Ye canna gang that gate, man. Ye hae nae claes fittin' for a funeral!" said Chairlie. "Ye hae nocht but that auld sack!"

"I'm no carin'," stoutly asserted Cleg, "I'm gaun doon to see if I can help. It's no the funeral I'm carin' for, it's what's to come after."

Poet Jock got up and began cautiously to forage on all the shelves.

"A' my things are awesome big across," he said, "but maybe there will be eneuch amang us to fit ye oot."

Cleg's wardrobe had dwindled to a shirt and a pair of trousers. He had lost his cap in Loch Spellanderie.

But Auld Chairlie found him a pair of socks and a pair of boots—which, though they were not "marrows" or neighbours, were yet wearable enough. Cleg treated himself to a sleeved waistcoat, which, by merely shifting the buttons, became a highly useful garment. It had been exposed for some time to the weather, and when Cleg saw it, it was mounted upon two sticks, out in the little patch of cornland which Poet Jock had sown at the back of the cabin, upon a quarter acre of ground which the company had included within its wire fence with some idea of constructing a siding some day, when the traffic increased.

"Where gat ye that braw waistcoat?" queried Poet Jock when he came in, looking admiringly at the remarkable change in Cleg's appearance.

"O I juist changed claes wi' the craw-bogle!" replied Cleg with a quiet complacency, which became him like his new garment.

"Dod," said Auld Chairlie, "it's a maist remarkable improvement, I declare."

Poet Jock gave Cleg a grey woollen shirt with a collar attached which had washed too small for him, but which still reached nearly to Cleg's feet. He added a red-and-green tie of striking beauty (guaranteed to kill up to sixty yards), and an old railway cap, which had been a castaway of some former occupant of the cabin.

"There, noo," he said, when Cleg was finally arrayed. "Ye are nane so ill put on! Ye micht e'en gang to the funeral. I hae seen mair unfaceable folk mony a time. I'll get ye on the late express, that is, if it is no Sulky Jamie that's in chairge o' her."

Sulky Jamie was the name of a guard who withheld his hand from any work of mercy, if it involved the least irregularity. He was an incomparably faithful servant to the railway company of Port Andrew. But he could not be said to be popular among his fellow servants along the line.

So Poet Jock, seeing that Cleg was bent upon his quest, withstood him no more, but walked all the long way down the incline with him to Dunnure station, and there waited to pick up a "chance of a ride" on the night passenger. For no one in the cabin had a farthing of money. Poet Jock, indeed, never had any four days after pay day, and Auld Chairlie always sent his down to be banked, saving only what had to be paid monthly to Sanders Bee, the shopkeeper at the Dunnure huts, for their provisions.

"I canna trust mysel' when there's siller in the hoose!" said Auld Chairlie, who knew himself to be a brand plucked from the burning, and still glowing a little below the surface.

But it was with great good hope that Poet Jock walked with Cleg to Dunnure, in order to arrange a free passage for him down to Netherby.

The last "stopping" passenger before the boat train was late, and they had a good while to wait in the ill-lighted station.

But it came at last, and lo! Sulky Jamie was in charge.

Poet Jock went boldly up to his van and tackled him. He stated the case with eloquence and lucidity. He argued with him, as Sulky Jamie moved to and fro, swinging his lantern and never looking at him.

But the guard was incorruptible, as indeed he ought to have been. No tramp should come on his train so long as he was the guard of it.

Whereupon Poet Jock, stung to the quick, told Sulky Jamie his opinion of him. He said that when it came his time to leave the line, there would be a hurrah which would run along the metals from Port Andrew to Netherby. He further informed him that there was one testimonial which would be subscribed with enthusiasm among his mates—a coffin for Sulky Jamie. But even that only on condition that he would promptly engage to occupy it. Poet Jock ended by offering to prepare him for burial on the spot, and was in the act of declaring that he would put all these things into rhyme when the guard blew his whistle.

Cleg was nowhere to be seen, but Sulky Jamie had had his eyes wide open while he listened to the poet. He blew his whistle again, waved the lamp, and stopped the train as it was moving out of the station. He plunged into the forward van, which was sacred to the "through" luggage. In a moment Cleg came out with a fling which sent him head first upon the platform. A white-haired military-looking man looking out of the next carriage laughed loudly, and clapped his hands with glee.

This act of Sulky Jamie's aroused Poet Jock to fury.

"Wait," he cried, "wait till the fast day an' I'll settle wi' ye, ye muckle swine, pitchin' oot the bit boy like that."

But Sulky Jamie was unmoved.

"I'll be pleased to see ye on the fast day or ony ither day. But I'll hae nae tramps on my train!" said he, as he swung himself on board.

But, had he known it, he was carrying one at that moment. For it so happened that a Pullman carriage had been invalided from the morning boat train owing to a heated axle and an injury to the grease box. Now the resources of the Port Andrew fitting shop, though adequate for all ordinary purposes, were not sufficient to deal with the constitution of such a delicate and high-bred work of art as a bogie Pullman.

So Cleg waited till he saw the guard at Dunnure station raise his hand to blow his whistle. Then he darted sideways, in and out among the carriages, and before the train was properly in motion he was lying at full length on the framework of the bogie part of the Pullman.

With a growl and a roar the train started. Cleg's heart beat quickly. He was jolted this way and that. The dust and small stones swept up by the draught under the train nearly blinded him. But Cleg hung on desperately. He had determined at all hazards to travel upon Sulky Jamie's train. So the boy clutched the bars tighter and twined his feet more firmly round the bogie, determined to win his passage to Netherby in spite of all the ill-natured guards in the world.

Indeed, the jarring laugh of the man with the white moustache when he was thrown out at Dunnure station, rankled much more in his small heathen heart than the hard heart of Sulky Jamie.

"What was his business wi' it?" Cleg demanded of himself half a dozen times, during that interminable period before they came to the next station.

The train stopped at last, and Cleg dashed the wet locks off his brow and cuddled his beam closer. He could stand it out now, he thought. He was congratulating himself on being in Netherby in a few minutes, when he heard the military voice above him.

"Guard," it said, "the boy you threw out of the train at Dunnure got in below the empty Pullman. I think he is in there now."

Then Sulky Jamie swore loudly and emphatically. Cleg could hear him swinging himself down from the platform upon the line.

The reflection of the lantern showed him the bars and wheels of the forward bogie.

But Cleg did not wait for the arrival of Sulky Jamie. He dropped down and sped out at the dark side of the station, with bitter anger in his heart against the interfering military man. As he looked down from the wire paling he saw the deserted platform of Newton Edward, and a vengeful thought struck him. He ran quickly round the stern light of the train and climbed upon the platform. A lantern was sitting on a barrow. The station master was talking to the engine driver far away at the end, for the late train was always long. The guard was routing out tramps beneath the Pullman.

With sudden determination Cleg pulled the stem of his cap over his eyes, and buttoned the sleeved waistcoat of railway velveteen closer about him. Then he took the lantern in hand. He was going to pay his debts to that evil-conditioned military man with the white moustache.

He could see him now, sitting at his ease, and trying to read his paper by the light of the miserable oil lamp, fed with scanty drains of dirty, half-melted oil, which to this day is supplied as an illuminant by the Port Andrew Railway Company.

Cleg opened the door smartly.

"Ticket, sir!" he said briskly.

The military man put his hand in his side pocket, and handed out his ticket without looking up, with the ease and freedom of a well-seasoned traveller. He never took his eyes off his paper.

"Netherby—right, sir!" said Cleg Kelly, ticket collector.

Then Cleg went to the nearest compartment and promptly jumped in. It was half full of sleepy commercial travellers, who took little notice of the curiously attired boy.

Cleg could hear the tramp of his enemy as he came up from routing below the Pullman. It sounded sulkier than ever upon the platform.

"Did not you nab him?" cried the voice of the military man from his carriage window.

"None of your gammon!" replied the other voice. And the whistle sounded promptly.

The temper of Sulky James was distinctly ruffled.

The train ran on down to Netherby. There the tickets were taken at the little platform to which Muckle Alick had so often run, late and early, with lamp in hand. It was a sleepy emergency man from the head offices who took the tickets in Cleg's compartment. He lumped them all together, and paid no attention whatever to the yellow first-class through ticket among its green brethren, which Cleg handed to him with such a natural air of loafish awkwardness.

Clang went the door. But the window was down for air, and Cleg could hear the angry accents of Sulky Jamie further down the train.

"Nonsense! Your ticket took at the last station. More o' your gammon, like enough. Find that ticket or pay for the journey from Port Andrew—seven-and-nine! And look something slippy, too! I can't keep my train waiting all day on the like of you, and the express due in twenty minutes."

Cleg could not catch the answer of the military man. But the guard's reply was clear.

"I don't care if ye were the Prince of Wales. Pay up, or I'll give ye in charge!"

The train started down to the main platform. And Cleg had the door open before the commercials in the corner were more than half awake. He slipped out, and ran down the platform instead of up. At the corner stood James Cannon's signal box, by the side of a white bridge. Cleg swarmed up the pole at the corner, set a foot lightly on the white painted palings, and dropped like a cat upon the road.

He was a modest boy, and did not desire to give any trouble.

He thought of the military man with joy in his heart.

"Now I guess we're about quits!" he said.

ADVENTURE L.

GENERAL THEOPHILUS RUFF.

Cleg slept that night in a hay-shed half a mile out of the town. He did not mean to go to Sandyknowes till the morrow. And even then it was not quite clear to him what he could do to help the widow. But as usual he would think it out during the night.

The morning came, fiery with lamb's wool in fluffy wisps all about the sky. Cleg shook himself, yawned, and dusted off the hay from his garments.