hat M'Kelvie thocht.

"But the big man in grey says, 'Noo, lads, I've done ye a good turn. You
come and hear me preach the morn in the kirk at the fit o' the hill.' 'A
minister!' cried M'Kelvie an' me. A wastril whalp could hae dung us owre
with its tail. We war that surprised like."

So that is the way "Drucken" Bourtree became a God-fearing quarryman.
And as for M'Kelvie, he got three months for assaulting and battering
the policeman that very night; but then, M'Kelvie was only an Irishman!

EPILOGUE

IN PRAISE OF GALLOWAY

_New lands, strange faces, all the summer days
My weary feet have trod, mine eyes have seen;
Among the snows all winter have I been,
Rare Alpine air, and white untrodden ways_.

_From the great Valais mountain peaks my gaze
Hath seen the cross on Monte Viso plain,
Seen blue Maggiore grey with driving rain,
And white cathedral spires like flames of praise_.

_Yet now the spring is here, who doth not sigh
For showery morns, and grey skies sudden bright,
And a dear land a-dream with shifting light!
Or in what clear-skied realm doth ever lie_,

_Such glory as of gorse on Scottish braes,
Or the white hawthorn of these English Mays?_

_Night in the Galloway Woods_.

Through the darkness comes the melancholy hoot of the barn owl, while
nearer some bird is singing very softly--either a blackcap or a
sedge-warbler. The curlew is saying good-night to the lapwing on the
hill. By the edge of the growing corn is heard, iterative and wearisome,
the "crake," "crake" of the corn-crake.

We wait a little in the shade of the wood, but there are no other sounds
or sights to speak to us till we hear the clang of some migratory wild
birds going down to the marshes by Loch Moan. Many birds have a night
cry quite distinct from their day note. The wood-pigeon has a peculiarly
contented chuckle upon his branch, as though he were saying, "This here
is jolly comfortable! This just suits _me_!" For the wood-pigeon is a
vulgar and slangy bird, and therefore no true Scot, for all that the
poets have said about him. He is however a great fighter, exceedingly
pugnacious with his kind. Listen and you will hear even at night

"The moan of doves in immemorial elms,"

or rather among the firs, for above all trees the wood-pigeon loves the
spruce. But you will find out, if you go nearer, that much of the mystic
moaning which sounds so poetic at a distance, c