ent kens that, for they've sent me on commissions up and down
the land to look at wuds and report on the nature of the timber.
Bribery, they think it is, but Andrew Amos is not to be bribit. He'll
have his say about any Goavernment on earth, and tell them to their
face what he thinks of them. Ay, and he'll fight the case of the
workingman against his oppressor, should it be the Goavernment or the
fatted calves they ca' Labour Members. Ye'll have heard tell o' the
shop stewards, Mr Brand?'

I admitted I had, for I had been well coached by Blenkiron in the
current history of industrial disputes.

'Well, I'm a shop steward. We represent the rank and file against
office-bearers that have lost the confidence o' the workingman. But I'm
no socialist, and I would have ye keep mind of that. I'm yin o' the old
Border radicals, and I'm not like to change. I'm for individual liberty
and equal rights and chances for all men. I'll no more bow down before
a Dagon of a Goavernment official than before the Baal of a feckless
Tweedside laird. I've to keep my views to mysel', for thae young lads
are all drucken-daft with their wee books about Cawpital and
Collectivism and a wheen long senseless words I wouldna fyle my tongue
with. Them and their socialism! There's more gumption in a page of John
Stuart Mill than in all that foreign trash. But, as I say, I've got to
keep a quiet sough, for the world is gettin' socialism now like the
measles. It all comes of a defective eddication.'

'And what does a Border radical say about the war?' I asked.

He took off his spectacles and cocked his shaggy brows at me. 'I'll
tell ye, Mr Brand. All that was bad in all that I've ever wrestled with
since I cam to years o' discretion--Tories and lairds and manufacturers
and publicans and the Auld Kirk--all that was bad, I say, for there
were orra bits of decency, ye'll find in the Germans full measure
pressed down and running over. When the war started, I considered the
subject calmly for three days, and then I said: "Andra Amos, ye've
found the enemy at last. The ones ye fought before were in a manner o'
speakin' just misguided friends. It's either you or the Kaiser this
time, my man!"'

His eyes had lost their gravity and had taken on a sombre ferocity.
'Ay, and I've not wavered. I got a word early in the business as to the
way I could serve my country best. It's not been an easy job, and
there's plenty of honest folk the day will give me a bad name.