oes would disappear as
by magic.

Robert worked in this fight like a man. He helped to cut down trees and
saw them into logs, to cook the food at the soup kitchen. Everything and
anything he tried, running errands, and even going with the van to
solicit material for the following day's meals.

All were cheerful, and no one seemed to take the fight bitterly. Sports
were organized. Quoiting tournaments were got up, football matches
arranged, games at rounders and hand-ball--every conceivable game was
indulged in, with sometimes a few coppers as prizes but more often a few
ounces of tobacco or tea or a packet of sugar. Dances in the evenings
were started at the corner of the row to the strains of a melodeon, and
were carried on to the early hours of the morning. It was from these
gatherings that the young lads generally raided the fields and hen runs
of the hostile farmers, returning with eggs, butter, potatoes, and even
cheese--everything on which they could lay their hands.

At one of these gatherings Robert related his experience with "auld
Hairyfithill." Robert had been round with the van that day, and calling
at Wilson's, or Hairyfithill Farm, to ask if they had any cabbage to
give, he heard the old man calling to the servant lass: "Mag! Mag! Where
are ye? Rin an' bring in the hens' meat; there's thae colliers coming."

Nothing daunted, Robert had gone into the kitchen to ask if they had
anything to give the strikers.

"Get awa' back to yer work, ye lazy loons, ye!" was the reply from old
Mr. Wilson. "Gie ye something for your soup kitchen! Na, na! Ye can gang
an' work, an' pay for your meat. Gang awa' oot owre, and leave the town,
an' dinna come back again." And so they had drawn blank at
Hairyfithill.

"It wad serve him richt, if every tattie in his fields was ta'en awa',"
said Matthew Maitland, after the story had been told and laughed over.

"It wad that," agreed a score of voices; but nothing was done nor
anything further said, so the dancing proceeded.

About two o'clock in the morning while the dancing was still going on
and a fire had been kindled at the corner in which some of the strikers
were roasting potatoes and onions a great commotion was suddenly caused,
when Dickie Tamson and two other boys drove in among them old
Hairyfithill's sow which he was fattening for the market. Some proposed
that the pig be killed at once.

"Oh no, dinna kill it," said Matthew Maitland, with real alarm in his
voic