Sometimes he could restrain himself no longer. Then he would spring to his feet, and stand, a little swaying figure, and denounce them passionately in almost pathetic eloquence. These orations always concluded in set fashion.
“Ye're all agin us!” the little man would cry in quivering voice.
“We are that,” Tammas would answer complacently.
“Fair means or foul, ye're content sae lang as Wullie and me are beat. I wonder ye dinna poison him—a little arsenic, and the way's clear for your Bob.”
“'The way is clear enough wi'oot that,” from Tammas caustically.
Then a lengthy silence, only broken by that exceeding bitter cry: “Eh, Wullie, Wullie, they're all agin us!”
And always the rivals—red and gray—went about seeking their opportunity. But the Master, with his commanding presence and stern eyes, was ever ready for them. Toward the end, M'Adam, silent and sneering, would secretly urge on Red Wull to the attack; until, one day in Grammoch-town, James Moore turned on him, his blue eyes glittering. “D'yo' think, yo' little fule,” he cried in that hard voice of his, “that onst they got set we should iver git either of them off alive?” It seemed to strike the little man as a novel idea; for, from that moment, he was ever the first in his feverish endeavors to oppose his small form, buffer-like, between the would-be combatants.
Curse as M'Adam might, threaten as he might, when the time came Owd Bob won.