John Alexander Goble had played many parts in his time, like most vagrants. He had been born a gamekeeper's son in Renfrewshire, and had lost his father early, that devoted upholder of proprietary rights having been shot through the head in a poaching affray. After this catastrophe the widow, who had openly pined for her native Glasgow during the whole of her husband's lifetime, had returned to that municipal paradise; and the ripening youth of John Alexander Goble had been passed in a delectable locality, known as "The Coocaddens," to which he could never refer without a gleam of tender reminiscence in his eyes.
Why John Alexander had ever deserted this Eden Hughie could never rightly ascertain. His references to that particular epoch in his career were invariably obscure; but since he darkly observed on one occasion that "weemen can mak' a gowk o' the best man leevin'," Hughie gathered that Mr. Goble's present course of life owed its origin to a tender but unsatisfactory episode in the dim and distant days of his hot youth.
"After that," John would continue elliptically, "I went tae Motherwell. D'ye ken Motherwell? A grand place! Miles and miles of blast-furnaces, and the sky lit up day and nicht, like the Last Judgment. I did a wheen odd jobs there. Whiles I would hurl a trolley wi' coke, whiles I would sort coal wi' some lassies, and at last I got a job as a moulder."
"What's that?" inquired the ever-receptive Hughie.
"What else but a body that makes moulds?"
"Yes, but how does he do it?"
"Weel, there's a sort o' sandy place at the fit o' each smelting-furnace—like a bit sea-shore, ye'll understand—and every four-and-twenty hours they cast the furnace. They let oot the melted ore, that is, and it rins doon intil moulds that hae been made in the sand. (Ye dae it by just buryin' baulks o' timber in rows and then pickin' them oot again, and the stuff rins intil the hollows that have been left. When it's cauld they ca' it pig-iron.) Well, I stuck tae that job for a matter o' sax months. But it was drouthy work, besides bein' haird on the feet,—you go scratch-scratching in the sand wi' your bare soles makin' the moulds,—and presently I gave it up and took tae daen' odd jobs among the trucks and engines in the yairds. I liked that fine, for machinery is the yin thing that really excites me. First I was a coupler, then I was a fireman, then I got tae drivin' a wee shunting engine, dunting trucks about the yaird. And at last I was set in charge o' a winding-engine at a pit-heid. That was a grand job; but it didna last long. I was drinkin' haird by this time—I'd stairtit after I left the Coocaddens—and yin' day I was that fou' I let the cage gang doon wi' a run tae the bottom o' the shaft."
"Was there anybody in the cage?" inquired Hughie, as Goble paused, as if to contemplate some mental picture.
"There was not, thank God! But there was a bit laddie doon ablow in the pit, that was sittin' on his hutch—his truck, that is—at the fit o' the shaft, waitin' on the cage. He wasna expectin' the thing tae fall doon like a daud o' putty, so he was no' sittin' quite clear; and the cage cam' doon and took off baith his feet. Man, I hae never forgotten his mither's face when they brought him up. I lost ma job, and I hae never touched a drop since. For seven-and-twenty years have I been on the teetotal—seven-and-twenty years! It'll shorten ma life, I doot," he added gloomily; "but I'll bide by it!"
"What became of the boy?" inquired Hughie.