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 voice. "Ye'd get into a row for that. Ye'd better tak' it back, or there may be fun."
"Kill the damn'd thing," said Tam Donaldson callously, "an' it'll maybe a lesson to the auld sot. Him an' his hens' meat! I'd let him ken that it's no' hens' meat the collier eats—at least no' so lang as he can get pork."