The funeral took place the day after, and there was only one mourner to follow the coffin to the grave—Billy himself, in his ragged jacket and bare feet. The only mournings he had to put on were the tears which flowed down his cheeks all the way. Even when the coffin was hid in the ground, and the earth tumbled in, and the turf spread over the top, he could not put off his mournings, or leave the place chatting gaily about business matters, as is the custom at funerals. He still seemed to see Kate’s open eyes shining up at him through earth and turf, and he had a firm idea that she could still hear him speak, though herself unable to reply. He loitered long after the gravediggers were gone, and stuck a little twig in the ground so that he should know the spot again, and then, when no one was near to see, he lay down on the grass and whispered to Kate through the openings in the turf. He had but two thoughts to reiterate—the regret that Rodie had not kicked him out of the world instead of Kate, and the wish that he might live to “bite Rodie” for what he had done to Kate. Whenever Billy was in trouble after that he came to the graveyard to whisper his griefs to Kate through the turf. He told her of all his adventures and the tortures of the comical fiend and the kicks of Rodie; and though he got no reply, he felt quite certain that he had Kate’s sympathy in every word he uttered. Billy’s was not a large mind, or a very acute one, but when an idea did get fairly in, it stuck there firmly. When Kate had been some months in the grave, Rodie and Joss prepared a lot of florins—their most successful effort in base coining—and informed Billy that they were going through to Edinburgh to attend the Musselburgh Races, on business, and that he was to accompany them, and have the honour of carrying their luggage—an old leather valise containing the base florins. Joss and Rodie, for prudential reasons, went by different trains, and Billy, though he accompanied Rodie, had strict orders to sit at the other end of the carriage, and take no more notice of Rodie than of any stranger.
It chanced, however, that by the time the train drew up at the Waverley Station platform, that particular carriage was empty of all but Billy and Rodie, and the base coiner had no sooner glanced along the platform than he uttered an oath and drew in his head with surprising quickness.
“Do you see that ugly brute standing over there, near the cabman with the white hat?” he observed to Billy.
“That ugly brute” was I, the writer of these experiences, on the look out for any of my “bairns” who might be drawn thither by the race meeting, and Billy quickly signified that he did see me.
“Well, keep clear of him, or we’re done for. That’s McGovan, and he’s a perfect bloodhound,” and Rodie cursed the bloodhound with great heartiness. “If he gets his teeth on us, we’ll feel the bite, I tell ye.”
“Ah!” it was all Billy said, and it was uttered with a start, for Rodie’s words had suggested a strange idea to him.
“Yes, if he gets us at it it’ll mean twenty years to us if it means a day,” continued Rodie, still wasting a deal of breath on me. “Now you get out first, and go straight to the place I told ye of, while I jink him and get round by the other.”
Billy obeyed, and was soon lost in the crowd, while Rodie—who mistakenly believed that his face was as familiar to me as mine was to him—cut round by another outlet, and escaped to the appointed rendezvous.
Meantime Billy had only gone far enough with the crowd to get behind one of the waiting cabs, whence he watched Rodie leave the station. Then he crept out of his hiding-place, and walked back to the spot where I stood, and touched me lightly on the arm.
“I’m Rodie’s boy,” he said, while I stared at him in astonishment. “I’ve come from Glasgow with him, and we’re to go ‘smashing’ at the races to-morrow. Would it be twenty years to him if you caught us at it?”