Pay-day was on Saturday. On Monday morning Sandy intended starting out on his journey home. All Saturday night he coughed out the long hours of the darkness, but in the morning he looked fit and well.
"You'll come through it, you fool!" said Moleskin. "I'll be dead myself afore you."
On the next night he went to bed early, and as we sat around the gaming table we did not hear the racking cough which had torn at the man's chest for months.
"He's getting better," we all said.
"Feeling all right, Sandy?" I asked, as I turned into bed.
"Mon! I'm feelin' fine now," he answered. "I'm goin' to sleep well to-night, and I'll be fit for the journey in the morn."
That night Sandy left us for good. When the morning came we found the poor wasted fellow lying dead in his bunk, his eyes wide open, his hands closed tightly, and the long finger-nails cutting into the flesh of the palm. The money which we gave to the man was bound up in a little leathern purse tied round his neck with a piece of string.
The man was very light and it was an easy job to carry him in the little black box and place him in his home below the red earth of Kinlochleven. The question as to what should be done with the money arose later. I suggested that it should be used in buying a little cross for Sandy's grave.
"If the dead man wants a cross he can have one," said Moleskin Joe. And because of what he said and because it was more to our liking, we put the money up as a stake on the gaming table. Clancy won the pile, because his luck was good on the night of the game.
That is our reason for calling him Clancy of the Cross ever since.