Afterwards I kept mucking about on farms and other places, working a day here and a week there, earning a guinea clear at one job and spending it while looking for the next. Sometimes I tramped for days at a time, sleeping in haysheds, barns and ditches, and "bumming my grub," as we tramps say, from houses by the roadside. Often in the darkness of the night I lit my little fire of dried sticks under shelter of a rock or tree, and boiled my billy of tea in the red flames. Then I would fall asleep while looking at the pictures in the embers, and my dreams would take me back again to Glenmornan and the road that led from Greenanore to my home on the steep hillside of Donegal. Often and often I went home to my own people in my nightly dreams. When morning came I would set out again on my journey, leaving nothing to tell of my passing but the ashes of my midnight fire. I had nothing to cheer me, no hopes, no joys, no amusements. It was hard to obtain constant employment; a farmer kept me a fortnight, a drainer a week, a roadmender a day, and afterwards it was the road, the eternal, soul-killing road again. When I had money I spent it easily; spending was my nearest approach to pleasure. When I had aught in my purse I lived in suspense, thinking of the time when all would be spent, but when the coin was gone I had the contentment of a man who knows that he can fall no lower. Always, however, I sought for work; I wanted something to do. My desire to labour became a craze, an obsession, and nothing else mattered if I got plenty of work to do.
"You are an idle, useless-lookin' lump o' a man," the women in roadside cottages said to me. "Why don't you work?" Looking for work meant laziness and idleness to them. For me they felt all the contempt which people with fixed abodes feel for vagabonds. They did not hate me; of that I was not worthy. They were very human, which is the worst that can be said of them, and they despised me. Work was scarce; I looked light and young, and a boy is not much good to a farmer. Yet for my age I was very strong, and many a man much older than myself I could work blind, if only I got the chance. But no one seemed to want me. "Run away, little impudence, and hide behind your big sister's petticoats!" were the words that I was greeted with when I asked for a job.
For a whole month I earned my living by gathering discarded metal from the corporation middens near Glasgow and selling the scrap to proprietors of the city rag-stores. Starvation has hold of the forelock of a man who works at that job. Sometimes I made tenpence a day. By night I slept on the midden, or, to be more exact, in the midden. I dug a little hole in the warm refuse sent out from the corporation stables, and curled myself up there and went to sleep, somewhat after the manner of Job of old. Once a tipster employed me to sell his tips outside the enclosure of Ayr racecourse. I gave up that job quickly, for I could only earn sixpence a day. During the end of the summer I made a few shillings by carrying luggage for passengers aboard the steamer at G—— Pier, but in the end the porters on the quay chased me away. I was depriving decent men of their livelihood, they said.
About this time I met Tom MacGuire, a countryman of my own, an anarchist, a man with great courage, strength, and love of justice. Tom said that all property was theft, all religion was fraud, and a life lacking adventure was a life for a pig. He had just come out of jail after serving six months' hard because he shot the crow[4] in a Greenock public-house. I met him on the roadside, where he was sitting reading an English translation of some of Schopenhauer's works. We sat down together and talked of one thing and another, and soon were the best of friends. I told Tom the story of the man who wanted me to say "Yes, sir," when speaking to him.
"I have a job on that man's place to-night," said Tom. "Will you come and give me a hand?"
"What is the job?" I asked.
Tom lowered the left eyelid slightly as I looked at him. That was his only answer. I guessed instinctively that Tom's job was a good one, and so I promised to accompany him.
We worked together on that estate not only that night, but for some weeks afterwards. Operations started at midnight and finished at four o'clock in the morning. We stopped in Paisley, and we went into the town in the morning, each on a different route, and sold the proceeds of our night's labour. At the end of a fortnight, or, to be exact, fifteen days' work on the estate, Tom was accosted by two policemen as he was going into Paisley. His belly looked bigger than any alderman's, and no wonder! When searched he had three pheasants under his waistcoat. Because of that he got six months, and the magistrate spoke hard things against Tom's character. For all that, my mate was a sound, good fellow. In a compact made beforehand it was understood that if one was gripped by the law he would not give his comrade away, and Tom was good to his word when put to the test. From that time forward I forsook poaching. I loved it for its risks alone, but I was not an adept at the art, and I could never make a living at the game. I felt sorry for poor Tom and I have never seen him since.
Once, eighteen months after I had left Braxey Farm, I wrote home to my own people. I was longing to hear from somebody who cared for me. In reply an angry letter came from my mother. "Why was I not sending home some money?" she asked. Another child had come into the family and there were many mouths to fill. I would never have a day's luck in all my life if I forgot my father and mother. I was working with a drainer at the time and I had thirty shillings in my possession. This I sent home, but not with a willing heart, for I did not know when I would be idle again. Three days later my mother wrote asking me to send some more money, for they were badly needing it. I did not answer the letter, for I got sacked that evening, and I went out on the road again with five shillings in my pocket and new thoughts in my head, thoughts that had never come there before.