"Ye canna gang that gate, man. Ye hae nae claes fittin' for a funeral!" said Chairlie. "Ye hae nocht but that auld sack!"
"I'm no carin'," stoutly asserted Cleg, "I'm gaun doon to see if I can help. It's no the funeral I'm carin' for, it's what's to come after."
Poet Jock got up and began cautiously to forage on all the shelves.
"A' my things are awesome big across," he said, "but maybe there will be eneuch amang us to fit ye oot."
Cleg's wardrobe had dwindled to a shirt and a pair of trousers. He had lost his cap in Loch Spellanderie.
But Auld Chairlie found him a pair of socks and a pair of boots—which, though they were not "marrows" or neighbours, were yet wearable enough. Cleg treated himself to a sleeved waistcoat, which, by merely shifting the buttons, became a highly useful garment. It had been exposed for some time to the weather, and when Cleg saw it, it was mounted upon two sticks, out in the little patch of cornland which Poet Jock had sown at the back of the cabin, upon a quarter acre of ground which the company had included within its wire fence with some idea of constructing a siding some day, when the traffic increased.
"Where gat ye that braw waistcoat?" queried Poet Jock when he came in, looking admiringly at the remarkable change in Cleg's appearance.
"O I juist changed claes wi' the craw-bogle!" replied Cleg with a quiet complacency, which became him like his new garment.
"Dod," said Auld Chairlie, "it's a maist remarkable improvement, I declare."
Poet Jock gave Cleg a grey woollen shirt with a collar attached which had washed too small for him, but which still reached nearly to Cleg's feet. He added a red-and-green tie of striking beauty (guaranteed to kill up to sixty yards), and an old railway cap, which had been a castaway of some former occupant of the cabin.