When Alick Watson had settled with Red Steve Selden he looked more like a mess in a butcher’s shop than a leader that had once been out in Canada and come back to Scotland all in a fash to see to the emancipation of the working class. They fought it out in a Cowgate wynd, four of the chaps had come to see fair play, in the end they held Alick and said to Selden he’d best give best else he’d get bloody murdered.

Selden coughed and spluttered and stood up again and said he’d never given any man best, it wasn’t his wyte he had bairned the lass and it wasn’t his wyte she’d never let on. Alick said What the hell! You knew all the time! but Selden swore by Christ he never had, if he’d known he’d have done the decent thing. And all the chaps that were standing around cried out to Alick he might believe that, it was true enough, those daft Bulgars the Reds were as scared and respectable about bairning a quean as though they went to the kirk three times on a Sunday and said a grace afore every meal, there was hardly a one but was doucely married, they never looked near a lass if they were, a damn lot of killjoys a lot of folk said…. So Alick had had all his fighting for nothing: and what the hell was his fury for?

Alick said they could mind their own mucking business; and put on his coat and went up to the Slainges Barracks direct and hung about outside the gates a while, half-feared and yet desperate, the sentry looked at him and said Hello, chum! And Alick said Hello. Is this where you ’list?

The sentry, he was swinging to and fro in his kilt and carrying a wee stick, not a rifle, took a keek at the guardroom and syne round about, and said For Christ’s sake, what’s ta’en you?—have you lain with your sister or robbed a bank? Alick said he’d done neither; and the sentry said not to be a soft sod, then, why join up in this lousy mob? The grub was stinking potatoes, worse beef, seven shillings a week pay and about half of that docked in sports and fines. It was just plain hell when it wasn’t hell decorated.

Alick said Ah well, he’d just take his chance; and went in through the gates to the office place, a wheen of poor muckers were wheeling round the square, shoggle and thud, they looked half-dead, punishment drill of some kind Alick knew. And he half made up his mind to turn back, then swore at himself for a yellow-livered sod, they couldn’t do worse to him, could they, than the bobbies had done to Ewan?—Oh Christ! And he burst open the door of the office place and went in and they asked who the hell he thought he was, the Colonel, maybe? and closed the door; and that was Alick Watson’s end for the Cowgate.