At nine o’clock, with the crowd gey thick, two bobbies came barging through the press and stood up on either side of the gate, one a young constable childe from the country, that everybody liked, a mere loon, with no harm and a cheery smile that he couldn’t hide though he tried to look solemn as a sourock now, standing under the eye of his sergeant, the big ugly sod that had come to Footforthie, some called him Feet and some called him worse, Leslie his name, a heavy-looking brute with bulging eyes and a grind of a voice. Stand back there! he cried to the folk round about, and somebody sounded a raspberry, and everybody laughed.

Then folk looked round and saw that a car was coming, the manager’s car, slow, Sergeant Leslie opened the gates and gave it a wave in. But one of the pickets, the young toff, held up his hand, every body stared, Christ, didn’t he know the manager?

But the car slid to a stop and Ewan went forward and talked a minute to the manager, he said You is it, Tavendale? Yes, I’ve heard all the story. This’ll mean one thing certain enough, anyhow: YOU’LL not come back to Gowans and Gloag’s. Ewan said they would see about victimization when the strike was over: what about the manager himself coming out? And the manager reddened and said to his chauffeur Drive on! and Sim Leslie caught Ewan’s shoulder: Stand away there, or I’ll have you ta’en in!

A fair growl went up from the folk at that, no body could stop strikers picketing their works. Who did the fat sod think he was—Hitler? And two loons at the back threw a handful of clinkers over a baulk, they splattered all about the big sergeant’s helmet and his meikle red face, like a sow’s backside, went a mottled grey: Stand away there! though not a soul stood within ten feet. Some chaps cried Let’s pitch him into the Dock, Broo chaps that had nothing to lose anyway, and God knows the mischief that mightn’t have happened but that some of the older folk with sense cried out to the young ones not to haver, where the hell did they want to land —in the nick? And the young toff nodded to the bobby, Feet: We’ve a legal right to be here to argue with anybody who tries to gel into the Works…. Lads, here’s the first of the blacklegs coming.

Sure enough they were, a dozen of the muckers, the most of them foremen like old Johnny Edwards, dandering along in a bouroch, fair hang-dog, though laughing out loud and gey brassy, fair brave if it wasn’t for the wamble of their eyes and hands. They pushed through the stir, syne the picket tackled them, there rose a surge and a stour so that folk couldn’t see. Then the gates were opened and in they all went, the dirty blacklegging lousy scabs. Why the hell hadn’t the Reds flung them into the Dock? What the hell were Reds for but to take up a row?