But nobody but Mr. Yarrow, senior, followed him. I was with the majority on this point, as I have said before, and so stayed where I was. Besides, Mad Jeremy was so curious to see and hear. He laughed and sang, his shrill voice carrying well through the crackle of the rafters and the snap and spit of the smaller shredded fragments of flame. As soon as he caught sight of Mr. Ablethorpe and my father he began to hurl down the copings of the battlements upon their heads. So that in the end they had to desist from the attempt, though they had nobly done their best. And all the while he sang. It was the trampling measure of "There's nae luck" that the madman had chosen for his swan song. Never had been seen or heard such a thing. As he finished each verse he would rise and dance, balancing himself on the utmost point of the cupola, his melodeon swaying in his hand and his voice declaring ironically that-- "There's nae luck aboot the hoose, There's nae luck ava, There's little pleasure i' the hoose, When oor guidman's awa'!" Then he would laugh, and call out to the people beneath that the luck had come back. "The guidman o' the Grange is safe!" he would cry. "He is at his loom, but never more will he weave, I ken. Jeremy has seen to that. And what for that, quo' ye? Juist to learn him that when Jeremy asks for his ain, he is no to be denied as if he were a beggar wantin' alms!" Then he took a new tack, and launched into "The Toom Pooch"--which is to say, the "empty pocket"--a very popular ditty in the Scots language, and especially about Breckonside: "An empty purse is slichtit sair, Gang ye to market, kirk, or fair, Ye'll no be muckle thocht o' there, Gin ye gang wi' a toom pooch!" He finished with a shout of derision. "Ye puir feckless lot!" he shouted down to the crowd beneath. "I ken you and Breckonside. Here's charity for ye! Catch a haud!" And he showered the contents of a pocket-book down upon their heads. "Here are notes o' ten pound, and notes o' twenty, and notes o' a hundred! What man o' ye ever saw the like? Only Jeremy, Jeremy and his maister. They wan them a', playin' at a wee bit game wi' rich lonely folk. Jeremy was fine company to them. And whiles it ended in a bit jab wi' the knife in the ribs, and whiles in a tug o' the hemp aboot a lad's neck, if he wasna unco clever. But it was never Jeremy's neck, nor was the knife ever in Hobby's back till Jeremy--but that's tellin'! Oh, Hobby's a'richt. I saw him sitting screedin' awa' at his windin' sheet, and thinkin' the time no lang." He rose and danced, singing as he danced-- "There's nae luck aboot the hoose, There's nae luck ava----"