“Sir John hates to get away,” commented one. “He just can’t make up his mind to go. His heart is broke. But what’s the use? We can’t stay here and be buried alive. The trainmen say it’s a hard job now to get through, and all the way to Glenarken is full of big drifts. I say we must shake this, and it’s nobody’s right to run our heads into danger for the whim of a little love for the old town. Sure, we are all hard enough up, and it’s we that has not got a roof to our heads, nor a bite to our stomachs that has the worst to fear. It’s a cruel sufferin’ to think of it at all; but so it is, and it’s no use fashing.” “Weel, weel,” said another, “it’s an awfu’ plight, and naebody can say what’s next. We maun better be dead than to pit our heads in a pother of snaw and wait for next simmer to melt us out.” “Simmer, man, is it!” exclaimed a rough cart-man with a huge ham sandwich in each hand, and his jaws working on the remnants of their predecessor. “Simmer! It’s all up with the simmers frae now to the end o’ the warld. It’s bonny Scotland good-bye, and mind you, man, you’ll never see gorze again on the Queen’s Drive, I’m thinking, and you’ll never tak’ your bonnet aff on Arthur’s seat, nor pluck the daisy on Holy Rood mead. You’ll never canter to the Pentlands, nor hear the sang of praise go up frae the Roslin chapel, and you’ll nae hear the bell toll frae Grey Friars kirk, nor mark time wi’ the Hielanders in St. Giles’, and you’ll never bide the chance when you can see old Hay’s shop in High street, nor watch the middlings stare their een out at John Knox’s hame. It’s ower by naw,” and the good fellow turned away in a choking effort to repress his own tears, and swallow the generous morsels he had bitten from his overloaded hands. Leacraft pressed by these disturbed groups, and found, after he had inducted Jim to the hospitalities of the various tables, his own strength and composure deserting him. He sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands. It seemed as if he had lived through some dreadful nightmare, and the weird and sickening sense of yet more miseries, rising thick and fast, covering with gloom a nation’s happiness, stunned him.