“Jim Mulloy’s brother told me he seen the paymasther ’ere yestherday in Letther Kyle,” said a withered little man, who was mixing mortar with extraordinary deliberation. “He was comin’ out o’ the bank, an’ he havin’ the brown bag with him.” “Maybe it’s little chance oursel’ has of it, whether or no,” responded his satellite, a red-faced youth, whose occupation of eternally shaking sand through a sieve might well foster pessimism. “Don’t ye know well thim isn’t workin’ for nothin’”--indicating the bricklayers on the gable, and the portly and prosperous stonemasons, chipping away in professional silence. “Short thim fellows’d be leggin’ it away to Dublin if they wasn’t gettin’ their pay; an’ d----d well Glasgow knows it’s the likes of us must be waitin’ on him!” The man who was supplying the sand tilted his barrow up on end and leaned on the handles, secure in the knowledge that the ganger was engaged at the other side of the station in raining down expletives upon the heads of the sinkers of the well. “It’s what they’re sayin’ beyond,” he remarked, jerking his head in the direction of the men working at the platform, “that what has him desthroyed is the bog of Tully. Eight months now they’re sthrivin’ to fill that spot.” “An’ if they were eight months more,” said the man who was mixing the mortar, “they’ll not fill it.” He took off the tin lid of his pipe and stirred up its embers with a horny fore-finger. “Betther for him not to be intherfarin’ with the likes o’ that place.” The pessimist with the sieve laughed with the superiority of youth, and of a reader of the _Daily Independent_. “There’s wather runnin’ undher the ground there in every place,” went on the same speaker, “me father knew that well--sure the bog itsel’ is only sittin’ on it. There’s holes up in Cahirdreen that’s sixty feet deep, and wather runnin’ in the bottom o’ them. ’Tis out undher Tully that wather goes. Sure there was a man had a grand heifer--God knows ye’d sooner be lookin’ at her than atin’ yer dinner--she fell down in one o’ them holes, and went away undher the ground with the wather. As sure as I’m alive, they heard her screeching up through the bog!” The reader of the _Independent_ was half-staggered, and the ganger, who had advanced upon the party with the quietness of a dangerous bull, here broke upon the conversation in gross and fervid oratory. “They’re gettin’ it in style down there,” said one of the platform party. “By damn, if he comes to talkin’ to me, I’ll throw down the shovel and ax him where is me three weeks’ wages!” “Maybe ye will, Mortheen,” rejoined his next-door neighbour, “an’ maybe this time next week ye’ll be afther him axing him to take ye back.” “Is it _him_?” replied the undaunted Mortheen; “little I’d think of breaking his snout for him, or Glasgow’s ayther!” As he spoke, the whistle of an engine, thinned by distance, made itself heard, and away on the horizon the steam cloud blossomed like a silver flower against the sunny sky.