"Ye'll be gaun to do something decent the day, Tam, when we take ye hame?" said Jamie Allan. "I hear ye ha'e two bottles ready for the occasion." "Ay, but I'm damned shair there's no a lick gaun unless ye take me hame," answered Donaldson. "If I ha'e to be creeled, I'll be creeled right, an' every one o' ye'll gang hame wi' me afore ye get a taste." "Oh, but we'll see to that, chaps," said old Lauder. "Here's a hutch, get him in an' aff wi' him." The victim pretended to resist, and stoutly maintained that they should not creel him. He was seized by half a dozen pairs of arms, and with much expenditure of energy and breath, deposited in the hutch. Some considerate person had put some straw and old bags in the "carriage" to make it more comfortable, and a few of the wags had chalked inscriptions, the reverse of complimentary, all over it. "There, noo', boys," said old Lauder, who had been busy hanging lighted pit lamps round Tam's cap, "gi'e him a guid run to the bottom, and see that he gets a guid bump in the lye." The men ran the hutch to the "bottom" straight against the full tubs ready to be sent to the surface. "Come on, Sourocks, let us up," called Allan to the old man who acted as "bottomer." "Hell to the up will ye get!" replied the old fellow, "I'm gaun to put on these hutches first." "No, ye'll no', an' if ye do, you'll gang into the 'sump,' an' we'll chap the bell oorsels"--the sump being the lodgment into which the water gathered before pumping operations could start. "Sourocks" thought discretion the better part of valor in this case, and swearing quietly to himself, he signaled to the engineman at the top to draw them up. "He's no gaun to walk hame," said Allan, as they all gathered again on the pit head. "We'll take the hutch hame wi' Tam in it. Put a rope on it, and we'll draw the damned thing through the moor, an' maybe Tam'll mind the day he was creeled as lang as he lives." This proposal was jumped at, especially by the younger men, to whom an idle day did not mean so much worry on pay-day as to their married elders. Andrew Marshall had waited at the end of the village, knowing that the creeling was to take place, and that he would get the men on their way from the pit. Presently old Lauder, who had taken a short cut across the moor, came up, and Andrew accosted him. "Will ye wait here, Jamie, so that I can try an' get a meetin' held wi' the rest o' the men when they come alang?" "I will that, Andra," replied Jamie, taking the lighted lamp from his head, and sitting down at the corner on his "hunkers." "They're a' comin' hame anyway, for we're creelin' Tam Donaldson." Soon the procession appeared, the hutch jolting along the rough street, the men shouting and singing as they came. The village had turned out to see the fun. Andrew and Jamie found themselves in the midst of a crowd of women and children, as the foremost of the men came to a halt at the corner.