In passing Ronald said good-bye again to the handsome setters and the spaniel and the old retriever; and then he went on and out of the station, but it was not to return to his books. The seeing of so many people going away to the north, the talking with the dogs, the trial of the big salmon-rod, had set his brain a little wild. What if he were to go back and beg of the withered old man to take him with him—ay, even as the humblest of gillies, to watch, gaff in hand, by the side of the broad silver-rippling stream, or to work in a boat on a blue-ruffled loch! To jump into a third-class carriage and know that the firm inevitable grip of the engine was dragging him away into the clearer light, the wider skies, the glad free air! No wonder they said that fisher folk were merry folk; the very jolting of the engine would in such a case have a kind of music in it; how easily could one make a song that would match with the swing of the train! It was in his head now, as he rapidly and blindly walked away along the Cowcaddens, and along the New City Road, and along the Western Road—random rhymes, random verses, that the jolly company could sing together as the engine thundered along— _Out of the station we rattle away,_ _Wi’ a clangour of axle and wheel;_ _There’s a merrier sound that we knew in the north—_ _The merry, merry shriek of the reel!_ _O you that shouther the heavy iron gun,_ _And have steep, steep braes to speel—_ _We envy you not; enough is for us_ _The merry, merry shriek of the reel!_ _When the twenty-four pounder leaps in the air,_ _And the line flies out with a squeal—_ _O that is the blessedest sound upon earth,_ _The merry, merry shriek of the reel!_ _So here’s to good fellows!—for them that are not,_ _Let them gang and sup kail wi’ the deil!_ _We’ve other work here—so look out, my lads,_ _For the first, sharp shriek of the reel!_ He did not care to put the rough-jolting verses down on paper, for the farther and the more rapidly he walked away out of the town the more was his brain busy with pictures and visions of all that they would be doing at this very moment at Inver-Mudal. ’God bless me,’ he said to himself, ’I could almost swear I hear the dogs whimpering in the kennels.’