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Joe was aware that he was a marked man, and consequently, if not actually a ribbonman, was very well inclined to that or anything else, which might be inimical to gaols, policemen, inspectors, gaugers, or any other recognised authority; in fact, he was a reckless man, originally rendered so by inability to pay high rent for miserably bad land, and afterwards becoming doubly so from having recourse to illegal means to ease him of his difficulties.
"Close behind the track-layers comes the gaugers, then the spikers and bolters. Three strokes to the spike, ten spikes to the rail, four hundred rails to the mile. Quick work you say, but the fellows on the Union Pacific are tremendously in earnest." Or as another writer has it, "We witnessed here the fabulous speed with which the line was built.
"It's a mere spoiling o' the Egyptians," replied Andrew; "puir auld Scotland suffers eneugh by thae blackguard loons o' excisemen and gaugers, that hae come down on her like locusts since the sad and sorrowfu' Union; it's the part of a kind son to bring her a soup o' something that will keep up her auld heart, and that will they nill they, the ill-fa'ard thieves!"
Great were the weariness and annoyance of the old Inspector and the Weighers and Gaugers, whose slumbers were disturbed by the unmercifully lengthened tramp of my passing and returning footsteps. Remembering their own former habits, they used to say that the Surveyor was walking the quarter-deck.
Those two hours, moreover, with her husband in the morning became very wearisome to her. At first she had declared that it would be her greatest ambition to help her husband in his work, and she had read all the letters from the MacNabs and MacFies, asking to be made gaugers and landing-waiters, with an assumed interest. But the work palled upon her very quickly.
"No, no, landlord," answered a strong deep voice behind him, "it's e'en because your English gaugers and supervisors,* that you have sent down benorth the Tweed, have taen up the trade of thievery over the heads of the native professors." * The introduction of gaugers, supervisors, and examiners, was one of the great complaints of the Scottish nation, though a natural consequence of the Union.
As we climbed from slippery rock to slippery rock, over long leathery coils of thick sea weed, like serpents, on, on through the Dorus to the open sea, noticing the dark passages, the gloomy caves, the recesses among the cliffs, the narrow passes, where one could turn to bay and keep off many, it was natural to think of rebels skulking here, with a price on their heads, after the '98, or of lawless people stilling illicit poteen to hide it from the gaugers.
Next day, I took four gaugers and carried them to the Khan, where I found him awaiting me. As soon as he saw me, he rose and opened his magazines, and we measured the contents and found them fifty ardebbs of sesame, making five thousand dirhems.
"Troth, he's nae wise man neither, to interfere no that I blame him for saving the gaugers' lives that was very right; but it wasna like a gentleman to be fighting about the poor folk's pocks o' tea and brandy kegs however, he's a grand man and an officer man, and they do what they like wi' the like o' us."
"It's a mere spoiling o' the Egyptians," replied Andrew; "puir auld Scotland suffers eneugh by thae blackguard loons o' excisemen and gaugers, that hae come down on her like locusts since the sad and sorrowfu' Union; it's the part of a kind son to bring her a soup o' something that will keep up her auld heart, and that will they nill they, the ill-fa'ard thieves!"
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