"Oh, this is Jock M'Craw,

A sodger in the raw,

But Bully Beef and Duff

'll mak' him fat an' tough,

And then he'll be

Like Bob M'Gee,

A twelve stane three

Mileeshiman! Mileeshiman!"

 CHAPTER II.SPUD ARRIVES AT THE DEPOT.

 

CHAPTER II.

 

SPUD ARRIVES AT THE DEPOT.

The Depot in Blacktoon was a somewhat ancient affair. In its palmiest days the blood-sucking Hanoverian mercenaries of King Geordie had been quartered there. And during the Russian Scare a score of low jerry-built buildings had been added to house the braw lads hastily summoned to defend their kail-pots and their wives. The Depot was therefore a glorified "Model"—in fact, some of the "Mileeshy" described it as a "bug and flea factory." However, that was not the fault of His Majesty's Government, but rather the result of collecting from the highways and byways all the odds and ends of humanity. Nevertheless, it was a useful institution from a social reformer's point of view. In times of stress and unemployment the Depot became a refuge and soup-kitchen for all those who could muster enough chest measurement and say "99" while an old horse surgeon thumped the lungs with his ironlike fists. And strange to say, it was also viewed by the magistrates as a sort of reformative penitentiary. Many a lad summoned before the bailie for sheep-stealing, burglary, wife-beating, or "getting a lassie into bother," was given the option of "sixty days—or jine the Mileeshy." Naturally, these rapscallions preferred 

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