Sam threw the tea dregs into the fire and watched the coal sizzle a moment. Used tea leaves burned well and smelled good. Perhaps he ought to write in to the papers about it; win a guinea or a prize or something. Over the crumpled jacked he put on the old Crombie coat he had found in a bazaar up Byres Road. It cost him four bob. Must have been given in error surely! Good God. He put on the corduroy bunnet.

He lived in a single end in Patrick down near South Street and his close was the last remaining one still inhabited by paying tenants. The rest of the tenement building was being slowly demolished. Old Rachel still hid in number seventeen but nobody official knew that. She had moved in with the demolishers and so far had outstayed them. Her family had parked her away in an old folks’ home where she had managed to stay for six weeks before leaving and dossing around Anderston. Sam had found her there three weeks later. They had known each other for a long time and he reckoned she could give him twenty years; he had turned seventy five months ago. She swore to having milked cows in MacGregor’s farm at Partick Cross when she was a girl. Sam could not remember ever having heard of a farm at Partick Cross.