Melodies and memories

176 MELODIES AND MEMORIES.
Glasgow and Edinburgh, to be known as the Cleland and
Mid Calder branch.
Those who had never seen the initial stages of railway
making stared and wondered, even questioned if these
smart, spruce-looking measurers really knew quite well
what they wanted to accomplish. Their appearance and
talk were little akin to those of the natives, still they were
civil, and knew well when they got good bread and butter,
cheese, and milk at the farm houses, when their active
exercise in the open air had whetted their appetites.
Again and again the surveyors returned, sometimes
slightly varying their line of operations.
Those courteous " Ceevil Engineers," as they were
called, must sometimes have laughed over the simple,
curious questions that the rural dwellers plied them with.
Sometimes the glowing pictures of improved travelling
facilities, prosperous times, and high prices, to follow in the
wake of the new line, were accepted with greater credence
by the unsophisticated country folks than the cunning
romancers expected. They were sly blades, those sur-
veyors, but paid well for what they got, and were treated
with wonderful respect, although for trampling through
growing crops they were reckoned barbarians.
A time came when, by a huge poster headed, "To Be
or Not To Be," the public were invited to meet in a public
school. When the large and representative company, as
the newspaper report had it, had been treated to some rosy
word-pictures of "the good time coming," should rail-
ways be made, all present, save two officials of the other
railway company, voted as one man in favour of the
railway. For long after, some of these guileless-minded
natives imagined that that meeting decided the whole
matter.
In course of time operations were commenced at various
points along the pegged-off track. Local excitement began