“And how do you get word?” I asked.
“Weel, the post comes up the road to the foot o’ the Gled. Syne some o’ the fairmers up the water tak’ up a letter and leave it at the foot o’ the Cauldshaw Burn. A fisher, like yersel’, maybe, brings it up the glen and draps it at the herd’s cottage o’ the Front Muneraw, whaur it lies till the herd, Simon Mruddock, tak’s it wi’ him on his roonds. Noo, twice every week he passes the tap o’ the Aller, and I’ve gotten a cairn there, whaur he hides it in an auld tin box among the stanes. Twice a week I gang up that way mysel’, and find onything that’s lyin’. Oh, I’m no’ ill off for letters; I get them in about a week, if there’s no’ a snawstorm.”
The man leant forward to put a fresh coal to his pipe, and I marked his eyes, begrimed with peat smoke, but keen as a hawk’s, and the ragged, ill-patched homespun of his dress. I thought of the good folk in the lowlands and the cities who hugged their fancies of simple Arcadian shepherds, who, in decent cottage, surrounded by a smiling family, read God’s Word of a Saturday night. In the rugged man before me I found some hint of the truth.
“And how do you spend your days?” I asked. “Did you never think of trying a more kindly countryside?”
He looked at me long and quizzically.
“Yince,” he said, “I served a maister, a bit flesher-body doun at Gledfoot. He was aye biddin’ me dae odd jobs about the toun, and I couldna thole it, for I’m a herd, and my wark’s wi’ sheep. Noo I serve the Yerl o’ Callowa, and there’s no’ a body dare say a word to me; but I manage things according to my ain guid juidgement, wi’oot ony ‘by your leave.’ And whiles I’ve the best o’ company, for yince or twice the Yerl has bided here a’ nicht, when he was forewandered shooting amang thae muirs.”
But I was scarce listening, so busy was I in trying to picture an existence which meant incessant wanderings all day among the wilds, and firelit evenings, with no company but dogs. I asked him if he ever read.
“I ha’e a Bible,” he said doubtfully, “and I whiles tak’ a spell at it to see if I remember my schulin’. But I’m no keen on books o’ ony kind.”
“Then what in the name of goodness do you do?” said I.
Then his tongue was unloosed, and he told me the burden of his days; how he loved all weather, fighting a storm for the fight’s sake, and glorying in the conquest; how he would trap blue hares and shoot wildfowl—for had he not the Earl’s leave?—and now and then kill a deer strayed among the snow. He was full of old tales of the place, learned from a thousand odd sources, of queer things that happened in these eternal deserts, and queer sights which he and others than himself had seen at dawning and sunset. Some day I will put them all down in a book, but then I will inscribe it to children and label it fantasy, for no one would believe them if told with the circumstance of truth. But, above all, he gloried in the tale of the changes of sky and earth, and the multitudinous lore of the hills. I heard of storms when the thunder echoed in the Cauldron like the bleating of great sheep, and the man sat still at home in terror. He told with solemn eyes of the coming of snow, of masterful floods in the Aller, when the dead sheep came down and butted, as he said, with their foreheads against his house-wall. His voice grew high, and his figure, seen in the red glare of the peats, was like some creature of a tale.
But in time the fire sank, the dogs slumbered, our pipes went out, and he showed me my bed. It was in the garret, which you entered by a trap from the shed below. The one window had been shattered by some storm and boarded up with planks, through whose crevices I could see the driving mist and the bog lying dead under cover of night. I slept on rough blankets of homespun, and ere I lay down, in looking round the place, I came upon a book stuck fast between the rafters and the wall. It was the Bible used to brush up the shepherd’s learning, and for the sake of his chances hereafter I dragged it forth and blew the dust from it.
In the morning the mist had gone, and a blue sky shone out, over which sudden gusts swept like boats on a loch. The damp earth still reeked of rain; and as I stood at the door and watched the Aller, now one line of billows, strive impetuous through the bogland, and the hills gleam in the dawning like wet jewels, I no more wondered at the shepherd’s choice. He came down from a morning’s round, his voice bellowing across the uplands, and hailed me from afar. “The hills are no vera dry,” he said, “but they micht be passed; and if I was sure I wadna bide, he wad set me on my way.” So in a little I followed his
