The shepherd was a masterful man; tall, save for the stoop which belongs
to all moorland folk, and active as a wild goat. He was not a new
importation, nor did he belong to the place; for his people had lived in
the remote Borders, and he had come as a boy to this shieling of Farawa.
He was unmarried, but an elderly sister lived with him and cooked his
meals. He was reputed to be extraordinarily skilful in his trade; I know
for a fact that he was in his way a keen sportsman; and his few
neighbours gave him credit for a sincere piety. Doubtless this last
report was due in part to his silence, for after his first greeting he
was wont to relapse into a singular taciturnity. As we strode across the
heather he gave me a short outline of his year's lambing. "Five pair o'
twins yestreen, twae this morn; that makes thirty-five yowes that hae
lambed since the Sabbath. I'll dae weel if God's willin'." Then, as I
looked towards the hilltops whence the thin mist of morn was trailing,
he followed my gaze. "See," he said with uplifted crook--"see that
sicht. Is that no what is written of in the Bible when it says, 'The
mountains do smoke.'" And with this piece of exegesis he finished his
talk, and in a little we were at the cottage.
It was a small enough dwelling in truth, and yet large for a moorland
house, for it had a garret below the thatch, which was given up to my
sole enjoyment. Below was the wide kitchen with box-beds, and next to it
the inevitable second room, also with its cupboard sleeping-places. The
interior was very clean, and yet I remember to have been struck with the
faint musty smell which is inseparable from moorland dwellings. The
kitchen pleased me best, for there the great rafters were black with
peat-reek, and the uncovered stone floor, on which the fire gleamed
dully, gave an air of primeval simplicity. But the walls spoiled all,
for tawdry things of to-day had penetrated even there. Some grocers'
almanacs--years old--hung in places of honour, and an extraordinary
lithograph of the Royal Family in its youth. And this, mind you, between
crooks and fishing-rods and old guns, and horns of sheep and deer.
The life for the first day or two was regular and placid. I was up
early, breakfasted on porridge (a dish which I detest), and then off to
the lochs and streams. At first my sport prospered mightily. With a
drake-wing I killed a salmon of seventeen pounds, and the next day had a
fine basket of trout from a hill-burn. Then for no earthly reason the
weather changed. A bitter wind came out of the northeast, bringing
showers of snow and stinging hail, and lashing the waters into storm. It
was now farewell to fly-fishing. For a day or two I tried trolling with
the minnow on the lochs, but it was poor sport, for I had no boat, and
the edges were soft and mossy. Then in disgust I gave up the attempt,
went back to the cottage, lit my biggest pipe, and sat down with a book
to await the turn of the weather.
The shepherd was out from morning till night at his work, and when he
came in at last, dog-tired, his face would be set and hard, and his eyes
heavy with sleep. The strangeness of the man grew upon me. He had a
shrewd brain beneath his thatch of hair, for I had tried him once or
twice, and found him abundantly intelligent. He had some smattering of
an education, like all Scottish peasants, and, as I have said, he was
deeply religious. I set him down as a fine type of his class, sober,
serious, keenly critical, free from the bondage of superstition. But I
rarely saw him, and our talk was chiefly in monosyllables--short
interjected accounts of the number of lambs dead or alive on the hill.
Then he would produce a pencil and note-book, and be immersed in some
calculation; and finally he would be revealed sleeping heavily in his
chair, till his sister wakened him, and he stumbled off to bed.
So much for the ordinary course of life; but one day--the second I think
of the bad weather--the extraordinary happened. The storm had passed in
the afternoon into a resolute and blinding snow, and the shepherd,
finding it hopeless on the hill, came home about three o'clock. I could
make out from his way of entering that he was in a great temper. He
kicked his feet savagely against the door-post. Then he swore at his
dogs, a thing I had never heard him do before. "Hell!" he cried, "can ye
no keep out o' my road, ye britts?" Then he came sullenly into the
kitchen, thawed his numbed hands at the fire, and sat down to his meal.