A space of years elapsed ere I met him, for fate had carried me far
from the upland valleys. But once again I was afoot on the white
moor-roads; and, as I swung along one autumn afternoon up the path
which leads from the Glen of Callowa to the Gled, I saw a figure before
me which I knew for my friend. When I overtook him, his appearance
puzzled and troubled me. Age seemed to have come on him at a bound,
and in the tottering figure and the stoop of weakness I had difficulty
in recognising the hardy frame of the man as I had known him.
Something, too, had come over his face. His brow was clouded, and the
tan of weather stood out hard and cruel on a blanched cheek. His eye
seemed both wilder and sicklier, and for the first time I saw him with
none of the appurtenances of his trade. He greeted me feebly and
dully, and showed little wish to speak. He walked with slow, uncertain
step, and his breath laboured with a new panting. Every now and then
he would look at me sidewise, and in his feverish glance I could detect
none of the free kindliness of old. The man was ill in body and mind.