"It's an ill world now," he said in a slow, querulous voice.
"There's nae need for honest men, and nae leevin'. Folk dinna heed me
ava now. They dinna buy my besoms, they winna let me bide a nicht in
their byres, and they're no like the kind canty folk in the auld
times. And a' the countryside is changin'. Doun by Goldieslaw they're
makkin' a dam for takin' water to the toun, and they're thinkin' o'
daein' the like wi' the Callowa. Guid help us, can they no let the
works o' God alane? Is there no room for them in the dirty lawlands
that they maun file the hills wi' their biggins?"
I conceived dimly that the cause of his wrath was a scheme for
waterworks at the border of the uplands, but I had less concern for
this than his strangely feeble health.
"You are looking ill," I said. "What has come over you?"
"Oh, I canna last for aye," he said mournfully. "My auld body's about
dune. I've warkit it ower sair when I had it, and it's gaun to fail on
my hands. Sleepin' out o' wat nichts and gangin' lang wantin' meat are
no the best ways for a long life"; and he smiled the ghost of a smile.
And then he fell to wild telling of the ruin of the place and the
hardness of the people, and I saw that want and bare living had gone
far to loosen his wits. I knew the countryside, and I recognised that
change was only in his mind. And a great pity seized me for this
lonely figure toiling on in the bitterness of regret. I tried to
comfort him, but my words were useless, for he took no heed of me; with
bent head and faltering step he mumbled his sorrows to himself.
Then of a sudden we came to the crest of the ridge where the road dips
from the hill-top to the sheltered valley. Sheer from the heather ran
the white streak till it lost itself among the reddening rowans and the
yellow birks of the wood. The land was rich in autumn colour, and the
shining waters dipped and fell through a pageant of russet and gold.
And all around hills huddled in silent spaces, long brown moors crowned
with cairns, or steep fortresses of rock and shingle rising to
foreheads of steel-like grey. The autumn blue faded in the far
sky-line to white, and lent distance to the farther peaks. The hush of
the wilderness, which is far different from the hush of death, brooded
over the scene, and like faint music came the sound of a distant
scytheswing, and the tinkling whisper which is the flow of a hundred
streams.
I am an old connoisseur in the beauties of the uplands, but I held my
breath at the sight. And when I glanced at my companion, he, too, had
raised his head, and stood with wide nostrils and gleaming eye
revelling in this glimpse of Arcady. Then he found his voice, and the
weakness and craziness seemed for one moment to leave him.
"It's my ain land," he cried, "and I'll never leave it. D'ye see yon
broun hill wi' the lang cairn?" and he gripped my arm fiercely and
directed my gaze. "Yon's my bit. I howkit it richt on the verra tap,
and ilka year I gang there to make it neat and ordlerly. I've trystit
wi' fower men in different pairishes that whenever they hear o' my
death, they'll cairry me up yonder and bury me there. And then I'll
never leave it, but be still and quiet to the warld's end. I'll aye
hae the sound o' water in my ear, for there's five burns tak' their
rise on that hillside, and on a' airts the glens gang doun to the Gled
and the Aller."
Then his spirit failed him, his voice sank, and he was almost the
feeble gangrel once more. But not yet, for again his eye swept the
ring of hills, and he muttered to himself names which I knew for
streams, lingeringly, lovingly, as of old affections. "Aller and Gled
and Callowa," he crooned, "braw names, and Clachlands and Cauldshaw and
the Lanely Water. And I maunna forget the Stark and the Lin and the
bonny streams o' the Creran. And what mair? I canna mind a' the
burns, the Howe and the Hollies and the Fawn and the links o' the
Manor. What says the Psalmist about them?
'As streams o' water in the South, Our bondage Lord, recall.'