The Short Stories of John Buchan (Complete Collection). Buchan John

thing. I couldna wish to dee better than just be happit i’ the waters o’ my ain countryside, when my legs fail and I’m ower auld for the trampin ‘.”

      Something in that queer figure in the setting of the hills struck a note of curious pathos. And towards evening as we returned down the glen the note grew keener. A spring sunset of gold and crimson flamed in our backs and turned the clear pools to fire. Far off down the vale the plains and the sea gleamed half in shadow. Somehow in the fragrance and colour and the delectable crooning of the stream, the fantastic and the dim seemed tangible and present, and high sentiment revelled for once in my prosaic heart.

      And still more in the breast of my companion. He stopped and sniffed the evening air, as he looked far over hill and dale and then back to the great hills above us. “Yon’s Crappel, and Caerdon and the Laigh Law,” he said, lingering with relish over each name, “and the Gled comes doun atween them. I haena been there for a twalmonth, and I maun hae anither glisk o’t, for it’s a braw place.” And then some bitter thought seemed to seize him, and his mouth twitched. “I’m an auld man,” he cried, “and I canna see ye a’ again. There’s burns and mair burns in the high hills that I ‘ll never win to.” Then he remembered my presence, and stopped. “Ye maun excuse me,” he said huskily, “but the sicht o’ a’ thae lang blue hills makes me daft, now that I’ve faun i’ the vale o’ years. Yince I was young and could get where I wantit, but now I am auld and maun bide i’ the same bit. And I’m aye thinkin’ o’ the waters I’ve been to, and the green heichs and howes and the bricht pools that I canna win to again. I maun e’en be content wi’ the Callowa, which is as bonny as the best.”

      And then I left him, wandering down by the stream-side and telling his crazy meditations to himself.

      III

      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 vexed 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.

      I asked him how he had done since I saw him last.

      “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 care for 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 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 with the knowledge of many years, 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. All 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 scythe-swing, 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 mak it neat and orderly. 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 lie 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. I ‘ll hae a brawer buryin’ than ony, for a hill-top’s better than a dowie kirkyaird.”

      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?

      “Like streams o’ water in the South

       Our bondage, Lord, recall.”

      “Ay, but that’s the name for them. ‘Streams o’ water in the South.’”

      And as we went down the slopes to the darkening vale I heard him crooning to himself in a high, quavering voice the single distich; then in a little his weariness took him again, and he plodded on with no thought save for his sorrows.

      IV

      The conclusion of this tale belongs not to me but to the shepherd of the Redswirehead, and I heard it from him in his dwelling, as I stayed the night, belated on the darkening moors. He told me it after supper in a flood of misty Doric, and his voice grew rough at times, and he poked viciously at the dying peat.

      In the last back-end I was at Gledfoot wi’ sheep, and a weary job I had and little credit. Ye ken the place, a lang dreich shore wi’ the wind swirlin’ and bitin’ to the bane, and the broun Gled water choked wi’ Solloway sand. There was nae room in ony inn in the town, so I made good to gang to a bit public on the Harbour Walk, where sailor-folk and fishermen feucht and drank, and nae dacent men frae the hills thocht of gangin’. I was in a gey ill way, for I had sell’t my beasts dooms cheap, and I thocht o’ the lang miles