第33章 THE DROVERS(2)

My itinerary is by no means clear to me; the names and distances I never clearly knew, and have now wholly forgotten; and this is the more to be regretted as there is no doubt that, in the course of those days, I must have passed and camped among sites which have been rendered illustrious by the pen of Walter Scott.Nay, more, I am of opinion that I was still more favoured by fortune, and have actually met and spoken with that inimitable author.Our encounter was of a tall, stoutish, elderly gentleman, a little grizzled, and of a rugged but cheerful and engaging countenance.He sat on a hill pony, wrapped in a plaid over his green coat, and was accompanied by a horse-woman, his daughter, a young lady of the most charming appearance.They overtook us on a stretch of heath, reined up as they came alongside, and accompanied us for perhaps a quarter of an hour before they galloped off again across the hillsides to our left.Great was my amazement to find the unconquerable Mr.Sim thaw immediately on the accost of this strange gentleman, who hailed him with a ready familiarity, proceeded at once to discuss with him the trade of droving and the prices of cattle, and did not disdain to take a pinch from the inevitable ram's horn.Presently I was aware that the stranger's eye was directed on myself; and there ensued a conversation, some of which I could not help overhearing at the time, and the rest have pieced together more or less plausibly from the report of Sim.

'Surely that must be an AMATEUR DROVER ye have gotten there?' the gentleman seems to have asked.

Sim replied, I was a young gentleman that had a reason of his own to travel privately.

'Well, well, ye must tell me nothing of that.I am in the law, you know, and TACE is the Latin for a candle,' answered the gentleman.

'But I hope it's nothing bad.'

Sim told him it was no more than debt.

'Oh, Lord, if that be all!' cried the gentleman; and turning to myself, 'Well, sir,' he added, 'I understand you are taking a tramp through our forest here for the pleasure of the thing?'

'Why, yes, sir,' said I; 'and I must say I am very well entertained.'

'I envy you,' said he.'I have jogged many miles of it myself when I was younger.My youth lies buried about here under every heather-bush, like the soul of the licentiate Lucius.But you should have a guide.The pleasure of this country is much in the legends, which grow as plentiful as blackberries.' And directing my attention to a little fragment of a broken wall no greater than a tombstone, he told me for an example a story of its earlier inhabitants.Years after it chanced that I was one day diverting myself with a Waverley Novel, when what should I come upon but the identical narrative of my green-coated gentleman upon the moors!

In a moment the scene, the tones of his voice, his northern accent, and the very aspect of the earth and sky and temperature of the weather, flashed back into my mind with the reality of dreams.The unknown in the green-coat had been the Great Unknown! I had met Scott; I had heard a story from his lips; I should have been able to write, to claim acquaintance, to tell him that his legend still tingled in my ears.But the discovery came too late, and the great man had already succumbed under the load of his honours and misfortunes.

Presently, after giving us a cigar apiece, Scott bade us farewell and disappeared with his daughter over the hills.And when I applied to Sim for information, his answer of 'The Shirra, man!

A'body kens the Shirra!' told me, unfortunately, nothing.

A more considerable adventure falls to be related.We were now near the border.We had travelled for long upon the track beaten and browsed by a million herds, our predecessors, and had seen no vestige of that traffic which had created it.It was early in the morning when we at last perceived, drawing near to the drove road, but still at a distance of about half a league, a second caravan, similar to but larger than our own.The liveliest excitement was at once exhibited by both my comrades.They climbed hillocks, they studied the approaching drove from under their hand, they consulted each other with an appearance of alarm that seemed to me extraordinary.I had learned by this time that their stand-oft manners implied, at least, no active enmity; and I made bold to ask them what was wrong.

'Bad yins,' was Sim's emphatic answer.

All day the dogs were kept unsparingly on the alert, and the drove pushed forward at a very unusual and seemingly unwelcome speed.

All day Sim and Candlish, with a more than ordinary expenditure both of snuff and of words, continued to debate the position.It seems that they had recognised two of our neighbours on the road -

one Faa, and another by the name of Gillies.Whether there was an old feud between them still unsettled I could never learn; but Sim and Candlish were prepared for every degree of fraud or violence at their hands.Candlish repeatedly congratulated himself on having left 'the watch at home with the mistress'; and Sim perpetually brandished his cudgel, and cursed his ill-fortune that it should be sprung.

'I willna care a damn to gie the daashed scoon'rel a fair clout wi'

it,' he said.'The daashed thing micht come sindry in ma hand.'

'Well, gentlemen,' said I, 'suppose they do come on, I think we can give a very good account of them.' And I made my piece of holly, Ronald's gift, the value of which I now appreciated, sing about my head.

'Ay, man? Are ye stench?' inquired Sim, with a gleam of approval in his wooden countenance.

The same evening, somewhat wearied with our day-long expedition, we encamped on a little verdant mound, from the midst of which there welled a spring of clear water scarce great enough to wash the hands in.We had made our meal and lain down, but were not yet asleep, when a growl from one of the collies set us on the alert.