the town
slumbering by the riverside. I come often with a little book in one
pocket to read from, and a little book in the other to write in, but I
rarely use either the one or the other, for there is far too much to see
and think about.

From this spot I make excursions round about, and have had many strange
and interesting adventures: and now find thoughts of mine, like lichens,
upon all the boulders and old walls and oak trees of that hillside.
Sometimes I climb to the top of the hill. If I am in a leisurely mood I
walk lawfully around Old Howieson's farm by a kind of wood lane that
leads to the summit, but often I cross his walls, all regardless of his
trespass signs, and go that way to the top.

[Illustration: It was on one of these lawless excursions in Old
Howieson's field that I first saw that strange old fellow]

It was on one of these lawless excursions in Old Howieson's field that I
first saw that strange old fellow who is known hereabout as the Herbman.
I came upon him so suddenly that I stopped short, curiously startled, as
one is startled at finding anything human that seems less than human. He
was kneeling there among the low verdure of a shallow valley, and looked
like an old gray rock or some prehistoric animal. I stopped to look at
him, but he paid no heed, and seemed only to shrink into himself as
though, if he kept silent, he might be taken for stock or stone. I
addressed him but he made no answer. I went nearer, with a sensation of
uncanny wonder; but he did not so much as glance up at me, though he
knew I was there. His old brown basket was near him and the cane beside
it. He was gathering pennyroyal.

"Another man who is taking an unexpected crop from Old Howieson's
acres," I thought to myself.

I watched him for some moments, quite still, as one might watch a turtle
or a woodchuck--and left him there.

Since then I have heard something about him, and seen him once or
twice. A strange old man, a wanderer upon the face of the fragrant
earth. Spring and summer he wears always an old overcoat, and carries a
basket with double covers, very much worn and brown with usage. His cane
is of hickory with a crooked root for a handle, this also shiny with
age. He gathers bitter-bark, tansy; ginseng, calamus, smartweed, and
slippery elm, and from along old fences and barnyards, catnip and
boneset, I suppose he lives somewhere, a hole in a log, or the limb of a
tree, but no one knows where it is, o