expression of rapturous gratefulness and devotion
that, in the midst of deformity, disease, pain, and wretchedness, was
at once beautiful and sublime. He cried with a loud voice, 'The Lord
bless and reward you!' and expired with the effort."[28] Still more
striking is the account of his relation with Tom Purdie, the
wide-mouthed, under-sized, broad-shouldered, square-made,
thin-flanked woodsman, so well known afterwards by all Scott's friends
as he waited for his master in his green shooting-jacket, white hat,
and drab trousers. Scott first made Tom Purdie's acquaintance in his
capacity as judge, the man being brought before him for poaching, at
the time that Scott was living at Ashestiel. Tom gave so touching an
account of his circumstances--work scarce--wife and children in
want--grouse abundant--and his account of himself was so fresh and
even humorous, that Scott let him off the penalty, and made him his
shepherd. He discharged these duties so faithfully that he came to be
his master's forester and factotum, and indeed one of his best
friends, though a little disposed to tyrannize over Scott in his own
fashion. A visitor describes him as unpacking a box of new
importations for his master "as if he had been sorting some toys for a
restless child." But after Sir Walter had lost the bodily strength
requisite for riding, and was too melancholy for ordinary
conversation, Tom Purdie's shoulder was his great stay in wandering
through his woods, for with him he felt that he might either speak or
be silent at his pleasure. "What a blessing there is," Scott wrote in
his diary at that time, "in a fellow like Tom, whom no familiarity can
spoil, whom you may scold and praise and joke with, knowing the
quality of the man is unalterable in his love and reverence to his
master." After Scott's failure, Mr. Lockhart writes: "Before I leave
this period, I must note how greatly I admired the manner in which all
his dependents appeared to have met the reverse of his fortunes--a
reverse which inferred very considerable alteration in the
circumstances of every one of them. The butler, instead of being the
easy chief of a large establishment, was now doing half the work of
the house at probably half his former wages. Old Peter, who had been
for five and twenty years a dignified coachman, was now ploughman in
ordinary, only putting his horses to the carriage upon high and rare
occasions; and so on with all the rest that remained of the ancie