ment, "but maist folk ca' him 'Streams o' Water.'"

"Ay," said I, "and why 'Streams of Water'?"

"Juist for the reason ye see," said he.

Now I knew the shepherd's way, and I held my peace, for it was clear
that his mind was revolving other matters, concerned most probably with
the high subject of the morrow's prices. But in a little, as we
crossed the moor toward his dwelling, his thoughts relaxed and he
remembered my question. So he answered me thus:

"Oh, ay; as ye were sayin', he's a queer man Yeddie-aye been; guid kens
whaur he cam frae first, for he's been trampin' the countryside since
ever I mind, and that's no yesterday. He maun be sixty year, and yet
he's as fresh as ever. If onything, he's a thocht dafter in his
ongaein's, mair silent-like. But ye'll hae heard tell o' him afore?"
I owned ignorance.

"Tut," said he, "ye ken nocht. But Yeddie had aye a queer crakin' for
waters. He never gangs on the road. Wi' him it's juist up yae glen
and doon anither and aye keepin' by the burn-side. He kens every water
i' the warld, every bit sheuch and burnie frae Gallowa' to Berwick.
And then he kens the way o' spates the best I ever seen, and I've heard
tell o' him fordin' waters when nae ither thing could leeve i' them.
He can weyse and wark his road sae cunnin'ly on the stanes that the
roughest flood, if it's no juist fair ower his heid, canna upset him.
Mony a sheep has he saved to me, and it's mony a guid drove wad never
hae won to Gledsmuir market but for Yeddie."

I listened with a boy's interest in any romantic narration. Somehow,
the strange figure wrestling in the brown stream took fast hold on my
mind, and I asked the shepherd for further tales.

"There's little mair to tell," he said, "for a gangrel life is nane o'
the liveliest. But d'ye ken the langnebbit hill that cocks its tap
abune the Clachlands heid? Weel, he's got a wee bit o' grund on the tap
frae the Yerl, and there he's howkit a grave for himsel'. He's sworn
me and twae-three ithers to bury him there, wherever he may dee. It's
a queer fancy in the auld dotterel."

So the shepherd talked, and as at evening we stood by his door we saw a
figure moving into the gathering shadows. I knew it at once, and did
not need my friend's "There gangs 'Streams o' Water'" to recognise it.
Something wild and pathetic in the old man's face haunted me like a
dream, and as the dusk swallowed him up, he seemed like some old Druid
recalled of the god