us 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. "Yen'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 maunna mind 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 linns
that I canna win to again. I maun e'en be content wi' the Callowa,
which is as guid as the best."

And then I left him, wandering down by the streamside 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 troubled 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, a