aded in the far
sky-line to white, and lent distance to the farther peaks. The hush of
the wilderness, which is far different from the hush of death, brooded
over the scene, and like faint music came the sound of a distant
scytheswing, and the tinkling whisper which is the flow of a hundred
streams.

I am an old connoisseur in the beauties of the uplands, but I held my
breath at the sight. And when I glanced at my companion, he, too, had
raised his head, and stood with wide nostrils and gleaming eye
revelling in this glimpse of Arcady. Then he found his voice, and the
weakness and craziness seemed for one moment to leave him.

"It's my ain land," he cried, "and I'll never leave it. D'ye see yon
broun hill wi' the lang cairn?" and he gripped my arm fiercely and
directed my gaze. "Yon's my bit. I howkit it richt on the verra tap,
and ilka year I gang there to make it neat and ordlerly. I've trystit
wi' fower men in different pairishes that whenever they hear o' my
death, they'll cairry me up yonder and bury me there. And then I'll
never leave it, but be still and quiet to the warld's end. I'll aye
hae the sound o' water in my ear, for there's five burns tak' their
rise on that hillside, and on a' airts the glens gang doun to the Gled
and the Aller."

Then his spirit failed him, his voice sank, and he was almost the
feeble gangrel once more. But not yet, for again his eye swept the
ring of hills, and he muttered to himself names which I knew for
streams, lingeringly, lovingly, as of old affections. "Aller and Gled
and Callowa," he crooned, "braw names, and Clachlands and Cauldshaw and
the Lanely Water. And I maunna forget the Stark and the Lin and the
bonny streams o' the Creran. And what mair? I canna mind a' the
burns, the Howe and the Hollies and the Fawn and the links o' the
Manor. What says the Psalmist about them?

'As streams o' water in the South, Our bondage Lord, recall.'

Ay, but yen's the name for them. 'Streams o' water in the South.'"

And as we went down the slopes to the darkening vale I heard him
crooning to himself in a high, quavering voice the single distich; then
in a little his weariness took him again, and he plodded on with no
thought save for his sorrows.

IV

The conclusion of this tale belongs not to me, but to the shepherd of
the Redswirehead, and I heard it from him in his dwelling, as I stayed
the night, belated on the darkening moors. He told me it after supper