r how he dries or cures his
findings. No one knows his name: perhaps he has forgotten it himself. A
name is no great matter anyway. He is called simply the Herbman. He
drifts into our valley in the spring, is seen here and there on the
hills or in the fields, like the crows or the blackbirds, and disappears
in the fall with the robins and the maple leaves. Perhaps he is one of
those favoured souls to whom life is all spring and summer.

The age has passed him by, and except for certain furtive old women, few
care now for his sovereign remedies.

I met him once in the town road, and he stopped humbly without lifting
his eyes, and opening his basket let out into the air such a fragrance
of ancient simples as I never smelled before. He said nothing at all;
but took out dry bundles of catnip, sassafras, slippery elm, to show me.
He had also pennyroyal for healing teas, and calamus and bitter-bark for
miseries. I selected a choice assortment of his wares to take home to
Harriet, but could get him to name no price. He took what I gave without
objection and without thanks, and went his way. A true man of the hills.

As I said, I came often to the field below Old Howieson's farm. I think
the old man saw me coming and going, for the road winds along the side
of the hill within sight of his house, skirts a bit of wood, and with an
unexpected turn comes out triumphantly to the top of the ridge beyond.

At the turn of the road I always disappeared, for I crossed the wall
into the field below Old Howieson's farm, and mysteriously failed to
appear to the watchful eye upon the ridge beyond. What could be more
provoking or suspicious! To go in at one end of a well-travelled road
and not to come out in the regular and expected way at the other! Or to
be suspected of not being deferential toward trespass signs, or
observant of closed ways! How disturbing to all those who dwell
tremulously within posted enclosures of whatever sort, or those who base
their sense of possession upon stumped paper, or take their God from a
book. Men have been crucified for less.

Sooner or later those who cross boundaries clash with those who defend
boundaries: and those who adventure offend those who seek security; but
it was a long time before I came face to face with Old Man Howieson.

This was the way of it: Well back of Howieson's buildings and reaching
upward upon the face of the hill stretches a long and narrow field, a
kind of barren back pasture