settled thing for John to "give me
a cry" over the garden wall as he set forth upon his evening round, and
for me to overtake and bear him company.

That dread voice of his that shook the hills when he was angry, fell in
ordinary talk very pleasantly upon the ear, with a kind of honeyed,
friendly whine, not far off singing, that was eminently Scottish. He
laughed not very often, and when he did, with a sudden, loud haw-haw,
hearty but somehow joyless, like an echo from a rock. His face was
permanently set and coloured; ruddy and stiff with weathering; more like
a picture than a face; yet with a certain strain, and a threat of latent
anger in the expression, like that of a man trained too fine and
harassed with perpetual vigilance. He spoke in the richest dialect of
Scots I ever heard; the words in themselves were a pleasure and often a
surprise to me, so that I often came back from one of our patrols with
new acquisitions; and this vocabulary he would handle like a master,
stalking a little before me, "beard on shoulder," the plaid hanging
loosely about him, the yellow staff clapped under his arm, and guiding
me uphill by that devious, tactical ascent which seems peculiar to men
of his trade. I might count him with the best talkers; only that talking
Scots and talking English seem incomparable acts. He touched on nothing
at least but he adorned it; when he narrated, the scene was before you;
when he spoke (as he did mostly) of his own antique business, the thing
took on a colour of romance and curiosity that was surprising. The clans
of sheep with their particular territories on the hill, and how, in the
yearly killings and purchases, each must be proportionately thinned and
strengthened; the midnight busyness of animals, the signs of the
weather, the cares of the snowy season, the exquisite stupidity of
sheep, the exquisite cunning of dogs: all these he could present so
humanly, and with so much old experience and living gusto, that
weariness was excluded. And in the midst he would suddenly straighten
his bowed back, the stick would fly abroad in demonstration, and the
sharp thunder of his voice roll out a long itinerary for the dogs, so
that you saw at last the use of that great wealth of names for every
knowe and howe upon the hillside; and the dogs, having hearkened with
lowered tails and raised faces, would run up their flags again to the
masthead and spread themselves upon the indicated circuit. It used to
fill m