nd showed little wish to speak. He walked with slow, uncertain
step, and his breath laboured with a new panting. Every now and then
he would look at me sidewise, and in his feverish glance I could detect
none of the free kindliness of old. The man was ill in body and mind.

I asked him how he had done since I saw him last.

"It's an ill world now," he said in a slow, querulous voice.

"There's nae need for honest men, and nae leevin'. Folk dinna heed me
ava now. They dinna buy my besoms, they winna let me bide a nicht in
their byres, and they're no like the kind canty folk in the auld
times. And a' the countryside is changin'. Doun by Goldieslaw they're
makkin' a dam for takin' water to the toun, and they're thinkin' o'
daein' the like wi' the Callowa. Guid help us, can they no let the
works o' God alane? Is there no room for them in the dirty lawlands
that they maun file the hills wi' their biggins?"

I conceived dimly that the cause of his wrath was a scheme for
waterworks at the border of the uplands, but I had less concern for
this than his strangely feeble health.

"You are looking ill," I said. "What has come over you?"

"Oh, I canna last for aye," he said mournfully. "My auld body's about
dune. I've warkit it ower sair when I had it, and it's gaun to fail on
my hands. Sleepin' out o' wat nichts and gangin' lang wantin' meat are
no the best ways for a long life"; and he smiled the ghost of a smile.

And then he fell to wild telling of the ruin of the place and the
hardness of the people, and I saw that want and bare living had gone
far to loosen his wits. I knew the countryside, and I recognised that
change was only in his mind. And a great pity seized me for this
lonely figure toiling on in the bitterness of regret. I tried to
comfort him, but my words were useless, for he took no heed of me; with
bent head and faltering step he mumbled his sorrows to himself.

Then of a sudden we came to the crest of the ridge where the road dips
from the hill-top to the sheltered valley. Sheer from the heather ran
the white streak till it lost itself among the reddening rowans and the
yellow birks of the wood. The land was rich in autumn colour, and the
shining waters dipped and fell through a pageant of russet and gold.
And all around hills huddled in silent spaces, long brown moors crowned
with cairns, or steep fortresses of rock and shingle rising to
foreheads of steel-like grey. The autumn blue f