The Short Stories of John Buchan (Complete Collection). Buchan John
was a man of something over middle size, but with a stoop forward that shortened him to something beneath it. His dress was ragged homespun, the cast- off clothes of some sportsman, and in his arms he bore a bundle of sticks and heather-roots which marked his calling. I knew him for a tramp who long had wandered in the place, but I could not account for the whole-voiced shout of greeting which met him as he stalked down the path. He lifted his eyes and looked solemnly and long at the scene. Then something of delight came into his eye, his face relaxed, and flinging down his burden, he stripped his coat and came toward us.
“Come on, Yeddie, ye ‘re sair needed,” said the shepherd, and I watched with amazement this grizzled, crooked man seize a sheep by the fleece and drag it to the water. Then he was in the midst, stepping warily, now up, now down the channel, but always nearing the farther bank. At last with a final struggle he landed his charge, and turned to journey back. Fifteen times did he cross that water, and at the end his mean figure had wholly changed. For now he was straighter and stronger, his eye flashed, and his voice, as he cried out to the drovers, had in it a tone of command. I marveiled at the transformation; and when at length he had donned once more his ragged coat and shouldered his bundle, I asked the shepherd his name.
“They ca’ him Adam Logan,” said my friend, his face still bright with excitement, “but maist folk ca’ him ‘Streams o’ Water.’”
“Ay,” said I, “and why ‘Streams of Water’?”
“Juist for the reason ye see,” said he.
“Now I knew the shepherd’s way, and I held my peace, for it was clear that his mind was revolving other matters, concerned most probably with the high subject of the morrow’s prices. But in a little, as we crossed the moor toward his dwelling, his thoughts relaxed and he remembered my question. So he answered me thus,—
“Oh, ay; as ye were sayin’, he’s a queer man, Yeddie—aye been; guid kens whaur he cam frae first, for he’s been trampin’ the countryside since ever I mind, and that’s no yesterday. He maun be sixty year, and yet he’s as fresh as ever. If onything, he’s a thocht dafter in his ongaein’s, mair silent-like. But ye ‘ll hae heard tell o’ him afore?”
I owned ignorance.
“Tut,” said he, “ye ken nocht. But Yeddie had aye a queer crakin’ for waters. He never gangs on the road. Wi’ him it’s juist up yae glen and doon anither, and aye keepin’ by the burn-side. He kens every water i’ the warld, every bit sheuch and burnie frae Gallowa’ to Berwick. And then he kens the way o’ spates the best I ever saw, and I’ve heard tell o’ him fordin’ waters when nae ither thing could leeve i’ them. He can weyse and wark his road sae cunnin’ly on the stanes that the roughest flood, if it’s no juist fair ower his heid, canna upset him. Mony a sheep has he saved to me, and it’s mony a guid drove wad never hae won to Gledsmuir market but for Yeddie.”
I listened with a boy’s interest in any romantic narration. Somehow, the strange figure wrestling in the brown stream took fast hold on my mind, and I asked the shepherd for farther tales.
“There’s little mair to tell,” he said, “for a gangrel life is nane the liveliest. But d’ ye ken the lang-nebbit hill which cocks its tap abune the Clachlands heid? Weel, he’s got a wee bit o’ grund on the tap frae the Yerl, and there he’s howkit a grave for himsel’. He’s sworn me and twae-three ithers to bury him there, wherever he may dee. It’s a queer fancy in the auld dotterel.”
So the shepherd talked, and as at evening we stood by his door we saw a figure moving into the gathering shadows. I knew it at once, and did not need my friend’s, “There gangs ‘Streams o’ Water’” to recognise it. Something wild and pathetic in the old man’s face haunted me like a dream, and as the dusk swallowed him up, he seemed like some old Druid recalled of the gods to his ancient habitation of the moors.
II
Two years passed, and April came with her suns and rains, and again the waters brimmed full in the valleys. Under the clear, shining sky the lambing went on, and the faint bleat of sheep brooded on the hills. In a land of young heather and green upland meads, of faint odours of moor-burn, and hill-tops falling in lone ridges to the sky-line, the veriest St. Anthony would not abide indoors; so I flung all else to the winds and went a-fishing.
At the first pool on the Callowa, where the great flood sweeps nobly round a ragged shoulder of hill, and spreads into broad deeps beneath a tangle of birches, I began my toils. The turf was still wet with dew and the young leaves gleamed in the glow of morning. Far up the stream rose the terrible hills which hem the mosses and tarns of that tableland, whence flow the greater waters of the countryside. An ineffable freshness, as of the morning alike of the day and the seasons, filled the clear hill-air, and the remote peaks gave the needed touch of intangible romance.
But as I fished, I came on a man sitting in a green dell, busy at the making of brooms. I knew his face and dress, for who could forget such eclectic raggedness?—and I remembered that day two years before when he first hobbled into my ken. Now, as I saw him there, I was captivated by the nameless mystery of his appearance. There was something startling to one, accustomed to the lack- lustre gaze of townbred folk, in the sight of an eye as keen and wild as a hawk’s from sheer solitude and lonely travelling. He was so bent and scarred with weather that he seemed as much a part of that woodland place as the birks themselves, and the noise of his labours did not startle the birds which hopped on the branches.
Little by little I won his acquaintance—by a chance reminiscence, a single tale, the mention of a friend. Then he made me free of his knowledge, and my fishing fared well that day. He dragged me up little streams to sequestered pools, where I had astonishing success; and then back to some great swirl in the Callowa where he had seen monstrous takes. And all the while he delighted me with his talk, of men and things, of weather and place, pitched high in his thin, old voice, and garnished with many tones of lingering sentiment. He spoke in a broad, slow Scots, with so quaint a lilt in his speech that one seemed to be in an elder time among people of a quieter life and a quainter kindliness.
Then by chance I asked him of a burn of which I had heard, and how it might be reached. I shall never forget the tone of his answer as his face grew eager and he poured forth his knowledge.
“Ye ‘ll gang up the Knowe Burn, which comes down into the Cauldshaw. It’s a wee tricklin’ thing, trowin’ in and out o’ pools i’ the rock, and comin’ doun out o’ the side o’ Caerfraun. Yince a merrymaiden bided there, I’ve heard folks say, and used to win the sheep frae the Cauldshaw herd, and bile them i’ the muckle pool below the fa’. They say that there’s a road to the Ill Place there, and when the Deil likit he sent up the lowe and garred the water faem and fizzle like an auld kettle. But if ye’ve gaun to the Colm Burn ye maun haud atower the rig o’ the hill frae the Knowe heid, and ye ‘ll come to it wimplin’ among green brae faces. It’s a bonny bit, rale lonesome, but awfu’ bonny, and there’s mony braw trout in its siller flows.”
Then I remembered all I had heard of the old man’s craze, and I humoured him.
“It’s a fine countryside for burns,” I said.
“Ye may say that,” said he, gladly, “a weel-watered land. But a’ this braw south country is the same. I’ve traivelled frae the Yeavering Hill in the Cheviots to the Caldons in Galloway, and it’s a’ the same. When I was young, I’ve seen me gang north to the Hielands and doun to the English lawlands, but now that I’m gettin’ auld, I maun bide i’ the yae place. There’s no a burn in the South I dinna ken, and I never cam to the water I couldna ford.”
“No?” said I. “I’ve seen you at the ford o’ Clachlands in’ the Lammas floods.”
“Often I’ve been there,” he went on, speaking like one calling up vague memories. “Yince, when Tam Rorison was drooned, honest man. Yince again, when the brigs were ta’en awa’, and the Back House o’ Clachlands had nae bread for a week. But O, Clachlands is a bit easy water. But I’ve seen the muckle Aller come roarin’ sae high that it