John Todd, when I knew him, was already "the oldest herd on the
Pentlands," and had been all his days faithful to that curlew-
scattering, sheep-collecting life. He remembered the droving days,
when the drove roads, that now lie green and solitary through the
heather, were thronged thoroughfares. He had himself often marched
flocks into England, sleeping on the hillsides with his caravan;
and by his account it was a rough business not without danger. The
drove roads lay apart from habitation; the drovers met in the
wilderness, as to-day the deep-sea fishers meet off the banks in
the solitude of the Atlantic; and in the one as in the other case
rough habits and fist-law were the rule. Crimes were committed,
sheep filched, and drovers robbed and beaten; most of which
offences had a moorland burial and were never heard of in the
courts of justice. John, in those days, was at least once
attacked, - by two men after his watch, - and at least once,
betrayed by his habitual anger, fell under the danger of the law
and was clapped into some rustic prison-house, the doors of which
he burst in the night and was no more heard of in that quarter.
When I knew him, his life had fallen in quieter places, and he had
no cares beyond the dulness of his dogs and the inroads of
pedestrians from town. But for a man of his propensity to wrath
these were enough; he knew neither rest nor peace, except by
snatches; in the gray of the summer morning, and already from far
up the hill, he would wake the "toun" with the sound of his
shoutings; and in the lambing time, his cries were not yet silenced
late at night.
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