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 Scotch 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 Scotch 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 proportionally
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.
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