“You are very good,” said Ralph. “If you can conveniently take me in I shall be thankful. But don’t be putting yourselves out for me. When I tell you that I slept last night in the ruins of the old castle at Kingussie, and in a hay-cart near Grantown the night before, you will see that to be under a roof at all will be a luxury to me.”
He laughed. The shepherd gave him another of those sympathetic, discerning looks.
“You have had trouble I see,” he said. “But I’m thinkin’ that you’re meetin’ it in the right way.”
“Oh,” said Ralph lightly, “I’m just an actor out of work. For several weeks we have had plenty to do and no money; now we have neither money nor work, and I am hoping to get into another company.”
“It’s no right that ony man should work without wages,” said Angus; “it’s clean against Scripture. But just for a wee while I’m thinkin’ that it’s maybe no sic an ill thing for us to learn that a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance o’ the things which he possesseth.”
“Well, it’s not hard to agree to that now that I’m close to your house,” said Ralph, “but I’ll confess to you that I was beginning to despair before I met you.”
“Ay,” said Angus, a smile crossing his face, “Ilka ane o’ us is apt to be like this stray lamb that was tryin’ to mak’ its way hame and was scairt almost to death with encounterin’ deefficulties. It might have hed the sense to know that as the sayin’ goes, ‘Where twa are seekin’ they’re sure to find.’”
“Is that one of your Scottish proverbs?” said Ralph, struck by the beauty of the thought.
“Ay, it is, sir, and it often comes to my mind when I’m after the sheep. Ye mauna despair though you’re oot o’ work. We are maist o’ us ready to say ‘The Lord’s my shepherd,’ but at the first glint o’ trouble we change the psalm and say ‘but I’m terrible feart that I’ll come to want.’”
There was a sort of dry humour in his manner of saying these last words, and Ralph smiled.