Lewis grinned at the portraiture. “You do me proud. But let’s talk about serious things. You were on sheep when I came in. Get back to them and give me your mind on Cheviots. The lamb sales promise well.”
For twenty minutes the room hummed with technicalities. One man might support the conversation on alien matters, but on sheep the humblest found a voice: Lewis watched the ring of faces with a sharp delight. The election had made him sick of his fellows—fellows who chattered and wrangled and wallowed in the sentimental. But now every line of these brown faces, the keen blue eyes, the tawny, tangled beards, and the inimitable soft-sounding southern speech, seemed an earnest of a real and strenuous life. He began to find a new savour in existence. The sense of his flat incompetence left him, and he found himself speaking heartily and laughing with zest.
“It’s as I say,” said the herd of the Redswirebead. “I’m getting an auld man and a verra wise ane, and the graund owercome for the world is just ‘Pay no attention.’ Ye’ll has heard how the word cam’ to be. It was Jock Linklater o’ the Caulds wha was glen notice to quit by the laird, and a’ the countryside was vexed to pairt wi’ Jock, for he was a popular character. But about a year after a friend meets him at Gledsmuir merkit as crouse as ever. ‘Lodsake, Jock, man, I thocht ye were awa’,’ says he. ‘No,’ says Jock, ‘no. I’m here as ye see.’ ‘But how did ye manage it?’ he asked. ‘Fine,’ says Jock. ‘They sent me a letter tellin’ me I must gang; but I just payed no attention. Syne they sent me a blue letter frae the lawyer’s, but I payed no attention. Syne the factor cam’ to see me.’ ‘Ay, and what did ye do then, Jock?’ says he. ‘Oh, I payed no attention. Syne the laird cam’ himsel.’ ‘Ay, that would fricht ye,’ he says. ‘No, no a grain,’ said Jock, verra calm. ‘I just payed no attention, and here I am.’”
Lewis laughed, but the rest of the audience suffered no change of feature. The gloaming had darkened, and the little small-paned window was a fretted sheet of dark and lucent blue. Grateful odours of food and drink and tobacco hung in the air, though tar and homespun and the far-carried fragrance of peat fought stoutly for the mastery.
One man fell to telling of a fox-hunt, when he lay on the hill for the night and shot five of the destroyers of his flock before the morning, it was the sign—and the hour—for stories of many kinds—tales of weather and adventure, humorous lowland escapades and dismal mountain realities. Or stranger still, there would come the odd, half-believed legends of the glen, told shamefully yet with the realism of men for whom each word had a power and meaning far above fiction. Lewis listened entranced, marking his interest now by an exclamation, and again by a question.
The herd of Farawa told of the salmon, the king of the Aller salmon, who swam to the head of Aller and then crossed the spit of land to the head of Callowa to meet the king of the Callowa fish. It was a humorous story, and was capped there and then by his cousin of the Dreichill, who told a ghastly tale of a murder in the wilds. Then a lonely man, Simon o’ the Heid o’ the Hope, glorified his powers on a January night when he swung himself on a flood-gate over the Aller while the thing quivered beneath him, and the water roared redly above his thighs.
“And that yett broke when I was three pairts ower, and I went down the river with my feet tangled in the bars and nae room for sweemin’. But I gripped an oak-ritt and stelled mysel’ for an hour till the water knockit the yett to sawdust. It broke baith my ankles, and though I’m a mortal strong man in my arms, thae twisted kitts keepit me helpless. When a man’s feet are broke he has nae strength in his wrist.”
“I know,” said Lewis, with excitement. “I have found the same myself.”
“Where?” asked the man, without rudeness.
“Once on the Skifso when I was after salmon, and once in the Doorab hills above Abjela.”