"An undertaker," exclaimed his listener, unconsciously pushing back his chair, shocked at the gruesome humour. Besides, the man was looking at him with something like a professional eye, as if making an estimate of time, and space.
"Aye," responded he of the apostolic claim, "I'm an undertaker—but times is dull. I was an undertaker ten year in Lockerby, but I left there lang syne. I had ae fine customer, the bailie; he had eleven o' a family. But I lost his trade. The bailie was sick—an' my laddie, wee Sandy, was aye plaguin' me for a sled. I tell't him I'd get him ane when I had mair siller. Weel, wee Sandy was aye rinnin' ower to the hoose an' askin' aboot the bailie. 'Twas nat'ral eneuch; the laddie meant nae harm, but he wanted his sled afore the snaw was gone. Ony way, they tuk offense."
"Did he get his sled?" asked Mr. Blake mechanically, staring at the man.
"Na, poor wee Sandy never got his sled. I had juist ae ither customer ye micht ca' guid. He was deein' o' consumption, an' I took guid care o' Sandy's sympathy. There was no askin' aboot him, mind ye. But there was a mean man i' the business, wha was never meant to be an undertaker. His name was Creighton, Tom Creighton, an' what dae ye think Tom did, to get his trade?"
"I don't know," said Mr. Blake, rising to depart.
"Weel, I'll tell ye. Twa days afore he died, Tom Creighton tuk him oot for a drive—he was awfu' fair to his face an' he got around him; tell't him at the gate that he hoped to gie him anither drive later on. Of course, he got his trade—he had to gie him his trade after that. But I wadna stoop to sic like tricks for nae man's trade. So I left Lockerby an' came here—I'm the only yin here."
Mr. Blake was glad to escape his garrulous acquaintance, and had heard enough of his sombre annals. He walked out, and wandered far—o'er moor and fen, o'er hill and valley, by many an unforgotten path, he wandered—past his boyhood's school, where he heard again the laughing shout that seemed scarcely to have died away from lips now silent long.
He loitered again by the babbling stream which had been the fishing-ground of boyhood, and lay once more on mossy beds, and bathed his face in the same friendly tide. He gazed far up into the leafy trees and saw the very nooks where boyhood's form had rested; again he saw the sun gleam on the happy heads of those who gambolled far beneath.
He drank his fill of the long yesterday, thirsty still. No familiar face, no voice of long ago, had he seen or heard; and he tasted that unreasoning pain which comes to the man who knows, and is wounded by the truth, that his native heath is reconciled to his exile, careless of his loneliness, indifferent to bid it cease.
When he returned to the hospitable inn, he was as one seeking rest, and finding none. He sat, reflective, while memory bathed the soul of love with tears. Presently the sound of voices floated out from an adjoining room. He listened eagerly, for one was evidently the voice of a returned wanderer like himself. The other was that of a man who had never wandered from his native spot. The home-keeper's tongue had still its mother-Scotch, but his companion had been cured.