When night came I accompanied him down the course of the linn and on to the high road. At the last he laid many injunctions upon me, the chief being to take care of our companion in the cave.
"He's a guid man," he said, "but a thochtless. I blame mysel' yet for the crack I gi'ed him on the heid. It seems tae ha'e left him a bit confused. Ye'll tak' care o' him."
When the moment of parting came he took off his bonnet, and gripping me fervently by the hand said:
"I'll be back ere lang, but if I dinna return, I should like ye noo and then to gie a kindly thocht to the memory o' the packman. Maybe I may find a grave under the open sky on the purple moorland; and if that be my lot and ye should be spared for happier days and can fin' the place where I lie, maybe ye'll see that my cairn is no' left withoot a name. But dinna be carvin' ony extravagant eulogy on the stane. Juist put the words 'Hector the packman.' That'll be enough for me--but it's the prood man I wad be, lying in the mools beneath, if ye wad add a line or twa o' Latin juist to let the unborn generations ken that I was a scholar. There are twa bit legends that come ready to my min'; ane is,
"Sciro potestates herbarum usumque medendi
Maluit, et mutas agitare inglorius artes.
'He was skilly in the knowledge o' herbs and o' their healing powers, and wi' nae thocht o' higher glory he liked to practise that quiet art'--that's frae Virgil, as ye will nae doot remember an' of course refers to my salve. But there's anither word frae my auld frien' Horace; it's a fit epitaph for a man like me wha's life has never been what it micht ha'e been:
"... Amphora coepit
Institui: currente rota cur urceus exit?
'The potter was minded to make a bonnie vessel; why does naething but a botchery come frae the running wheel?'"
Before I could make a fitting reply he dropped my hand and left me. I stood in the dusk watching him go. He glided into the shadows and soon he had become as incorporeal as one of them. With a sense of desolation upon me, I made for the field where my night's task awaited me, and laboured steadily till the dawn.
As I made my way back to the cave I could not help wondering where Hector might be.