Sometimes as I walked I stumbled--tears blinding me. My life was a barren waste--my heart a desolation. Nothing mattered--Mary was dead. So, in a maze of torturing thoughts I journeyed till, some four days after leaving Daldowie--I have no memory of the precise time--I gathered from a passer-by that I was only seven miles from Dumfries. Before me, huddled together on the left side of the road, was a cluster of cottages. From their roofs steel-blue clouds of smoke were rising. The atmosphere was one of quiet peace, and with my eyes set upon the brown road before me I plodded wearily on. The highway was bordered on each side by a low hedge, when suddenly that on my right hand came to an end and gave place to a green tongue of grassy lawn, which divided the road upon which I was walking from another that swept away to the right. When I came abreast of this grassy promontory, I saw that it was occupied by a man. He sat under the shade of a beech tree; a pipe was between his lips and in his left hand he held a little leather-covered book. An open pack lay beside him. The sound of my footsteps caught his ear and he turned towards me and looked at me with a pair of cold grey eyes.
"A very good day to you," he said, and I halted to return his salutation. "I wonder if you can help me," he continued. "Ha'e you the Latin?" The unexpected nature of the question startled me, awaking me from my torpor, and I asked him to repeat himself. "It's this wey," he said: "this wee bookie is the work o' a Latin poet ca'd Horace, a quaint chiel, but ane o' my familiars. Now I was juist passin' a pleasant half-'oor wi' him, and I ha'e come across a line or twa that I canna get the hang o' ava. But if ye ha'ena the Latin, ye'll no' be able to help me."
"Maybe I can help," I answered, and walking towards him I seated myself by his side.
"It's this bit," he said, laying his forefinger on the place. I took the little volume, and, after pausing for a moment to pick up some knowledge of the context, I suggested a rendering.
"Dod, man," he said, "ye've got it. That mak's sense, and is nae doot what Horace had in his heid. Let's hear a bit mair o't." I proceeded to translate a little more when he stopped me saying, "No, no, let's ha'e the Latin first; and then I'll be better able to follow ye."
With memories of Balliol swelling within me, I proceeded to do as he bade me. I read to the end of the ode and was about to translate it when he broke in:
"I see," he said, "you're an Oxford man; sic' pronunciation never fell frae the lips o' ane o' Geordie Buchanan's school."
I felt my disguise drop from me before the piercing intuition of this strange wayfarer and for a moment I was at a loss how to protect myself. "Possibly," I said, "my pronunciation may be of the Oxford school, but, be that as it may, you surprise me. One hardly expects to come across a packman who reads the classics."
"No," he said, "there is only ae Hector the packman, and that's me. Ever since I took to the road I have aye carried a volume o' Horace in my pack. Mony a time I ha'e found comfort in his philosophy. I am only a packman, but I ha'e ambitions. Can ye guess the greatest o' them?"
"To own a shop in Dumfries," I said.