It opens with a picture of the author toiling across a bare common in a hot summer day, and reaching at last a ruined hut surrounded with tall trees, where he meets by appointment with a hale old man, with an iron-pointed staff lying beside him. Then follows a retrospective account of their first acquaintance--formed, it seems, when the author was at a village school; and his aged friend occupied "one room,--the fifth part of a house" in the neighbourhood. After this, we have the history of this reverend person at no small length. He was born, we are happy to find, in Scotland--among the hills of Athol; and his mother, after his father's death, married the parish schoolmaster--so that he was taught his letters betimes: But then, as it is here set forth with much solemnity, From his sixth year, the boy, of whom I speak, In summer, tended cattle on the hills. And again, a few pages after, that there may be no risk of mistake as to a point of such essential importance-- From early childhood, even, as hath been said, From his _sixth year_, he had been sent abroad, _In summer_, to tend herds: Such was his task! In the course of this occupation, it is next recorded, that he acquired such a taste for rural scenery and open air, that when he was sent to teach a school in a neighbouring village, he found it "a misery to him," and determined to embrace the more romantic occupation of a Pedlar--or, as Mr. Wordsworth more musically expresses it, A vagrant merchant bent beneath his load; --and in the course of his peregrinations had acquired a very large acquaintance, which, after he had given up dealing, he frequently took a summer ramble to visit. The author, on coming up to this interesting personage, finds him sitting with his eyes half shut;--and, not being quite sure whether he's asleep or awake, stands "some minutes space" in silence beside him. "At length," says he, with his own delightful simplicity-- At length I hailed him--_seeing that his hat Was moist_ with water-drops, as if the brim Had newly scooped a running stream!-- --"'Tis," said I, "a burning day; My lips are parched with thirst;--but you, I guess, Have somewhere found relief." Upon this, the benevolent old man points him out a well in a corner, to which the author repairs; and, after minutely describing its situation, beyond a broken wall, and between two alders that "grew in a cold damp nook," he thus faithfully chronicles the process of his return-- My thirst I slaked--and from the cheerless spot Withdrawing, straightway to the shade returned, Where sate the old man on the cottage bench.