"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. A look of distress crossed his face. "Na, na," he said. "Something far better." He bent towards his open pack and rummaged among its contents, and as he did so I observed--what hitherto had escaped my notice--that he had a wooden leg. His right knee was bent at an angle and his foot was doubled up behind his thigh, as though his knee-joint had been fixed in that position by disease or injury; and the bend of his knee was fixed in the bucket of a wooden stump. "Here they are," he said, and he held up a bundle of small paper-covered books tied together with a tape. "Here they are. Now can ye no’ see the degradation it is for a man like me to hawk sic trash aboot the country." I took the bundle and, looking at the title-page of the uppermost book, read _The Lovers’ Dream-Book, being a True and Reliable Interpretation of Dreams by Joseph the Seer_. I looked at the second. It was _The Farmer’s Almanac_, and the third was _The Wife of Wigtown_. "They’re what we ca’ chap-books," he said. "I sell them at a penny the piece, but they’re awfu’ rubbish. Now my ambition is to improve the taste in letters o’ the country folk. For mony a year it has been my hope and intention to lay mysel’ on and produce a _magnum opus_. Now hoo dae ye think this would look on a title page?--’Selections from Odes of Horace done into braid Scots by Hector the Packman,’ or ’The Wisdom of Virgil on Bees and Bee-keeping by the same author.’ Man, I’m thinkin’, for a work like that, I micht get a doctorate frae ane o’ the Universities. Ay, I maun lay masel’ on when next winter comes." He rummaged once more among the contents of his pack, and picked out a pot, the mouth of which was covered with a piece of parchment. "You’ll ha’e heard tell o’ my magical salve; an infallible cure for boils or blains in man or beast--it cures as it draws: a soothing balm for burnt fingers: and a cream that confers upon a lassie’s cheek the tender saftness o’ the rose." He removed the parchment and exhibited the ointment. With his forefinger he transferred a piece of the unguent to the back of his left hand and rubbed it in. In a moment he held his hand up to me--"Did ye ever see onything like that? Every particle o’ it is gone. Think o’ the benefit that sic’ a salve maun confer upon the human epiderm. I sent the King a pot last year up to London, but I’m thinkin’ it has miscarried, for I ha’e never heard frae him yet. Man, there’s a widda woman in Locharbriggs: she’s maybe thirty-five, but to look at her you would say she was a lassie o’ eighteen. What has done it? Hector’s magical salve! Her complexion is by-ordinar. Nae doot she was bonnie