Fantasy fiction; Poetry; Science fiction; Short stories
He was a man of something over middle size, but with a stoop forward
that shortened him to something beneath it. His dress was ragged
homespun, the cast-off clothes of some sportsman, and in his arms he
bore a bundle of sticks and heather-roots which marked his calling. I
knew him for a tramp who long had wandered in the place, but I could
not account for the whole-voiced shout of greeting which met him as he
stalked down the path. He lifted his eyes and looked solemnly and long
at the scene. Then something of delight came into his eye, his face
relaxed, and flinging down his burden he stripped his coat and came
toward us.
"Come on, Yeddie, ye're sair needed," said the shepherd, and I watched
with amazement this grizzled, crooked man seize a sheep by the fleece
and drag it to the water. Then he was in the midst, stepping warily,
now up, now down the channel, but always nearing the farther bank. At
last with a final struggle he landed his charge, and turned to journey
back. Fifteen times did he cross that water, and at the end his mean
figure had wholly changed. For now he was straighter and stronger, his
eye flashed, and his voice, as he cried out to the drovers, had in it a
tone of command. I marvelled at the transformation; and when at length
he had donned once more his ragged coat and shouldered his bundle, I
asked the shepherd his name.
"They ca' him Adam Logan," said my friend, his face still bright with
excitement, "but maist folk ca' him 'Streams o' Water.'"
"Ay," said I, "and why 'Streams of Water'?"
"Juist for the reason ye see," said he.
Now I knew the shepherd's way, and I held my peace, for it was clear
that his mind was revolving other matters, concerned most probably with
the high subject of the morrow's prices. But in a little, as we
crossed the moor toward his dwelling, his thoughts relaxed and he
remembered my question. So he answered me thus:
"Oh, ay; as ye were sayin', he's a queer man Yeddie-aye been; guid kens
whaur he cam frae first, for he's been trampin' the countryside since
ever I mind, and that's no yesterday. He maun be sixty year, and yet
he's as fresh as ever. If onything, he's a thocht dafter in his
ongaein's, mair silent-like. But ye'll hae heard tell o' him afore?"
I owned ignorance.
"Tut," said he, "ye ken nocht. But Yeddie had aye a queer crakin' for
waters. He never gangs on the road. Wi' him it's juist up yae glen
and doon anither and aye keepin' by the burn-side. He kens every water
i' the warld, every bit sheuch and burnie frae Gallowa' to Berwick.
And then he kens the way o' spates the best I ever seen, and I've heard
tell o' him fordin' waters when nae ither thing could leeve i' them.
He can weyse and wark his road sae cunnin'ly on the stanes that the
roughest flood, if it's no juist fair ower his heid, canna upset him.
Mony a sheep has he saved to me, and it's mony a guid drove wad never
hae won to Gledsmuir market but for Yeddie."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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