The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 20Stevenson, Robert Louis
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The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 20
Stevenson, Robert Louis
French -- England -- Fiction; Prisoners of war -- Fiction
"I envy you," said he. "I have jogged many miles of it myself when I was
younger. My youth lies buried about here under every heather-bush, like
the soul of the licentiate Lucius. But you should have a guide. The
pleasure of this country is much in the legends, which grow as plentiful
as blackberries." And directing my attention to a little fragment of a
broken wall no greater than a tombstone, he told me, for an example, a
story of its earlier inhabitants. Years after it chanced that I was one
day diverting myself with a Waverley Novel, when what should I come upon
but the identical narrative of my green-coated gentleman upon the moors!
In a moment the scene, the tones of his voice, his northern accent, and
the very aspect of the earth and sky and temperature of the weather,
flashed back into my mind with the reality of dreams. The unknown in the
green coat had been the Great Unknown! I had met Scott; I had heard a
story from his lips; I should have been able to write, to claim
acquaintance, to tell him that his legend still tingled in my ears. But
the discovery came too late, and the great man had already succumbed
under the load of his honours and misfortunes.
Presently, after giving us a cigar apiece, Scott bade us farewell and
disappeared with his daughter over the hills. And when I applied to Sim
for information, his answer of "The Shirra, man! A'body kens the
Shirra!" told me, unfortunately, nothing.
A more considerable adventure falls to be related. We were now near the
border. We had travelled for long upon the track beaten and browsed by a
million herds, our predecessors, and had seen no vestige of that traffic
which had created it. It was early in the morning when we at last
perceived, drawing near to the drove-road, but still at a distance of
about half a league, a second caravan, similar to but larger than our
own. The liveliest excitement was at once exhibited by both my comrades.
They climbed hillocks, they studied the approaching drove from under
their hand, they consulted each other with an appearance of alarm that
seemed to me extraordinary. I had learned by this time that their
stand-off manners implied, at least, no active enmity; and I made bold
to ask them what was wrong.
"Bad yins," was Sim's emphatic answer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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