"You'll be gaun the Greenholm way, master?" said the stranger, deferentially.
"I am. But no farther than the village for the night."
"Weel, master, I'm just gaun the same gate: and aiblins you winna be offended though a gaberlunzie should jog at your heels?"
Eustace looked at him, with a complacent smile, without replying to the question; but the smile seemed to be intended and accepted as a negative reply. They went on together, side by side.
"It's a braw and bonnie nicht," said the beggar, surveying the surrounding scenery with a gratified eye, and pointing here and there with his staff. "A braw May nicht indeed. Look to the lift--look to the earth--there's beauty owre a'. See--the parting beams o' the sun linger on the bald, rocky brow o' yon hill, like a crown o' glory, while a' the dell aneath is losing itsel' in the shadow, and the haze is rising that will soon ha'e the appearance o' a loch. You hear the sweet sangs o' the birds, the sough o' the westland wind, and the everlasting plash o' yon burnie that gushes owre its linn. The gowden clouds are sailing solemnly as if to strains o' angel-music. How pleasant to wander, free as air, amang Nature's charms!"
"It is so," said Eustace, surprised at the elevation of the beggar's tone. "But life passes through gloom and storm as well as through sunshine. We have our flowery May, and we have our wintry December. In some deep cleugh among the hills patches of last December's snow will still be lying."
"Ay, truly," returned the mendicant, glancing keenly at the youth. "And, if I may presume, you seem to me, frae your words, to ha'e borne the brunt o' a stormy fortune, though you're o' gentle rank, and in the morning o' life, and no a grey carle like me, wha has warsled wi' the warld sae lang an' sair."
"No one, whatsoever his station, is exempt from the frowns of fickle Fortune," said Eustace. "In sooth, the more exalted the station, the more exposed is it to adverse blasts."
"True, master, true," responded the gaberlunzie. "The whirlwind, or the levin'-bolt, that rives and scatters in flinders the sturdy oak o' a hunder years, spares the wee bush that grows lowly at its root."
"But how came you, who must have been a man of mettle in your prime, to take to this wandering life?" questioned Eustace. "The world must have gone ill with you."