I chose a place in a field just below Old Howieson’s farm, where there is a thorn-apple tree to sit or lie under.  From the thorn-apple tree, by turning my head in one direction, I can look up at the crown of the hill with its green hood of oaks and maples and chestnuts, and high above it I can see the clouds floating in the deep sky, or, if I turn my head the other way, for I am a kind of monarch there on the hill and command the world to delight me, I can look off across the pleasant valley with its spreading fields and farmsteads set about with trees, and the town slumbering by the riverside.  I come often with a little book in one pocket to read from, and a little book in the other to write in, but I rarely use either the one or the other, for there is far too much to see and think about.

From this spot I make excursions round about, and have had many strange and interesting adventures:  and now find thoughts of mine, like lichens, upon all the boulders and old walls and oak trees of that hillside.  Sometimes I climb to the top of the hill.  If I am in a leisurely mood I walk lawfully around Old Howieson’s farm by a kind of wood lane that leads to the summit, but often I cross his walls, all regardless of his trespass signs, and go that way to the top.

[Illustration:  It was on one of these lawless excursions in Old Howieson’s field that I first saw that strange old fellow]

It was on one of these lawless excursions in Old Howieson’s field that I first saw that strange old fellow who is known hereabout as the Herbman.  I came upon him so suddenly that I stopped short, curiously startled, as one is startled at finding anything human that seems less than human.  He was kneeling there among the low verdure of a shallow valley, and looked like an old gray rock or some prehistoric animal.  I stopped to look at him, but he paid no heed, and seemed only to shrink into himself as though, if he kept silent, he might be taken for stock or stone.  I addressed him but he made no answer.  I went nearer, with a sensation of uncanny wonder; but he did not so much as glance up at me, though he knew I was there.  His old brown basket was near him and the cane beside it.  He was gathering pennyroyal.

“Another man who is taking an unexpected crop from Old Howieson’s acres,” I thought to myself.

I watched him for some moments, quite still, as one might watch a turtle or a woodchuck—­and left him there.

Since then I have heard something about him, and seen him once or twice.  A strange old man, a wanderer upon the face of the fragrant earth.  Spring and summer he wears always an old overcoat, and carries a basket with double covers, very much worn and brown with usage.  His cane is of hickory with a crooked root for a handle, this also shiny with age.  He gathers bitter-bark, tansy; ginseng, calamus, smartweed, and slippery elm, and from along old fences and barnyards, catnip and boneset, I suppose he lives somewhere,