a hole in a log, or the limb of a tree, but no one knows where it is, or how he dries or cures his findings.  No one knows his name:  perhaps he has forgotten it himself.  A name is no great matter anyway.  He is called simply the Herbman.  He drifts into our valley in the spring, is seen here and there on the hills or in the fields, like the crows or the blackbirds, and disappears in the fall with the robins and the maple leaves.  Perhaps he is one of those favoured souls to whom life is all spring and summer.

The age has passed him by, and except for certain furtive old women, few care now for his sovereign remedies.

I met him once in the town road, and he stopped humbly without lifting his eyes, and opening his basket let out into the air such a fragrance of ancient simples as I never smelled before.  He said nothing at all; but took out dry bundles of catnip, sassafras, slippery elm, to show me.  He had also pennyroyal for healing teas, and calamus and bitter-bark for miseries.  I selected a choice assortment of his wares to take home to Harriet, but could get him to name no price.  He took what I gave without objection and without thanks, and went his way.  A true man of the hills.

As I said, I came often to the field below Old Howieson’s farm.  I think the old man saw me coming and going, for the road winds along the side of the hill within sight of his house, skirts a bit of wood, and with an unexpected turn comes out triumphantly to the top of the ridge beyond.

At the turn of the road I always disappeared, for I crossed the wall into the field below Old Howieson’s farm, and mysteriously failed to appear to the watchful eye upon the ridge beyond.  What could be more provoking or suspicious!  To go in at one end of a well-travelled road and not to come out in the regular and expected way at the other!  Or to be suspected of not being deferential toward trespass signs, or observant of closed ways!  How disturbing to all those who dwell tremulously within posted enclosures of whatever sort, or those who base their sense of possession upon stumped paper, or take their God from a book.  Men have been crucified for less.

Sooner or later those who cross boundaries clash with those who defend boundaries:  and those who adventure offend those who seek security; but it was a long time before I came face to face with Old Man Howieson.

This was the way of it:  Well back of Howieson’s buildings and reaching upward upon the face of the hill stretches a long and narrow field, a kind of barren back pasture with boulders in it, and gnarly hawthorn trees, and a stunted wild apple or so.  A stone fence runs down one side of the cleared land and above it rises the hill.  It is like a great trough or ravine which upon still spring evenings gathers in all the varied odours of Old Howieson’s farm and orchard and brings them down to me as I sit in the field below.  I need no book then, nor sight