At this point their ways parted.  The minister held on up the valley of the Ken, curving over the moorland towards the farm of Drumquhat.  He went more leisurely now that he had broken the back of his morning’s walk.  The larks sprang upward from his feet, and their songs were the expression of an innocent gladness like that which filled his own heart.

He climbed the high stone dykes as they came in his way, sometimes crossing his legs and sitting a while on the top with a sort of boyish freedom in his heart as though he too were off for a holiday—­a feeling born in part of the breezy uplands and the wide spaces of the sky.  On his right hand was the dark mass of the Hanging Shaw, where it began to feather down to the Black Water, which rushed along in the shadow to meet the broad and equable waters of the Ken.

As the minister came to one of these dykes, treading softly on a noiseless cushion of heather and moss, he put his foot on a projecting stone and vaulted over with one hand lightly laid on the top stone.  He alighted with a sudden bound of the heart, for he had nearly leapt on the top of a boy, who lay prone on his face, deeply studying a book.  The boy sprang up, startled by the minister’s unexpected entrance into his wide world of air, empty of all but the muirfowls’ cries.

For a few moments they remained staring at each other—­tall, well-attired minister and rough-coated herdboy.

“You are diligent,” at last said the minister, looking out of his dark eyes into the blue wondering orbs which met his so squarely and honestly.  “What is that you are reading?”

“Shakespeare, sir,” said the boy, not without some fear in telling the minister that he was reading the works of the man who was known among many of the Cameronians as “nocht but the greatest of the play-actors.”

But the minister was placable and interested.  He recognised the face as that of the boy who came to church on various occasions; but with whom he had found it so difficult to come to speech.

“How many plays of Shakespeare have you read?” queried the minister again.

“Them a’—­mony a time,” said the boy.  The minister marvelled still more.  “But ye’ll no’ tell my gran’mither?” said the boy beseechingly, putting the minister upon his honour.

Mr. Cameron hesitated for a moment, and then said—­

“I will not tell your grandmother unless you are doing something worse than reading Shakespeare, my boy.  You are from Drumquhat, I think,” he continued.  “What are you doing here?”

The boy blushed, and hung his head.

“Cutting thistles,” he said.

The minister laughed and looked about.  On one hand there was a mown swathe of thistles, on the other they still grew luxuriantly all down the slope to the burnside.

“I suppose you are cutting down the thistles in Shakespeare?  There are a good many of them,” he said; “but is that what your master keeps you for?”