The boy looked up quickly at this imputation on his honesty.

“I’m on piecework,” he said, with a kind of defiance in his tone.

“On piecework?” asked the minister, perplexed; “how is that?”

“Weel, sir, it’s this way, ye see.  Gran’faither used to pay me a penny an hour for cuttin’ the thistles.  He did that till he said I was the slowest worker ever he had, an’ that by the time that I was done wi’ ae side o’ the field, the ither was ready to begin owre again.  I said that I was quite willin’ to begin again, but he said that to sit doon wi’ a book and cut as far roon’ ye as the hook could reach, was no’ the kind o’ wark that he had been accustomed to on the farm o’ Drumquhat.  So he took me off working by time and put me on piecework.  I dinna get as muckle siller, but I like it juist as weel.  So I can work and read time aboot.”

“But how do you know how the time goes?” asked the minister, for watches were not at that date to be found in the pockets of herdboys on the Galloway hills.

The boy pointed to a peeled willow-wand which was stuck in the ground, with a rough circle drawn round it.

“I made that sun-dial.  Rab Affleck showed me,” he said simply, without any of the pride of genius.

“And are ye sure that the working hour is always the same length as the reading time?” asked the minister.

Walter looked up with a bright twinkle in his eye.

“Whiles when I’m workin’ at the thistles, she may get a bit kick forrit,” he said.

The minister laughed a low, mellow laugh.  Then he quoted a text, as was customary with him: 

“’And Hezekiah said, It is a light thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees in the dial of Ahaz.’”

The minister and Walter sat for a long time in the heat of the noonday regarding one another with undisguised interest.  They were in the midst of a plain of moorland, over which a haze of heat hung like a diaphanous veil.  Over the edge there appeared, like a plain of blue mist, the strath, with the whitewashed farmhouses glimmering up like patches of snow on a March hillside.  The minister came down from the dyke and sat beside the boy on the heather clumps.

“You are a herd, you tell me.  Well, so am I—­I am a shepherd of men, though unworthy of such a charge,” he added.

Walter looked for further light.

“Did you ever hear,” continued Mr. Cameron, looking away over the valley, “of One who went about, almost barefoot like you, over rocky roads and up and down hillsides?”

“Ye needna tell me—­I ken His name,” said Walter reverently.

“Well,” continued the minister, “would you not like to be a herd like Him, and look after men and not sheep?”

“Sheep need to be lookit after as weel,” said Walter.

“But sheep have no souls to be saved!” said Richard Cameron.

“Dowgs hae!” asserted Walter stoutly.

“What makes you say so?” said the minister indulgently.  He was out for a holiday.