One man fell to telling of a fox-hunt, when he lay on the hill for the night and shot five of the destroyers of his flock before the morning, it was the sign—­and the hour—­for stories of many kinds—­tales of weather and adventure, humorous lowland escapades and dismal mountain realities.  Or stranger still, there would come the odd, half-believed legends of the glen, told shamefully yet with the realism of men for whom each word had a power and meaning far above fiction.  Lewis listened entranced, marking his interest now by an exclamation, and again by a question.

The herd of Farawa told of the salmon, the king of the Aller salmon, who swam to the head of Aller and then crossed the spit of land to the head of Callowa to meet the king of the Callowa fish.  It was a humorous story, and was capped there and then by his cousin of the Dreichill, who told a ghastly tale of a murder in the wilds.  Then a lonely man, Simon o’ the Heid o’ the Hope, glorified his powers on a January night when he swung himself on a flood-gate over the Aller while the thing quivered beneath him, and the water roared redly above his thighs.

“And that yett broke when I was three pairts ower, and I went down the river with my feet tangled in the bars and nae room for sweemin’.  But I gripped an oak-ritt and stelled mysel’ for an hour till the water knockit the yett to sawdust.  It broke baith my ankles, and though I’m a mortal strong man in my arms, thae twisted kitts keepit me helpless.  When a man’s feet are broke he has nae strength in his wrist.”

“I know,” said Lewis, with excitement.  “I have found the same myself.”

“Where?” asked the man, without rudeness.

“Once on the Skifso when I was after salmon, and once in the Doorab hills above Abjela.”

“Were ye sick when they rescued ye?  I was.  I had twae muscles sprung on my arm, but that was naething to the retching and dizziness when they laid me on the heather.  Jock Jeffrey was bending ower me, and though he wasna touching me I began to suffocate, and yet I was ower weak to cry out and had to thole it.”

“I know.  If you hang up in the void for a little and get the feeling of great space burned on your mind, you nearly die of choking when you are pulled up.  Fancy you knowing about that.”

“Have you suffered it, Maister Lewie?” said the man.

“Once.  There was a gully in the Doorabs just like the Scarts o’ the Muneraw, only twenty times deeper, and there was a bridge of tree-trunks bound with ropes across it.  We all got over except one mule and a couple of men.  They were just getting off when a trunk slipped and dangled down into the abyss with one end held up by the ropes.  The poor animal went plumb to the bottom; we heard it first thud on a jag of rock and then, an age after, splash in the water.  One of the men went with it, but the other got his legs caught between the ropes and the tree and managed to hang on.  The poor beggar was helpless with fright; and he squealed—­great heavens! how he did squeal!”