86 GAMEKEEPERS AND GILLIES 



flexible stoicism. Sunt lacrymce rerum it was mournful 

 to see one, once so stalwart and indefatigable, reduced to 

 a cripple's stroll and chair ; but he suffered no complaint 

 to vex his visitors, only saying patiently, with a shake of 

 his good gray head, ' We must just submit.' While life 

 endures, the scent of a velveteen coat will always bring 

 back to me the memory of my earliest lessons in angling, 

 when, encircled by John Pace's guiding arms, I let the 

 baited hook swim down the burn, and pulled out trout of 

 a lustre and iridescence unknown in these latter days. 



It is a far cry from gray Galloway to brown Caithness ; 

 yet is the distance not so great as to account for the con- 

 trast in air, in light, in landscape, in people. It is like 

 passing to a different realm. ' Brown Caithness ' I have 

 called it; for although the land breaks into blossom at 

 midsummer, golden whin, purple bell-heather, bluebells, 

 stitchwort, fragrant moor orchis, and the like, I know it 

 best before whiter has relaxed its grip, when the earliest 

 salmon ascend meandering Thurso. Brown is then the 

 dominant tone in this eerie land, an impression confirmed 

 by the following jotting in my notebook : ' Brown heather, 

 brown peats, brown stone houses ; even the roofs most 

 of them are of brown flags ; though the great whisky 

 distillery of Gerston strikes a noisier key with its covering 

 of purple Welsh slate. The ploughed land is brown 

 too, and the wan pastures nearer pale-brown than green. 

 Through the great plain winds a sullen river, whose 

 waters, though snow-fed, are brown also. Its course is 

 silent, save where, at long intervals, brown barriers of rock 

 oppose and work it into sudden roar of wrath.' 



In this brown setting moves a tall, lithe figure clad in 



