From Fox's Earth 



one who asked if he had lifted cattle. It might 

 be so. He was equal to filling a basket out of 

 any water, only the glen is narrow at the mouth, 

 and I had seen no boy. There was no boast- 

 fulness, no special desire that I should think that 

 he was telling the truth ; rather, perhaps, to the 

 contrary. Therein is the peculiar moral com- 

 plexion. We got to know each other better ; and 

 he would have gone many miles to show me good 

 water. 



The names of the tributaries have a meaning. 

 Like that of the main stream, these were given 

 by an imaginative folk. They are a picture, a 

 tale in miniature. "Quair" means green. "Lyne," 

 the stream of linns or pools. " Manor," the 

 stream of the pebbly channel. This was the 

 Leithen, which tells something of the rudeness. 



The stream dominates as in the Tweed. It is 

 not so in the north. One talks of going up the 

 Leithen. The character gives its name to the 

 glen. It is the stream that has linns, or is stony. 

 In the remoter feeders the order is reversed. 

 The stream is lost, or is only part. The ways 

 that wander among the hills are known as 

 " hopes"; it is a border name, or mainly so. Many 

 of these hopes are nameless. I tried to name 

 some of them according to what I found there, 

 but modern imagination is of little use. Often 

 nothing grew higher than the ferns. Here and 

 there a patch of wood darkened the slope. In 



