"There was never the beat of him," said the shoemaker.
"But good, good at heart, man! With a better chance of fortune he might be holding his head to-day as high as the best of them." The drovers looked at each other with a meaning that was not for the eyes of the old man; but he had small chance of seeing it, for he was throng at his fine pair of shoes.
"He had a name for many arts," said the man with coarse hose, "but they were not the arts that give a lad settlement and put money in his purse."
"The hot young head, man! He would have cured," said the old man, sewing hard. "Think of it," said he: "was ever a more humoursome fellow to walk a glen with? His songs, his stories, his fast jump at one's meaning, and his trick of leaving all about him in a good key with themselves and him. Did ever one ask a Saxon shilling from his purse that it was not a cheery gift if the purse held it?"
"True, indeed!" said the drovers, eating bannocks and cheese.
"'Twixt heaven and hell," said the fellow with the coarse hose, "is but a spang. It's so easy for some folk to deserve the one gate--so many their gifts--that the cock-sureness leaves them careless, and they wander into the wrong place."
"You were speaking?" said Baldi, a little angry, though he heard but half.
"I said thy son was a fellow of many gifts," answered the drover, in a confusion.
"He had no unfriends that I ken of," said the old man, busy at the shoes; "young or old, man or woman."
"Especially woman," put in another drover, wrinkling at the eyes.
"I've had five sons: three in the King's service, and one in the Low-country; here's my young wanderer, and he was--he is--the jewel of them all!"
"I heard of him and from him this very day," said Baldi, busy at the brogues, white and drawn at the face and shaking at the lips. "I have worked at these shoes since morning, and little time is there to put bye on them, for at Inneraora town must they be before breakfast. Solomon Carrier, passing at three, gives me a cry and takes them."
"Fine indeed; the finest of the fine! They're for a particular one."
"No, man; a particular one, and were they not his in time a sorry man was I. They're the best Baldi Crom ever put leather on."
Till the turn of the night the drovers slept in their plaids, their cattle steaming out-by in the dark, munching the coarse grass selvedge, breathing heavy. And when the men and their beasts went in the darkness of the morning, Baldi Crom was still throng at his fine pair of shoes.