Sooner or later those who cross boundaries clash with those who defend
boundaries: and those who adventure offend those who seek security; but
it was a long time before I came face to face with Old Man Howieson.

This was the way of it: Well back of Howieson's buildings and reaching
upward upon the face of the hill stretches a long and narrow field, a
kind of barren back pasture with boulders in it, and gnarly hawthorn
trees, and a stunted wild apple or so. A stone fence runs down one side
of the cleared land and above it rises the hill. It is like a great
trough or ravine which upon still spring evenings gathers in all the
varied odours of Old Howieson's farm and orchard and brings them down to
me as I sit in the field below. I need no book then, nor sight of the
distant town, nor song of birds, for I have a singular and incomparable
album of the good odours of the hill. This is one reason why I chose
this particular spot in the fields for my own, and it has given me a
secret name for the place which I will not here disclose. If ever you
should come this way in May, my friend, I might take you there of an
evening, but could warrant you no joy of it that you yourself could not
take. But you need not come here, or go there, but stop where you are at
this moment, and I here assure you that if you look up, and look in,
you, also, will see something of the glory of the world.

One evening I had been upon the hill to seek again the pattern and
dimensions of my tabernacle, and to receive anew the tables of the Jaw.
I had crossed Old Howieson's field so often that I had almost forgotten
it was not my own. It was indeed mine by the same inalienable right that
it belonged to the crows that flew across it, or to the partridges that
nested in its coverts, or the woodchucks that lived in its walls, or the
squirrels in its chestnut trees. It was mine by the final test of all
possession--that I could use it.