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had previously asked W. if he had heard whether any of the bones 
were broken or lost, and his answer was, “No, they were inside 
the clothes, and all there, so he had been told.” 
He told us that the dog had been carried away after the inquest 
by some relation, his father had told him, but whither he knew 
not. 
How it came to pass that the body was discovered was, that it 
was “sheep-getherin’ time, and Mounsey’ lads war off latin’ woolled 
uns on t’ high fells,” so H. thought. 
The Shepherds’ Meeting on Helvellyn is fixed by law, as 
unalterable as the laws of the Medes and Persians, for the first 
Monday after the 2oth of July, and this would account for the 
fact of the shepherds going up to the high fells, and scouring the 
recesses of that cove and the dark skirts of the screes that sweep 
down to the Red Tarn. 
We had been well repaid for our Patterdale excursion, and a 
week or two later, the joint story of the Patterdale men was con- 
firmed by one of the oldest living Helvellyn shepherds, who had 
always believed that the dog was “a laal wiry-haired tarrier dog, 
that was varra poor when runned to bay.” He scouted the idea 
of her having lived upon her master, and had known, ‘“‘a gay good 
lock o’ years sen,” a collie that remained till it was pined almost 
to death by the side of her master’s body, near Wanthwaite Crags 
on Helvellyn, and had then come home; and he argued that if, 
rather than feed upon its master, the collie came back, the “laal 
tarrier,” had it not chanced upon a carrion sheep, would probably 
also have returned, for it would “ken” its way, as Gough frequently 
went from Patterdale to Wythburn, and it had only got to go down 
by the ghyll from the Tarn to find its road to the valley. ‘‘Fwoaks 
as thinks that a dog would mell of its maister’s body knas nowt 0’ 
t’ natur o’ sec like things.” So Willy W. said, as he knocked the 
ashes out of his pipe with great emphasis, and stowed it away with 
a look of pity and disgust: “They might as weel talk of a barn 
eatin’ its deead fadder or mudder”—and there the matter ended. 
I was glad of old Willy’s word, for if any man knew dogs or 
dog-nature he did, and it was well to haye some weight of opinion 
