194 The Mountain Sheep 



mountains. We had placed our sheep behind a 

 little rise along the summit, and between this and 

 ourselves some three hundred yards still inter- 

 vened. We were, of course, much above where 

 any trees grew, and the ground was of that stony 

 sort with short growth and no great rocks immedi- 

 ately near; a high, lumpy pasture of mounds and 

 hollows, wet with snows but lately melted, hailed 

 upon often, rained on but seldom. Lower down, 

 this pasture country (which made the top of all 

 but the highest and severest mountains) fell away 

 in descents of gravel and sheer plunges of rock. 

 To get closer to our sheep we now discovered we 

 must go down some of this hill we had just come 

 up ; they were on the watch, but were fortunately 

 watching the wrong place, and we all sat down 

 in happy pride for a consultation. The other 

 side of the hill had turned out suddenly to be a 

 precipice, a regular jumping-off one, that went 

 a long way and ended in a crumble of shifting 

 stones, and then took a jump or two more and so 

 reached the water at the distant bottom. This 

 side was our only possible course, and we took 

 another look at the sheep. They had given up 

 watching, and in joy we started for them quickly. 

 We had so skilfully chosen the ground for our 



