i 9 4 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



head was dark grey and wise, her eyes pearly green and 

 iridescent with an oblong pupil of blackish-blue, quiet, yet 

 full of fear; her wool was dense but short and of a cinder 

 grey; her dark horny feet were overgrown from lack of 

 use. She would not budge even when a dog sniffed at 

 her, but only bowed her head and threatened vainly to 

 butt. She was huge and heavy and content, though 

 always all alone. As she lay there, her wool glistening 

 with rain, I had often wondered what those eyes were 

 aware of, what part she played in the summer harmonies 

 of night and day, the full night heavens and cloudless 

 noon, storm and dawn, and the long moist heat of dewy 

 mornings. She was now shorn, and the old man watched 

 her as he drank the liquor in which a cabbage and a piece 

 of bacon had been boiled. " I often thinks," he said, 

 " that I be something like that sheep . . . ' slightly 

 wounded ' . . . but not ' short service ' now . . . haha ! 

 . . . left alone in this here lane to browse a bit while 

 the weather's fine and folks are kind. . . . But I don't 

 know but what she is better off. Look there," he said, 

 pointing to a wound which the shearer had made in one of 

 her nipples, where flies clustered like a hideous flower of 

 crape, " I have been spending this hour and more flicking 

 the flies off her. . . . Nobody won't do that for me 

 unless I come in for five shillings a week Old Age Pen- 

 sion. But I reckon that won't be for a roving body like 

 me without a letter-box." In the neighbouring field a 

 cart-horse shook herself with a noise of far-off thunder 

 and laughed shrilly and threw up her heels and raced along 

 the hedge. A bee could be seen going in and out of the 

 transparent white flowers of convolvulus. The horse had 

 her youth and strength and a workless day before her; the 



