78 DANVIS FARM LIFE 



bent over his knee or pilloried between his legs. 

 Surely the sheep was made to be shorn. Fancy 

 any other domestic animal undergoing the process. 

 What comes of pig-shearing is proverbial. 



From the barn, so silent since foddering ended, 

 issues now a medley of sounds — the loud bleat- 

 ing of the ewes, in tones as various as human 

 voices, and the higher-pitched lamentations of the 

 lambs, bewailing their short separation, the cas- 

 tanet-like click of the shears, loud jests and merry 

 laughter, the outcry of the alarmed swallows 

 cleaving the upper darkness of the ridge, where 

 within feather-lined mud walls their treasures lie. 



Ranged along the floor, each in his allotted 

 place, are the three, four, or half-dozen or more 

 shearers, bending each over his sheep, which, 

 under his skillful hand, shrinks rapidly from um- 

 ber plumpness to creamy-white thinness, under- 

 going a change so great that, when released, she 

 goes leaping forth into the yard, her own lamb 

 hardly knows her. At his table, with a great reel of 

 twine at his elbow, is the tier, making each fleece 

 into a compact bundle. At the stable-door is the 

 alert catcher, ready with an unshorn sheep as each 

 shorn one is let go; and these, with a boy to pick 

 up scattered locks, constitute the working force. 



Neighbors drop in to lounge an hour away in 

 the jolly company, to take a pull at the cider 

 pitcher, or engage shearers for their own shearing. 



