MERINO SHEEP 149 



hundred or hundreds or thousands of grade sheep 

 or full bloods dotting the ferny pastures of the 

 hill country or the broad levels of the Champlain 

 Valley, rank with English grasses. From old Fort 

 Dummer to the Canada line one could hardly get 

 beyond the sound of the sheep's bleat unless he 

 took to the great woods, and even there he was \ 

 likely enough to hear the intermittent jingle of a 

 sheep-bell chiming with the songs of the hermit 

 and wood thrushes, or to meet a flock driven 

 clattering over the pebbles of a mountain road; 

 for a mid-wood settler had his little herd of sheep, 

 to which he gave in summer the freedom of the 

 woods, and which took — alas for the owner's 

 crops — the freedom of the meadow and grain 

 patches, and were sheltered from the chill of win- 

 ter nights in a frame barn bigger than their mas- 

 ter's log house. 



In June, when the May-yeaned lambs were 

 skipping in the sunshine that had warmed the 

 pools and streams till the bullfrogs had their 

 voices in tune, the sheep were gathered from the 

 pastures and driven over the dusty roads to the 

 pens beside the pools on the tapped mill-flumes 

 and washed amid a pother of rushing waters, 

 shouts of laughter of men and boys, and discord- 

 ant, plaintive bleats of parted ewes and lambs. 



A fortnight or so later came the great event of 

 the shepherd's year, the shearing, for which great 



