WILD LIFE 83 



and he could sit and amuse himself as he liked best. 

 If he could read so much the better. It was in my 

 hut, over in the next bottom to this, that I first read 

 about Moses and his shepherding life, and about 

 David's killing of the lion and the bear. Ah, how 

 oflad I felt that we hadn't such wild beasties to 

 frighten and maybe kill our sheep and us. The 

 worst we ever had to fear were the foxes that some- 

 times killed a young lamb or two. But there was 

 otherwhile a crueller than that. If a ewe happened 

 to get overturned on a lonesome part of the hill 

 the ravens and carrion crows would come and pick 

 out her eyes before she was dead. This happened 

 to two or three of my ewes, and at last I got an 

 old gun and shot all the crows and ravens I could 

 get nigh. Once I shot an eagle, but that was the 

 only eagle I ever saw. Since the hills have been 

 more broken by the plough such birds are but 

 seldom seen. There haven't been any wild turkeys 

 either for many a year. I have heard my father 

 say he killed two or three no great while before I 

 was born; they used to call them bustards. There 

 used to be a good many buzzards on the hill when 

 I was a boy. They did no hurt to the sheep, but 

 they destroyed the game and the chickens. Once 

 I set up a pair of clams for one in a thorn-bush in 

 Box-holt Bottom, and when I went to look the next 

 morning I found my bird catched by the legs. He 

 was such a great fellow that I was afraid to tackle 



