WuOy 



striving after his ideal state — intoxication — and 

 his mind-shrivelling life in general was rarely 

 brutal to Wully, and Wully repaid him with an 

 exaggerated worship that the greatest and wisest 

 in the land would have aspired to in vain. 



Wully could not have imagined any greater 

 being than Robin, and yet for the sum of five 

 shillings a week all Robin's vital energy and 

 mental force were pledged to the service of a 

 not very great cattle and sheep dealer, the real 

 proprietor of Wully's charge, and when this 

 man, really less great than the neighboring 

 laird, ordered Robin to drive his flock by 

 stages to the Yorkshire moors and markets, of 

 all the 376 mentalities concerned, Wully's was 

 the most interested and interesting. 



The journey through Northumberland was 

 uneventful. At the River Tyne the sheep were 

 driven on to the ferry and landed safely in 

 smoky South Shields. The great factory chim- 

 neys were just starting up for the day and belch- 

 ing out fogbanks and thunder-rollers of opaque 

 leaden smoke that darkened the air and hung 

 low like a storm-cloud over the streets. The 

 sheep thought that they recognized the fuming 



280 



