DANVIS FARM LIFE 77 



milking, the boys roused from their morning nap, 

 and some helpful, timely coming shearers, to get 

 the sheep home from the pastures. Them the sun 

 salutes with his first rays as they encompass the 

 sheep on the dry knoll where they have slept, and 

 call and drive them homeward across the pasture 

 and through the lane to the barnyard. 



Who shall tell the waywardness of sheep ! How 

 they will come to one when not called or wanted, 

 but will flee from the caller when wanted as if he 

 were a ravening wolf; how they will peer suspi- 

 ciously at the gap or gateway through which they 

 should go, as if on the thither side were lurking 

 dire perils; or how they will utterly ignore it and 

 race past it at headlong speed, unheeding the 

 shaking of salt-dish and the most persuasive 

 "ca-day," and how surely they will discover the 

 smallest break in a fence through which they 

 should not go, and go scrambling through it, or 

 over a wall, pell-mell, like a charging squadron of 

 horse, as, if not possessed with the devil himself, 

 possessed, at least, with the fear that he, or some- 

 thing more terrible than he to ovine imagination, 

 will surely take the hindmost. But the patience 

 with which they endure shearing is a virtue which 

 covers many of their sins. Seldom struggling 

 much, though they are held continually in un- 

 natural positions, on the side with the neck under 

 the shearer's knee, or on the rump with the neck 



