98 



CLIPPING DAY IN YARROW. 

 i'holografh by Eiticitrds, Selkirk. 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE COLLIE. 



BY JAMES C. DALGLIESH. 



" But should you. while u\indcrin» in the leild sheepland. happen on moor or in market upon 

 (1 very perfect gentle knight clothed in dark grey habit, splashed here and there with rays of moon : 

 free by right divine of the guild of gentlemen, strenuous as a prince, lithe as a rowan, graceful 

 as a girl, with high king carriage, motions and manners of a fairy queen ; should he have a noble 

 breadth of brow, an air of still strength born of right confidence, all unassuming ; last and most 

 unfailing test of all, should you look into two snoxvcloud eyes, calm, wistful, inscrutable, their 

 soft depths clothed on with eternal sadness — yearning, as is said, for the sold that is not 

 theirs — know then that vou look upon one of the line of the most illustrious sheepdogs of the 

 North." — " OwD Bob." 



I. The Working Collie. — The foregoing 

 quotation from Alfred Olliphant's de- 

 lightful fictional biography of Bob, son 

 of Battle, refers more particularly to the 

 grey Sheepdog of Kenmuir, but it is a 

 description which may be applied in general 

 to all the dogs of the Collie strain that 

 follow their active lives among the fells 

 and dales and on the wind-swept hillsides 

 of the North. The townsman who knows 

 the shepherd's dog only as he is to be 

 seen, out of his true element, threading 



his confined way through crowded street^ 

 where sheep are not, can have small appre- 

 ciation of his wisdom and his sterhn^ 

 worth. To know him properly, one needs 

 to see him at work in a country where 

 sheep abound, to watch him adroitly round- 

 ing up his scattered charges on a wide- 

 stretching moorland, gathering the wander- 

 ing wethers into close order and driving 

 them before him in unbroken company 

 to the fold ; handling the stubborn pack 

 in a narrow lane, running lightly over the 



