60 FEBRUARY 



boy as close to his heels as the best-trained spaniel, down 

 the hill, into the valley and up the next slope ; and there 

 were the ewes following one another in a straight line 

 towards a yet remoter field, for the hedges on this farm 

 serve no other purpose than to give the fields a certain 

 individuality and a right to their names, for every field 

 has been christened. 



One difficulty in the work of rescue remained : the 

 lamb could not walk fast enough to overtake the retreat 

 ing flock. Its skinny legs straddled wider, and the flock 

 retreated rather faster than before. You might have taken 

 them for black Brittany sheep, so dark they looked 

 against the white snow. The lamb s bleat carried about 

 five yards, so faint it was, a sort of sigh ; but it suggested 

 to the boy the device of increasing its volume. He 

 bleated too. We both bleated. The sound was not 

 quite like any sound that ever was in heaven or earth. 

 Though it may have been &quot; a poet s dream,&quot; yet it 

 possessed the virtue of range ; it carried ; and in spite 

 of the absence of a filial or maternal note in its ludicrous 

 mimicry, it set up some wave of thought or feeling in the 

 disappearing sheep. They stopped ; and when after a 

 moment s pause they moved on again one ewe left her 

 place in the line and fell to the back, and finally stopped. 

 She had one lamb with her and had, it seemed, tempor 

 arily forgotten the twin. The boy hurried up the slope 

 with the lamb in his wake, and stopped, like a well- 

 trained sheep dog, when the ewe looked like turning 

 away. The vagrom baby, like Black Auster, had toiled 

 behind in vain ; but now made good the gap, and at 

 last stood indeterminate between mother and boy. Then 

 the doubting mother advanced, smelt the baby from end 

 to end, decided that the odour was authentic ; and the 

 last picture is of the lamb butting its mother with that 



