A Shepherd's Life

tale of a titlark-Caleb Bawcombe's father-Father and son-A grateful sportsman and Isaac Bawcombe's pension-D

m a long time and had spent many afternoons and evenings in his company, listening to his anecdotes of his shepherding days, that I went to see his own old home for myself-the village of Winterbourne Bishop already described,

oo, was getting past work and wished to spend his declining years in his native village in an adjoining parish, where he owned some house and cottage property. And now what was to become of the old shepherd, since the new tenant had brought his own men with him?-and he, moreover, considered that John, at eighty-five, was too old to tend a flock on the hills, even of tegs. His old master, anxious to help him, tried to get him some employment in the village where he wish

d there at Winterbourne Bishop his master had to leave him, alt

nterbourne Bishop church where as a small boy he had played among the old gravestones as far back in time as the middle of the eighteenth century. But old John had long survived wife and children, and having no one but himself to think of was at liberty to end his days where he pleased. Not so

n enterprising temper, found an opening for herself at a distance from home where she could start a little business. Caleb indignantly refused to give up shepherding in his place to take part in so unheard-of an adventure; but after a year or more of life in his lonely hut among the hills and cold, empty cottage in the village, he at length tore himself away from that beloved spot and set forth on the longest journey of his life-about forty-five miles-to join her and help in the

ually better in health to-day than he was then, there is good rea

new how that I was in her way. To her practical, peasant mind there was no sense in my being there. "He be a stranger to we, and we be strangers to he." Caleb was silent, and his clear eyes showed neither annoyance nor pleasure but only their native, wild alertness, but the caste feeling is always less strong in the hill shepherd than in other men who are on the land; in some cases it will vanish at a touch, and it was so in this one. A canary in a cage hanging in the kitchen served to introduce the subject of birds captive and birds free. I said that I liked the little yellow bird, and was not vexed to see him in a cage, since he was cage-born; but I considered that those who caught wild birds and kept them prisoners did not properly understand things. This happened to be Caleb's view. He had a curiously tender feeling about the little wild birds, and one amusing incident of his boyhood which he remembered came out during our talk. He was out on the down one summer day in charge of his father's flock, when two boys of the village on a ramble in the hills came and sat down on the turf by his side. One of them had a titlark, or meadow p

heir fury on Caleb, but they durst not, seeing that his dog was lying at his side; they could

ldness in the earth than now, and a nobler wild animal life. Even more interesting were some of the memories of his father, Isaac Bawcombe, whose time went back to the early years of the nineteenth century. Caleb cherished an admiration and reverence for his father's memory which were almost a worship, and he loved to describe him as he appeared in his old age, when upwards of eighty. He was ere

not. Seven shillings a week he had always had; and that small sum, with something his wife earned by making highly finished smock-frocks, had been sufficient to keep them all in a decent way; and his sons were now all earning their own living. But Caleb got married, and resolved to leave the old farm at Bishop to take a better place at a distance from home, at Warminster, which had been offered him. He would there have a cottage to live in, nine shillings a week, and a sack of barley for his dog. At that time the shepherd had to keep his own dog-no small expense to him when his wages were no more than six to eight shillings a week. But Caleb was his father's favourite son

pened; old Isaac was no longer shepherding on the downs, but living very com

ouragement; but, however the thing came into their hands, they could not take it home on account of their father. Now it happened that an elderly gentleman who had the shooting was a keen sportsman, and that in several successive years he found a wonderful difference in the amount of game at one spot among the hills and in all the rest of his hill property. The only explanation the keeper could give was that Isaac Bawcombe tended his flock on that down where rabbits, hares, and partridges were so plentiful. One autumn day the gentleman was shooting over that down, and seeing a b

ommanding his presence in that city filled him with astonishment; for, though he was sixty years old and the father of three sons now out in the world, he could not yet regard himself as an old man, for he had never known a day's illness, nor an ache, and was famed in all that neighbourhood for his great physical strength and endurance. And now, with his own cottage to live in, eight shillings a week, and his pensioners' garments, with certain other benefits, and a shil

persons of the labouring class in the rural districts. I have sometimes marvelled at the number of such cases to be met with in the villages; but when one comes to think about it one ceases to wonder that it should be so. For the labourer on the land goes on from boyhood to the end of life in the same everlasting round, the changes from task to task, according to the seasons, being no greater than in the case of the animals that alter their actions and habits to suit the varying conditions of the year. March and August and December, and every month, will bring about the changes in the atmosphere and earth

her, cherishing the same memories, speaking of the same old, familiar things, and their lost friends and companions, their absent, perhaps estranged, children, are with them still in mind as in the old days. The past is with them more than the present, to give an undying interest to life; for they share it, and it is only when one goes, when the old wife gets the tea ready and goes mechanically to the door to gaze out, knowing that her tired man will come in no more to take his customary place and listen to all the things she has stored up in her mind during the day to tell him; and when the tired labourer comes in at dusk to find no old wife waiting to give him his t

n the churchyards you do not find them, since the farm-labourer has only a green mound to mark the spot where he lies. Nevertheless, he is someti

nd interesting in many ways, and the churchyard, too, is one of the most interesting I know, a beautiful, green, tree-shaded spot, with an extraordinary n

had a good deal of trouble to get the key, and to find it open now was a pleasant surprise. An old woman was there dusting the seats, and by and by, while I was talking with her, the old labourer came stumping in with his ponderous, iron-shod boots and without taking off his old, rusty hat, and began shouting at the church-cleaner about a pair of trousers he had given her to mend, which h

"and you promised to do them, so he has

o mend, and I said, 'Leave them and I'll do them when I've time'

wn on her knees she began industriously picking the old, brown, dead moss out of the le

for yourself, now you'v

poor and I couldn't get no schooling. I've got these glasses to do my sewing, and only

k-looking, and appeared very thin in her limp, old, faded gown; she had a meek, patient exp

ived here you must know w

d I couldn't read it because I wasn't taught

was a man of a noble and generous disposition, good as a husband, a father, a friend, and charitable to the poor. Under a

t before; I didn't know the name, though I've known this stone since I

of the sweetest, kindest woman that ever lived. Oh, how good this dear woman had been to her in her young married lif

was your

red his spine, and he died, poor fellow, and left me with our five little children." Then, having tol

id, "No, that's wrong. There wasn't eve

Lampard or it would not be stated her

've never known such a name an

this Lampard-in 1714, it says. And you are only seventy-six, you tell me; that is to say

stone. And the church too. I've heard say it

quarrel with the Pope and determined he would be Pope himself as well as king in his own country. So he turned al

his wives. But about Lampard, it do seem s

ards, but you'll find very few Lampards living in the villages. Why, I could tell you a dozen or twenty surnames, so

hear some of them

Thorr, Pizzie, Gee, Every, Pottl

s I had mentioned. Then, pointing to a small, upright grave

've got more names in my mind to tell you. Maidment,

e only knew

inscription to John Toomer and his wife Rebecca. She died fi

them, I

longed here,

e about

as only a labourer and worked

ne over them-t

ady who lived here; she'd been good to them, and she ca

ant to h

id; he was a labourer, an

? go

so well; they lived in the little thatched co

ll ill at th

f an evening and call his wife. 'Mother! Mother, where are you?' you'd hear him call, 'Mother, be you upstairs? Mother

there was no

g. He was just one of us,

ll together and were quite free and easy in our talk, very much on a level. But she was not done with me yet. She followed to the gate, and holding out he

y she has haunted me-she and her old John Toomer, and it has just now occurre