A Shepherd's Life

collier-A story of his strength-Donkeys poisoned by yew-T

his father, partly on account of the man's fine character, and partly beca

men supposed to be his equals in bodily strength, one a native of the village, the other a periodical visitor. The first was Jarvis the blacksmith, a man of an immense chest an

ming soberly on behind. No sooner did he see him than it occurred to his wild and muddled mind that he had a quarrel with this very man, Shepherd Isaac, a quarrel of so press

o Isaac, who still smiled and said no word. Then he pulled his waistcoat off, and finally his shirt, and with noth

round the legs with the other, and flung the big man across his shoulder, and carried him off, struggling and shouting, to his cottage. There at the door, pale and distressed, stood the poo

on had been affected by his gigantic figure, mighty voice, and his wandering life over all that wide world of Salisbury Plain. Afterwards when I became acquainted with a good many old men, aged from 75 to 90 and upwards, I found that Old Joe's memory is

master-for he never had but one-allowed him the use of a wagon and the driver's services for the conveyance of one load of peat each year. The wagon-load of peat and another of faggots lasted him the year with the furze obtained from his "liberty" on the down. Coal at that time was only used by the blacksmiths in the villages, and was conveyed in sacks on ponies or donkeys, and of those who were engaged in this business the best known was Old Joe. He appeared periodically in the villages with his eight donkeys, or neddies as he called them, with jingling bells on their headstalls and their burdens of two sacks of small coal on each. In stature he was a giant of about

s expense. One night at a village on the Wylye it was discovered that he had put his eight donkeys in a meadow in which the grass was just ripe for mowing. The enraged farmer took them to the village pound and locked them up, but in the morning the donkeys and Joe

n; and was tired, and slept very soundly until it was light and time to put his neddies out before any person came by and discovered that he had been making free with the rector's grass. Glancing round he could see no donkeys, and only when he stood up he found they h

laced his dead neddies with others, and co

old and Isaac was left without sheep, and with little to do except to wait from Michaelmas to Candlemas, when there would be sheep again at the farm. It was a long time to Isaac, and he found his enforced holiday so tedious that he made himself a nuisance to his wife in the house. Forty times a day he would throw off his hat and sit down, resolved to be happy at his own f

tting on his hat! His wife called out after him, and getting no response sent the boy with his hat

wet, his face beaming, and sat down with a great sigh of pleasure. "Two hu

, "I hope thee'll be ha

in one form of poaching-a sport which had a marvellous fascination for the people of England in former times, but was pretty well extinguished during the first quarter of the la

ers would be sent out not only to keep an eye on the deer but on the keepers too. Much depended on the state of the weather and the moon, as some light was necessary; then, when the conditions were favourable and the keepers had been watched to their cottages, the gang would go out for a night's hunting. But i

er bedtime, or would go out ostensibly to look after the sheep, and, if fortunate, would return in the small hours with a deer on his back. Then, helped by his mother, with whom he lived (for this was when he was a young unmarried man, about 1820), he would quickly skin

en. It was only after much questioning on my part that Caleb brought himself to tell me of these ancient adventures, and finally to give a detailed account of how his father came to take his first deer. It was in the depth of winter-bitterly cold, with a strong north wind blowing on the snow-covered downs-when one evening Isaac caught sight of two deer out on his sheep-walk. In that part of Wiltshire there is a f

-and it was a season of bitter want. For many many days he had eaten his barley bread, and on some days barley-flour dumplings, and had been content wit

ar him until he was within sixty yards, and then bounded down from the wall, over the dyke, and away, but in almost opposite directions-one alone making for the forest; and on this one the dog was set. Out he shot like an arrow from the bow, and after him ran Isaac "as he had never runned afore in all his life." For a short space deer and dog in hot pursuit were visible on the snow, then the darkness swallowed them up as they rushed down the slope; but in less than half a minute a sound came back to Isaac, flying, too, down the incline-the long, wailing cry of a deer in distress. The dog had seized his quarry

of a Wiltshire shepherd has more interest for me than I find in fifty narratives of elephants slaughtered wholesale