Ch. 7: What The Shepherd Saw - Page 2

the negative.

'Then,' said the shepherd, 'I'll get me home-along, and rest for a few
hours. There's nothing to be done here now as I can see. The ewes can
want no more tending till daybreak--'tis beyond the bounds of reason that
they can. But as the order is that one of us must bide, I'll leave 'ee,
d'ye hear. You can sleep by day, and I can't. And you can be down to my
house in ten minutes if anything should happen. I can't afford 'ee
candle; but, as 'tis Christmas week, and the time that folks have
hollerdays, you can enjoy yerself by falling asleep a bit in the chair
instead of biding awake all the time. But mind, not longer at once than
while the shade of the Devil's Door moves a couple of spans, for you must
keep an eye upon the ewes.'

The boy made no definite reply, and the old man, stirring the fire in the
stove with his crook-stem, closed the door upon his companion and
vanished.

As this had been more or less the course of events every night since the
season's lambing had set in, the boy was not at all surprised at the
charge, and amused himself for some time by lighting straws at the stove.
He then went out to the ewes and new-born lambs, re-entered, sat down,
and finally fell asleep. This was his customary manner of performing his
watch, for though special permission for naps had this week been
accorded, he had, as a matter of fact, done the same thing on every
preceding night, sleeping often till awakened by a smack on the shoulder
at three or four in the morning from the crook-stem of the old man.

It might have been about eleven o'clock when he awoke. He was so
surprised at awaking without, apparently, being called or struck, that on
second thoughts he assumed that somebody must have called him in spite of
appearances, and looked out of the hut window towards the sheep. They
all lay as quiet as when he had visited them, very little bleating being
audible, and no human soul disturbing the scene. He next looked from the
opposite window, and here the case was different. The frost-facets
glistened under the moon as before; an occasional furze bush showed as a
dark spot on the same; and in the foreground stood the ghostly form of
the trilithon. But in front of the trilithon stood a man.

That he was not the shepherd or any one of the farm labourers was
apparent in a moment's observation,--his dress being a dark suit, and his
figure of slender build and graceful carriage. He walked backwards and
forwards in front of the trilithon.

The shepherd lad had hardly done speculating on the strangeness of the
unknown's presence here at such an hour, when he saw a second figure
crossing the open sward towards the locality of the trilithon and furze-
clump that screened the hut.