rm mists, and a dew that hung on the brambles till ten o'clock.
The frogs were spawning in the pools; primroses were out by scores,
and monthly roses blooming still; and Master shot a goat-sucker on
the last day in November. All this puzzled the sheep, I suppose, and
gave them a notion that their time, too, was at hand. At any rate
the lambs fell early; and when they fell, it had turned to perishing
cold.

That Christmas-eve, while the singers were up at the house and the
fiddles going like mad, it was a dismal time for two of us. Laban
Pascoe, the hind, spent his night in the upper field where the sheep
lay, while I spent mine in the chall[1] looking after Dinah, our
Alderney, that had slipped her calf in the afternoon--being promised
the castling's skin for a Sunday waistcoat, if I took care of the
mother. Bating the cold air that came under the door, I kept pretty
cosy, what with the straw-bands round my legs and the warm breath of
the cows: for we kept five. There was no wind outside, but moonlight
and a still, frozen sky, like a sounding board: so that every note of
the music reached me, with the bleat of Laban's sheep far up the
hill, and the waves' wash on the beaches below. Inside the chall the
only sounds were the slow chewing of the cows, the rattle of a
tethering-block, now and then, or a moan from Dinah. Twice the
uproar from the house coaxed me to the door to have a look at Laban's
scarlet lantern moving above, and make sure that he was worse off
than I. But mostly I lay still on my straw in the one empty stall
staring into the foggy face of my own lantern, thinking of the
waistcoat, and listening.

I was dozing, belike, when a light tap on the door made me start up,
rubbing my eyes.

"Merry Christmas, Dick!"

A little head, bright with tumbled curls, was thrust in, and a pair
of round eyes stared round the chall, then back to me, and rested on
my face.

"Merry Christmas, little mistress."

"Dick--if you tell, I'll never speak to you again. I only wanted to
see if 'twas true."

She stepped inside the chall, shutting the door behind her.
Under one arm she hugged a big boy-doll, dressed like a sailor--from
the Christmas-tree, I guessed--and a bright tinsel star was pinned on
the shoulder of her bodice. She had come across the cold town-place
in her muslin frock, with no covering for her shoulders; and the
manner in which that frock was hitched upon her made me stare.

"I got out of bed a