ing his breakfast and dinner with him, he told Mrs.
Shelley not to expect him back till the evening. Across the dewy meadows
in the fresh June morning, the loveliest part of the day, went John
Shelley, startling a skylark every now and then from the ground, from
whence it rose carolling forth its matin song, gently at first, but
louder and louder as it sprang higher and higher, until lost to sight,
its glorious song still audible, though John Shelley was too much
occupied with his own thoughts, and, perhaps, too much accustomed to the
singing of the lark, to pay much attention to it. Even his dogs, Rover
and Snap, failed to wake him from his meditation, until he reached the
meadow where he had folded his sheep for the night, and then every
thought, except whether the sheep were all safe, vanished from his mind
as he stood counting them. A few words to the dogs explained his wishes
that the shorn sheep were to be driven out and the unshorn left in the
fold for the present; and then, after a great deal of barking on the
part of the dogs, and shouting from the shepherd, and rushing and
scrambling on the part of the sheep, their bells jingling a not
unmusical accompaniment to the thrushes and blackbirds, which were
pouring out their morning song in the adjoining copse, this manoeuvre
was effected, and John led his shorn flock to the downs, walking in
front with his crook in his hand, while the dogs brought up the rear,
yelping and barking at the heels of any erring sheep that strayed
outside the flock.

The shepherd was a man who concentrated all his thoughts on the business
he had on hand, and as he led his sheep to the down on which he meant to
leave them to the care of the dogs for the day, he was making a nice
calculation of how long it would take him and his assistants to finish
the shearing, when, just as he was about to leave the sheep, he was
accosted by an old woman. She was tall, thin, with a slight stoop, a
hooked nose, bright black eyes, and rough, crisp, grizzly hair, which
gave her rather a witch-like appearance; nor did the bonnet perched on
the top of her head, its crown in the air, tend to dispel this notion.
She had a knotted stick in one hand, and a basket with some pieces of
wool off the sheeps' backs which she had collected from the bushes in
the other. It was Dame Hursey, the wool-gatherer, well known to John
Shelley and every other shepherd in the neighbourhood, with all of whom
she often had a gossip