en her and the sky, and drew on towards the field
of sheep, the rider turning his face in receding. Gabriel looked at
her. It was a moment when a woman's eyes and tongue tell distinctly
opposite tales. Bathsheba looked full of gratitude, and she said:--

"Oh, Gabriel, how could you serve me so unkindly!"

Such a tenderly-shaped reproach for his previous delay was the
one speech in the language that he could pardon for not being
commendation of his readiness now.

Gabriel murmured a confused reply, and hastened on. She knew from
the look which sentence in her note had brought him. Bathsheba
followed to the field.

Gabriel was already among the turgid, prostrate forms. He had flung
off his coat, rolled up his shirt-sleeves, and taken from his pocket
the instrument of salvation. It was a small tube or trochar, with
a lance passing down the inside; and Gabriel began to use it with a
dexterity that would have graced a hospital surgeon. Passing his
hand over the sheep's left flank, and selecting the proper point, he
punctured the skin and rumen with the lance as it stood in the tube;
then he suddenly withdrew the lance, retaining the tube in its place.
A current of air rushed up the tube, forcible enough to have
extinguished a candle held at the orifice.

It has been said that mere ease after torment is delight for a time;
and the countenances of these poor creatures expressed it now.
Forty-nine operations were successfully performed. Owing to the
great hurry necessitated by the far-gone state of some of the flock,
Gabriel missed his aim in one case, and in one only--striking wide
of the mark, and inflicting a mortal blow at once upon the suffering
ewe. Four had died; three recovered without an operation. The total
number of sheep which had thus strayed and injured themselves so
dangerously was fifty-seven.

When the love-led man had ceased from his labours, Bathsheba came and
looked him in the face.

"Gabriel, will you stay on with me?" she said, smiling winningly,
and not troubling to bring her lips quite together again at the end,
because there was going to be another smile soon.

"I will," said Gabriel.

And she smiled on him again.

CHAPTER XXII

THE GREAT BARN AND THE SHEEP-SHEARERS

Men thin away to insignificance and oblivion quite as often by not
making the most of good spirits when they have them as by lacking
good spirits when they are indispensable. Gabriel lately, for the
fir