or in
virtue; and John had another collie tale of quite a different
complexion. At the foot of the moss behind Kirk Yetton (Caer Ketton,
wise men say) there is a scrog of low wood and a pool with a dam for
washing sheep. John was one day lying under a bush in the scrog, when he
was aware of a collie on the far hillside skulking down through the
deepest of the heather with obtrusive stealth. He knew the dog; knew him
for a clever, rising practitioner from quite a distant farm; one whom
perhaps he had coveted as he saw him masterfully steering flocks to
market. But what did the practitioner so far from home? and why this
guilty and secret manoeuvring towards the pool?--for it was towards the
pool that he was heading. John lay the closer under his bush, and
presently saw the dog come forth upon the margin, look all about to see
if he were anywhere observed, plunge in and repeatedly wash himself over
head and ears, and then (but now openly and with tail in air) strike
homeward over the hills. That same night word was sent his master, and
the rising practitioner, shaken up from where he lay, all innocence
before the fire, was had out to a dykeside and promptly shot; for alas!
he was that foulest of criminals under trust, a sheep-eater; and it was
from the maculation of sheep's blood that he had come so far to cleanse
himself in the pool behind Kirk Yetton.

A trade that touches nature, one that lies at the foundations of life,
in which we have all had ancestors employed, so that on a hint of it
ancestral memories revive, lends itself to literary use, vocal or
written. The fortune of a tale lies not alone in the skill of him that
writes, but as much, perhaps, in the inherited experience of him who
reads; and when I hear with a particular thrill of things that I have
never done or seen, it is one of that innumerable army of my ancestors
rejoicing in past deeds. Thus novels begin to touch not the fine
_dilettante_, but the gross mass of mankind, when they leave off to
speak of parlours and shades of manner and still-born niceties of
motive, and begin to deal with fighting, sailoring, adventure, death, or
childbirth; and thus ancient out-door crafts and occupations, whether
Mr. Hardy wields the shepherd's crook or Count Tolstoi swings the
scythe, lift romance into a near neighbourhood with epic. These aged
things have on them the dew of man's morning; they lie near, not so much
to us, the semi-artificial flowerets, as to the tru