mother yonder a new child," he added, with his
usual grin. He was busy tying the skin of a dead lamb on to the back of
another--dressing him up, in fact, in another suit, even as Rebecca once
did Jacob.

"When a yo do lose her lamb, we's careful to leave the dead un next its
mother, for they've got hearts same as we. If us was to go for to take
the lamb, they 'ould pine. 'Tis nat'ral, ain't it? Well, you see, 'tis
like this. After a bit we takes a lamb from a yo as has a double, like
this un here; skins the dead lamb; and ties the skin round t'other's
neck, same as this--see? She'll let this un suck then; but she 'ouldn't
afore--no fear! They do know their own childern, same as we; just as they
knows them as tends 'em. By-and-by I'll cut this skin away, bit by bit,
when I judges this un has got to smell same as her own child: it'll be
all right then. Ah! 'tis like this with sheep--there's something to be
learnt about they every time in the day as one comes nigh 'em."

So the two men rested against the hurdles in the sun, and Murphy sat
solemnly between them: he had become very particular in his manners when
with sheep. The disguised lamb was already sucking the ewe; and Job lit
his short clay pipe and smiled: he had been up all night.

"I'd never have a lamb killed, if it was my way; no'r I wouldn't. Do you
minds last season, when you and yer dog was along? I wus a-going across
the Dene with a bottle o' warm milk, with a bit of a tube stuck in it, if
you minds. 'Twas warm milk I'd taken from the cow. Ah, well, 'twas for a
lamb as had lost its mother: udder wrong; I could find of it when the
master brought the lot in. And I goes for to say as any un as 'ud serve a
yo that way should be crucified. Well, 'tis that very lamb as was as is
now the yo a-suckling the one we dressed up. See how things do work
round, don't 'em?"

But the talk was not always about sheep, when the folds or the pens were
visited, or "Him and his dog" walked with Nutt and other shepherds over
the open lands, in the wind and the weather.

One day Job had been busy sheepwashing, and the talk turned on dogs, as
it often did.

"'Tis wonderful what they knows. What don't 'em know? I says. See that
Scot I had--the one afore this un. Well, I was down a-sheepwashing, same
as I've been just. One o' the full-mouthed sheep as we had then broke
away, and went straight over river, and it ain't very narrow there, as
you minds. She got up on the further bank