y, exclaimed with much
agitation:

"It's all up with me, Maria! Never no more can I go up on them there
Downs, was it ever so!"

"Now don't you take on like that," said his wife, who was a very
sensible woman: "but tell us all about it first, whatever it is as has
given you this shake-up, and then me and you and the son here, between
us, we ought to be able to get to the bottom of it!"

"It began some nights ago," said the shepherd. "You know that cave up
there--I never liked it, somehow, and the sheep never liked it neither,
and when sheep don't like a thing there's generally some reason for
it. Well, for some time past there's been faint noises coming from that
cave--noises like heavy sighings, with grunts mixed up in them; and
sometimes a snoring, far away down--real snoring, yet somehow not honest
snoring, like you and me o'nights, you know!"

"I know," remarked the Boy, quietly.

"Of course I was terrible frightened," the shepherd went on; "yet
somehow I couldn't keep away. So this very evening, before I come down,
I took a cast round by the cave, quietly. And there--O Lord! there I saw
him at last, as plain as I see you!"

"Saw who?" said his wife, beginning to share in her husband's nervous
terror.

"Why him, I 'm a telling you!" said the shepherd. "He was sticking
half-way out of the cave, and seemed to be enjoying of the cool of the
evening in a poetical sort of way. He was as big as four cart-horses,
and all covered with shiny scales--deep-blue scales at the top of him,
shading off to a tender sort o' green below. As he breathed, there was
that sort of flicker over his nostrils that you see over our chalk roads
on a baking windless day in summer. He had his chin on his paws, and I
should say he was meditating about things. Oh, yes, a peaceable sort o
beast enough, and not ramping or carrying on or doing anything but what
was quite right and proper. I admit all that. And yet, what am I to do?
Scales, you know, and claws, and a tail for certain, though I didn't
see that end of him--I ain't used to 'em, and I don't hold with 'em, and
that 's a fact!"

The Boy, who had apparently been absorbed in his book during his father
s recital, now closed the volume, yawned, clasped his hands behind his
head, and said sleepily:

"It's all right, father. Don't you worry. It's only a dragon."

"Only a dragon?" cried his father. "What do you mean, sitting there, you
and your dragons? Only a dragon indeed! And what