ecret of his
animosity for his straight-going, straight-speaking neighbor.

* * * * *

Owd Bob, in the mean time, had escorted the children to the larch-copse
bordering on the lane which leads to the village. Now he crept
stealthily back to the yard, and established himself behind the
water-butt.

How he played and how he laughed; how he teased old Whitecap till that
gray gander all but expired of apoplexy and impotence; how he ran the
roan bull-calf, and aroused the bitter wrath of a portly sow, mother of
many, is of no account.

At last, in the midst of his merry mischief-making, a stern voice
arrested him.

"Bob, lad, I see 'tis time we larned you yo' letters."

So the business of life began for that dog of whom the simple
farmer-folk of the Daleland still love to talk,--Bob, son of Battle,
last of the Gray Dogs of Kenmuir.

Chapter II. A SON OF HAGAR

It is a lonely country, that about the Wastrel-dale.

Parson Leggy Hornbut will tell you that his is the smallest church in
the biggest parish north of the Derwent, and that his cure numbers more
square miles than parishioners. Of fells and ghylls it consists, of
becks and lakes; with here a scattered hamlet and there a solitary hill
sheep-farm. It is a country in which sheep are paramount; and every
other Dalesman is engaged in that profession which is as old as Abel.
And the talk of the men of the land is of wethers and gimmers, of
tup-hoggs, ewe tegs in wool, and other things which are but fearsome
names to you and me; and always of the doings or misdoings, the
intelligence or stupidity, of their adjutants, the sheep-dogs.

Of all the Daleland, the country from the Black Water to Grammoch Pike
is the wildest. Above the tiny stone-built village of Wastrel-dale the
Muir Pike nods its massive head. Westward, the desolate Mere Marches,
from which the Sylvesters' great estate derives its name, reach away in
mile on mile of sheep infested, wind-swept moorland. On the far side of
the Marches is that twin dale where flows the gentle Silver Lea. And it
is there in the paddocks at the back of the Dalesman's Daughter, that,
in the late summer months, the famous sheep-dog Trials of the North are
held. There that the battle for the Dale Cup, the world-known Shepherds'
Trophy, is fought out.

Past the little inn leads the turnpike road to the market-centre of the
district--Grammoch-town. At the bottom of the paddocks at the bac