nearly as big as his body, and he
seemed hardly to know that large tears were rolling down his sunburnt
face and losing themselves in his bushy beard. I tried to be cheerful
myself, but he kept repeating, "It is only natural you should be glad
to go, yet it is very rough upon us." In vain I assured him I was not
at all glad to go,--very, very sorry, in fact: all he would say was, "To
England, home and beauty, in course any one would be pleased to
return." I can't tell you what he meant, and he had no voice to waste on
explanations; I only give poor dear Jim's valedictory sentences as they
fell from his white and trembling lips.

Very different was Ned Palmer, the most diminutive and wiry of hill
shepherds, with a tongue which seemed never tired, and a good humoured
smile for every one. Ned used to try my gravity sorely by stepping up to
me half a dozen times during the service, to find his place for him in
his Prayer-book, and always saying aloud, "Thank you kindly, m'm."

Chapter IX: Another shepherd's hut.

To get to Ned's hut--which was not nearly so trim or comfortable as
Salter's, and stood out in the midst of a vast plain covered with waving
yellow tussocks,--we had to cross a low range of hills, and pick our
way through nearly a mile of swampy ground on the other side. The
sure-footed horses zig-zagged their way up the steep hill-side with
astonishing ease, availing themselves here and there of a sheep track,
for sheep are the best engineers in the world, and always hit off the
safest and easiest line of country. I did not feel nervous going _up_
the hill, although we must have appeared, had there been any one to look
at us, more like flies on a wall than a couple of people on horse back,
but when we came to the ridge and looked down on the descent beneath us,
my heart fairly gave way.

Not a blade of grass, or a leaf of a shrub, was to be seen on all the
steep slope, or rather precipice, for there was very little slope about
it; nothing but grey loose shingle, which the first hoof-fall of
the leading horse invariably sent slipping and sliding, in a perfect
avalanche of rubble, down into the soft bright green morass beneath.
Of all the bad "tracks" I encountered in my primitive rides, I really
believe I suffered more real terror and anguish on that particular
hill-side than on any other. My companion's conduct too, used to be
heartless in the extreme. He let the reins fall loosely on his horse's
neck, m