shoulder walking along the road which
led past the Black Rogue's house. The sheep was heavy and the man was
in no hurry, so he came slowly and the boy knew that he himself could
easily get back to his master before the shepherd was even in sight.

'I will wager,' he cried, as he pushed quickly through the bushes which
hid the cabin--'I will wager that I will steal the sheep from the man
that is coming before he passes here.'

'Will you indeed?' said the Gallows Bird. 'I will wager you a hundred
silver pieces that you can do nothing of the sort.'

'Well, I will try it, anyway,' replied the boy, and disappeared in the
bushes. He ran fast till he entered a wood through which the shepherd
must go, and then he stopped, and taking off one of his shoes smeared it
with mud and set it in the path. When this was done he slipped behind a
rock and waited.

Very soon the man came up, and seeing the shoe lying there, he stooped
and looked at it.

'It is a good shoe,' he said to himself, 'but very dirty. Still, if I
had the fellow, I would be at the trouble of cleaning it'; so he threw
the shoe down again and went on.

The Shifty Lad smiled as he heard him, and, picking up the shoe, he
crept round by a short way and laid the other shoe on the path. A few
minutes after the shepherd arrived, and beheld the second shoe lying on
the path.

'Why, that is the fellow of the dirty shoe!' he exclaimed when he saw
it. 'I will go back and pick up the other one, and then I shall have a
pair of good shoes,' and he put the sheep on the grass and returned to
fetch the shoe. Then the Shifty Lad put on his shoes, and, picking up
the sheep, carried it home. And the Black Rogue paid him the hundred
marks of his wager.

When the shepherd reached the farmhouse that night he told his tale to
his master, who scolded him for being stupid and careless, and bade him
go the next day to the mountain and fetch him a kid, and he would send
that as a wedding gift. But the Shifty Lad was on the look-out, and hid
himself in the wood, and the moment the man drew near with the kid on
his shoulders began to bleat like a sheep, and no one, not even the
sheep's own mother, could have told the difference.

'Why, it must have got its feet loose, and have strayed after all,'
thought the man; and he put the kid on the grass and hurried off in the
direction of the bleating. Then the boy ran back and picked up the kid,
and took it to the Black Gallows Bird.

The s