FullReads

“There’s the sheep!” exclaimed William, pointing eagerly. “You see the sheep?” and sure enough, it was a great company of woolly backs, which seemed to have taken a mysterious protective resemblance to the ledges themselves. I could discover but little chance for pasturage on that high sunburnt ridge, but the sheep were moving steadily in a satisfied way as they fed along the slopes and hollows.

“I never have seen half so many sheep as these, all summer long!” I cried with admiration.

“There ain’t so many,” answered William soberly. “It’s a great sight. They do so well because they ‘re shepherded, but you can’t beat sense into some folks.”

“You mean that somebody stays and watches them?” I asked.

“She observed years ago in her readin’ that they don’t turn out their flocks without protection anywhere but in the State o’ Maine,” returned William. “First thing that put it into her mind was a little old book mother’s got; she read it one time when she come out to the Island. They call it the ‘Shepherd o’ Salisbury Plain.’ ‘T was n’t the purpose o’ the book to most, but when she read it, ‘There, Mis’ Blackett!’ she said, ‘that’s where we ‘ve all lacked sense; our Bibles ought to have taught us that what sheep need is a shepherd.’ You see most folks about here gave up sheep-raisin’ years ago ‘count o’ the dogs. So she gave up school-teachin’ and went out to tend her flock, and has shepherded ever since, an’ done well.”

For William, this approached an oration. He spoke with enthusiasm, and I shared the triumph of the moment. “There she is now!” he exclaimed, in a different tone, as the tall figure of a woman came following the flock and stood still on the ridge, looking toward us as if her eyes had been quick to see a strange object in the familiar emptiness of the field. William stood up in the wagon, and I thought he was going to call or wave his hand to her, but he sat down again more clumsily than if the wagon had made the familiar motion of a boat, and we drove on toward the house.

It was a most solitary place to live,–a place where one might think that a life could hide itself. The thick woods were between the farm and the main road, and as one looked up and down the country, there was no other house in sight.

“Potatoes look well,” announced William. “The old folks used to say that there wa’n’t no better land outdoors than the Hight field.”

I found myself possessed of a surprising interest in the shepherdess, who stood far away in the hill pasture with her great flock, like a figure of Millet’s, high against the sky.

V.

Everything about the old farmhouse was clean and orderly, as if the green dooryard were not only swept, but dusted. I saw a flock of turkeys stepping off carefully at a distance, but there was not the usual untidy flock of hens about the place to make everything look in disarray. William helped me out of the wagon as carefully as if I had been his mother, and nodded toward the open door with a reassuring look at me; but I waited until he had tied the horse and could lead the way, himself. He took off his hat just as we were going in, and stopped for a moment to smooth his thin gray hair with his hand, by which I saw that we had an affair of some ceremony. We entered an old-fashioned country kitchen, the floor scrubbed into unevenness, and the doors well polished by the touch of hands. In a large chair facing the window there sat a masterful-looking old woman with the features of a warlike Roman emperor, emphasized by a bonnet-like black cap with a band of green ribbon. Her sceptre was a palm-leaf fan.