PAGE 8
A Dunnet Shepherdess
by
VII.
It was long before we noticed the lapse of time; I not only told every circumstance known to me of recent events among the households of Mrs. Todd’s neighborhood at the shore, but Mrs. Hight became more and more communicative on her part, and went carefully into the genealogical descent and personal experience of many acquaintances, until between us we had pretty nearly circumnavigated the globe and reached Dunnet Landing from an opposite direction to that in which we had started. It was long before my own interest began to flag; there was a flavor of the best sort in her definite and descriptive fashion of speech. It may be only a fancy of my own that in the sound and value of many words, with their lengthened vowels and doubled cadences, there is some faint survival on the Maine coast of the sound of English speech of Chaucer’s time.
At last Mrs. Thankful Hight gave a suspicious look through the window.
“Where do you suppose they be?” she asked me. “Esther must ha’ been off to the far edge o’ everything. I doubt William ain’t been able to find her; can’t he hear their bells? His hearin’ all right?”
William had heard some herons that morning which were beyond the reach of my own ears, and almost beyond eyesight in the upper skies, and I told her so. I was luckily preserved by some unconscious instinct from saying that we had seen the shepherdess so near as we crossed the field. Unless she had fled faster than Atalanta, William must have been but a few minutes in reaching her immediate neighborhood. I now discovered with a quick leap of amusement and delight in my heart that I had fallen upon a serious chapter of romance. The old woman looked suspiciously at me, and I made a dash to cover with a new piece of information; but she listened with lofty indifference, and soon interrupted my eager statements.
“Ain’t William been gone some considerable time?” she demanded, and then in a milder tone: “The time has re’lly flown; I do enjoy havin’ company. I set here alone a sight o’ long days. Sheep is dreadful fools; I expect they heard a strange step, and set right off through bush an’ brier, spite of all she could do. But William might have the sense to return, ‘stead o’ searchin’ about. I want to inquire of him about his mother. What was you goin’ to say? I guess you ‘ll have time to relate it.”
My powers of entertainment were on the ebb, but I doubled my diligence and we went on for another half-hour at least with banners flying, but still William did not reappear. Mrs. Hight frankly began to show fatigue.
“Somethin’ ‘s happened, an’ he’s stopped to help her,” groaned the old lady, in the middle of what I had found to tell her about a rumor of disaffection with the minister of a town I merely knew by name in the weekly newspaper to which Mrs. Todd subscribed. “You step to the door, dear, an’ look if you can’t see ’em.” I promptly stepped, and once outside the house I looked anxiously in the direction which William had taken.
To my astonishment I saw all the sheep so near that I wonder we had not been aware in the house of every bleat and tinkle. And there, within a stone’s-throw, on the first long gray ledge that showed above the juniper, were William and the shepherdess engaged in pleasant conversation. At first I was provoked and then amused, and a thrill of sympathy warmed my whole heart. They had seen me and risen as if by magic; I had a sense of being the messenger of Fate. One could almost hear their sighs of regret as I appeared; they must have passed a lovely afternoon. I hurried into the house with the reassuring news that they were not only in sight but perfectly safe, with all the sheep.