Page:The English Peasant.djvu/227

 laird's expense; a roomy dairy, a cowhouse with stalls for six cows, a stable for the horse, and a place for the dog. Nothing was forgotten. I can imagine no life, on the whole, so healthful and so hopeful as that of a Cheviot shepherd, if the old conditions of service can be maintained, and such cottages built for him.

It is, however, one full of anxiety, and sometimes of great peril. During the winter months they are liable to terrible snowstorms, in which not only the flock but the shepherd himself has been known to perish. The mariner is hardly more weatherwise than the shepherd, but the most experienced shepherd is unable to foresee the extent and fury of these pitiless storms. Sometimes they come with hardly any notice at all, or after warm weather sufficient to delude all but the most canny into the belief that the winter is over and gone; at other times the skies will gather and lower for hours, but none can tell in what quarter the storm will break. In sheltered parts of the hills the shepherds erect stone walls in the form of a circle, roughly built of boulders, and about four feet high, as places of refuge for the sheep when a storm comes on. Happy is the shepherd who can gather his sheep, and fold them safely into such a "stell," for if they get scattered after the storm has set in, they will, of their own accord, seek the nooks and gullies—the very spots where the snow-wreaths accumulate, and get buried at the depth of many feet. When this occurs, the shepherds go and search for the lost sheep with long poles, with which they probe the snow, but in the white, wavy, trackless drift they would have little chance of success, if it were not for the help of their invaluable dogs. The intelligence of these sagacious animals is an ever-renewed cause of wonder; without them, it is not too much to say, a district like the Cheviots would be a desert.

Each shepherd has two dogs, and with such companions he can never be lonely, for, in the business of attending to the flock, they have more than a human sympathy with his wishes and intentions. A word, a look, a whistle is sufficient. They dart off and gather the sheep from distant hills, exercising something very much like reason in bringing home the wanderer for miles, and hardly expecting any reward but the satisfaction of having pleased their master.