Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/105

Rh “No.”

“Nothing at all—not to anybody?”

“No.”

“Good-night.”

About the end of September, our countryside was alarmed by the harrying of sheep by strange dogs. One morning, the squire, going the round of his fields as was his custom, to his grief and horror found two of his sheep torn and dead in the hedge-bottom, and the rest huddled in a corner swaying about in terror, smeared with blood. The squire did not recover his spirits for days.

There was a report of two grey wolvish dogs. The squire’s keeper had heard yelping in the fields of Dr. Collins, of the Abbey, about dawn. Three sheep lay soaked in blood when the labourer went to tend the flocks.

Then the farmers took alarm. Lord, of the White House farm, intended to put his sheep in pen, with his dogs in charge. It was Saturday, however, and the lads ran off to the little travelling theatre that had halted at Westwold. While they sat open-mouthed in the theatre, gloriously nicknamed the “Blood-Tub,” watching heroes die with much writhing, and heaving, and struggling up to say a word, and collapsing without having said it, six of their silly sheep were slaughtered in the field. At every house it was enquired of the dog; nowhere had one been loose.

Mr. Saxton had some thirty sheep on the Common. George determined that the easiest thing was