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She had noted some reserve in Railton's manner when he mentioned the broken dyke and knew the flockmasters were careful about their dry walls. The rest was plain; the heaf is the hill pasture where a lamb is born, and Swinset was fifteen miles away. It was a very large sheepwalk and much time would be needed to find the sheep on the wide belt of moor.
He wanted the bracing winds, and the soft lights that chased the flying shadows across the English hills. He smiled as he reflected that he was like the Herdwicks that never forgot their native heaf; but while he longed for the red moors and straight-cut valleys he felt a stronger call.
However, there were the lambs; one could trust a Herdwick to return to its heaf. When he reached the top the wind had blown away the snow, and he stood near the middle of a narrow belt of heath, with his feet sinking in a bog. On each side, he got a glimpse of dark rocks, streaked with white where the wind had packed the snow into the gullies. In front there was a gulf, down which his path led.
A few minutes afterwards he scrambled over a pile of fallen stones, shouted to Tom, and began to run, for he understood what had happened. The broken wall marked the boundary of the Mireside heaf and the sheep were now on familiar ground. It was his business to drive them to the farm, but they were trying to turn off to look for shelter among the crags.
T' lambs niver get over wet spring and t' ewes is poor. Then flock is weel under tally; I've lost two score Swinset Herdwicks, and the mak-up's next Thursday." "But how did you lose forty sheep?" Grace asked. "There was a hole in fell dyke and Swinset sheep are thief sheep, varra bad to hoad. I bowt ewes there and t' lambs followed when they wandert back to their heaf." Grace pondered.
The Major, in spite of his sickness, stood up and pulled gallantly at the cable, the wind blowing his pigtail and skirts perpendicularly out from his person. "Heaf!" screamed Francisco from the bows; "Heave!" echoed Owen; and as the words flew past him on the gale, my grandfather's exertions were prodigious. At last, after tremendous tugging, the anchor came up.
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