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A barnman, a white-headed cow-herd boy, with Cuddie the new ploughman and his mother, completed the party.
People who live in solitudes are always hospitable. The cow-herd took the wayworn fugitive in, and gave him food and shelter. Alfred remained his guest for a considerable time. The story is, that after a few days the cow-herd asked him who he was, and how he came to be wandering about in that distressed and destitute condition. Alfred told him that he was one of the king's thanes.
The cow-herd was a strange, uncanny-looking fellow with a great shock of red hair, and a very red face. He shouted at the children in a dreadful hoarse voice; they felt frightened of him at first, and thought he was mad; but they soon found out that the poor fellow was only deaf and dumb. The cows were his intimate friends.
On the east the province of Sennar used to produce abundant grain, and might easily produce no less abundant cotton. Westward the vast territories of Kordofan and Darfur afford grazing-grounds to a multitude of cattle, and give means of livelihood to great numbers of Baggara or cow-herd Arabs, who may also pursue with activity and stratagem the fleet giraffe and the still fleeter ostrich.
Yet the crowd found her bashful fear so irresistibly funny, that it roared again. Also, when the little cow-herd with a crown on his head, lifted his hand or foot toward his partner, and then shrank trembling away, it roared yet more at the poltroon manner of the thing. Killian's partner said, 'You alter all my plays, but the way you do them is something to marvel at.
He watched and waited, and more than once pretended to go from home: at last one morning, from the larch-wood, he saw the unnatural girl seated with her maid on the bank of the river, the cow-herd reading to them, and on the other side the dumb idiot lying listening. He was almost beside himself with what, I can hardly define. In a loud voice of bare command he called to her to come to him.
So the play went on; and now, more and more, the showman had cause to grumble. Whenever he came to a part where the play required that the queen should turn from her own cow-herd to the ugly odd man, everything went wrong. 'Very well, thought he at last, 'she may be as innocent as Desdemona but it will all come to the same at the last!
The little calf always remained standing like one which was eating, and the cow-herd said: 'It will soon run by itself, just look how it eats already! At night when he was going to drive the herd home again, he said to the calf: 'If you can stand there and eat your fill, you can also go on your four legs; I don't care to drag you home again in my arms. But the little peasant stood at his door, and waited for his little calf, and when the cow-herd drove the cows through the village, and the calf was missing, he inquired where it was.
Then a cow-herd named Samanga, who had been instructed beforehand by them, approaching the king, spoke unto him of the cattle. Then the son of Radha and Sakuni, O king, addressing Dhritarashtra, that foremost of monarchs, said, 'O Kaurava, our cattle-stations are now in a delightful place. The time for their tale as also for marking the calves hath come.
The cow-herd answered: 'It is still standing out there eating. It would not stop and come with us. But the little peasant said: 'Oh, but I must have my beast back again. Then they went back to the meadow together, but someone had stolen the calf, and it was gone.
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