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But this habit he had got into was observed by others, and the farm-men would say, "Something's wrong to-day the master's gone off to the head-shepherd."
He got her an old felt hat, a big old frieze overcoat, and a pair of old leather leggings. When she had put on these somewhat cumbrous things, and had tied her hat firmly on with a strip of cloth, and fastened the coat at the waist with a cord, she was told to go to the head-shepherd and ask him to direct her to the field where the rooks were troublesome.
And at home with his old parents and his people he was happy once more; in a short time he found a place as head-shepherd, with a cottage in the village, and followed his flock on the old familiar down, and everything again was as it had been from the beginning of life and as he desired it to be even to the end.
Joseph replied that it was about fourteen miles he had left Bishop that morning. Then the farmer asked him if he knew a man there named Caleb Bawcombe, and if he had a place as shepherd there, as he was now on his way to look for him and to try and persuade him to go back to Dorset, where he had been his head-shepherd for the space of a year.
He told me this story of a sheep-dog he owned when head-shepherd on a large farm on the Dorsetshire border with a master whose chief delight in life was in coursing hares. They abounded on his land, and he naturally wanted the men employed on the farm to regard them as sacred animals. One day he came out to the shepherd to complain that some one had seen his dog hunting a hare.
He tells of an unlucky farmer in those parts whose sheep fell sick and died in numbers, year after year, bringing him down to the brink of ruin, and how his old head-shepherd would say, solemnly shaking his head, "'Tis not strange master, he shot a raven." There was no ravens' breeding-place very near Winterbourne Bishop.
Joseph said that Caleb had a place as head-shepherd on a farm at Bishop, that he was satisfied with it, and was, moreover, one that preferred to bide in his native place. The farmer was disappointed, and the other added, "Maybe you've heard Caleb speak of his elder brother Joseph I be he." "What!" exclaimed the farmer. "You're Caleb's brother! Where be going then? to a new place?"
When Bawcombe had taken up his new place at Doveton, his master, Mr. Ellerby, watched him for a while with sharp eyes, but he was soon convinced that he had not made a mistake in engaging a head-shepherd twenty-five miles away without making the usual inquiries but merely on the strength of something heard casually in conversation about this man.
It was formerly one of the most important sheep-fairs in the country, but for the last two or three decades has been falling off and is now of little account. When Bawcombe was shepherd at Doveton it was still great, and when he first went there as Mr. Ellerby's head-shepherd he found himself regarded as a person of considerable importance at the Castle.
It may be, that for the good of mankind, for religion, education, and liberty, it was expedient in those earlier ages, that the Bishop of Rome should declare himself the head-shepherd and lay the foundation of a spiritual kingdom; but, that the christian church in later times has declined on that account, admits of no doubt.
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