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I have ever been a day-dreamer; and there are few things I like better than to lie, upon some hot and sunny day, in the tall grass beneath the shade of some deep boughs, with running water murmuring near, hearing the summer bee buzzing monotonously, and in the distance, the clear, sharp tinkle of the sheep-bell.
When the boy recovered from his swoon, it was late in the afternoon; he was alone; the faint tinkling of the sheep-bell had again replaced the sound of the human chorus of expectation, and dread, and jesting; all was peaceful, he could not understand why he lay there, feeling so weak and sick.
I watched her, while the fierce pulsings of my temples blurred my eyes, and made her seem as in a sea of mist. The noises of the day had lulled to echoes. The peace of a summer twilight was stealing stealthily over all the land. From a far-off pasture came the silvery tinkle of a sheep-bell; the unutterably mournful cooing of a dove was borne from the forest.
Dartmoor slept insensible under granite and ice; no sheep-bell made music; no flocks wandered at will; only the wind moaned in the dead bells of the heather; only the foxes slunk round cot and farm; only the shaggy ponies stamped and snorted under the lee of the tors and thrust their smoking muzzles into sheltered clefts and crannies for the withered green stuff that kept life in them.
I picture heartbroken lovers parting forever at lonely wayside stiles, while the sad twilight deepens around them, and only the tinkling of a distant sheep-bell breaks the sorrow-laden silence. Old men sit and gaze at withered flowers till their sight is dimmed by the mist of tears.
The sheep-bell, in its half-muffled strokes, as of a small hammer tapping on an iron or copper plate, is, one would imagine, a sound well within the starling's range, easily imitated, therefore specially attractive to him. But to pass to another subject what does the shepherd himself think or feel about it; and why does he have bells on his sheep? He thinks a great deal of his bells.
And presently Nan told herself that there was nothing like a good run. She looked to and fro along the river, and listened to the sheep-bell which tinkled lazily in the pasture behind her. She looked over her shoulder to see if a favorite young birch tree had suffered no harm, for it grew close by the straight-edged path in which the cattle came down to drink.
The frosty air was perfectly still, and through it sounded the barking of dogs, the tinkle of the sheep-bell, the woodsman's axe in the plantations, and now and then the rattle of Dumple's harness, as she shook his head or shifted his feet at the gate where he had been left standing.
Before dark, she knew what she would do, and after the old mother was asleep, she rose softly and slipped out the door without awakening even old Jack, and went to the barn, where she got the sheep-bell that old Beelzebub used to wear and with the clapper caught in one hand, to keep the bell from tinkling, she went swiftly down the road toward Hurricane Gap.
And then into the light of his fire stepped a shepherdess with a sheep-bell in her hand, with a beautiful, pale, distressed face, a wet, clinging dress, and masses of yellow hair surging out of the shawl over her head. The ill startled picket dropped the butt of his musket to the ground and stared. "I want to see Chad, your captain," she said, timidly. "All right," said the soldier, courteously.
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