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The thing acted as a stimulus to recollection, for it spoke of three human lives flowing onwards to the Unknown in a single stream of destiny: Mrs. Abel, Farmer Perryman, Snarley Bob and further articulations would have followed had not the re-entry of the Perrymans disturbed the process and plunged it back beneath the threshold of consciousness.
"All of a sudden I sees 'the Shepherd, plain as plain. He were standin' just behind the old dog, strokin' his head. 'Shoot, Snarley, he sez; 'shoot, and we'll look after him. 'Stand back, then, Master, I sez; 'for I'm goin' to fire. 'Fire, he sez; 'but aim lower. The shot won't hurt me, and he went on strokin' the dog's head.
Had Snarley received a due share of the unearned increment which his own and his rams' achievements brought into other hands he would probably have died a millionaire. But for all his toil and skill he received no more than a shepherd's wage. There were not wanting persons, of course, who regarded his condition as a crucial instance of the exceeding rottenness of our present industrial system.
Throughout these communings there was scarcely a trace of moral reference in the usual senses of the term. One rule of life, and one only, Snarley professed to have derived from his invisible monitor that "the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." This rule, also, he accepted in a strictly literal sense, and considered himself under orders accordingly.
If, as seldom happened, your voice and presence chanced to strike the responsive chord, Snarley became your devoted slave on the spot; the heavy, even brutal, expression that his face often wore passed off like a cloud; you were in the Mount of Transfiguration, and it seemed that Elijah or one of the prophets had come back to earth.
She were drivin' a little blood-mare as she'd bought o' me one as I'd bred myself for I were more in 'osses than sheep in them days and Mrs. Abel were allus a lady as knowed a good 'oss when she see it. And there was Snarley Bob, in his Sunday clothes, sittin' on the seat behind. She'd got a little blue bonnet on, as suited her to a T, and were lookin' like a "
At length one of us suggested Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale," to which the other immediately replied, "Why didn't we think of that before?" It was the very thing. But how were we to proceed? We knew very well that a deliberately planned attempt to "read something" to Snarley was sure to fail.
Her object in coming was to guide our walk in some direction where we were not likely to encounter Snarley Bob, whose haunts she knew, and whom it was not desirable that we should meet before the appointed time; for the nightingales were now in full song, and Snarley was certain to be abroad. We therefore took a path which led in an opposite direction to that in which his cottage lay.
It is true that the figures at which he estimated these personal quantities were very small in proportion to those which he had set down to the more public aspects of the case; for his principles forbade him to reckon either Mrs. Abel or Snarley as "more than one."
It may, however, be noted that in the tap-room of the Nag's Head, where the blasphemy of the Divine name was a normal occurrence, Snarley, of whose displeasure everybody went in fear, would never allow the name of Christ to be so much as mentioned, not even argumentatively by Hankin; and once when a foul-mouthed navvy had used the name as part of some filthy oath, Snarley instantly challenged the man to fight, struck him a fearful blow between the eyes and pitched him headlong, with a shattered face, into the village street.
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