All that he does is brutal. He stones the flock where it would tarry
against his will. He mutilates the males, and drags the females away
from their sucking babes. He shears their fleeces every spring,
unheeding how the raw skin drops blood. He drives the halting,
footsore, crippled animals on by force over flint and slate and
parching dust. Sometimes he makes them travel twenty miles a day.

For his pastime he sets the finest of his beasts to fight. This is
the feast day and holiday sport of all the shepherds; and they bet on
it, until all they have, which is but little, goes on the heads of
the rams; and one will wager his breeches, and another his skin
jacket, and another his comely wife, and the ram which is beaten, if
he have any life left in him, will be stabbed in the throat by his
owner: for he is considered to have disgraced the _branca_.

This Sunday and Saints' day sport was going on a piece of grass land
in the district known as the Vale of Edera.

On the turf, cleared of its heaths and ferns, there was a ring of
men, three of them shepherds, the rest peasants. In the midst of them
were the rams, two chosen beasts pitted against each other like two
pugilists. They advanced slowly at first, then more quickly, and yet
more quickly, till they met with a crash, their two foreheads, hard
as though carven in stone, coming in collision with a terrible force;
then each, staggered by the encounter, drew back, dizzy and bruised,
to recoil, and take breath, and gather fresh force, and so charge one
on the other in successive rounds until the weaker should succumb,
and, mangled and senseless, should arise no more.