they had in their pockets, continuing till the captain's _revenons à nos
moutons_ once more started their shears. The sun crept up in the sky, a
fitting cessation occurred, and, a ranchman having given the signal, a
tide set in for the cook-house and breakfast.

In Mr. Hardy's story, just mentioned, his hero performs rather a feat in
shearing three and a half pounds of washed wool in twenty-three and
one-half minutes, A Mexican would have to take a reef in his big hat if
he could not do better than that. His tin check is worth four and a half
cents to him, and a fair hand ought to have at least fifty in his pocket
at sunset, in return for as many seven-pound unwashed fleeces,--always
provided he has not sacrificed them to _monte_ during the day. A
first-rate man will have seventy, and, if called upon to show what he is
made of, will shear a heavy-woolled wether in six minutes. At evening
each shearer turns in his checks, and receives in return a signed paper
with his name and their number.

The interior of the shed when shearing is at its height commends itself
very forcibly to the attention of the artist. The heaps of fleeces,
mellow masses of gray, yellow, and white, the throng of anxious sheep,
watching with painful interest their companions struggling in the
swarthy arms of the stalwart, bare-chested shearers, saddles, broad
sombreros, whips, and weapons grouped in so many pendent escutcheons of
the great Mexican vagabond family, the flitting _coleritos_, the scarfed
shearers themselves, all are so many veritable "bits." But it is not
only that the details are good: they compose admirably about the long
aisle, with here and there a dagger of sharp light thrust into the
shade, and without, the luminous clouds of dust. The shearer puts one
foot on the low table, the neck of the sheep resting over his knee, and
its fleece rolling off like a robe; his broad chest is thrown out, his