drive their sheep and lambs up the steep, zigzagging path that led to
Peregrine's steading, and there the old shepherd would receive his
charges. Dressed in his white linen smock, his crook in his hand, and
his white beard lifted by the wind, he would take his place at the mouth
of the rocky defile below his house. At a distance he might easily have
been mistaken for a bishop standing at the altar of his cathedral church
and giving his benediction to the kneeling multitudes. There was dignity
in every movement and gesture, and the act of receiving the farmers'
flocks was invested by him with ritual solemnity. He gave to each farmer
in turn a formal greeting, and then proceeded to count the sheep and
lambs that the dogs had been trained to drive slowly past him in single
file. He knew every farmer's "stint" or allowance, and stern were his
words to the man who tried to exceed his proper number.

"Thou's gotten ower mony yowes to thy stint, Thomas Moon," he would say
to a farmer who was trying to get the better of his neighbours.

"Nay, Peregrine, I reckon I've nobbut eighty, and they're lile 'uns at
that."

"Eighty's thy stint, but thou's gotten eighty-twee; thou can tak heam
wi' thee twee o' yon three-yeer-owds, an' mind thou counts straight next
yeer."

Further argument was useless; Peregrine had the reputation of never
making a mistake in his reckoning, and, amid the jeers of his fellows,
Thomas Moon would drive his two rejected ewes with their lambs back to
his farm.

When all the sheep had been counted and driven into the pens which they