neighbor.

Owd Bob, in the mean time, had escorted the children to the
larch-copse bordering on the lane which leads to the village. Now
he crept stealthily back to the yard, and established himself behind
the water-butt.

How he played and how he laughed; how he teased old Whitecap
till that gray gander all but expired of apoplexy and impotence;
how he ran the roan bull-calf, and aroused the bitter wrath of a
portly sow, mother of many, is of no account.

At last, in the midst of his merry mischief-making, a stern voice
arrested him.

"Bob, lad, I see 'tis time we lamed you yo' letters."

So the business of life began for that dog of whom the simple
farmer-folk of the Daleland still love to talk,--Bob, son of Battle,
last of the Gray Dogs of Kenmuir.

Chapter II. A SON OF HAGAR

It is a lonely country, that about the Wastreldale.

Parson Leggy Hornbut will tell you that his is the smallest church
in the biggest parish north of the Derwent, and that his cure
numbers more square miles than parishioners. Of fells and ghylls it
consists, of becks and lakes; with here a scattered hamlet and there
a solitary hill sheep-farm. It is a country in which sheep are